Terry Gross

Judas Priest lead singer Rob Halford kicks off a series of interviews on hard rock and heavy metal. The band, originally from Birmingham, England, was a pioneer of the heavy metal sound at the height of its popularity in the 1970s and 80s. The band's name comes from the title of the Bob Dylan song, "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." Halford left the band in 1991, citing internal tension. In 1998 he came out of the closet during an interview on MTV. Halford, whose nickname is the Metal God, returned to Judas Priest in 2003.

On his third album, Up Front & Down Low, singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson covers classic country songs including "She Thinks I Still Care," "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers," and "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone." On his earlier discs, including his self-titled 2000 debut and 2006's Separate Ways, Thompson performed more of his own songs. He's also appeared on various recordings with his parents, the British folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson.

Novelist Bill Flanagan wrote the comedy A&R about the smooth operators and the scatty artists who make the music business so entertaining. Now he's lampooning the cable-TV industry in his novel New Bedlam. The source for his send-ups? His day job as an MTV networks exec.

Canadian journalist Paul Watson won the 1994 Pulitizer Prize for his photograph of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu,Somalia. His war-zone work leaves him suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress, and he says the Mogadishu photo still haunts him. Watson has also reported from Rwanda, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq; he earned three National Newspaper Awards for foreign reporting and photography while at the Toronto Star, and was recently posted to head The Los Angeles Times' Southeast Asia bureau in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Actor, comic, and Howard Stern Show cast member Artie Lange stars in the film Artie Lange's Beer League, which makes its network TV premiere tonight on Comedy Central. Lange was a regular on the Fox network's sketch-comedy show Mad TV, and he's appeared in a number of comedy films, including Old School and Elf. Lange's personal life — namely his binge drinking and eating — is often fodder for Howard Stern and the rest of the cast on the daily Sirius Radio program.

NPR's Baghdad bureau chief, Jamie Tarabay, has been living in and covering Iraq since December 2005. She spoke to Terry Gross in Fresh Air's Philadelphia studios, during a two-week break from her reporting duties. Australian by birth and Lebanese by heritage, Tarabay speaks fluent Arabic and French. She lived for three years as a child in Beirut during the bombings there. Before joining NPR she was a correspondent for the Associated Press, reporting from Southeast Asia, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

Journalist Connie Schultz won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2005 for her work as a columnist for The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland. The judges praised her for writing "pungent columns that provided a voice for the underdog and underprivileged." "Pungent" is a good word, too, for the tone of Schultz's new memoir, about being the wife of a political candidate. Her husband, Sherrod Brown, was an Ohio congressman when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate; Schultz took a sabbatical from her job to help him campaign. Her book is . . .

Sinatra, Streisand, Rosemary Clooney and Tony Bennett — even Fred Astaire — have all recorded their songs: The husband-and-wife team of Marilyn and Alan Bergman has been writing irresistible tunes together for 50 years.

David Steinberg was big on the stand-up circuit back in the 1960s and '70s; he appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson over a hundred times. Now he's host of TV Land's Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg, on which he interviews other comedians. Steinberg went on to a career in TV production, directing episodes of Seinfeld, Mad About You and Friends. His new memoir is called The Book of David.

Saxophonist Harry Allen and singer-instrumentalist Eddie Erickson are just two of the performers on a new CD, The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet Perform Music From 'Guys and Dolls'. Erickson, who's best known as a guitarist, is featured on the disc as a vocalist, singing Frank Loesser's tunes alongside Rebecca Kilgore.