A year after the triumphant return of the original Judas Priest line-up as part of Ozzfest 2004, the metal legends continue to have the kind of success simply not expected from bands well into their third decade. Since the return of original Priest lead singer Rob Halford was first announced in 2003, fans eagerly waited to hear new music from the band. That wait finally ended in March when Angel of Retribution was released and quickly went to #13, the band's highest Billboard album chart position in its 35 year career. The group is currently touring the world to promote the album. KTVU.com caught up with guitarist/songwriter Glenn Tipton to discuss the band's history and it's latest album.

KTVU.com: Before getting into Judas Priest's reunion and the new album, I have a couple of questions that are a bit more historical. You joined the band as second guitarist back in 1974; had there been a second guitarist prior to you?

Glenn Tipton: Yeah, I joined the band around '74, just prior to the first album. And I was the first second guitarist in the band.

KTVU.com: Priest's sound is just starting to develop on the band's debut Rocka Rolla, but it really took a quantum leap forward with Sad Wings of Destiny. How much time did it take to gel creatively with KK Downing as far as coming up with Priest's signature style of trading leads and harmony lines?

Glenn Tipton: Well, I think right from the word go we started to adjust to each other's playing and sort of develop a relationship on the guitar. But I think you're right, it really kicked in with Sad Wings of Destiny. And through the years, it's just become a sort of sixth sense to us.

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Video On Demand: Watch Judas Priest Play "Breaking The Law"

KTVU.com: Another aspect to the tandem guitar playing I've wondered about is that -- except for Priest's contemporaries Thin Lizzy -- there weren't that many bands that explored the twin-lead guitar concept in the direction of hard rock and metal. There were some blues-rock and boogie outfits that had used two guitar counterpoint and interplay as far as rhythm and lead guitar, but to me it seems Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest really wrote the book on the tandem guitar style that would change how hard rock and metal bands up into the thrash era approached music. Were there any influences that you had in mind when you developed that style?

Glenn Tipton: Initially, the idea was to get another guitar player in the band so we could trade off licks or one could do the lead section while the other guitarist was playing rhythm to keep the band sounding full. And you've also got the big stereo guitar sound that just made heavy riffs that much heavier, or you've got the intricate bits where you have two guitars that can play across each other and play harmonies. And it evolved from that, you know? And we went on to play some pretty intense stuff in terms of harmonies. So it just evolved really, without any planning or forethought.

KTVU.com: I had a quick question about your solo album too. From what I understand, you put it together over the years of the hiatus that the band when through after Rob left, when you were auditioning singers. Eventually, its release ended up coinciding with the first album Priest did with Tim "Ripper" Owens as lead vocalist. Did you ever get an opportunity to pursue that solo material as far as playing it live?

Glenn Tipton: No, I didn't get to do it live. I started the solo album basically because Priest, we thought, was over, and I'm not the sort of person who'll just go sit in the corner the rest of my life. I'm a fairly prolific guy and I started to write stuff. I worked first of all with [late bassist for The Who] John Entwistle and [late British rock drumming great] Cozy Powell, and then I worked with [former David Lee Roth/Mr. Big bassist] Billy Sheehan and a lot of young guns from L.A. and put a whole bunch of stuff together and released it with a view to going out and touring behind it. Then, shortly after that, along came Ripper. And, in the end, we went out as Priest because Priest will always be the priority.

KTVU.com: On the question of bringing Ripper in as vocalist for the band, when researching questions I came across an old interview you did during the tour promoting Turbo in 1986 where you talked about someone asking what you thought Bad Company getting back together. You asked "What? With Paul Rodgers?" When the person said no, you replied that "…would be like Judas Priest reforming without Rob Halford." After all the auditions for a new singer in the '90s, was it just a matter of Ripper falling in with the band so well that you decided you could still carry on as Judas Priest?

Glenn Tipton: When Ripper joined the band, we'd given up hope, really, of finding anybody. And Ripper came out of the blue and we suddenly realized that potentially we could go back out and play Priest music and we knew that there were still a lot of people out there who wanted to hear the band. There's no substitute for Rob really, but we found the only guy on the planet who could step into his shoes, and that enabled us to go out be Priest again and that's what we did. We were together five years with Ripper; we did three albums with him, two studio and one which was live, and they're great albums. Slightly different, but then they were with a different guy and they should have been different, you know? I'm very proud of those years…

But eventually, and probably inevitably, we reformed with Rob. And that was just a chance happening, a suggestion at one of the meetings to do with the box set. We all realized at that point that that was what we actually wanted and that if we didn't do it now, we never would. No disrespect to Ripper -- he's such a great guy and a fantastic singer -- and he actually welcomed it. He said "You've got to do it" and was a real gentleman about it.

KTVU.com: And he definitely seemed to land on his feet ending up with Iced Earth, another great metal band …

Glenn Tipton: That's right. And I hear he's doing some solo stuff as well. We wish him luck. He's got a great platform to work from and he's such a talented singer I'm sure he'll be successful in his own right.

KTVU.com: As far as the new album, I was curious about a couple of the more acoustic based tunes on Angel of Retribution. Judas Priest is one metal band that never sold out for a power ballad hit during the '80s, but the slower songs on this album, particularly "Angel," really show a different side to the band. It immediately brought to mind the live take on the Joan Baez song "Diamonds and Rust" you've played on recent tours that is closer to the original spirit of the tune than the original version Priest recorded. Was there a conscious decision to make such a departure with the new material?

Glenn Tipton: What we did was just try to write this album naturally. It's been fourteen years and there was a lot of expectation. And we knew that might set people up for a lot of disappointment. So we decided the best thing to was to just right naturally because otherwise we would have had a lot of pressure on our shoulders. So everything just came out naturally; it wasn't too engineered or though about too much. We just tried to enjoy ourselves and it's just that simple. We just sat down and that's what came out.

KTVU.com: "Lochness" also stood out as something very distinct from past material as far as the epic length and subject matter. How did that song develop?

Glenn Tipton: Well, Rob came up with the idea. Being British and having passed Loch Ness a few times in the early days touring, he suggested the theme and got the lyrics going and we just put every monster riff we could together. There's also that passage in the middle that depicts the loneliness of the loch and the mist on the water … it's like a mini movie. We wanted to do an epic track, but we didn't start out, again, to write an epic track. It just wrote itself really. And that's how it came about.

KTVU.com: How much of the new album can people expect to hear when they see you this summer? And, following up on the success of last year's Ozzfest tour, are there any older songs that fans might not have seen you play live for a while?

Glenn Tipton: We're playing a lot of songs of the new album, usually four or five tracks, which for us is a lot. Normally when you go out, people haven't necessarily heard the album and if you play more than three they start getting a bit restless. But people are receiving it well, so we're playing an additional song or two. And some tunes we haven't done in a while -- "I'm A Rocker" and "Riding on the Wind" -- will be in there along with all the old classics like "Victim of Changes," "Beyond the Realms of Death," "Hell Bent For Leather" and so forth. So it's a good mix of the old and the new.