Judas Priest’s Ian Hill: Bassist for the High Priests of Metal (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part One…

Some bands find success with an album and spend the rest of their careers making that record over and over again. Judas Priest has been consistent; you always seemed to be moving forward. Was that by design?

Yeah; we tried to build with each album, try and get better. You’re learning stuff every day, and we still are, even after all these years. Sometimes – one or two instances – we’ve stepped sideways, but we try to step forward. And I think it’s why, when you look out at the audience even now, there’s a hell of a lot of young faces down there. And when I say young, I’m not talking about 40 or 50. I’m talking late teens, early twenties. They’re singing along to the lyrics, not just to the new album, but to all the older stuff as well.

We’ve stayed relevant over the years, and that’s enabled us to make that contact with the younger audience. If you didn’t know who we were and listened to Invincible Shield or Firepower, for instance, we could be any new, up-and-coming band. We’ve kept up that momentum.

Judas Priest were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022. What are your feelings about that?

It’s funny, because right up until the day, I was very unsure: “Do we really need this?” But when you actually got up on stage and looked down, you’d see all the other artists at these big tables down at the front of the stage. Dolly Parton, Dave Grohl, Eminem, Lionel Richie and all these people. They’re all getting into it and they’re loving it.
We’re up there, playing songs which are 30, 40 years old, and they’re really getting their rocks off on it. I looked down and I just got a bit of a glow! You got a sense of belonging, that you’re a member of a fraternity. And from that point of view, I’m so glad we did it.

Invincible Shield has done really well, and in a lot of places. It did well on the charts here in the US. It went Top Ten in the UK, France and Norway. And it made it to number one in Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. What do you think explains the enduring popularity of what Judas Priest is doing?

The essence of the band, the signature sound is all-important. Obviously there’s been changes with Richie [Faulkner] taking over from Ken [K.K. Downing, longtime guitarist]. Richie’s been with the band now for 12, 13 years; [other] bands have come and gone in that time. And of course, initially, he was trying to fill in for Ken, doing Ken’s parts. But he’s had Glenn right there with him, giving him the hints and the pointers. When we started to record albums with Richie, he could be himself. He could be Richie Faulkner rather than “Richie Downing.” And he sort of blossomed.

And Andy [Sneap] is now standing in for Glenn [Tipton], who unfortunately is not able to do a great deal these days. And the same thing happened with Andy, you know, when he became apparent that Glenn wasn’t going to be able to do tours. He was the perfect choice; he had just produced Firepower, so he was familiar with all of the new stuff. And he was a fan of the band anyway.

So it’s all worked out; it’s worked a treat. The band sound has been able to remain there, recognizable all the way through those changes.

You were 17 when you joined the band. If someone could travel back in time and tell that 17 year-old, “When you’re 72, you’re still going to be playing with Judas Priest,” how do you think he would have reacted?

I wouldn’t have believed it! The thing is, an artist at 72 years of age, still belting out contemporary music back then in the late ‘60s, that simply didn’t exist. Bing Crosby was in his sixties. Sinatra was in his early fifties. The thought of somebody jigging about on stage at 72? “No, people die when they’re 72!” So it wouldn’t have made any sense at all.

I think everybody gets a watershed moment when you have to make that decision: Are you going to make it a go or not? And it happened for me around 1972. We were getting gig offers that were coming in from 300 miles away on a Wednesday night. And if you’ve got a job, you can’t do that! You finish work, you go back home, get yourself cleaned up, load the stuff in the van, go do the gigs, and then back home for work the next morning.

So you’ve got to make that decision. We all had the kind of jobs that you could sort of walk into any day: heavy industrial based jobs. So we all said, “Yeah, let’s give it a go!”

It could have been different. And we never would have known, would we? But with hindsight, you look back, and going with Judas Priest was a good decision.