In a recent interview with Metal Hammer , Rob Halford recalled the period he spent away from Judas Priest from 1992 to 2003, when he rekindled ties with his bandmates. According to the artist, the great catalyst for the reconciliation was a handwritten letter he wrote while in a café.
Halford said that at the time he was missing Judas Priest and decided to put that into a “very intimate and personal” letter which he then sent to the band’s management. “I was living in San Diego and I missed the band, so I went to a coffee shop. People don’t write letters anymore, it’s all email, but I went to the coffee shop and bought a cup of coffee, sat outside with some sheets of blue paper and a blue envelope and poured my heart out in seven or eight pages telling them how I was doing and what I was feeling,” Rob recounts.
Rob Halford would later discover that the letter was a key part of Judas Priest's decision to invite him back into the band. "They all read the letter and said, 'Let's do this,'" he recounts.
The singer also said that the band's first reunion was in a very British style, without much fanfare or commotion: “The final question was, 'So… You're back?', 'Yes, I'm back', 'Okay, great'. And everyone left! And I stood there in my kitchen thinking 'My God, I'm back in Priest'. It was very British.”
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