Early life and career

Faulkner was born in London,^[1] and lived in Stockholm, Sweden, where he worked as a sausage seller between 1995 and 2000,^[2] and learned to speak Swedish while living in the country.^[3]

His inspiration to pick up a guitar was watching recordings of Jimi Hendrix's concerts at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and at the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1970.^[4] Faulkner got his first guitar when he was around 7 or 8 years old.^[5] His father played guitar and was a fan of Hendrix and bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and used to show him a few chords.^[5] The first song he learned to play on guitar was The Troggs' 1966 single "Wild Thing".^[4] When Faulkner was about 13 years old, he connected with the owner of a local music shop who played in a cover band, covering material from Iron Maiden to Thin Lizzy to UFO. He asked Faulkner to play a couple of songs with him at some gigs, which was his introduction to the world of gigging.^[5]

In the early stages of his career, Faulkner played in bands such as Dirty Deeds,^[1] Voodoo Six (which he co-founded with bassist Tony Newton),^[1] Ace Mafia,^[1] Parramon,^[1] and Lauren Harris' band.^[1] His first signed band was Deeds, and their album, 2002's Blown, was produced by Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris.^[5] With Faulkner on guitar, the Lauren Harris band was the opening act on Iron Maiden's Somewhere Back in Time World Tour in 2008.^[6] Steve Harris told Faulkner that if anything would have happened to any of his bandmates, he would have chosen Faulkner as a replacement.^[6]

Faulkner has also arranged music for actor Christopher Lee's heavy metal album Charlemagne: The Omens of Death. Lee's team sent Faulkner some songs that were very orchestral and symphony-based and asked him to arrange them into metal songs. Both Lee and his team gave Faulkner a free creative rein for any ideas he felt the songs needed.^[7] The album was released on 27 May 2013, Lee's 91st birthday.^[8]

Judas Priest

On 20 April 2011, Faulkner was appointed as the successor of guitarist K. K. Downing in heavy metal band Judas Priest.^[9] A mutual friend, guitarist Pete Friesen, recommended him to the band. Friesen and Faulkner had played together in a cover band in London called Metalworks, which coincidentally is also the title of a Judas Priest compilation released in 1993.^[10] They called him on a wrong phone number, so they sent him two emails. Faulkner thought they were junk mail, so he deleted them. The band began to track him down and eventually got his real phone number. When Faulkner got a call from the band's management, he thought it was a joke. He went to Glenn Tipton's house the next day to meet him and Rob Halford was present as well. They had a discussion and Faulkner played a few pieces for them. They sent him a few tracks because they wanted to hear what he would play on those tracks on the solos, and they went from there. Faulkner returned about a week later and they offered him the gig. He kept it a secret for a month until the official announcement.^[11]

Faulkner's first performance with Judas Priest occurred on 25 May 2011 on the TV show American Idol, where the band performed "Living After Midnight" and "Breaking the Law" with James Durbin.^[12] Faulkner's first album with Judas Priest was Redeemer of Souls, released in 2014.^[13]

Vocalist Rob Halford and guitarist Glenn Tipton have credited Faulkner with saving Judas Priest.^[14] Halford said in a 2015 interview; "Let's face it, to some extent Richie saved Judas Priest, because if we hadn't have found him at the crucial time that we were looking for a guitar player, things could have turned out quite differently."^[15]

In 2015, Faulkner was awarded the Dimebag Darrell Shredder Award by the readers of British magazine Metal Hammer at their annual Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards.^[16]

On 9 March 2018, Judas Priest released their second album with Faulkner, Firepower, which debuted and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart, becoming the band's highest charting album.^[17]