Judas Priest's Ian Hill: One for the Road

YOU LEARNED MUSIC RUDIMENTS WHEN YOU were a teenager. Do you still find the time or need to practice?
Before a tour and before an album, yes. After a long tour, I generally put the bass away and just chill out for a month or so, but it’s not long before I pick it up again.

When you were first starting out, what were some of the challenges you encountered during live performances?
The major obstacle was getting a volume on par with the guitarists. With a guitar, you can turn up and your speakers don’t blow into orbit. You couldn’t always do that with bass. I tried all sorts of things: great big folded horn speakers, four 4x12s instead of two. Since then, bass equipment has grown by leaps and bounds. In the early days, apart from the odd 18" speaker cabinet, there wasn’t much in the way of specialized bass equipment. You had to go through what the guitarists were using and, of course, the guitars with the higher frequencies could always get more out of it than the bass.

Do you still encounter gear problems on the road?
I’ve found when you’re going through places like Texas or Florida—where it’s very hot and humid—the sweat goes down the side of the bass and can short everything out. I’ve had that happen a few times. Nothing has exploded, but it sure keeps me on my toes!

How would you describe your live sound?
My bass sound is quite natural. I like a sort of piano-like sound, something that a lot of other bass players strive for. It can be difficult to get that clarity.

You began playing with a pick not too long ago. Has this helped you achieve a cleaner tone?
With two guitarists, playing with my fingers was just too soft. It was getting lost, so I started playing with a pick because it cut through better. You get that top-end attack you just don’t get with your fingers.

Judas Priest was one of the first bands to really modernize the dual guitar attack, courtesy of K. K. Downing and Glenn Tipton. What effect does this have on you as a bass player?
Ken and Glenn usually use a lot of effects, which I don’t use. I use effects on albums from time to time, but live, it’s not really necessary. Because there are already two very distorted guitars, if you add a distorted bass, it gets too mixed up. Also, because the drums and the bass are the foundation stones to the building, anything too complicated will make a song lose its solidity and heaviness. When you’ve got two guitars, the bass needs to be simple to cut through.

How do you keep yourself challenged on the bass?
I let Ken and Glenn do that for me [laughs]. Really, my bass lines are comparatively simple. They’re what the music calls for in the large part, although I have been playing a few more licks on the newer material. When I’m at home, I’ll try all kinds of things. I like to try new techniques and new ways of playing.

Judas Priest has had a number of drummers over the years. What challenges or benefits have these changes brought?
We have to play off each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and the drummers all brought something different. Dave Holland was a good technician and a good hard rock drummer. He didn’t play double bass drums that well—that’s something that Scott Travis brought to the band. That opened up a whole new spectrum. We could do fast double bass drum and bass lines together that we couldn’t do before. Les Binks, the drummer before Dave, was good at that as well.

Do you take any creative liberties with your bass lines onstage?
I try to keep to the studio version for a couple of reasons. First, everybody else onstage knows what I’m doing. For instance, I play right next to Glenn, and he uses me as a reference point for coming out of the lead breaks and things like that. Second, it’s what the audience expects. I used to experiment; I used to play a five-minute bass solo, but now we cram in two short songs.

Judas Priest has an immense catalog of songs to choose from as it is.
There’s a dilemma before every tour when we’re putting together the set list, because for every new one you put in, you’ve got to drop somebody’s favorite to make way. It’s one of the reasons we’re doing only two songs from the new album on this leg of the tour. Besides that, Nostradamus is a very long album, and it’s going to take some time to sink in and for people to get familiar with it.

How do you remember how to play all of those bass lines for those songs if you’re trying to pull them off verbatim?
I don’t know! I’ve always had a decent memory. But I couldn’t just pick a song out of the back catalog and play it. I’d have to listen to it and rehearse it first.

Is there a song you never tire of performing?
If I had to sit at home and play them on my own, I’d probably tire very quickly of the lot of them. But, all the songs we do live, we do because they’re good songs and people’s favorites. You never tire of the reaction you get when you play the first couple bars of the song. That rush you get from the audience is terrific.

Do you have a favorite song in your set list that displays your diversity as a bass player?
“The Rage” from British Steel [Epic, 1980] is a good song. That one starts off with a reggae bass line and then goes into a heavier part. There’s a little of everything in that one.

What is it about playing bass that keeps you going?
It’s the responsibility. Together with the drummer, you hold the whole song together. You are the foundation. You are the basis upon which everything else is built.

What’s next?
It’s at least a year down the road, but we are planning, sooner or later, to perform Nostradamus as the album, with or without an orchestra. It’d be great if we could do it with an orchestra, but the logistics of carrying a 20-piece orchestra around? We’ll see.

CAN BE HEARD ON

Judas Priest, Nostradamus [Sony, 2008]

CURRENTLY SPINNING

Cream, Wheels of Fire: Live [Polydor, 1968]
“Some of their work, particularly their live work, was tremendous. They’d take off on these big, long, rambling solos, and that was a big influence in my early days.”

GEAR

Basses Two Spector NS2 4-strings; Spector NS5 5-string; Hamer 5-string; DR High-Beams (4- string: .055–.115; 5-string: .050–.135)