K.K. Downing turned seventy five on Tuesday and spent the evening playing a support slot in San Jose, which is as fitting a way to mark it as anybody could arrange.
The greetings came in on video: James Hetfield and Robert Trujillo, Kerry King, Klaus Meine, Dee Snider, Tom Morello, Zakk Wylde, Tim Ripper Owens, John 5, David Ellefson, Doro Pesch, Blackie Lawless, Scott Gorham, Alex Skolnick and Eric Peterson, Charlie Benante, John Bush and Wolf Hoffmann. That is four decades of the genre filmed on telephones for one man.
He founded Judas Priest and played guitar in them for forty years, which is the sentence that explains the list. Half the people on it learned what a metal guitar part sounds like from records he made.
The show was KK's Priest on The Sinners Ride Again, supporting W.A.S.P., and a seventy fifth birthday spent on a stage in California as the opening act says more about the man than the video does.