Judas Priest - Reading Festival, August 22 1975 (Ultra-Rare 8mm Footage)
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- Опубликовано: 9 фев 2025
- This never-before-seen video is easily the most historically important, and also the earliest known, Judas Priest concert footage to ever surface yet. It is from their legendary performance at the 1975 Reading and Leeds Festival, and was shot on a Super 8 camera. Seeing as how this remarkable live footage is unavailable anywhere on RUclips or the whole Internet for that matter, I decided to share it with all my fellow metal maniacs who also love classic old school metal in general and Judas Priest in particular. You can clearly see how it was at this stage that the Judas Priest earnestly began moving away from the psychedelic boogie/blues rock of Rocka Rolla and pushing towards the true pure heavy metal sound that they'd go on to develop on Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin. Enjoy!!! =)
Rob Halford's biography brought me here to this exact 8MM cine film as he mentions! 😎
I'm reading it right now !
The same form me ;)
Me too👍🏻
Me too. Great stuff 👍
Ha! Me too.
as a fan of this band for 33 years....seeing this footage almost brings a tear to my eyes...knowing they were this good, tight, heavy and original....even getting the burnt out hippies headbanging....what a band
There were heavier bands than Judas priest since 1968
@@ranatoro1910 They might have been but they certainly weren't as Metal as Priest...
They weren't hippies...they were metal heads.
They just didn't know it yet.
@Rana Toro Which bands? Please don’t reply Black Sabbath😀 i’m just curious discovering bands from “the olden days”🤘
@@jengelenm same here lol
This is propably the
oldest gig I've ever
seen from priest
and it's pure gold to
me
That's why I love
RUclips so much,
please more of it
I was 3 years old when this happened, but was old enough when MTV and "You got another thing coming" video came around...
Pre-leather era! Love this!!! Thank you, what a gem.
I'm reading (and translating) "Confess", Rob's memoirs, and in chapter 5 he talks about this video! Quote:
"Again, the wonders of RUclips mean this Priest performance is preserved for posterity. Now, forty-five years on, it looks bonkers. A guy in the crowd shot it on Super 8, and the cine film is so jumpy that I am jerking around stage like a pantomime dame on crack. Which was about right."
Good job, Emmit ☺
Awesome.I saw Priest in 1977 for the first time.Those were the days !
Lucky you
Me too. Opening for Kiss. Hartford Connecticut.
@@jacktragic6917 lucky guy
The 1st of the 3 times I've seen them was May 3 1979 in Minneapolis at the Met Center opening for UFO. Priest were promoting the Hell Bent For Leather LP. Also the 1st of 3 times to see UFO as well - it was their last tour with Michael Schenker in the lineup promoting the Obsession album. Good times indeed!
@@jacktragic6917 Me too opening for Kiss. Huntington ,West Virginia
is very special to watch the hippie-metalheads of that time. No black clothes, no biker costumes, no studs...
Just rockers.rockin' out!
Yes, very refreshing. People actually looked like individuals without having to dress in uniforms (Priest as well).
Nowt wrong with black clothing tho my friend.
45 years later I still remember it as though it was yesterday my first 3 day festival
@@barnsley1912fc Mine too.
I was there!! JP came on after a dreadful act by the name of Stella...the crowd were lacking enthusiasm until Rob Halford fired us all up again with a yell of "GET ON YOUR F***ING FEET!!" (we did 🙂)
This is Stella. Thanks a lot!
@@nance64 😂😂😂
I was there to, but remember feck all. 😐
@@jeffelford1556 that must have been some strong stuff you were smoking 🤣🤣
@@jetbudgieii oh yeah ✌️
These guys were the pioneers of true Heavy Metal. They were doing this fifteen years before all the hair bands appeared. Zep gets too much credit for creating the genre. I always say Priest, Sabbath & Purple were the true progenitors of Metal.
Exactly! Idk why people say Metallica or zeppelin. Judas priest was doing stuff way heavier than both of them.
@@JSmith91 you guys really did your homework
@@JSmith91 who says Metallica pioneered metal lol
@@sinane.y mannnn I've heard it my whole life from the old heads. It's blasphemy.
what the f are hair bands, not such a thing
First time i ever saw and heard of Judas Priest. I was 16, and this was my first ever festival ... i travelled from the North East especially to see Hawkwind on the Friday night! This set was a bonus and was brilliant! I was right at the front of the stage and took a few pics on my 1970's camera! Seeing this is exactly how i remember it! Amazing!
+wal537
Hey, thanks for your comment. I wish I could have been there too. You
were very fortunate to have gotten to experience the kind of music my
generation will never get to, good sir. I would like to ask a few questions
about this particular festival. At the start of the video, there is a
wide view of the front row. Do you recognize yourself anywhere in there?
And do you still have those pictures that you took? Were you able to
meet the Judas Priest before or after their show? And most important question of
all, did you get to eat some of that prawn that was being sold at the
venue?
+Emmitt Ibrahim I was lucky enough to see Judas Priest twice the following year on the 'Sad Wings of Destiny Tour' in 1976. Great memories!
I have tried to spot myself in the crowd, but i can't ever remember what i looked like back then ... very long hair! ... that should rule a few people out! ha!ha! I do still have the pictures that i took somewhere ... also some of Robin Trower and The Mahavishnu Orchestra if i remember. Sadly, i never met Judas Priest, though there is a funny account of one of the gigs i mentioned above that my friend Jim and i attended and wrote about in the book 'Me-Moir' by Vic Reeves. I don't remember eating any prawn at all ... i would have prob just eaten chips for the entire weekend ... forty years ago is a long time!
+wal537
Thanks again for your reply. Can you remember what songs were played during the 1976 Sad Wings of Destiny tour? Since there is no known bootlegs from that tour, any information about the Priest's 1976 setlists is hard to come by and cannot be confirmed. And by any chance, do you happen to have any bootleg recording from that 1976 Sad Wings of Destiny tour? Or do you know anyone who might have one in their possession? That was a UK-only tour, and it only lasted a few months. So there wasn't much chance that for fans to bring a tape recorder and record the shows. But I'm still holding hope...
+Emmitt Ibrahim ... all i can remember is that the sets were probably very similar to the entire set played here at Reading. Sorry, i have no recordings from that tour, except the one that is already circulating ... 30 minute recording from a gig in Slough on the 11th October 1975, which is nearly, but not as good quality as the full Reading recording.
+wal537
That bootleg from the Slough gig is incomplete though. It cuts out right in the middle of "Mother Sun" song, and there's two more songs missing - "Island of Domination" and the encore "Rocka Rolla." The recorder ran out of tape and his cassette player could not catch the entire show. Also, from what I gathered, the 1976 setlists actually were different from the 1975 ones. "Mother Sun" was dropped from the setlist, and two new songs were introduced in its place - "Tyrant" and "Genocide." Also, "Never Satisfied" was supposedly used as a second encore show closer. And after the Sad Wings tour in 1976, did you also went to the Sin After Sin tour in the spring of 1977?
I’m reading Rob’s book Confess right now and he is documenting what led up to this performance and referenced this RUclips for readers to see. I love it!
Got it for Christmas and it's a great read!
Holy shit this is awesome! Thanks for uploading man :)
Can you imagine going back in time with professional video and audio capabilities and getting this whole concert in HD?
Except they didn't even know what "HD" was at that time?
@@mickeyflick9664Hard Drugs man, hard drugs..
Best part is the old guy headbanging at 2:02
I always wondered what happened to my dad. I always thought he was just tired of my mom's bullshit. But now, decades later, I know the truth- he just wanted to rock forever. \m/
Catweazle has seen it all
LOL, nice one!!
Darren H its a guy with a plastic bag on his head
Yeah,He must be born in1905
Super 8mm rare footage - - - - AWESOME !!!! I have never seen anything like that before, talking about the history of the British "Judas Priest". Unbelievable !!!! In 70's I was filming in the format 2x8mm Standard, without the magnetic strip for the synchronized sound recording.
I love finding rare footage that I've never seen before and this is definitely it. They're playing stuff from Sad Wings before it even came out, now that's vintage.
Man, this is so worth it just for a live version of "Island of Domination." Such a wicked song. I wish this was the entire set and not just snippets.
Absolutely awesome..I have owned this bootleg live album for years but never dreamed I would ever see this video footage!!!! Incredible!! I wish the whole show was available!
That would be impossible sadly, these 8mm films with the super 8 camera were rather short.
you own the bootleg live album?
Thank you so much for uploading this video for all the Judas Priest fans, like you said I'm pretty sure it's the oldest known video footage of them playing and you can see and hear how they already had their foundation which they have built on over 50 years, I think Black Sabbath were dark and heavy but more gothic where Judas Priest were the first to take hard rock into true metal when they went with the leather & studs and Halford wearing mirror sun glasses using a whip like a S&M Dom and riding a motorcycle on stage, I've seen them many times and I'm thankful they are now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
It blew my mind when he came out. No opinion here. Just saying.
@buddylove346 Early Judas Priest was also epic, gothic, and doomy for their first 3 albums Rocka Rolla, Sad Wings Of Destiny, and Sin After Sin too from 1974-1977. That change was altered on their 4th and 5th albums Stained Class and Killing Machine in 1978.
@@johnpolitis7929 I know, and I like their early style & music. I like every album.
@@buddylove346 Not for me. I only like their early style and music before 1978 and their first 3 albums, that's it.
Oh my God!!!!This is so beautiful!!!What a document!!!Great Great Great!!Thanx for sharing!
Extremely significant find, well done. I'm moved, look at them, so heavy even on hippy dressing!
Great stuff I listen to the stuff
Good stuff!t
And these guys are good still to date
What a screaming for Halford GOD!!!! this is history... thanks you so much, never never never forget this video in my fucking life.... Watch my old Judas Priest in the first concerts is outstanding... Ohh my god!!!
They didn’t know how big they would become, ahead of their time, big time raw talent!
Simply astounding footage!!!! One of the clearest sounding versions of this show I've heard (I'd love to have a copy of this show in it's entirety with this good of sound quality!!!). The video is a montage of short clips of "Victim Of Changes", the solo of "Deceiver", a few seconds of the rare tune "Father Mother Son", a rad chunk of "Island Of Domination" (w/alternate lyrics), and the very, very end of "Genocide". This footage is so historically important it should be placed in one of the world's most secure archives...
46 years ago now, a cool time capsule here.
Thank you!!!! thi is amazing!!!!! I love Sad Wings Of Destiny, is my favourite album.
Fantastic ! So glad this film survived and you shared it with us !
WOW!!!! this is historic! the 70's films of Judas Priest are very rare! Thank you!
OUTSTANDING find !🤟
Many thanks for posting
From memory , this was the turning point of their career , rocked Reading and went onto conquer the world !
1975 Headbangers knew what's up.
Thank you for this video! Ultra-rare indeed! Just imagine how proud momen this must've been for the band back in 1975!
Fantastic. Thank you for posting this. I’m reading Halfords autobiography now
This is so awesome! Love Judas Priest forever💜
Thank you for this awesome upload. I live in San Diego, CA. I’m very fortunate to have met the legendary vocalist and musician Rob Halford while shopping at RALPHS. He is very cool 😎 and down to earth.
Wow. Great footage of them!!! Just found this out the other day and this just proves that they have evolved dramatically. What a concert this must have been too!!!
Filmed 9 days after my 7th birthday...thank You for shareing...
Much love and thanks for sharing this with the world! I'd give anything to travel back in time to see them live in their early days.
Thanks for sharing. Listen to Metal since 30 years. And this is my Birthday ...this Concert..born to late
1975 was a rocking year
What a treasure this is! Thanks so much for putting this out there.
I grew up listening to Priest and Sabbath in High School. This is so cool!
I've Seen Judas Priest Many Times In Concert And I'm 60. Thanks For Sharing!!
Wow, truly amazing footage. I didn't think I'd ever see them live and in living color from this period. Thank you so much for loading this gem!!!
Thank you for posting !! ......Amazing Footage.
WOW, I was at this gig, THANK YOU SO MUCH for uploading it.
How old are you?
Awesome, I have never seen this footage before. Thanks for uploading
As a deaf old musician, I can't help but notice that none of the guitar or bass amps have a mic in front of them. Back in the day when you really needed to have a couple of 100 Watt Marshall stacks pumping sound off of the stage. Aeyoh!
When I used to play in a band I'd get sick and tired of sound men telling me to turn my amp down so that they could mike it up to be the same volume as it would have been without the PA. You lose all the sound of the guitar amp that way and the whole band sound is wrong. I've seen gigs ruined because of that. Crank the amps up and mic the vocals and maybe the drums - it worked in the old days and it could work just as well today. There is a whole generation of musicians who think you need a gigantic PA to play in a pub, and of course the PA companies lap it up.
KK's marshall amp to the left of him is clearly miced up, you can see the stand. I suspect glenn's is too, the halfstack to his left, but it's hidden behind the stage wedge monitor so we cant see. The bass could have gone direct DI. The other full stack amps behind glenn and ian are probably for the other bands and not miced up til they play, as it's been common then and now to setup as many bands gear as will fit ahead of time and move the mics...makes for faster changeover rather than moving gear between sets.
Good Eye Boudreaux
Wow absolutely amazing, what a performance. Priest was rocking from the start. Really cool to see old footage of a truly Iconic band.
I've never seen anything this early sounds badass!!!
At 1:59 in the video the old dude started what we call head banging today \😁/ still goes on till this day!
Was there and still got photos of different bands including Priest and Kokomo. Met Rob Halford a few months later at a gig they did at Cromer Links Pavilion and showed him my pics.
Hi Mr. Thirkettle,
Would it be possible for you to share those photos with me? If so, please private message me. There's virtually no photos of the Priest's Reading Festival available anywhere, you know. Did you also do more than just take photos? Specifically, did you also (hopefully) bring a tape recorder with you and record any of those early Priest shows? Also, what was Rob Halford's reaction to your photos of him and the band? Did he like what he saw? If I was there, I would have told him to fire John Hinch and replace him with Les Binks, instead of Alan Moore. Just imagine the Sad Wings of Destiny album, but with Les Binks on drums! Cromer Links Pavilion was also where Judas Priest played their very first show of the Stained Class Tour, in January 19, 1978. Were you there for that show as well? Thanks in advance and looking forward to hearing back from you.
Will see if I can dig them out and get back to you
Wow, that was nice. I really love these 70s Priest's songs. I love the 80s era as well but these 70s songs are so amazing. And they don't play them very often too, this makes these old live footages vary interesting.
Wow!! this is a really great footage, first time I've seen them play live at this era, the quality is really good too!
man, this stuff is fucking GREAT!! thanks for sharing, if you have more stuff like that i will be happy watching it :)
This is incredible! I was 14
i was 1
I was -17
I was 7.
I was 15 🤘
me too
Now this was way cool! To see more stuff from JP's formative years is always a welcome treat!
Hey everyone,
For those who keep asking if there is a full version of Judas Priest's Reading Festival set - take a close look at the screen's far-right corner at the very beginning of the video. At the front row you can clearly see a man in a dark red shirt filming the show with a large movie camera. That means there's a chance that a full-length concert video does exist. Assuming that the footage has not been lost or destroyed, this Reading Festival show may well be preserved in its entirety and the video is out there...somewhere. Perhaps one day it will surface? The cameraman or his family might sell or license the footage to Judas Priest for a public release. If they still have it, that is. That cameraman was much closer to the stage, and at a favorable angle, his camera has a much better view of the band as well. So any video from a professional 16 mm camera would be much better than this fan-filmed current video. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope for a miracle. If they can rediscover the lost Beatles and Bob Dylan concert videos from 1960s, surely something can be done for the early Judas Priest shows from the 1970s.
That camera is a video camera, not film. Still, if the video tape has survived the ages and can be transferred properly, it will be amazing.
+Simon Christensen first commercial video camera was early 80's Sony betacam...
I'm talking about the huge-ass professional video camera. Not the one used to record this, which was film :)
+Simon Christensen so am I :-) there was no video camera in 75..believe me :-)
There certainly was.
Thanks for the upload!
Truly an historical piece you have here. Back in the day when KK was still wearing those huuuuge hats ^^
I was there. (Quite near the front). Amazing set.
Thank you for posting this piece of music history!!
You have no idea how lucky we are that this has sound. Most 8mm films were silent.
this clip is clearly a dubbed over audio later to sync with the video footage ;)
Great thank you. Priest just as remember them when I saw them first time.
Epic. I love the early Priest albums.
My favs !
I love this kind of material, Ty.
good grief! I was at the front of this audience taking photos,
Far out! Where wud one find those today? Archived anywhere?
You're lucky it wasn't the smarphone...
Awesome! I'm just Reading 🙂 Rob Halford's book "Confess" and so Great to see this! Thank You for sharing! And Thanks Rob for your book ("The Book of Rob", as I call it) and Thanks Judas Priest for so great songs!
OH MY!
thank you,
thank you ,
thank you!!!
This is a masterpiece! Awesome post, just hit my recommended today.
wow awesome. glad this is uploaded
Absolutely incredible !!! So awesome to see this footage of the Priest prior to their leather makeover. Wish we could see the whole set. Thanks for sharing this piece of Priest history !!
I'd give a kidney to have been alive to see this
I'll take it
I was alive to see it, trust me. Keep your kidney.
Wow!
great! thanks for uploading!
W-O-W... thank you for posting this. Fantastic and almost unbelievable.
Long live the Priest!!!!!!
This is amazing! I was 4 in 1975, but by 1983 I had the Metal bug. Thanks for this!
Reading Rob’s memoir and he mentioned this clip. Outstanding!!
WOW!!!! Man, I'd never see this without YOU! BADASS!!
1975 AND 4 years later you have the best live album "Unleashed In The East"
Although whether or not that is a live album is not up for too much debate as far as the vocals go
@@zigmonger6646 Not up for debate at all. Rob said in his book his voice was shot so they redid the vocals at Ringo Star's home studio that once belonged to John and Yoko. The rest was live.
@@aerlial360 by trying to discredit my post you actually affirmed it.
Wow, that's awesome, that's for sharing! If you have more, please post it, if not - big thanks for it! That's a piece of history!
WOW!!! Simply amazing...
This is so beautiful...
Don't quote me on this, but I think these guys are going to go somewhere.
You’re nuts! This “heavy” music is a passing fancy.
Admittedly, I may have been wrong
Lame joke
BLOODY BRILLIANT!
THANKS for giving us such a gem,mate!
Looks like Benny Hill should have been runnin' around. Love it!
I was 5. Reading Halford's book Confess got me here. Simply amazing stuff.
The old grey haired man head banging at 1:35...I wish he was my grandpa
Who says he isn't? 😉
@@tomtrick7051 i miss marvins gramma.
Love this, a weird combination of heavy and mellow.
2:02 Older dude rocking out? Bang that head! LOL.
He was probably an old school rocker back in the 50s
@@ChristianVBlue3 nah, dude looks at least 70, so back in the 50s he would have still been old
He was my grandfather, he was born in 1910 and died in 1990. He had a very peculiar life and he was a great lover of music, parties, drugs and women until the end of his days
@@gorrionero Damn, that's an incredible story. How'd you figure out that's him?
@@guntherfanfan He's probably just making that up :).
holy shit, this video is a treasure! thank you sooo much for uploading this! :)
+Saša Machanová : Je to vynikajúce, neřku-li paní Sašo? Tož velmi si toho cením
This video has been out for 5 years and I somehow never have seen it after searching numerous times for the earliest Priest footage for many years off and on...weird. Anyway, these snippets seem to show some of the best early performances I've yet heard, it sounds very tight and heavy, and the audience seems to definitely feel that.
thanks a lot for this masterpiece man!!
I can't believe at around age 40 (I think anyway) Glenn decided to learn to sweep pick and incorporate it into his playing. not only that, he did it well and it sounded killer on Painkiller. inspiring. no many pro guitar players do that, especially from his era
@Brendan O' Neil from what I read they got the drummer from racer x - glen got interested in the playing of Paul Gilbert and Bruce; or at least the sweep picking then he really started woodshedding. His playing dramatically evolved. Btw, I think you meant Shrapnel not "Roadrunner"(?) Racer x were on Shrapnel
In 1990, I had 32 guitar students and the majority of the more advanced players had me teach them Painkiller! It was a great time for guitarists!!
@Brendan O' Neil 😊
Jan Akkerman was sweep picking in the early 70s
Thanks for uploading this rare footage of Judas Priest at the 1975 Reading Festival (not the "Reading and Leeds Festival", by the way - they didn't combine until 1999). I was there at this festival with some friends. We weren't very familiar with Judas Priest at the time (except for maybe seeing them on the OGWT on the telly). Rob Halford said that he had borrowed his sister's blouse for the show. They appeared well down the running order for the day. I can remember very little about it, but I don't think that we thought they were anything special (I didn't become a fan until some years later). There are maybe a couple of hundred fans right in front of the stage who may have seen the band gigging around the Birmingham area. The camera doesn't show the thousands of fans behind.
Priest at that stage in their career appeared down the order when you consider some of the other acts at that outstanding festival: Yes, Hawkwind, Wishbone Ash, Caravan, UFO, Babe Ruth, Soft Machine, Climax Blues Band, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Supertramp, Thin Lizzy, Dr Feelgood and Robin Trower Band, among others. There hasn't been anything of that consistent quality at any festival in many many years, when you think that Judas Priest appeared down the order. Reading (and Leeds) are just full of pop rubbish now, they are not rock festivals.
Who else is here after reading Rob’s book? 🤘
Im here during reading it. Haha!
Yup!
omg, priceless, thanks so much
AWESOME!! I'd love to see the extended version if there is one!
LOL! That was awesome. I was six years old when that was happening.
Hey everybody,
As an appreciation for giving nearly 70, 000 views to the Reading Festival video, and as early Christmas present, I decided to post something special on my channel for all my fellow Priest fans - a complete, uncut version of the Judas Priest's July 31, 1978 concert in Japan!!! The sound quality is superb and the band's performance is simply out of this world. After I finished writing up some contextual background info about the recording itself, and time stamping each track, the show is finally up now. Check it out here:
ruclips.net/video/0JAnUVu4U54/видео.html
Enjoy!!
This is awesome! Thanks for uploading. 😊