IAN HILL Says RICHIE FAULKNER Is Reason JUDAS PRIEST Is Still Active 13 Years After Completion Of 'Farewell' Tour

In a new interview with Shaggy of 94.9 and 104.5 The Pick, JUDAS PRIEST bassist Ian Hill said that the addition of guitarist Richie Faulkner to the band's lineup largely contributed to PRIEST's decision to stay on the road nearly a decade and a half after the legendary British heavy metal group announced its "farewell" tour. Asked what has kept PRIEST going strong and not calling it quits, as was the original plan, Hill said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Richie Faulkner. [Laughs] Yeah, he came, he replaced Ken [original PRIEST guitarist Kenneth 'K.K.' Downing], who went off to do his own thing .Of course, the whole idea was to slow down a little bit and to take the workload down a notch. But Richie came along with boundless enthusiasm and all this energy, and he just sort of rubbed off on the rest of us. And here we are three albums, three tours, four tours later — well, five tours later, if you count the [2011-2012] 'Epitaph' ['farewell'] tour — and we're still going strong. I mean, we're motoring. We're loving it. We really are."

When Shaggy noted that PRIEST last two albums, 2024's "Invincible Shield" and 2018's "Firepower", are some of the stronger LPs in the PRIEST catalog, Ian said: "I [feel the same way], yes. I do, very much so. It's something we always try and do, is try and take a step forward with each album. I mean, you're learning stuff all the time, and whatever we learn, we try and put it into the next project. And we've done that right from the very start, right from way back in early '70s. And it's important that you do it, because it keeps you modern and it keeps you relevant. And you can sort of make that connection with the younger fans, which is important. I mean, the original fans are all our age, and they're all sort of expiring. But we've been able to make that connection with the younger people. And you look down from stage, and you see people in late teens, early twenties, what have you. And they're loving it, and it's not just the new stuff that they're loving — they're singing along to the older stuff, 20, 30 years old, what have you. So you've got them interested in that and they've gone back into the heritage of the band and started to look at some of the earlier material. And it's great news — not just for us, but it's great news for metal in general, that these people are still getting interested into it."

Back in 2014, PRIEST guitarist Glenn Tipton was asked during an appearance on "Rockline" if people may have misconstrued what he and his bandmates said in late 2010 about not wanting to do any more extensive touring ever again. Glenn responded at the time: "We, uh, lied. [Laughs] The statement we made was we're gonna do no more world tours. As we said before, it takes a massive chunk out of your life. It's pretty arduous out there — almost two years, the last one, playing two and a half hours every night, four or five shows a week. But we enjoyed every second of it. And we said that at the end of it, we weren't gonna do any more world tours, but we didn't rule out any dates. And we just got so enthused with the new album and everything that we put some dates in."

Asked by "Rockline" host Bob Coburn if it's fair to say retirement didn't work out for the band at all, Tipton replied: "We lied. We lied. We didn't mean to." Singer Rob Halford added: "Actually, it's Richie Faulkner's fault; let's blame Richie. We can't overemphasize the importance of having Richie with us at this point in our career."

He continued: "When Richie joined us for the 'Epitaph' tour, extraordinary things were happening night after night after night. And that, accompanied with some of the things that Richie was doing backstage before the show, laying down licks with his little portable recording gear, it was just this energy that was just out of control. So, naturally, when you come off a tour like that and you digest everything, you're just raring to go and we couldn't wait to get into the writing mode and start making music for [the then-new JUDAS PRIEST album] 'Redeemer Of Souls' together."