Legendary 80s Metal Band's Founding Guitarist Reimagines Iconic Debut Album Track
"We just had fun in a spare bedroom, trying to create something different," Downing, 73, recently told Ultimate Classic Rock in an interview about the song, reminiscing about writing it with the band's original lead vocalist, Al Atkins. "We wrote quite a lot of stuff and then we went on the road. In my memory, 'Never Satisfied' was always in the set. When Al left and Rob [Halford] joined, then we were on the road for at least a couple of years. We had the song in the set [at that time] with Rob singing it as well."
Last year, the band reissued Rocka Rolla in honor of its 50th anniversary and included a full remix of the entire album - which, in turn, got Downing back into the band's first output. From there, the idea to rerecord the song just came naturally to him.
"I thought, 'I'm just going to plug the guitar in and have a go at jamming along to a couple of these songs,'" he told the outlet. "I just had fun doing it and I thought I would put the track down and ask Ripper if he'd do the courtesy of throwing a vocal on there. It came about really quickly and it was fun."
For Owens' part, he wanted to really honor the original track as much as possible, particularly in the way it was recorded. "It's really cool," the singer, 57, explained to Ultimate Classic Rock in a separate interview. "It's me singing it, but staying true to the melodies. I changed a little bit, added a little bit of rasp [and] some high notes."
The vocalist hopes that this new version will lead to more rerecordings in the future - and there's a lot to mine there, if they go down that route. "I said, 'Ken, let's record the whole damn thing. I don't care, let's have fun,'" Owens told the outlet. "You want to do 'Rocka Rolla,' okay. 'Run of the Mill' [would be fun]. I've always wanted to do 'Cheater,' because I felt the guitar with more balls [would be good]. I think he's just having some fun and there'll be some more coming, I hope."
Interestingly enough, the band's 1974 debut and their 1976 follow-up Sad Wings of Destiny were owned by the band's original label, Gull Records, for nearly 50 years, as the band broke their contract with the label to move to CBS Records in 1977. Because of that, they were unable to do anything with the music from those albums as they were not the rights holders.
However, Gull sold the masters and publishing to Reach Music and Exciter Records in partnership with the band in 2022, which allowed the band's longtime producer, Tom Allom, to oversee the remixing of Rocka Rolla that was released for the album's major milestone anniversary. Allom will also oversee the remixing of Sad Wings of Destiny for an upcoming 50th anniversary rerelease.
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