Known as The Metal God, the Judas Priest vocalist Rob Halford is one of the most influential Heavy Metal musicians of all time. He will celebrate his 74 birthday in 2025 and learned a lot about life during the past seven decades. In an interview with Lyndsey Parker (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), he talked about depression and the most important things to do to keep your mental health.
Rob Halford talks about depression and maintaining mental health
“My sobriety. I just celebrated 39 years this past January, the sixth. One day at a time. It’s a great way to live, because you’re living in the moment. It’s pointless worrying about tomorrow because you don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. Plans and ideas and dreams are vital, but tomorrow hasn’t happened. Yesterday’s gone. It’s in the past. You can’t change anything. You can maybe look at things that could be utilized to fix things in the next opportunity. So living in the moment is just so important. And look, where I’m at in my life, I’ve got nothing to complain about, absolutely nothing to complain about. But a lot of it is mental health. Regardless of who you are and what you do in life, to try and find the balance and harmony of mental health is really, really important.”
“I used to have really, really, really bad depression, not only when I was drinking, but as I came out of drinking. And I think that kind of came from my mom’s side, with the DNA and all that kind of stuff. Somehow I got through that. I didn’t go to therapy. No, I did my research. Yeah, a lot of it again is trying to understand… Sometimes there’s a chemical imbalance that has to be treated and can be treated successfully with the right pharmaceuticals, but sometimes you bring it on yourself, and that is stress, that is just over worrying about things that really haven’t happened or in your mind they might happen and all this plays on into your into your mental health.”
He continued:
“So that is something that I treasure amongst everything else — sobriety and staying in a mental positive frame of mind. Because negativity is crushing — negative thinking, negative things that you see and hear on the Internet or on the news, I try and just blank that out because it has no value, it has no purpose. It doesn’t build, it destroys. So, all of that is just part of trying to find the joy of waking up and thanking God for the day and just getting through the day — and just trying to push out as much goodness and kindness that you possibly can. It’s easy to do, and the circumstances surrounding getting to that place can be difficult, but we’ve all got a good heart. And so all of that is a part of staying in the light. Stay in the light. Stay with the love,” Rob Halford said.
The singer first joined Judas Priest in 1973, leaving the group in 1992, then returning in 2003. He was the voice on all the classic albums of the group like: “Sad Wings of Destiny” (1976), “British Steel” (1980), “Screaming for Vengeance” (1982), “Defenders of the Faith” (1984) and “Painkiller” (1990).
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