Juda Priest
Judas Priest’s Ian Hill: Bassist for the High Priests of Metal - By Bill Kopp
Judas Priest roared out of industrial Birmingham, England in the early 1970s. Once the group found its footing – bringing on powerful, operatic and charismatic lead singer Rob Halford – Judas Priest’s hard-charging, twin-lead guitar attack broke through in a big way. Leaders in the new wave of British heavy metal movement, Priest earned critical praise and widespread popularity. The band racked up more than a decade’s worth of hit albums; every album from 1977’s Sin After Sin through 1990’s Painkiller went gold or better.
And the band is going strong today, more than 50 years after the release of its first record. Judas Priest’s latest, Invincible Shield serves up the group’s patented metal for modern-day audiences. Just ahead of a North American tour that brings Judas Priest to more than two dozen cities, bassist and founding member Ian Hill spoke with Rock On about the band’s early days, its rise to fame, and the new music it’s still making.
Judas Priest toiled for years before really hitting the big time. What do you think explains that relatively slow climb to being a success?
There's no such thing as an overnight success. There's only a decade's hard work going into the overnight success. I think you can put it down pretty much to one song.
We've been together since 1969. We were learning our trade and just building up locally. We were having a steady build with the first record, Rocka Rolla, which came out in ‘74. It was released by a small record company called Gull; I think they were sort of hoping that we would make them [successful] rather than the other way around. It became apparent that they really hadn't got the financial clout to get us abroad, especially to America. Getting all the gear and whatever to America for a tour would have cost quite a bit of money, and they just didn't have the funds.
Long story short, we ended up with CBS Records in ‘76. At the time they were one of the biggest record companies. This was in the days when record companies were prepared to wait for their profits; they could see potential not just with us, but other acts as well. And they [understood], “Okay, we're not going to make money overnight with this lot, but we’ll stick with them and we'll earn it in the long run.”
And that's what happened: We had a steady build right up to [our eighth album, 1982’s] Screaming for Vengeance. We started recording that in a small island in Spain called Ibiza, and finished it off at Beejay Studios in Orlando, Florida. But we were one song short on the album.
This was in the days of vinyl; you could only get so much music on a record before [the quality] started to deteriorate. The grooves got closer together, they got shallower, less information; what have you. But we discovered we could squeeze one more on, so we threw together “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’.” And mainstream radio picked it up and played the hell out of it!
My lasting memory of starting that tour was that [small-venue] gigs were being canceled and [new dates at] larger venues were pouring in. And it was all because of the heavy airplay that we got with that song. That lifted the band’s status from playing town halls – Agora Ballrooms and things like that, 5,000 people, maybe 6,000 at a push – and suddenly we played to ten or twelve thousand people. And I believe that it was all down to that one track.
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 listen to Invincible Shield or Firepower, for instance, we could be any new, up-and-coming band. We've kept up that momentum.
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.