Judas Priest's Ian Hill Admits The KK Downing Split Wasn't Handled In The Best Way

Despite being a metal fixture for nigh on 50 years, Judas Priest only toured Australia for the first time in 2001, and have only returned a few times after that. In short, the band still see us as somewhat uncharted territory.

“We always wondered what took us so long to visit Australia and once we got there, we had so much fun that we always look forward to coming back,” says the affable Hill in his trademark Brummie accent.

Last year the band delivered their 18th LP, the majestic Firepower, which has received rave reviews and reinvigorated the band after a period of turmoil. Hill promises that Australian audiences will get a good dose of the record, along with the expected classics.

“For Download we know there are certain ‘classic’ songs we have to build our set around or the fans will complain, but we are going to play at least four songs from Firepower. To be honest we’d play even more but for every new song you put in you have to drop someone’s favourite. At this stage it just gets harder to put set lists together – but we do like to throw in a left-field choice – a Tyrant, a Saints In Hell, or a Night Comes Down – songs that we haven’t played for a long time. We’ll definitely try and do that for our Download set.”  

The Music asks Hill to look back over Priest’s career for albums that he feels were unfairly maligned or even ignored – and he is quick to defend some of his forgotten children.

“Point Of Entry [1981] is definitely an album that comes to mind,” he says. “When we released it, many people thought it was too poppy, or commercial, but the material – like Desert Plains and Heading Out To The Highway really stand up even today. I’d also point to Ram It Down [1988], which saw the band come back from the Turbo album with a much harder edge. In a way we never would have done Painkiller if we hadn’t done that album.”

Although Judas Priest are rapidly entering Rolling Stones territory in terms of longevity, they have no plans to follow fellow Downloaders Slayer into retirement.

“There’s no end plan, let’s put it like that,” says Hill. “And really there’s no reason why we can’t do another record. The thing is that Firepower is a very tough act to follow and we won’t put out anything inferior. We are still touring at the moment and no doubt we’ll do a 50-year celebration next year – and then who knows – we may get into the studio and do another one.”

Not everyone in the Priest camp feels like Hill. Back in 2011, KK Downing, one half of the band’s double axe attack, decided to retire. Since then, things have become acrimonious between Downing and his ex-bandmates, with Downing lobbing claims of band conflict, shoddy management and declining quality of performance as reasons for his departure. Downing was further infuriated when he was not asked to rejoin the band following Glenn Tipton’s Parkinson's disease diagnosis in early 2018. But Downing saved his harshest ire for Hill, citing great disappointment in the attitude of someone he had been friends with since their infant school days. Given how close Hill and Downing once were, how is their relationship holding up now?

“Look, I was annoyed with KK for leaving the band, even though I didn’t show it,” admits Hill. “He was adamant though that he’d had enough and wanted to do other things, and I respected that. That said, I don’t see how you can be disappointed that you weren’t asked to rejoin the band when we already had a replacement lined up for Glenn [Andy Sneap]. The reality is that it would have been difficult to fit KK back in anyway, given we now have two albums of new material.

“If we had known he’d felt that way about maybe coming back things might have been different, but he stayed incommunicado and the first we heard about his disappointment about not coming back was in the press.”

Despite these ‘professional’ differences of opinion, Hill does hold out hope that their personal relationship can survive.

“If we saw each other in a bar we would give each a hug, buy each other a beer and things would be ok. It’s just that things on a professional level, I feel, haven’t been handled in the best way - mainly on his part.”