Tim ‘Ripper’ Owen’s unique skills tore open a fairytale career, fronting iconic acts including Judas Priest, Iced Earth, Yngwie Malmsteen, Dio’s Disciples, The Three Tremors, and the incredibly ferocious RIPPER – a collaborative project spearheaded by Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta. And most recently powering KK’s PRIEST across the biggest stages in the world.
He heads back down under for a series of shows in February 2025 joined by the Metallic luminary of brothers Joel & Jordan McDonald, Andrew Hudson and Voya Mulitinovic, Ripper’s live assault will be molten as hell. Andrews Slaidins touched base with Tim to talk about his career.
Ripper : Hey, you look familiar.
Andrew : How are you, my friend? Welcome to The Rockpit, thanks for taking the time to chat with me.
Ripper : It’s all good. I’m good. Nice and busy. A year and a half of touring with KK’s Priest, and how do I get off the road and relax? I go do more shows for myself.
Andrew : What a way to do it. You’ve formed quite a love affair with Australia which goes back quite a few years now. You seem to be here on quite a regular basis since 2022. In 2023 you did the “Return To Death Row” EP tour, which features the band that you have with you again consisting of Joel and Jordan McDonald, Voya Milutinovic and Andrew Hudson.
Ripper : Yeah, I was there a year before that. Two years ago, I was there with a thing called Metal Gods with James Morley, Joel McDonald and Simon Wright on drums. We did this thing called Metal Gods that did AC/DC, Dio and Judas Priest songs, and then last year I did the “Return To Death Row” thing. So, I’ve been there a lot, it’s kind of crazy, but these guys are so good. Jordan, Joel, Voya and Andrew are just so good. Man, oh Man when I showed up to play those shows last year. My girlfriend lives in Katoomba the Blue Mountains, so I said let’s just throw a couple shows in while I come see you here. That was a month and a half in advance, we packed the two venues, and those shows were so good. I was like, man, you guys are good. So, when I said let’s do again and this time lets change the set list around and hopefully get Voya and Andrew to do it with us and we did. So, it’s pretty exciting.
Andrew : I know Joel had posted the other week that he’d been left with the incredibly tough job of curating a set list. Was that something that he wanted to take on? Or did you just go, hey, look, let’s go and do something completely different?
Ripper : No, we kind of did it together. I think Joel will take responsibility for it if people like it and then if they don’t like the setlist he’ll say it was my fault. We did it together. The thing is I would say, let’s do this. I mean, he would have suggestions for songs, or I would have suggestions. We already had the set list from last year and we could have kept it exactly the same to be honest, it was great but I wanted to add KK’s Priest songs into the set list.
I think we’re doing Ice Earth’s ‘When The Eagle Cries’. We’re doing ‘Beyond the Realms of Death’ by Priest, ‘Scream Machine’ from the Beyond Fear record I did. What’s funny is I said to him, do you want to make some changes? And he wanted that, and the guys wanted that. They wanted the challenge of doing songs and you don’t hear that, usually they would just want to refresh their memory on the songs we did a year ago, but they wanted that challenge of doing different songs and the songs we put in aren’t the easy ones. It’s not like we put in a bunch of easy songs. I think we do we’re doing ‘Green Manalishi’ this time which is an easy one. But you know, you could do ‘Breakin The Law’ and ‘Living After Midnight’ to ‘Green Manalishi’, those are all really easy, right?
But we added ‘Hellfire Thunderbolt’ from KK’s Priest; difficult, kind of. There’s a lot of harmony guitar playing obviously because that’s how KK and AJ do it. ‘One More Shot At Glory’, ‘Scream Machine’, ‘Beyond the Realms of Death’, Joel actually suggested that because last time we played ‘Diamonds And Rust’, the acoustic version that I did in Judas Priest. Joel said I saw you guys in KK’s Priest did ‘Beyond the Realms of Death’, I wouldn’t mind doing it, so I said, let’s replace ‘Diamonds and Rust’ with ‘Beyond the Realms of Death’.
I mean, if you guys want to do it, let’s do it, it’s definitely a more difficult song than ‘Diamonds And Rust’ for both of us, I think. I swear his words were, they liked the challenge. So I’m like, okay. Well, then the other day I said about ‘Scream Machine’ from the Beyond Fear record. It’s definitely a tough one with me it’s all falsetto, you know scream. It’s all fast great guitar work and I think they’ll just eat it up. Those guys are so good, I said to Joel last year when I sent him a set list. Here’s the set list and all that I had a guitar solo before ‘Grinder’, because I figured you know those guys he could do a solo and then just kind of end it go you “count, count, count”. I figured those guys learned an instrumental they made up, an instrumental where they’re playing harmony guitar parts and then the drums come in and it’s like a whole song. Jordan’s like a Muppet, he’s like a Muppet behind the drum kit. So they’re just unbelievable. I mean, you talk about a bunch of pros, these are the kind of guys you wish you could take everywhere with you.
Andrew : They are all class humans. I’m fortunate to have been friends with Joel for several years now. Same with Voya who I first met when he was in Bad Moon Born. They are all elite musicians, and I love their creative mind behind this. I’m glad in a way that, they’re also pushing you as well to go and do some stuff that you perhaps hadn’t thought of revisiting or haven’t had a chance to revisit for a little bit.
Ripper : You know the setlists have been so tough with KK’s Priest. I mean, we, you know, ‘Victim of Change’, ‘Beyond the Dark’, ‘Sinner’, the KK’s Priest songs are tough in their own right. When I do my solo tours, first of all, on a solo tour, if I don’t feel like doing a song that night, I can take it out of the set because it’s my show, my name’s on the sign. I can go, we’re not doing ‘Scream Machine’ tonight because I don’t feel very good. A couple of years back vocally, I wasn’t singing as good, so I probably wouldn’t have done ‘Scream Machine’ or maybe not even ‘Beyond Realms of Death’, I might have taken it out, but they want to do them and I don’t have an issue doing it now. Plus I just got done singing it on the KK’s Priest tours. The last tour we didn’t do ‘Beyond Realms of Death’, we did Diamonds, we actually switched it the opposite way. We did ‘Diamonds and Rust’ on the last tour and ‘Before the Dawn’, which Judas Priest never played in their history live ever. So, we played ‘Before The Dawn’ and then ‘Sinner’ replaced ‘Victim Of Changes’. Which is an easier song to sing, but yeah, it’s nice. You know, those guys, they have a lot of pride in what they do and they want it to be a good show, you could tell that when they play. I mean, you’ve known Joel, like you said, and Voya, and when I told my girlfriend who the band was, she goes, Oh, I saw Voya’s old band and she goes he’s great. You know, he’s perfect, she goes. It was funny when we were playing on stage, he was over at the side and I think it was like speaker in front of him or something and he was like over there and I’m like, they can’t even see him.
So she said, you were like singing and you looked over at him and said, get over here and stand next to me. She goes, it was the funniest thing. You’re like, kid, what the hell are you doing out there? (laughs) Man, they are good. Good musicians.
Andrew : You know last tour, the one that you did with this band, I mean, what a show. I was at the one at the Bendigo Hotel in Melbourne and it was jaw dropping. The crowd reaction to everything, hearing them sing along with you and that set was just divine, it was a perfect fun set. And you, my friend were just in fine form. I think you melted some serious faces with it and I love the fact that you all look as though you’re having such a great time.
Ripper : Yeah well, and it’ was and I remember when I went to that because I just did some shows with KK’s Priest and I had the same vibe with KK’s Priest, the energy, the professionalism, the show, everybody is on form and I walked into this, it was the first thing I did since those couple shows and it was like, and I remember when I went to that because I just did some shows with KK’s Priest, the energy, the professionalism, the show, everybody is on form. When I walked into this, it was the first thing I did since those couple shows and it was like, Wow, it was the same vibe and what’s fun about solo shows is I can have a little more humour between songs and have fun with the crowd. I don’t drink hardly ever, but at my solo shows, I will have a beer on stage and I just have fun.
I think that night, I probably called the crowd c*nts a couple of times because I get to the best part about that show and there was a guy next to my girlfriend there. As I said that, he kept calling me Ripper c*nt (Aussie term of endearment). She said he was having so much fun. He’s going Ripper c*nt, Ripper cu*t, Ripper c*nt and then he looked over at her, not knowing who she was. He goes, I just apologize. He goes, I don’t get out very often. I have three kids at home and this is my time out and I’m having so much fun (laughs). It was so great. That was a great small place. Those two shows in Sydney and Melbourne were amazing because they were only put together like a month and a half in advance. Wow, I’ll tell you what, they were great shows. The crowd, you were right. The crowd was fun, man. Those shows were packed too.
Andrew : Being in that crowd was nuts, we were so completely crammed in. Such a great night. Now, if we go back in your career, we first came to know of you in the early 90’s where you had released an album with Winters Bane the original project that tied into British Steel, the Judas Priest tribute band you were in. You then spent six years in Judas Priest. While in Priest you released two studio albums, two live albums, earned a Grammy nomination. How was that time for you? I know it’s probably been touched on a billion times with the movie Rockstar as it’s claimed to be loosely based on this time in your life. How surreal was it to go from singing the songs of Judas Priest, your heroes to being a part of the band?
Ripper : It was great. You know, I always tell the story because I wasn’t planning on being a musician, I had a regular job. I did music, but you know, I always, always had a job because I never thought I’d be a musician let alone get that break and it all came from out of nowhere. I tell the story that the only bad thing out of making Judas Priest was I lost my heroes and my idols because they became my friends and my family. They treated me like that, which sounds like it’s not a bad thing, but that band when I was in high school were the only band that was on my bedroom wall. I lost the people on the posters, they became friends. It was an outstanding time. They treated me so good. We had so much fun, and that’s what’s so amazing about getting back together with KK now. We stayed in contact, and it always makes me think of that, how easy it was. I probably do it even more than I did back then. I will look over at Ken and go, yeah, it’s KK Downing. I mean, Jesus, this guy. My daughter, she’s 19 and she came onto the road with us for a couple of shows here in America. We went out to dinner, it was me, KK and my daughter and had a great time. KK doesn’t like to do a lot of stuff. We all laughed that night, he has a great time and she thought, Oh my God, he’s so funny and so awesome. I said to her you don’t even realize who he is. I mean, this guy, is why people play music THIS guy. The Judas Priest time, man it was so great, it was my college, you know, I wouldn’t do what I do without them. I took what they gave me; they took a chance on me and I made a living out of it. I’ve worked hard since Judas Priest and I still work hard, but I thank them all the time because they took that chance with me and taught me how to treat people, they taught me how the music business works, I learned so much from them.
Andrew : Those two albums that you did, “Jugulator” and “Demolition”, are still so highly praised and recognised as Priest records. Changing frontman and vocalist can be so damn tough especially after a career that was so well established. The songwriting on those records is just great when you go back and you listen to them. It must have been such a cool thing to be a part of. How much freedom did you have and how much were you allowed to collaborate?
Ripper : I didn’t have much freedom. I had freedom in them trying to figure out different ways they could get me to sing because they knew that my versatility had a pretty big ceiling on it. So, they could go down some other paths and that’s why ‘Jugulator’ has death metal undertones under stuff. Even “Demolition” with ‘One On One’ it has those hints underneath, that death metal growl under it and no one realizes that. I’ll tell you they were some of the hardest times in the studio. Everything has changed nowadays, the last KK’s Priest record, I recorded right here with this mic sitting in this chair, looking at this laptop, recording the record. Back then was a times when you couldn’t do that. I sang things over and over again. I’m talking I sang and there would be one song in a day that I just sang over and over again to a point where it felt like my throat was gonna bleed. I was telling the story earlier that when I did those records with Yngwie Malmsteen and he was the easiest guy I ever recorded with I’d record one line and he would go that’s good. You know this is the guy who says more is more, but was like, yeah, that’s fine.
Glenn would work my tail off because he could figure out different ways to do it, let’s try this or try that, he was like a kid in a candy store. It was great doing and piecing those together. Songs like ‘Hell Is Home’ and ‘One On One’ I love, ‘In-between’, it’s just great stuff.
Andrew : I think it was evident at that last show in Melbourne when you did ‘One On One’, just the crowd reaction was just insane to it. Everybody was singing in unison for the chorus for that. It certainly is one of my favourite songs from your catalogue.
Ripper : It was great. It’s a funny one. I might switch it, I think we opened up with ‘Metal Gods’. Did we open up with Metal Gods at that tour? I think most of the time on my solo tours, we open up with ‘One On One’, you know, they come out You know, it’s a great way to start. That riff too is just huge. I just looked at my set yesterday. I thought I think I’m going to switch this for these upcoming shows. We need to open with ‘One On One’ because it’s such a great one and ‘Hell Is Home’ when the people do the ohhh ho parts, it’s pretty cool. The one complaint about KK’s Priest is there’s not enough of my Judas Priest era in the set. It’s hard to do it and you’re set when you’re trying to do KK it’s half KK’s priest half classic Judas Priest. We do ‘Burn in Hell’ now, and ‘One On One’ has to be in the set list. I mean, it’s just a great song.
Andrew : Having been in Judas Priest and now being in KK’s Priest, what’s the difference in dynamic there?
Ripper : Well, I think the response is even better with KK’s Priest. I think maybe it’s because metal is better now than when I was in Judas Priest. 1996 to 2003 was a terrible era for heavy metal. I mean, it was just bad. That last album “The Sinner Rides Again” the reception of it, and for both albums has been great. I love “The Sinner Rides Again” more than “Sermons Of The Sinner”. The shows have been great, either we have headlined festivals or co headlined them and went on a little bit earlier and the crowds have been great. The American tours we did, the crowds have been great.
It’s been everything and then some, aside from saying I’m in Judas Priest; that’s pretty giant, right? It’s the best thing. I just happened to be in Judas Priest during the worst time of heavy metal, Now with KK’s Priest the shows, the crowds, the response to the records have been great. I think the records have gone up a notch from when I was in Judas Priest to be honest.
Andrew : You mentioned singing with Malmsteen, you have spent time in Iced Earth, it seems your whole career has been built on doing some really big changing moves with these artists. I think you’ve elevated every band in some way, and that’s not blowing smoke up your ass. It’s a personal opinion, for me you have added something unique to them all. Another project you did was Dio’s Disciples. How was it doing Dio’s Disciples? That’s got to be another big one where you know the man had one of the greatest voices in rock period.
Ripper : It was a lot of fun. Ronnie was a friend and my biggest idol of a singer, but he’s a much more difficult singer for my style. Even though I sing him pretty well, he’s a tough singer to sing. He has a real high, natural, powerful voice.
It was great to be with the guys in the band. Wendy his wife managed me for years. I tell you, singing the songs were very emotional every night, no matter what what we were doing. You could really feel it. I remember I’d mess up and I think he’s probably up there pissed off at me (laughs), there was a lot of emotion doing it. It was really weird. Looking back vocally, I don’t think it was the best years of my life. I think it’s because I was singing that stuff, because it’s not where I am my most comfortable. When I’m doing my music, I could throw a high note in or a falsetto note and just do it. Dio is just pure power, the emotion just would hit you, every night I felt it. It was challenging but a lot of fun to do.
Andrew : It saw you working with another cast of incredible musicians that’s always has to be a treat.
Ripper : Great guys. Yeah. It’s so fun.
Andrew : Doing the KK’s Priest albums and tour, you mentioned you’ve headlined festivals and played to some huge crowds. What’s your preference? Is it a festival, a theatre or intimate club show? What gets the blood pumping best for you?
Ripper : I love playing festivals. Bloodstock was great, and festivals are great to do. I love playing festivals, in some ways you wish you could play them all the time, but I like packed, big, like, club kind of places, bigger ones, you know, because the crowds are better. I mean, I don’t care what anybody says emotion and connection wise. There’s a couple of things about festivals, because of us being a new band, they’re not all there to see you, right? There could be a hundred thousand people there, two thousand might be there to see you but our festivals have been out of this world. I like packed venues that are fifteen hundred to two thousand people strong people wise. Financially you would rather be playing the festivals, but I like when you get a couple thousand people in a place and they’re just hot and sweaty and singing and I get to feed off the crowd. Theatres are tough once they start sitting in a theatre, you know that that sucks out some of the life. At our shows they usually don’t sit in them, but there’s still a chair behind them and that seems to take a little bit of the vibe away. We played a lot of nice theatres on this last KK’s Priest tour in America and sometimes they would be a little different knowing there was chair behind them. They’re not crammed up to the front. You know if I’m going to pick one to play I’d rather just do tours of festivals. That would be great, but crowd wise I like those fifteen hundred two thousand capacity places.
Andrew : One of the projects you did was the all-star cover band Hail.
Ripper : Yeah, that was a blast, when we started it with Jimmy DeGrasso on drums and Andres Kisser, who’s an underrated guitar player and David Ellison on bass. It was fun because I could sing Sepultura one minute and you know, ‘Balls To The Wall’ the next minute and I’m singing Priest and Pantera showing the gambit of my voice. I remember when I would do Sepultura, people would be like where did this come from? When you grow up listening to those bands as well as others you’re influenced by it. That was a lot of fun, I just said to Andreas the other day we need to do some more of these shows. We need to book a little tour and do it again. Then in A New Revenge we used to play Rush a lot as well. It was fun doing it with those guys.
Andrew : The A New Revenge record was amazing.
Ripper : Yeah, it’s a great one. It was fun to do with Keri Kelly. It was straight forward kind of hard rock and it was a really, really good one.
Andrew : You guys were signed to an Australian label for that one. Do you think that they gave you the right representation? I honestly don’t think it got the attention it deserved; it was nowhere as big as it should have been? The band was a dream line up in many ways.
Ripper : No, no, it was terrible. We had a video that had tons and tons of views and it’s not even out there anymore ‘The Way’ which was our main video disappeared. It just disappeared and I said to Keri what happened? He goes, I don’t know? They probably tried, was it Golden Robot or something like that? I’m not saying that’s how they always are, but I think it’s pretty par for the course with a record like that, because the band might not be touring. So, they probably did try unfortunately, it was harder to get in America and places like that. I think it should have gotten more attention. But I guess every artist is going to say that, right. I think they probably did their best, but it’s still strange that ‘The Way’ video got taken down like two years ago, I went to post it on my page. I’m like, where’d it go? The ‘Never Let You Go’ video is still there, but the better song and the one that had all the views is gone. I’m like, wow, how does the label even let that happen? I don’t know.
Andrew : Would you ever reunite that project?
Ripper : Yeah, I’m waiting for Keri to see if he’s got any new stuff he wants to put together. When I’m off and here at home I’m in my studio singing. I’ve probably done four or five songs for Australian bands and artists. If you want me to sing on something, please reach out at rippervocals@gmail.com. I just, I can’t take too much time off. I like to, and then I start sitting there and think I like to sing. I’m a musician. That’s how I make my money. I’ll post on social media every now and then, hey, I’m off, so if you want me to sing on your record and it’s kind of fun. I sit here and like I said, the KK’s Priest record was recorded right here, and I like to do my vocals here.
If A New Revenge is ready to do another one, I’m here waiting. Now that one, I recorded all the demo stuff and then I went to a studio in LA and recorded it. But next time I’ll more than likely record it here.
Andrew : Aside from Australia and New Zealand in February, what does 2025 look like for you?
Ripper : Well, I come home from Australia like on March 4th or something like that, or no, March 11th or something. Then I fly to Central America. I’ve got four shows there. Then I’m gonna probably do South America, maybe do some, Texas and some American dates, I will try to get all that done by the middle of the year and then see what’s going to be going on with KK’s Priest. KK’s Priest is always going to be the number one thing. So, we’ll see what happens.
Andrew : And how much life has KK’s Priest, brought to KK again, obviously with his departure from Priest not being on the clearest of terms and to the public and this is not about stirring that pot. He obviously seems very, very happy with what he’s doing.
Ripper : Yeah, and it’s been great. He’s been great with it. He loves to do it. It takes a lot of tolls on him. It’s hard financially. It’s hard to tour, especially if you don’t do meet and greets. They don’t want to do any, so today that’s how bands survive and tour. It’s hard negotiating headline shows without doing them, everybody seems to want them these days and it’s probably a part of why we’re not coming to Australia. You can’t afford to tour nowadays without doing a little bit of meet and greet. That’s how you pay the bills. But he loves it to be honest, you can tell by watching him. I mean, good god, the songs he’s written and watching him on stage, him and AJ, he loves it. We sound really good. I think he has a smile on his face and he’s like, yeah, this is pretty good, you know? He loves it, he’s excited and loves people seeing that. I also know it’s hard and, and costly and it wears you down, he’s dealing with a lot because of it. But he loves doing it. The touring, the shows and the concerts have been very successful crowd wise, it’s just expensive to do. He won’t downscale anything so it’s expensive to tour.
Andrew : And why would you, given his legacy and the kind of show he has become accustomed to. We are out of time and it’s been an absolutely pleasure talking to you, Ripper. I really can’t wait for these shows in, February, especially the Corner Hotel one. I’ll certainly be there, and I can’t wait to hear what you have in store for us. I’d just like to thank you again for your time and wanted to wish you a safe and happy holidays as well.
Ripper : You too. Absolutely. We’ll see you when we get there and say hello.
Andrew : I look forward to it. Thanks for joining us here at The Rockpit.
Ripper : You got it, Andrew. Thank you.
