Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford isn’t ruling out a Tony Bennett covers album.
The 73-year-old music legend – who has made his name as one of the metal genre’s greatest vocalists – has admitted he’d love to branch out by taking on some of the late jazz singer’s tracks.
He told Ultimate Classic Rock magazine: “There’s so many musical things I want to do… I was singing Tony Bennett in the shower the other day and I listened to my voice and I’m going, ‘Do I dare to consider something like this?’
“And then I go, ‘I’m an old man; I can do what I f****** want!’ And I love Tony Bennett; I was sad, like a lot of us where, when he passed. He as an icon and a beacon.”
The rock star insisted his influences are wide ranging, and he is drawn to the idea of embracing his “imagination” as a singer.
He added: “I love all kinds of singers. My love for what the voice can do is always so attractive to me the ideas, the imagination, like [Lady] Gaga doing her thing in Vegas when she does the jazz side of stuff.”
While Rob insisted he has no firm plans to work on a Tony Bennett album, he joked he “better get a move on”.
He said: “So, yeah, I’d love to do that. I don’t know how I would go about it, but I better get a move on if I’m going to do something like that.
“I wouldn’t have dared to have done this back in the day.”
The Breaking The Law singer recently recalled how he was an emotional wreck after hearing about Ozzy Osbourne’s death last month aged 76.
He told Detroit radio station WRIF: “Oh, man. I got a call the day (Ozzy’s death) happened. I just put the phone down in my hotel room – I think it was in Leeds, in England, and I just curled up in a ball and bawled my eyes out for hours.
“I just couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it now. I’m still grieving, like so many people.”
Judas Priest played a gig in the UK the day after Ozzy’s passing on July 22 and Rob recalled how the band included a special tribute during their performance of the song Giants in the Sky.
He recalled: “That song talks about people that we love in music that have moved on to this beautiful place.
“We reference Lemmy and Ronnie (James Dio) and Paul Di’Anno (from Iron Maiden) and Jill (Janus from) Huntress and Chris (Cornell) and all of these greats, Janis Joplin, Freddie Mercury. And then for that show we added Ozzy at the end.”