Photo by Joe Lester
Ian Hill has been the backbone of metal legends Judas Priest for 50 years. He is the only member of Judas Priest, besides guitarist Glenn Tipton, to play on every single one of the band’s records. Hill actually even co-founded the band with former guitarist KK Downing in Birmingham in 1969, before Tipton was even involved, so his tenure goes all the way back to Judas Priest’s very beginning. Despite this fact, Ian Hill is arguably the most underappreciated member of the band. He certainly flies under the radar in the world of bass players. Bassists like Hill, and AC/DC’s Cliff Williams, often get overlooked, or underestimated, because of the seeming simplicity of their approach, but their indelible grooves have anchored some of the biggest songs in the hard rock and heavy metal canon.
Hill is probably most synonymous with his steady, pick-driven, eighth-note pulse undergirding Priest classics like Breaking the Law, Living After Midnight, Heading Out to the Highway, and You’ve Got Another Thing Coming. But listen to earlier albums like Sin After Sin and Stained Class and you’ll find a shared kinship between Hill and the adventurous, muscular approach of Seventies giants like Geezer Butler and Roger Glover. For the past 30 years, he’s partnered with double-kick juggernaut Scott Travis (drums), elevating Priest’s rhythmic feel into the modern era with equal parts flash and bombast, on albums like Painkiller and Firepower. In 50 years, Hill has managed to navigate the most fundamental role of a bassist without ever, pun intended, skipping a beat – he supports the song, stays out of the way of the melody, and maintains a humble demeanor despite the magnitude of his band’s accomplishments.
Born January 20th, 1951, Hill was introduced to the bass by way of his father. “He was a jazz, double bass player, in jazz and dance bands,” remembers Hill. “Our house was always filled with that kind of music – Nelson Riddle, Lionel Hampton, the Dorsey Brothers. He played in a few folk combos over the years, too. He never made any money; it was only ever a semi-professional thing – a bit of pocket money was really all he ever got.”
Bass Gear Magazine caught up with Hill shortly after Priest’s performance at the Bloodstock Festival in the English Midlands on August 15th. “We did three weeks of band rehearsals, after two years of enforced hiatus,” he offers, with a wry laugh. It was their first show on the 50 Heavy Metal Years Tour, in support of their 13-disk, 50th anniversary box set, Judas Priest: 50 Heavy Metal Years of Music, available on October 15th from Sony Music. Unfortunately, the tour has since been canceled/postponed due to guitarist Richie Faulkner (Downing’s replacement) suffering an aortic aneurysm onstage at the Louder Than Life Festival in Kentucky, recently. Luckily, and perhaps miraculously, Faulkner is now on the mend.
Photo by Joe Lester
Photo by Brunelli
FV: When you were first starting out, did you think you would be playing in Judas Priest for 50 years?
IH: No, we didn’t. The concept of somebody playing contemporary music in the ‘70s didn’t exist back then. It just wasn’t an item. On top of that, we didn’t look further than the next day [laughter].
FV: Can you talk a little bit about how the recording process has changed since those early days?
IH: In the early days, everything went down on the multi-track. I think our first record [Rocka Rolla] might have been just sixteen tracks; that’s all you had to play with, and five or six of those were taken up by the drum kit [laughter]. So, the number of tracks you could put on top of one another was quite limited, unless you started to do what they called “ping-pong,” where you record two tracks and then bounce both of those into a single one. That obviously created problems in the mix because once they were bounced over, that was it, you couldn’t separate them. Everything was analog, everything was run by electric motors, and everything was plugged in. These days, you can record an entire album and never see any of your band mates [laughter]. We don’t do that – we feed off each other’s vibes and attitudes, but it’s [making albums] changed beyond all recognition.
FV: I imagine you recorded mostly live back then, versus now, where there might be a lot more overdubbing. Would that be accurate?
IH: Yeah, that’s fairly true. It would be myself, whatever drummer we had, and one of the guitarists, either Ken [KK Downing] or Glenn [Tipton]. We’d go down there [to the recording studio] and put a working track together, and maybe Rob [Halford] would put down a rough vocal, and then we’d build off that. The key thing is getting the drums together, and if your parts were tight and you were happy with what you played, great, you could keep that as well. [Otherwise], you could build off of that – you could just keep on recording bass tracks until you got the parts the way you want.
FV: What bass were you using in the beginning?
IH: I was using the old Fender Jazz Bass. I used that right up until Defenders of the Faith, when I started to use Hamer – I used that for Defenders and Turbo. And then I discovered Spector guitars. I used to live in Florida, and I was in Miami, and I dropped in to see [acclaimed Judas Priest producer] Tom Allom, who was working at Criteria [Studios]. I walked into the studio and there was this bass, and I said, “That’s cool. What is it?” And Tom gave me the telephone number of Spector. What Tom was doing with it, I don’t know, but I called Stuart [Spector] up and he said, “Yeah, we’ll make you a couple of basses.” Even today, they are one of the premier basses, I think. They’re easy to play, they sound great, they’re tough as old boots, and they look great. You couldn’t really want anything more, and the company’s great, the people who work there, they’ve been golden to me over the years. It’s been a great relationship.
FV: I’m curious, you originally played one with a P pickup in the neck position and a Jazz pickup in the bridge position, but your signature model only has the P pickup. How come?
IH: Yeah, basically because I never use the bridge pickup [laughter]. The first signature bass had that [bridge] pickup on it as well, and I said, “What the hell? I never use the bloody thing.” So when the 50th anniversary one came along, I suggested maybe dropping that pickup, thinking it might be a little bit more reachable for people who want to go out and buy one – it was just that little bit more inexpensive.
Photo by Joe Lester
Photo by Shigeo Kikuchi
FV: How has your rig changed over the years? I’m sure that’s evolved what with all the boutique gear that’s available nowadays.
IH: I went from using the ubiquitous 4X12 [speaker cabs], and then I discovered folded horns, and then we started to tour the States and I became acquainted with the old Acoustic 360s, and their 306 cabinets, and I ended up with two complete rigs, one on each side [of the stage], so Ken could pick up a little bit of me as well. I had three of the speaker enclosures and two 360s, then going on to 370s. After that, I went to larger, custom-made folded horns, but they just took up too much truck space, and I was “DIing” anyway – you had a feed straight out of the back of the amplifier and straight into the desk. So, I started looking around for the more compact stuff that was coming out at the time, and I ended up with SWR. And I’ve been happy with those, right up until today.
FV: Judas Priest famously went through a lot of drummers before settling on Scott Travis in 1989. Did those changes ever have any effect on the way you approached your instrument?
IH: Simon [Phillips] and Les [Binks] were pretty similar, both excellent drummers. Simon was only 20 when he did Sin After Sin. He’s a small fellow as well. He’d sit behind this immense drumkit and vanish [laughter]. When Dave Holland came along, he was more of a solid, rock drummer. He was a powerful drummer, and easier to play to. I think the rhythm parts in those years, are bit simpler, and a bit more commercial, than they are now. Dave left ’89, and along came Scott, and he opened up a whole new dimension with his bass drum playing. I’m lucky enough to be able to get along with Scott great and stay tight with him. He’s a dream to play with – very, very steady, a great timekeeper. You can set your watch by him.
FV: Do you or Scott play to a click track in the studio?
IH: We did, right up until Firepower, when we actually went back to recording the way we used to – we played live in the studio. We laid down the drums and the bass at the same time. And if Richie didn’t want to change any of his parts, those stayed as well. And it really works, because the trouble with the click track is, it gets mechanical – it really is segmented. When you’ve got a free-flowing track, you will speed up and slow down a little bit, but it gives the music a bit more character, a bit more soul – it makes it more real.
FV: Tell me a little bit about how your dad originally got you into bass when you were a kid.
IH: Its’ a funny story, really, because he wanted me to play trombone [laughter], because he wanted to play trombone, and he went and bought himself one, before I was born, apparently, and of course, mom couldn’t stand the noise, and made him sell it. So he came back with a bass guitar, which wasn’t as raucous as the trombone. So, when I started high school and instruments became available, he put me down for a trombone. But by the time I got there, all the trombones were gone, and I ended up with a cornet. I learned how to play a scale in C Major, and a very, very shaky version of Hot Cross Buns [laughter]. And that was it – the same thing with my mom. She heard that and said, “Oh God, what kind of noise is this?” And that’s when I got interested in the double bass, and my dad showed me a few rudiments. Unfortunately, he died when I was fifteen years old, so that was the end of my jazz tuition on the double bass. That’s when I picked the bass guitar up and found it was ultimately easier to play – and ultimately more portable as well.
FV: Who were some of your favorite players when you were younger?
IH: A big influence was Jack Bruce. The live stuff that he did with Cream was just phenomenal – a phenomenal racket they made for a three-piece. And even today, I listen to it, and I still can’t figure out how he does some of the things he did. All the other old blues players as well – John McVie [Fleetwood Mac], Andy Fraser [Free], and John Entwistle [The Who], of course, but Jack was always my favorite.
FV: I think you can hear some of those influences on the earlier records, and then, over time, your own identity starts to evolve as the Judas Priest “sound” starts to become more prevalent.
IH: That’s very true. Ken was a big [Jimi] Hendrix fan, I was obviously a Cream fan, Al Atkins, the vocalist we started with, was a big [Led] Zeppelin fan, and John Hinch, the drummer, was a big [Black] Sabbath fan. So, even if you don’t mean it, those influences come out anyway, and I think, as you go on, you start to influence each other, and the original influence starts to fade a little bit, and you pick up your own identity.
FV: Did you always play with a pick?
IH: No, I played a lot with my fingers. In fact, the first record [Rocka Rolla] I played mostly with my fingers. Even when I play at home I go back to playing with my fingers. When we started to get louder, and the guitars got more distorted, I started to use a pick – it gave it [the bass tone] more distinction.
FV: Being that you had so much time off (due to the pandemic), was there anything you did differently to prepare for the tour?
IH: I did a lot of rehearsing at home. I started a few weeks before music [band] rehearsals, brushing up on the songs that we might play – obviously it starts out with a long list, and then it’s whittled down from that. So, I start two or three weeks beforehand to get my feel back. We were better rehearsed this time than we have been for years. Basically, because we’ve all been stale for the last two years, we did two weeks of full music rehearsals in a little live room in Kempsey in Worcestershire, and then we did a full week of production rehearsals, with the staging and effects. That’s more than we’ve done for a long time. We were pretty up on it by the time we hit the stage at Bloodstock. It was a great way to reintroduce ourselves after two years of inactivity.
Ian’s Gear:
Bass: Spector Ian Hill Euro4LX
Rig: SWR SM-1500 & SM-900 heads, (4x) SWR Triad 3-Way cabs
Strings: DR Strings Black Beauties & Red Devils (.040–.105)
Picks: Dunlop .73mm
HEAR HIM ON:
50 Heavy Metal Years of Music, Judas Priest (Sony Music, 2021)
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