JUDAS PRIEST Bassist: 'We All Genuinely Love What We Do'

Earlier this week, Beyond The Dark Horizon conducted an interview with bassist Ian Hill of British heavy metal legends JUDAS PRIEST. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Beyond the Dark Horizon: A few selections from every album in the JUDAS PRIEST catalog will be performed while on this tour. Being the only founding PRIEST member remaining, has it been odd for you to journey back and dig up old tracks that you have not performed in years? "Never Satisfied" off "Rocka Rolla" is a perfect example.

Ian Hill: It's funny, you know. You start going back and think, "Wow, our first album was out in '74." But yes, we are doing a song from every album. And as you look back at some of these albums, you find that there are some songs that you had forgotten about. We had some great material back then and it's been extremely difficult to get our set list together. And you know, for each old song we have to drop someone's favorite. It's been a bit of a nightmare, but we've done it, playing something from "Rocka Rolla" all the way down to "Nostradamus".

Beyond the Dark Horizon: Many critics and fans are throwing around the terms "farewell" and "retirement" which sound so permanent- but in reality, the band has plenty of journeys on the horizon. Glenn [Tipton, guitar] mentioned it was "the beginning of the end." That must be bittersweet.

Ian Hill: It's more of a slowing down process; not a goodbye or a farewell. None of us are spring chickens anymore, you know. It's just the world touring thing that really gets to us. We all genuinely love what we do and the thought of not doing it anymore is terrifying! We love this. We never really intended to kill the band off. But by no means does this mean that this will be the last time that we are on stage; it's just in the future we plan to do a handful of dates and take some time off, and in the long run I think it will extend the life of the band. Doing this might give us a few extra years because we love it.

Beyond the Dark Horizon: Did the addition of guitarist Richie Faulkner change the band's outlook? A revitalization in a sense? New blood can fuel the soul and add to the fire.

Ian Hill: Definitely, he's young [laughs]. He has the enthusiasm and he's moving all of us. There's a great future with him because he's such a talented performer and an overall great guy. He's a great find and we were very lucky to find him. It would have been difficult to carry on without someone of his caliber.

Beyond the Dark Horizon: Being in this business for 40 plus years, what has been the most important lesson learned?

Ian Hill: Tolerance and optimism. Those are the two things that you have to have. We're lucky that we're all friends. It's very important to be friends. If you have somebody that you don't really get along with in the band then it becomes difficult. We get along, we're great friends with the same goals and ambition to move forward. It's important that you tolerate peoples personality perks, it's interesting because everyone's got them.

Beyond the Dark Horizon: There is talk that JUDAS PRIEST has already begun work on the new album. How are the songs coming along?

Ian Hill: It's been coming along a bit slow at the moment because of the tour but Glenn and Rob [Halford, vocals] have put a lot of ideas together. This was before Richie joined the band so after the tour we're going to see if he has input on the album. Once that gets done we'll head over to the studio and complete the album. It's going to be sort of a traditional PRIEST album, now that we got the concept thing out of us. There's lots of classic metal in there; think of "Angel Of Retribution". It will be where we left off. We're excited; it's going to be a good old classic metal album.

Beyond the Dark Horizon: Where do you see the future of heavy metal? Do you think there are any bands today that can hold up that torch and standard that JUDAS PRIEST has held for over four decades?

Ian Hill: I'm sure there is, but bands come and go so quickly these days. The minute you discover them they seem to vanish. It's kind of a difficult question for me to answer since we're still around but yet bands like ourselves, AC/DC, IRON MAIDEN, we're all coming to the end of our careers and heavy metal will always be there. It's a popular music genre and it will never go away. When we begin to vanish then other bands will begin to establish themselves and it's up to the younger generation to keep it up.

Read the entire interview from Beyond The Dark Horizon.