If you ask Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band got its start, the answer is more complicated than you might expect.
At 72, Hill is the longest-serving member of the British heavy metal group, having been in the band continuously since 1970. Who better to untangle the origin story?
“Ken and John and myself formed the band,” says Hill, referring to guitarist K.K. Downing and drummer John Ellis, with whom he formed a singer-less rock trio. “We were called Freight. Very loosely, we were still learning our trade, you know, and we weren’t that good at the time.
“There was already a band called Judas Priest going, and Alan (Atkins) was the vocalist with that,” Hill continues on a video call from the United Kingdom before traveling to the United States for a tour that stops at the YouTube Theatre in Inglewood on Oct. 15. “Some months later, the original band split up. We’re talking, I don’t know, summer 1970, maybe fall 1970. And Alan walked past our rehearsal studio door.
“He liked what he heard and asked us if we needed a vocalist,” he says. “And of course we did.”
In that rehearsal hall in Wednesbury, just outside of Birmingham, they worked until early 1971 when they felt good enough to play out on the town.
“We were ready to go,” Hill says. “That’s when we realized the band name of Freight was absolutely bloody awful. And after much head-scratching, we couldn’t really think of anything that was better than Judas Priest. That was yardstick, if you can find something better.”
So Atkins rang up his old bandmates to ask and receive permission to adopt the name.
“That’s how we sort of inherited the name,” Hill says. “I think it was the bass player, Bruno Stapenhill, who thought of it originally. He took it from a Bob Dylan song. [“The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest,” from Dylan’s 1967 album “John Wesley Harding.”]
So that’s when Judas Priest began?
Not quite.
“We weren’t earning a great deal of money back then,” Hill says. “Just sort of subsistence money. Al’s wife got pregnant and he had to go get a proper job, to keep the family going. And Chris Campbell, who was drumming at the time, he left as well, just leaving Ken and myself.”
Down a singer and a drummer at the start of 1973, Hill and Downing recruited vocalist Rob Halford and drummer John Hinch from a band called Hiroshima, and things started to gel. In the fall of that year, they added a second guitarist, Glenn Tipton, and in 1974, Judas Priest recorded and released its debut album, “Rocka Rolla.”
Now, with Hill, Downing, Halford and Tipton, the classic lineup of Judas Priest had arrived. [The drum stool would be filled by different players over the years, with Dave Holland and Scott Travis its longest-running occupants.]
In an interview edited for length and clarity, Hill talked about the origins of heavy metal, the challenge of keeping the band together, and how Judas Priest stays relevant after a half-century of heavy metal stardom.
Q: The first few albums did well but it’s really toward the end of the ’70s and start of the ’80s that Judas Priest became huge. How did you create that sound?
A: I mean heavy metal didn’t exist back then. It was heavy rock or progressive rock, and it’s something sort of grew along with ourselves, and Sabbath, of course. We were all doing it, but we didn’t know it at the time. And it wasn’t until probably, as you say, around the time of ‘Killing Machine,’ that era, ’78, ’79, that if somebody says, ‘Oh yeah, they’re a heavy metal band,’ that they knew what to expect.
Around 1980, with ‘British Steel,’ everything sort of gelled. The musical direction and the image, you know, the leather and the studs and what have you. That was it then. We’ve got a path before us, if you know what I mean.
We’ve always done what we’ve thought and what comes from inside, really. It’s your emotions, and I think that that’s what brings out the music at the end of the day. It’s like any artist you know. You could only do what’s inside you.
Q: And what was inside was the sound of Judas Priest as the ’80s arrived?
A: That’s what it sounded like, it sounded like Judas Priest. As I say, from 1980 we had that path in front of us, the road is clear. Then everybody realized we were heavy metal, and so was Black Sabbath and so was Deep Purple. And arguably, you know, Led Zeppelin. We just invented a style of music, although it had been around for ages. We just didn’t know it at the time.
Q: Counting the earliest days of the band, you’ve been part of it almost 55 years now. Rob and Glenn and K.K. also were there for a long time, though K.K. left a few years ago and Glenn has had health challenges. How’d you keep it together?
A: Several times, especially when Rob left [from 1992 to 2003] it would have been easy just to say, ‘Oh, God, forget it,’ you know. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to do that. Glenn saw his opportunity and he went out and did his solo album there. That took him a couple of years to do. Then we got serious about continuing and carrying on.
Q: Then you got Ripper Owens in on vocals.
A: We learned of Tim Owens, Ripper Owens, who was singing in a covers band in Ohio. Somebody sent us a videotape and we saw him. We listened to him and went, ‘Geez, this guy can hit all the notes that Rob was hitting.’ Didn’t sound the same as Rob, but at least he could handle the material. We realized then that we’d got our man, and we could continue with him rather than making compromises with someone else.
We didn’t really want another established vocalist, because they bring baggage with them. Next thing you know, you’re doing some of their songs and what have you, and we really didn’t want to do that. We wanted to remain as much Judas Priest as we possibly could. That’s what Tim brought to the band.
Q: It could have been incredibly hard to replace Rob’s voice in Judas Priest.
A: Rob is arguably the only person you can’t really replace and remain the same. We found this out when Ken first left, it was 12 years ago, and Richie (Faulkner) came in. He was playing Ken’s parts. We needed him to sound as much like Ken as possible. And eventually he melded into the band. He was assimilated. His playing and his tone became Judas Priest. And Glenn was giving him tips and hints along the way.
It’s funny, because all these years later, when it was discovered that Glenn couldn’t continue for tragic reasons [Tipton stopped touring in 2018 due to Parkinson’s disease, though he remains an official member of the band], you got Richie doing the same with Andy [Sneap, a touring guitarist since 2018].
I always remember, when we were discussing maybe getting back together with Rob – Ripper actually thought it was a good idea, you know, as a fan of the band. I take my hat off to him; he put himself out on top. But it made sense. Suddenly we were whole again and we sounded as we always did, that signature sound.
Q: It’s handing down the knowledge over the years.
A: Yeah, the fans expect it to sound a certain way, the older songs, and you really can’t disappoint the fans. I mean, we could do a Cream and just go off in four different directions with the tempo and a key, and then hopefully we’ll come back together in about 15 minutes. You could do that. We wouldn’t be Judas Priest. So you try and keep it the same all the way.
Q: You played the Power Trip metal festival in the desert a year ago, and were inducted into the Rock Hall the year before that. Your shows have original fans and young ones and everything in between. What keeps Judas Priest and the music alive?
A: With us, we’ve always tried to take a step forward with each new cycle, each album. Embrace new recording techniques and new gizmos and new gadgets. No reason why not.
We’ve managed to keep it current and modern throughout the years. If you’ve got a new heavy metal fan and he hadn’t heard Judas Priest before, and you played him, say, ‘Firepower’ or ‘The Invisible Shield’ [the band’s 2018 and 2024 albums] they get it. We could be a young band. Rob and myself are in our 70s now, but we sound young and I think that’s what’s kept us relevant with the younger fans.
Q: There’s a continuity to the music you’ve made.
A: It’s amazing. I think the reason is that heavy metal, it’s never been ‘in’ – well, in the ’80s it sort of rose above, it put its head above the parapet, didn’t it? It almost became a fad. But it’s always bubbled under the general pop music, which is very, very vocal-based for the most part. Whereas heavy metal and jazz, and other forms of music, it’s very music-based. And there are people that want that.
They want something extra than just singing along to the chorus of something that’s playing in the background. They care if there’s a great lead break or an interesting bass line or the drum pattern. They care if the vocal’s got two- or three-octave range and things like that.
And those people will always be there. You know, if you take heavy metal away, you’re gonna have to replace it with something else, just because of these people. It probably’ll sound exactly like heavy metal.
Related Articles
Things to do in the San Fernando Valley, LA area, Oct. 10-17
Alfie Templeman talks new music ahead of his Los Angeles show
Crypta’s Fernanda Lira talks upending the metal scene ahead of Southern California shows
8 hauntingly good Halloween concerts in Southern California
How Shira Yevin took on the music industry, one pink RV at a time