Judas Priest leader secretly battled cancer during pandemic

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Rob Halford

Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford secretly battled prostate cancer during the COVID lockdown.

The rocker has revealed in a new interview he's in remission after winning his fight with cancer in 2020.

"That happened while we were all locked down, so things happen for a reason as far as time sequence of events," he tells Consequence. "I have nothing but gratitude to be at this point in my life, still doing what I love the most."

He has detailed his cancer battle in a new chapter added to the updated paperback edition of his 2020 memoir, Confess, revealing he was both surprised and relieved by his diagnosis.

"I felt a combination of shock, horror, and oddly, relief - at least now I know... 'Am I going to die?'" he writes. "It was all I could think of. I know blokes who've died of prostate cancer: 'No, you're not going to die, Rob,' said Dr. Ali."

He underwent a prostatectomy, during which doctors removed his entire prostate gland and some of the infected tissue around it.

Halford reveals more cancer was found earlier this year and he underwent radiation treatments in April and May and an appendectomy after a tumor was discovered on his appendix before getting the all-clear in June.

"It's been a draining year, I can't deny it, but I'm delighted to have come through it," Halford wrote in the book, according to Consequence, revealing a commercial for the Phoenix Children's hospital gave him the strength to fight cancer.

"It showed kids with cancer," he said. "Some only babies. They were lying there, with tubes coming out of them, fighting for their lives. They didn't know what was going on... It made me feel totally ashamed of myself: 'Rob, how dare you be so selfish?' And from that second, I changed my entire mental attitude towards my disease."

The news of Rob's cancer battle comes just weeks after the band was forced to scrap the remainder of its 2021 dates following guitarist Richie Faulkner's onstage acute cardiac aortic dissection during the band's performance at the Louder Than Life festival in Kentucky.

Faulkner was rushed to the hospital after the band's set and surgeons spent 10 hours saving his life.