Ian Hill Retires From Judas Priest After 57 Years
The 74-year-old founding bassist said advancing arthritis in his shoulders, hand and knees ended his playing days. Uriah Heep's Davey Rimmer takes over.
Ian Hill, the founding bassist of Judas Priest, has retired from the band after 57 years. The band shared his personal statement on Friday.
Hill, 74, said advancing arthritis left him no choice. “For a long time now, when asked ‘how long can you continue,’ I’ve always answered ‘until my performances suffer,’” he wrote. “I hate to say it, but that time has come.”
He said the arthritis is advanced in his left shoulder and right hand, established in his right shoulder and present in both knees. He has fought it with painkilling pills, gels and cortisone injections in his shoulder and hand.
The injury that settled it came on the band’s recent European tour. Two nights before a London headline show, Hill snapped a tendon in his left shoulder just before the encores in Brussels. He couldn’t lift his arm high enough to reach the neck of his bass. He sat out the London show — the first Judas Priest concert he had ever missed.
Davey Rimmer, the Uriah Heep and Elegant Weapons bassist, stepped in. The band had asked him to learn the set list as a precaution, and he played the London show at short notice. Judas Priest has now named him Hill’s permanent replacement, calling Hill “the backbone of Judas Priest” and welcoming Rimmer into the “Priest family.”
The band’s longest-serving member
Hill joined Judas Priest in 1970 and played on all 19 of its studio albums, from 1974’s Rocka Rolla to 2024’s Invincible Shield. He laid down the bass parts for the band’s next album before stepping away. After K.K. Downing’s 2011 exit, Hill had been the last continuous member from the band’s earliest days.
He also pointed to family as a reason for stepping away. “I’ve neglected my family life for fifty seven years,” he wrote, saying he wanted to spend his remaining years making up for it — before one of them ends up pushing him around in a wheelchair.
Judas Priest finished its European tour over the summer and has no shows scheduled for the rest of 2026. The band’s next dates are festival appearances in Norway and Denmark in June 2027.
