Andy was only 16 when Free broke through. 16 in the 60ies in England in a band otherwise full of straights. It cannot have been easy for him.
I read Robert Halford's autobiography Confess a while ago and for the first 40 years of his life he grappled with living an openly gay life. He writes that he knew of his sexual orientation since he was 10 years old, but that in 50ies und 60ies England in the Midlands there were simply no openly gay men that he could pattern himself after. His Priest band mates knew it too - from day one when he joined the band (bassist Ian Hill's GF at the time was Halford's older sister who was close to Rob), but it was never discussed except when the other guys would jokingly taunt him whether he shouldn't try a pretty girl for once (he did - to no avail). It's hard to believe but he writes that until he turned 40 he had only had casual sex in men's restrooms (he got arrested once too in the US, George Michael style, but one of the cops was a Priest fan and they let him go without pressing charges) or tragic relationships with men who were not so much gay, but starstruck being with "the lead singer of Judas Priest". Instead he drank until coming clean of alcohol in the mid 80ies. Only in the 90ies did he find solace and a lasting relationship with a gay man (totally not into rock and they are together to this day).
But the funniest part was: The leather-studded Metal God is hell-bent for gay vanilla sex; there are - contrary to popular belief - no dungeons in his houses in Phoenix and, uhum, Walsall (near Birmingham/Wolverhampton, UK) and he has never actively or passively used a whip off-stage.
And Priest's leather image was actually not his but KK Downing's do (who was in desperate search of a "uniform" to create an image he felt the band lacked early on), says Ken: "
Rob just took the ball and ran with it from a certain point onwards"
Oh, and not only "Eat Me Alive", but also "Jawbreaker" are blow job odes.
