Judas Priest's "TURBO" to receive deluxe 30th anniversary reissue

Was hoping this release would have material from the sessions or something. The two live discs are essentially pointless as they are of a setlist that is a carbon copy of Priest Live.

I saw Priest three of my twelve times on their Fuel for Life tour to support this album and while all three times were great, the setlist was relatively the same all three times.

I know most people do not like Turbo but I always found it to be fun and the final two songs (Hot for Love and Reckless) are classic Priest that are forgotten because of the album they are from.

My biggest complaint stems from the Fuel for Life tour. All three times I went I was hoping to hear them perform Reckless. That is my second favorite Judas Priest song ever and was always extremely disappointed that they never even attempted to play it live. Such a waste since Rob would sound terrible trying to do that song now.

I think people need to realize two things about Priest:

1. They have very few unreleased tracks in their archives.
2. They have released all but two tracks from the Turbo Sessions.

So if you think there's some massive list of Turbo material to be released there isn't.  Here's the list of the 19 tracks from the Turbo sessions and where they ended up:


Released on TURBO:
1. Turbo Lover
2. Locked In
3. Private Property
4. Parental Guidance
5. Rock You All Around The World
6. Out In The Cold
7. Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days
8. Hot For Love
9. Reckless

Released on RAM IT DOWN:
10. Ram It Down
11. Hard As Iron
12. Love You To Death
13. Monsters Of Rock

Released on the Re-Masters series:
14. Red, White & Blue
15. Prisoner Of Your Eyes
16. All Fired Up

Still unreleased:
17. Under The Gun
18. Fighting For Your Love

One other song recorded during the TURBO sessions, but not intended for the album, was called "Turn On Your Light" - this 1985 demo is on the Defenders remaster from 2001.

Some accounts report that "Heart Of A Lion" was from the Turbo Sessions, but I am not positive it is. I know that Racer X had the track by 1987 and recorded it for their 1988 album Second Heat, but I don't know if that was a Ram It Down reject or from Turbo. The liner notes from the Metalogy box set say Turbo, but Priest's liner notes are generally riddled with errors - the remasters have wrong information for almost all the bonus tracks for instance - that I'm not sure what to think for that one. Regardless, that track has already been released on the Metalogy box set in 2004.

Oh, one more thing.  In case you thought that Turbo was the last time that Priest tried a poppier direction, you are wrong.  In 1988, they actually worked with the production team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman who had produced for Banarama, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue!!!  They recorded a demo which has never been released, but snippets have surfaced and it sounds like a Synthwave band with Halford as a lead singer. Lol!  That would have immolated their career immediately if they had released that material.  The full story is here: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/judas-priest-audio-snippet-of-never-released-collaboration-with-pop-production-team-stock-aitken-and-waterman/  and here's the snippet:



I wouldn't mind hearing the whole thing actually.  

Witchfinder wrote:

Oh, one more thing.  In case you thought that Turbo was the last time that Priest tried a poppier direction, you are wrong.  In 1988, they actually worked with the production team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman who had produced for Banarama, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue!!!  They recorded a demo which has never been released, but snippets have surfaced and it sounds like a Synthwave band with Halford as a lead singer. Lol!  That would have immolated their career immediately if they had released that material.  The full story is here: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/judas-priest-audio-snippet-of-never-released-collaboration-with-pop-production-team-stock-aitken-and-waterman/  and here's the snipper:



I wouldn't mind hearing the whole thing actually.  

That's rather shocking and unbelievable. I never knew they tried something like that.

yeah that info makes Painkiller seem like a more calculated move than what i had originally thought. like, "shit we've tried sucking the dick of satan and selling our souls to pop-stardom, why not just go balls out pseudo-thrash on our next record?"

Wurthless wrote:

yeah that info makes Painkiller seem like a more calculated move than what i had originally thought. like, "shit we've tried sucking the dick of satan and selling our souls to pop-stardom, why not just go balls out pseudo-thrash on our next record?"  

Here's what Rob said about those S/A/W tracks back in 1988, "We split up the studio jobs-they respected us as songwriters and it was an interesting idea. Unfortunately, I think, those songs have nothing to do with Ram It Down. I don't know if we are going to have a S/A/W offering by year's end. Another thing we realized is the stuff mad with S/A/W could be a smash hit on the radio, but I think the people's response would be that we only made this to make hit singles. Bu we've got a lot more things to do than thinking about a few hit singles on the charts. That could make an irreversible damage to the band; we've got to sort our priorities out."

Add that quote to the Blabbermouth quotes and it seems they merely did this for the hell of it. They knew S/A/W from the Gull Records days, so it was probably just a bit of fun before the release of Ram It Down, which had already been recorded but not released when they recorded the S/A/W tracks.

That's good to hear/read. I was being mostly facetious with my remarks about being pop-sellouts, but I still feel like Painkiller was a sort of, "oh shit, we better actually pump out some good metal instead of trying to ride trends" move.

I mean, if i was a renowned musician I'd probably make more than a few out of left field tracks just for the hell of it too. Seems like a nice way to blow off steam.

Witchfinder wrote:

Oh, one more thing.  In case you thought that Turbo was the last time that Priest tried a poppier direction, you are wrong.  In 1988, they actually worked with the production team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman who had produced for Banarama, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue!!!  They recorded a demo which has never been released, but snippets have surfaced and it sounds like a Synthwave band with Halford as a lead singer. Lol!  That would have immolated their career immediately if they had released that material.  The full story is here: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/judas-priest-audio-snippet-of-never-released-collaboration-with-pop-production-team-stock-aitken-and-waterman/  and here's the snippet:



I wouldn't mind hearing the whole thing actually.  

"You Are Everything" is a cover of The Stylistics 1971 hit, which hit #9 that year. My father used to play their greatest hits L.P all of the time when I was a kid. The Stylistics, The Spinners, The 5th Dimension & the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose were more or less my father's go to soul/R&B albums of the early 70's. I love this stuff, but I don't know how I would have been with hearing this from one of my favorite bands in 1988. Turbo and Ram It Down were enough of a departure, even if I didn't fully realize that as a teen.



This is getting a bit off track, but if there are any fans from the Netflix show Luke Cage, there was a great moment in EP; 6 where The Stylistics "People Make the World Go Round" was used.

Witchfinder wrote:

Oh, one more thing.  In case you thought that Turbo was the last time that Priest tried a poppier direction, you are wrong.  In 1988, they actually worked with the production team of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman who had produced for Banarama, Rick Astley and Kylie Minogue!!!  They recorded a demo which has never been released, but snippets have surfaced and it sounds like a Synthwave band with Halford as a lead singer. Lol!  That would have immolated their career immediately if they had released that material.  The full story is here: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/judas-priest-audio-snippet-of-never-released-collaboration-with-pop-production-team-stock-aitken-and-waterman/  and here's the snippet:



I wouldn't mind hearing the whole thing actually.  

OMFG! I never heard about this before, but thank GOD they didn't go through with that. I doubt I would ever have listened to them again if they released a whole album like that. The one minute of that song just now makes me want to throw up right now.

Witchfinder wrote:

Well, that was... awful.
I can see why they've kept this one salted away in the vaults; if they'd released it back then it would've torpedoed their career before Ripper Owens had a chance to.

I picked up a copy of this. The mix is great and the live show is great. Not impressed with the packageing.. its a cheap digipack with the lyrics and a few pictures in the booklet..

I didn't realize that snippet had been released! Thanks for posting! I had previously only heard that no one in the band wants that to ever see the light of day.

The live show included on Turbo 30 is really good. But I'm still disappointed that they didn't use this as an opportunity to include those still unreleased tracks from the Turbo sessions (if there are only two of them this would have been the perfect opportunity to do so).