Day After Day #159: You've Got Another Thing Comin'

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

You've Got Another Thing Comin' (1982)

When you get as old as I am, you realize that there's no such thing as guilty pleasures. Either you like something or you don't. In my teen years, I was a huge metalhead, but once I got into my 20s, I turned my back on it. A lot of us did in the early '90s, when Nirvana and alt-rock effectively banished heavy metal to the hinterlands. It was dumb and uncool and I just stopped listening to it. 

But around 2006, a co-worker got me back into Iron Maiden and I realized I really liked this stuff. I didn't grow a mullet and start wearing jean jackets with patches or anything, but I started revisiting some of the old metal bands I used to dig as a kid. One of them was Judas Priest. 

Around 1982, I had already been into metal for a few years but didn't know much about Priest until I saw the video for "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" on Night Flight. By this point, we were living in Richland, Washington, where the FM radio situation was dire (only one "rock" station that played stuff like Steve Miller's "Abracadabra" on a goddamn loop) and our cable system didn't have MTV on it. But when I saw this video, I was bowled over.

Judas Priest formed in Birmingham, England, in 1969 by singer Al Atkins and bassist Brian Stapenhill, who were joined by John Perry on guitar and John Partridge on drums. The name came from the Bob Dylan song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." The band recorded a demo and got a contract with the label Immediate, but the label went defunct before an album could be made and the band split up in 1970. Atkins had teamed up with a hard rock band called Freight that featured guitarist K.K. Downing and bassist Ian Hill, but quit the band in December 1972. Vocalist Rob Halford joined soon afterward and a year later, Priest added guitarist Glenn Tipton. Halford's voice transformed the band as he was able to range between a deep growl and a glass-shattering falsetto.

The band's debut, Rocka Rolla, came out in 1974 on Gull Records, featuring a straightahead hard rock sound. Priest released Sad Wings of Destiny two years later, and it features the beginning of the band's heavy metal style. Displeased with their label support, Priest broke their contract and signed with CBS. Over the next few years, the band started to build their audience internationally and their albums started to sell well. They also started to record shorter, more commercial songs like "Breaking the Law," "Living After Midnight" and "Heading Out to the Highway" and became an arena rock draw, known for their leather-and-studs look. 

But it wasn't until 1982's Screaming for Vengeance album that Priest really broke through commercially. The album was heavier than their previous release, Point of Entry, which some fans had derided as too commercial. "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" was a last-minute addition to the album and became the band's signature song. The video, directed by Julien Temple, also brought a lot of attention to the song.

It's a classic driving song, with a powerful riff chugging along as Halford sings about fighting through adversity.

"One life, I'm gonna live it up/I'm takin' flight, I said I'll never give it up/Stand tall, I'm the kind of proud/I'm on top as long as the music's loud/If you think I'll sit around as the world goes by/You're thinkin' like a fool, 'cause it's a case of do or die/Out there is a fortune waitin' to be had/If you think I'll let it go, you're mad/You've got another thing comin'."

The song is a big middle-finger to critics who thought the band was toast after Point of Entry, as well as to the ones who thought they sucked to begin with.

"That's right, here's where the talkin' is/Well, listen, this night there'll be some action spent/Drive hard, I'm callin' all the shots/I've got an ace card comin' down on the rocks/If you think I'll sit around while you chip away my brain/Listen, I ain't foolin' and you'd better think again/Out there is a fortune waitin' to be had/If you think I'll let it go, you're mad/You've got another thing comin'."

The song went to #67 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but more importantly, it drove the album to go double platinum (and hit #17 on the Billboard 200 album chart) and made Priest one of the hottest metal bands going. They toured the U.S. with Iron Maiden, another band that was breaking through in '82. Priest also made a big splash on the Heavy Metal Day of the US Festival in 1983. 

Priest was huge in the '80s; the fanaticism of their fans was displayed in hilarious glory in the amazing documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which documents fans in the parking lot of a Priest show in Landover, Maryland in 1986. The band was named in a civil suit in 1990, alleging that they were responsible for two fans shooting themselves after listening to the Priest album Stained Class; one died immediately and one disfigured himself but died three years later of a suspected drug overdose. Their families sued, claiming that subliminal messages in the band's cover of Spooky Tooth's "Better by You, Better Than Me" caused the men to kill themselves. A judge eventually dismissed the lawsuit.

In 1991, Halford formed a thrash metal band called Fight as a side project; he left Priest in May 1992. Priest famously hired Tim "Ripper" Owens, who had previously sung in a Priest cover band, as Halford's replacement in 1996. The band released two albums with Owens. Meanwhile, Halford formed an industrial band called 2wo and then a metal band called Halford, which released four albums. 

In a 1998 interview with MTV, Halford came out as gay. It was shocking at the time, but not so shocking when you thought about the biker getups he used to wear. He was worried about negative backlash, but was surprised at the support he received after the announcement. Halford returned to Priest in 2003 and the group has released five studio albums, including one this year. The lineup has changed over the years, with Halford and Hill remaining as full-time members. Tipton is still a member of the band but is not touring because he has Parkinson's disease. Downing left the band in 2011 and was replaced by Richie Faulkner; in 2019, Downing formed KK's Priest with Ripper Owens on lead vocals.

I saw the band in '88 at the Worcester Centrum and then again 30 years later in Worcester. The band still puts on a great show, and Halford can still belt out the classics. Clearly, I don't listen to metal all the time, but I still like to crank up some every now and then.