Songfacts®:

• This Judas Priest rocker evokes the open road. "That's freedom," lead singer Rob Halford said in a Songfacts interview. "You've got the wheel and you're not going to let anybody else take your life away from you. You're out there into the great, vast landscape of life, and life is a highway. That's just a correlation between the two sets of things."
• "Heading Out To The Highway" is a biker's anthem from a band very much associated with motorcycles... and leather. They started developing their leather look a few years earlier, a look that many metal bands emulated. Bikers have long worn leather, so it seemed like a natural fit when Rob Halford started riding a Harley on stage to kickstart their song "Hell Bent For Leather." Their drummer, Dave Holland, didn't take as well to the look: In the video, he pairs his leather jacket with a necktie.
• This was the lead single from the album Point Of Entry, Judas Priest's follow-up to their classic British Steel. Recorded in Ibiza, it wasn't nearly as inspired, in part because the band got a bit distracted on the party island. Their next album, Screaming For Vengeance, held up a lot better.
• Directed by Julien Temple, the music video shows the band performing the song on an infinity curve painted to look like a desert highway. It was low-budget, but still better than many of the videos MTV, which went on the air that year (1981), had to choose from.