Judas Priest legend Ian Hill retired from the band after suffering a serious injury. He was the band’s longest-serving member. Now he’s opened up about the horrifying moment he knew his career with the band was over.
Speaking to independent metal journalist Vladyslav Stadnyk (Metal Pilgrim), Hill, the longest-serving member of Judas Priest, discussed his decision to retire from the band. On Oct. 9, 2026, Hill announced his retirement and blamed the “evil arthritis,” as well as other injuries, for his necessary exit.
“It is funny, because the last couple of tours have been a bit of a struggle,” Hill said, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. “Because this trouble is basically my shoulder and my thumb. [I’ve got a] great big lump on my thumb, which is all arthritis. I’ve been struggling with that for the past couple of tours or so. And it doesn’t go away, unfortunately, and it’s one of those things that just gets worse as time goes by.
Ian Hill was Judas Priest’s longest-serving member
Hill then confessed, “I almost retired at the end of the last tour.” he continued, “It’s funny the way it came about. Iron Maiden said, ‘Do you fancy doing a four-week tour of America this year?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah, that sounds okay, a four-week tour of America, quick four weeks.’ Then they pulled out.”
“In the meantime, we’d put in Bloodstock in Britain, which is the festival in Britain,” he continued. “So you can’t tool up to do one show. So the next thing, ‘Oh, we’ll do one or two dates in Europe around Bloodstock.’ And nine weeks later… And that’s what did it. We did six shows in eight days.”
Hill went on to recall, “That was running up to Brussels, so that’s when the tendon snapped. Because we were averaging maybe a day on, a day off, day on, day off, so the crew could get to the next gig and what have you. And, of course, it was recovering on the days off. Obviously, I wasn’t doing anything, so it recovered. And then, of course, you go on stage, and you aggravate it all over again. But then it was sort of, like I say, six shows in eight days, and I’d never had time to recover.”
Arthritis and other injuries caused Hill to have to retire from Judas Priest
He then shared that it was “right before the encores on the Brussels show” that everything came crashing down. “I just felt a snap and a real sharp, searing pain,” he said. “I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s the end of it.’”
Even though he was injured, Hill remembered having to find a way to play through the pain. “For the encores,” he said, “I had to actually get my elbow and rest it on my stomach and pull the bass back so I could get down to the bottom of the neck.
Finally, he shared how his injury is doing these days. “It’s easing off a lot now,” he revealed. “I can sort of lift it and do things that I couldn’t do immediately after that. I mean, I couldn’t move it at all. From the elbow down, everything was fine. It worked a treat, but I just could not move my shoulder. And that’s why I had to miss the London show. I physically could not play the bass.”
Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images
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