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MICHAEL Sweet has recalled an early encounter with Judas Priest’s Rob Halford from the Stryper frontman’s days as a young fan, saying: “I think he was hitting on me actually”.
Sweet was talking during an interview on Sirius XM about his love of the British heavy metal progenitors, recalling the time he want back to the band’s hotel after a 1980 concert, in the hope of meeting them.
“I saw Priest for the first time when I was 16 years old,” Sweet, now 62, said on the Faction Talk station.
“I saw them at the Long Beach Arena in California and I followed them back to their hotel room. We were brave, me and my buddy Greg.
“And I had tight sailor pants on and makeup and my hair all done up. We were brave enough to go knock on the door, at the hotel.
“They opened it up and I said ‘We just wanted to meet Rob’.
“They closed the door. The door opened, there was Rob Halford.”
Sweet corrected himself during the interview on the Trunk Nation program regarding his age, saying he was 17. Priest played Long Beach Arena on June 13, 1980, when Sweet would have been a few days short of his 17th birthday, on July 4.
He continued to host Eddie Trunk: “Anyway, don’t tell Rob this but I think he was hitting on me actually. I mean, I was pretty then. I’m not anymore.
“And then fast forward to Canada. We were playing in Canada in 1990 and we were performing on stage and in the middle of a Stryper song I stop. I go ‘hold on, hold on’. I go ‘Rob Halford’?
“And he holds up his drink and he goes ‘yep’ and I said ‘dude, what are you doing here’ and he said ‘I’m a Stryper fan’ and I said ‘well, you come up and will you jam with us’ and we did ‘Breaking The Law’ with Rob on stage in Canada.”
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