Metal
Ian Hill announced on Friday that he is retiring from Judas Priest. The bassist, who is seventy-four, was the band’s longest-serving member — he came in in 1970, the year after it was founded — and the last of the classic line-up left, and Uriah Heep’s Davey Rimmer takes over from him — Rimmer had already stood in on 21 September at the Eventim Apollo in London.
“For some years now, I’ve been struggling with the onset of the evil arthritis, which is now in an advanced state in my left shoulder and right hand, established in my right shoulder, and present in both knees,” Hill wrote. He has been holding it off with painkillers, gels and, lately, cortisone injections in the shoulder and the hand. Specialists have told him he might get away without surgery, but that either way there is no guarantee he would have the strength in the arm to get through a whole show.
The injury that settled it happened on this European tour. In Brussels, two nights before the London date, he snapped a tendon in his left shoulder just before the encores and could no longer lift his arm as far as the neck of the bass. The band had already asked Rimmer to learn the set in case Hill had to drop out mid-tour, and it was Rimmer who walked out at the Apollo. That was the first Judas Priest show Hill had ever missed.
Hill says he did manage to put bass lines on the new album, for which the band has given neither title nor date. “The obvious choice for my replacement is Davey,” he wrote. “He’s a great bassist, and a genuinely nice bloke who’ll fit the job perfectly.” The band added a line of its own: “He has been the backbone of Judas Priest for so long and will be greatly missed by us all.”
Rimmer plays in Uriah Heep and in Elegant Weapons, the band led by Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner —who joined when K.K. Downing left in 2011— with Ronnie Romero on vocals and Christopher Williams on drums. Judas Priest have announced no tour dates with the new line-up.
Text by Roger Estivill