JUDAS PRIEST Bassist: 'We Are Spinal Tap'

JUDAS PRIEST bassist Ian Hill recently spoke to Stuff.co.nz about the group's "colorful" past. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

On the group's early days:

"Basically, we all loved FREE, HENDRIX and CREAM, and so we just made everything harder and faster and created metal. Not only did we create the early sound of metal, but the look as well. That was Rob [Halford] really. Before he joined we were wearing satin and velvet, which didn't really suit our darker songs. Rob arrived wearing leather, chains, denim, studs and that, and soon all our fans started wearing it too."

On Rob Halford going public with his homosexuality in the early '90s:

"It was the worst kept secret in rock 'n' roll. When he announced it he just rubber-stamped what most people already knew, but that didn't stop a lot of homophobes sending us nasty letters. Of course, the rest of the band knew Rob was gay from the early '70s, but what people do behind their bedroom door is up to them. We've never oppressed him in any way."

On the famous 1990 subliminal messages trial:

"That was 'orrible, actually. We had to sit in a courtroom every day for a whole month in Reno, Nevada. It was ridiculous. The argument was this — people killed themselves because there's a subliminal message on your record. Really? I can't hear anything. No, that's because it's subliminal. Oh, OK. Then someone would say, 'Wait! I do hear something!' Which meant it wasn't technically subliminal, so it was covered by America's Freedom of Speech amendment.

"The case was a joke. If you could get people to do things via subliminal messages, surely you wouldn't prune down your paying audience by getting them to kill themselves. You'd get them to go out and buy 50 copies of your record."

On whether JUDAS PRIEST comes the closest of any band to those hairy leather-clad losers in the spoof rock-umentary "Spinal Tap":

"Loads of the things in that movie have actually happened to us. We've gotten lost several times between the dressing rooms and the stage in big venues. We've had loads of really demented drummers leave in strange ways. We've had tour buses break down in the middle of nowhere, and we've had stage sets turn up that are way too small because we got the scale wrong. So yeah, we are 'Spinal Tap', I suppose."

On whether the band ever get tired of it all, shreiking and stomping about like teenagers, now they are all in their 50s:

"Absolutely. Sometimes I'm strapping on a big leather codpiece and I think, 'What the hell am I doing? I should be playing golf.' Well, we do that too, of course. I love golf. But I also love the rebel element of making heavy music. Metal's this great working-class anti-establishment form of music for people that hate fluffy pop songs. The hardness of it, and all the lyrics about people being filleted with big knives or having their heads chopped off, these things help it stay underground. It will never be the music that cultured people play in flashy clubs while they drink cocktails or try and pick up women. Generally, they want something . . . lighter."