The original Turbo is a curious album. This was Priest’s early experiment with guitar synthesizers. Although, this wasn’t the first time Priest ventured into mainstream territory, a lot of listeners were unprepared for what sounds like keyboards—but are actually guitars—combined with songs designed for radio and MTV. Fans and critics didn’t know what to do with it then, and they are still working out its place in 1980s rock/heavy metal and the Priest catalog. We might think of it as a kind of missing link between more poppy hard rock and actual metal: Turbo is the sort of album you might have loaned to a friend to try to transition them from Bon Jovi and Def Leppard to harder, heavier bands at the time like Iron Maiden or Queensrÿche.
Ram It Down, is a natural—if not completely successful—follow-up record, which makes sense because four of its final tracks were written during the same sessions as Turbo as part of a scrapped double album titled either Twin Turbo or Twin Turbos. One part would have been more commercial and synth-based songs, which became Turbo. The other half would have been hard rock, and some of these tracks appear on Ram It Down. However, it’s somewhat difficult to see how the through-line from Ram It Down to its follow-up, the totally crushing Painkiller. For better or worse, there’s not much else in the Priest catalog that sounds like Turbo.
It’s possible Priest thought that Turbo would be the album to take them to the next level of success. Ironically, they held the track “Reckless,” which the producers of Top Gun wanted to include in the movie and on the soundtrack (The Top Gun soundtrack and Judas Priest were both on the Columbia label at the time). Putting “Reckless” on both the soundtrack and Turbo apparently wasn’t an option. Priest didn’t know how big the movie would become and didn’t want to leave it off of Turbo. One wonders how much the placement in a blockbuster movie would have helped their career.
Though the band was destroying it live, the primary inspiration behind taping so many shows was to make them available for the increased consumer base they seemed to think Turbo was going to generate. In an era before everything was taped, before bands released live albums with every studio album, and the technology to film and tape was more expensive and complicated to set up, professionally documenting live shows was a bigger deal. Taping a string of shows suggests Priest and/or Columbia believed the band to be on the brink of greater things.
The studio album continues to mostly hold together. Leadoff track “Turbo” is still virile. The moody, icy, textured, “Out in the Cold” wouldn’t be as good without the guitar synths, and it still stuns and conveys a feeling of loneliness and yearning. While most of Turbo sounds increasingly better with time, the backend stumbles a little bit. Though I’m sure they have their fans, the last three tracks are listenable, mid-tempo rockers that don’t live up to the first two-thirds of the record.
The jewel of Turbo 30 is the May 22, 1986 live show from Kansas City recorded during the Fuel for Life Tour. We get, for example, an intense rendition of “Desert Plains” and a pounding cover of “The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown).” If you like Priest . . . Live!, also recorded on the Fuel for Life tour, you’ll enjoy this.
The only real complaint that I can levy against Turbo 30 is the exclusion of “All Fired Up,” recorded during the 1985 Turbo sessions and most likely intended for the scrapped Twin project. It’s a stronger track than the last three Turbo tunes, so its exclusion is especially disappointing. “Reckless” could easily have been bumped onto the Top Gun soundtrack and replaced with “All Fired Up.” For reference, the triple-disc version of Screaming for Vengeance also contains the bonus studio track “Prisoner of Your Eyes” that the single-disc remaster includes. Although plenty of record companies do it, it’s bad faith to make the fans buy multiple versions of the same release just to pick up an extra track or two. It’s fairly common knowledge that anyone who tracks down an expanded version for the live work most likely wants to hear any and all bonus tracks, too. It’s this type of exploitative practice that tempts fans to acquire the music through alternative methods. However, I do appreciate that this is a compact and affordable physical package.
For those who purchase Turbo 30, there are perks. The physical packaging is thoughtful. The cover and inside have been rendered in a black light style of red, black, and purple. The booklet contains liner notes, albeit short ones, as well as photographs, credits, and lyrics. It’s not as extravagant (or costly) as some expanded editions, but as this price point, it demonstrates more care and attention to detail and design than some other bonus packages that cost more.
Let’s hope more expanded Priest releases appear with bonus tracks and live discs. Halford says the band recorded a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Play with Fire” during the Ram It Down sessions. How about a complete concert from the 1988 Mercenaries of Metal tour for a Ram It Down expanded version or a live show from the 1990-1991 Painkiller Tour added to a Painkiller rerelease? Priest can also work backwards in time. Plenty of us would love to hear anything else that exists from, say, Sad Wings of Destiny.
TRACKLIST
Disc 1: Turbo Studio Album
Turbo Lover
Locked In
Private Property
Parental Guidance
Rock You All Around the World
Out in the Cold
Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days
Hot for Love
Reckless
Bonus Disc 1: Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City
Out in the Cold
Locked In
Heading Out to the Highway
Metal Gods
Breaking the Law
Love Bites
Some Heads are Gonna Roll
The Sentinel
Private Property
Desert Plains
Rock You All Around the World
Bonus Disc 2: Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City
The Hellion
Electric Eye
Turbo Lover
Freewheel Burning
Victim of Changes
The Green Manalishi (With the Two Pronged Crown)
Living After Midnight
You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’
Hell Bent for Leather
