Judas Priest, Mellencamp leave memorable Rock Hall moments | NASCAR & Racing

Many of this year’s Hall inductees had more fame than Judas Priest. None had more rock ‘n’ roll. The heavy metal mainstays delighted a room full of pop-minded Lionel Richie fans and Duran Duran stans who may well have shunned them in their 1980s heyday.

Judas Priest showed they could still bang their graying heads as they lit up the Microsoft Theater on Nov. 5 with a set that included “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight,” bringing back former members including original guitarist K.K. Downing and ex-drummer Les Binks.

The Priest acceptances speeches that followed made metal feel warm and fuzzy, especially that the face and frontman of the band, Rob Halford, who went last.

“Hello, I’m the gay guy in the group,” Halford began, bringing cheers. He broke ground when he came out in 1998.

“We call ourselves the heavy metal community which is all-inclusive, no matter what your sexual identity is, what you look like, or what you believe in or don’t believe in,” he said. “Everybody’s welcome.”

Halford later thrilled the crowd again by singing part of a verse during the evening-ending all-star jam on Parton’s song “Jolene,” the kind of bizarre pairing these moments at the Hall are made for.

Or maybe on this night it wasn’t so odd. Parton, who temporarily turned down the honor thinking it should go to a more rocking artist, played up her new status, emerging for her performance in as much black leather as the guys in Judas Priest.

Newly minted members whose careers came behind the scenes rarely make Rock Hall headlines or get major minutes on TV. But sometimes those doing the inducting give them a big boost, as three Hall of Famers did this year.

Janet Jackson (class of 2018), dressed as she did on the cover of her breakthrough 1986 album “Control” to pay tribute to the men who helped her make it and were her career’s key collaborators, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.

Bruce Springsteen (class of 1999) sang the praises of Jimmy Iovine, who rose from a mere studio engineer on his 1975 album “Born to Run” to become one of the most important music executives of the past 30 years as founder of Interscope Records. “Congratulations little…