HOLY MAN

“When we started Priest, the concept of somebody doing this in their seventies didn’t exist!”

Heavy metal fans of a certain age will remember the rise of Judas Priest, the perennial quintet which has ruled the metallic airwaves from 1974 onwards in a variety of line-ups. The sole constant member of the band, which released the self-explanatorily-titled compilation 50 Heavy Metal Years Of Music last year, is bassist Ian Hill, whose presence at the back of the stage and at the lowest frequency of the songs has been a comforting presence for the band’s fans over the decades.

Note that Judas Priest have endured the proverbial rollercoaster ride of a career. Space doesn’t permit a full account of their escapades, so let’s just say that they defended themselves in court in 1990 after two fans entered a suicide pact; their singer Rob Halford left and returned in the same decade; one guitarist, KK Downing, left un-amicably in 2011; the other one, Glenn Tipton, retired with Parkinson’s disease in 2018; and his replacement, Richie Faulkner, narrowly survived an on-stage aortic