John Lennon’s former home inspired Judas Priest’s 1980 classic ‘Living After Midnight’.
The heavy metal band’s guitarist Glenn Tipton has recalled how the song came about while the band were working on their iconic LP ‘British Steel’ at Tittenhurst Park, where the old residence of the late Beatles frontman is situated in Berkshire, England.
In the early hours, he and frontman Rob Halford created the tune sat opposite Lennon’s famous piano from the ‘Imagine’ music video.
He recalled: “We were working on the songs for ‘British Steel’ at Tittenhurst Park, which had been John Lennon’s old home before he sold it to [Sir] Ringo Starr.
“We’d been out at the pub, and when we got back quite late, I started working on some ideas in the living room, but the noise woke Rob. His bedroom was right above. He came down and said he couldn’t get the riff out of his head, so I asked him to sing some lyrics right there on the spot and he came up with, ‘Living after midnight, loving till the dawn.’ That was how we used to live our life back in those days.”
He continued: “I should mention that it was very surreal sitting in the living room with John Lennon’s white piano there – the one he played ‘Imagine’ on in the video for that song.”
He added to Guitar Player magazine: “It was really a very simple riff that just worked.
“We finished the music before Rob worked on finishing the lyrics. We didn’t have a working title or anything other than the idea that Rob had come up with for the chorus. I think the riff just spoke for itself and like every great song that we ever wrote, it came together really fast. The best songs always do. It was almost fully formed from the outset. It didn’t evolve through any different approaches or stylistic changes; it was just born from nothing and worked immediately.”