Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill has announced his retirement after 57 years with the band, and Davey Rimmer has been confirmed as his replacement.
Hill is a founding member and the last original member left in the band, the steady heartbeat behind the Metal Gods since the very beginning. In a personal message to fans, he explained that he had always said he would carry on “until my performances suffer”, and that the time had now come.
He revealed that he has been battling advanced arthritis for several years, in his shoulders, his right hand and both knees, and has been managing it with painkillers and cortisone injections. He still recorded bass for the band’s new album, but there were doubts over whether he could finish the recent European tour. So the band asked Davey Rimmer, of Uriah Heep and Elegant Weapons, to learn the set as cover.
That cover was needed sooner than expected. Hill snapped a tendon in his left shoulder just before the encores at the Brussels show, and two days later Rimmer stepped in for the London date at short notice. Hill called it “an incredible performance”.
“In view of all this, and the fact that I’ve neglected my family life for fifty seven years, I’ve decided to retire and spend the remaining years making up for it,” Hill said. He described Rimmer as “a great bassist, and a genuinely nice bloke who’ll fit the job perfectly”.
He signed off with: “There’s not a day goes by where I don’t give thanks for the incredible journey I’ve lived through, and it just remains for me to say that I love you all, and thank you for the life you’ve let me live.”
The band said they were sending the message “with heavy hearts”, calling Hill “the backbone of Judas Priest for so long”. They wished him well in his retirement and welcomed Davey into the Priest family.
There’s no other way to say it: this is the end of an era. Ian Hill has never been the flashiest member of Judas Priest, but every one of those classic records stands on his bass lines. We wish him a long, happy retirement with his family, and we can’t think of a better pair of hands to take over than Davey Rimmer.
