When Richie Faulkner first joined Judas Priest in 2011, he brought with him a playing style that had been shaped by influences spanning from Zakk Wylde and Dave Murray to Michael Schenker and more.
However, after he got the gig and started his assimilation into the Judas Priest ecosystem, Faulkner became acutely aware that he had to take a step back from the “Wylde-isms” that were present in his playing and start finding his own voice on the electric guitar.
This observation became even more apparent when Glenn Tipton – his new guitar foil in the band – approached him early on and said as much during a gig.
“I always tried to copy people. I was into Michael Schenker and K.K. [Downing] and Randy Rhoads and all that. That’s just part of my heritage,” Faulkner says during an episode of No Cover Charge – a new podcast set up by Jared James Nichols and Tyler Larson of the Music Is Win YouTube channel. “Playing covers, you try and emulate the people you look up to.
“When you get into Priest, you realize you can’t do that anymore,” he continues. “Now, you’ve got your turn to speak your voice. It can’t be Zakk Wylde and Dave Murray and Michael Schenker anymore. It’s got to be ‘Rich.’
“I didn’t feel like a clone, but I felt like I’ve got to come up with my own bit. I think every album we do, you try a little bit more to hone that voice.”
These days, Faulkner is far more conscious about avoiding letting his influences bleed into his playing too much, but that wasn’t always the case.
“[I’m] thinking about not relying so much on the Zakk Wylde-isms but speaking more my own voice,” he reflects. “At the time, I didn’t have much else to rely on. I just had a box of tricks that came from the cover band days.”
The impact this was having on his playing came to the fore during his first tour with Priest back in 2011 and 2012 – the Epitaph World Tour – when Tipton addressed Faulkner’s show-stopping solo that routinely came towards the end of the band’s set.
When asked about that solo in particular – which you can watch above – Faulkner says, “We were out with Black Label [Society] for a part of it, so I did a section of Crazy Train [Ozzy Osbourne] – I think it was because it was in F sharp – and I'd do a section of Rock Bottom [Michael Schenker and UFO] in F sharp.
“Glenn actually came up to me and said, ‘Rich, can I have a word with you?’ And that's never good when someone says that. He said, ‘In this solo I notice you're playing some other people's stuff.’ He said, ‘I think you can come up with better than that.’”
Faulkner knew that was Tipton giving him the encouragement to trust his own instincts as a guitarist and introduce some of his own personal style into his playing.
Speaking to Guitar World in 2021, Faulkner further discussed how he has spent his time in Judas Priest balancing his influences with his own voice.
“It would be silly to try and hide those influences,” he said. “But when I joined the band, it became about, ‘What am I doing to say? These guys have got their voice... what’s my voice going to be?’
“So, I think those solos [Rising From Ruins and Traitors Gate] are some of my favorites because they contain what I think is my voice.”
