Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969. Their current lineup consists of guitarist Mick Box, keyboardist Phil Lanzon, lead vocalist Bernie Shaw, drummer Russell Gilbrook, and bassist Dave Rimmer. They have experienced numerous lineup changes throughout their -year career, leaving Box as the only remaining original member. Former members of the band are vocalists David Byron, John Lawton, John Sloman and Peter Goalby; bassists Paul Newton, Mark Clarke, Gary Thain, John Wetton, Trevor Bolder and Bob Daisley; drummers Alex Napier, Nigel Olsson, Keith Baker, Iain Clark, Lee Kerslake and Chris Slade; and keyboardists Ken Hensley, Gregg Dechert and John Sinclair.
Uriah Heep were part of the early 1970s rock scene and have been referred to as major pioneers of the hard rock, heavy metal and progressive rock genres. The band have sold over 40 million albums worldwide, with over 4 million sales in the US, where their best-known songs include "Look at Yourself", "July Morning", "Easy Livin'", "Come Away Melinda", "The Wizard", "Sunrise", "Lady in Black", and "Gypsy". They also maintain a significant following and perform at arena-sized venues in the Balkans, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia.
Uriah Heep have released twenty-five studio albums of original material, twenty live albums and forty-one compilation albums (including two greatest hits albums). Thirteen of the band's studio albums have made it to the UK Albums Chart (Return to Fantasy reached 7 in 1975), while of the fifteen Billboard 200 Uriah Heep albums, Demons and Wizards was the most successful ( 23, 1972). By the late 1970s, Uriah Heep had massive success in Germany, where the "Lady in Black" single was a big hit.Uriah Heep. Singles . musicline.de.
History
Early days (1967–1971)
The band's origins go back to 1967 when 19-year-old guitarist Mick Box formed a band in Brentwood, Essex called Hogwash, which began playing in local clubs and pubs. When the band's singer left, drummer Roger Penlington suggested his cousin David Garrick (who knew the band) as a replacement. Box and Garrick formed a songwriting partnership and having higher musical aspirations than their colleagues, decided to give up their day jobs and go professional. They set up a new band called Spice. David Garrick changed his surname to Byron. Drummer Alex Napier joined, having answered a music paper ad; bassist Paul Newton of The Gods (not to be confused with the American rock band of the same name) completed the line-up.
Spice avoided playing covers and according to Box, always strove "to do something original". Managed initially by Newton's father, the band climbed their way up to The Marquee level, then got signed by Gerry Bron (the Hit Record Productions Ltd.'s boss), who saw the band at the Blues Loft club in High Wycombe. "I thought they were a band I could develop and I took them on that basis", remembered Bron later. He became the band's manager and signed them to Vertigo Records, the newly formed Philips label. The four-piece found themselves booked into the Lansdowne Studios in London, still under the name of Spice. Then the name was changed to that of the well-known character from David Copperfield Uriah Heep (for, according to biographer Kirk Blows, "Dickens' name being everywhere around Christmas '69 due to it being the hundredth anniversary of his death"). According to Dave Ling's 2001 autobiography of the band, Wizards and Demons, The Uriah Heep Story, though the "Uriah Heep" moniker was chosen in December 1969, the band continued to play gigs as "Spice" until Ken Hensley joined in February 1970.
Uriah Heep then decided to widen the sound. "We'd actually recorded half the first album when we decided that keyboards would be good for our sound. I was a big Vanilla Fudge fan, with their Hammond organ and searing guitar on top and we had David's high vibrato vocals anyway so that's how we decided to shape it", Box recalled. Gerry Bron brought in session player Colin Wood, followed by Hensley, a former colleague of Newton in the Gods, who was then playing guitar in Toe Fat. "I saw a lot of potential in the group to do something very different", remembered Hensley.
Their 1970 debut album, …Very 'Eavy …Very 'Umble (released as Uriah Heep in the United States), introduced Hensley's heavy organ and the band's guitar-driven sound, with David Byron's theatrical, dynamic vocals soaring above thunderous sonic backgrounds, although acoustic and jazz elements also featured in the mix. The album's title references the signature phrase of the Dickens character ("very 'umble"). Hensley had little to contribute to the debut: Box and Byron wrote most of the material, including "Gypsy", in many ways (according to Blows) "a marriage of contrasts" that, in time, became their trademark. In a 1989 interview, Mick Box recalled: "The funny thing was we wrote it at the Hanwell Community Centre and Deep Purple were rehearsing in the room next door to us. You can imagine the kind of racket we were both making between us." During the winter of 1970, three-quarters into the recording of the album, drummer Alex Napier was replaced by Nigel Olsson, recommended to Byron by Elton John. The debut was not popular with rock critics (especially in the US, where Rolling Stone reviewer Melissa Mills infamously promised to commit suicide "if this band makes it"). In the course of the album's making the writing relationship between Box, Byron and Hensley was beginning to develop. "It was very quick, because we were all into the same things. It was like it was meant to be, there was that kind of chemistry", Mick Box recalled.
When Nigel Olsson returned to Elton John's group in the spring of 1970, Keith Baker took his place. The band's second album, Salisbury (February 1971), was more squarely in the progressive rock genre, with its 16-minute title track featuring a 24-piece orchestra. One of the album's tracks, "Lady in Black", described by Donald A. Guarisco as "a stylishly arranged tune that builds from a folk-styled acoustic tune into a throbbing rocker full of ghostly harmonies and crunching guitar riffs", became a hit in Germany upon its re-release in 1977 (earning the band the Radio Luxemburg Lion award). Produced by Gerry Bron, the second album was significant for Ken Hensley's rise to the position of main songwriter.
In December 1970 Keith Baker left the band and was replaced by Iain Clark (from another Vertigo band, Cressida). With him the band toured Germany in late December 1970/January 1971 and made their first US tour in the spring of 1971, supporting Three Dog Night and Steppenwolf.
By this time, Gerry Bron's deal with Philips/Vertigo was over, so he set up his own label, Bronze Records. The third album was recorded in the summer months of 1971, during the band's three visits to Lansdowne. "It was the point in time when the band really found a solid musical direction", said Bron later. The third album, Look at Yourself, released in October 1971, marked the solidification of disparate ideas that had been a prominent feature of Salisbury and presented the unified sound and direction. "July Morning" has often been cited as the standout track. "I think that 'July Morning' is one of the best examples of the way the band was developing at that point in time. It introduced a lot of dynamics, a lot of light and shade into our sound", Ken Hensley said. The album peaked at No. 39 in the UK.
Success (1972–1976)
By the end of 1971 it became clear, according to Hensley, that he, Byron and Box had become the tightly knit nucleus of the band. Feeling marginalised and having recently been badly shaken up when he was involved in an accident in Germany in one of the band's cars, first bassist Paul Newton left, in November 1971, and was briefly replaced by Mark Clarke. Newton recalled in a 2000 interview on Uriah Heep's website his departure: "Well, as you know, my father managed the band in the early days, with the Gods and Spice. He bought a lot of the gear and so on. When we became Uriah Heep and Ken joined the band and Ken is the first to admit it he had very definite ideas about what he wanted to do in a band. I suppose in some ways it was like the band was a vehicle which Ken needed and used to put his own ideas together. And there's nothing wrong with that as such. I mean, let's face it, the fact that what we did was successful was great for me too. But after a while you're bound to get some in-fighting in a situation like that. There were other problems too, because Gerry Bron was now the manager and my father was trying to get back some money from him get some of his money back on the equipment and so on. There was a lot of unhappiness on all sorts of levels and everybody was unhappy in a lot of ways. I actually wanted to leave the band for quite a while before I actually left but I didn't. Anyway, with the heavy work schedules and the pressures and so on, I ended up collapsing on stage one night and the other members of the band decided I should go. It was funny because I didn't want to go and there was a lot of animosity but at the same time it was a tremendous relief".
During that same November, Iain Clark was replaced by Lee Kerslake, once of the Gods. New Zealander Gary Thain, a member of the Keef Hartley Band, joined Uriah Heep as a permanent member in February 1972 halfway through another American tour, replacing Mark Clarke who was exhausted and nearing a mental breakdown. "Gary just had a style about him, it was incredible because every bass player in the world that I've ever known has always loved his style, with those melodic bass lines", Box later said. Thus the "classic" Uriah Heep formed, and according to biographer K. Blows, "Everything just clicked into place."
The result of this newly found chemistry was the album Demons and Wizards, which reached No. 20 in the UK and No. 23 in the US in June 1972. While its title and Roger Dean's sleeve both suggested that the band was romantically working medieval myth into their songs—and surely songs like "Rainbow Demon" and "The Wizard" (co-written by Mark Clarke, during his short stay) did have thematic links with fantasy world a more straightforward, hard-rocking approach was also apparent. To discard any possible insinuations concerning any kind of concept behind it, Hensley's note on the sleeve declared the album was "just a collection of our songs that we had a good time recording". Both critics and the band's aficionados hold the album in high regard, which, according to AllMusic, "solidified Uriah Heep's reputation as a master of gothic-inflected heavy metal". Ken Hensley remembered:
Two singles were released from the album: "The Wizard" and "Easy Livin, the second (a defiant rocker, according to Blows, "tailor-made for Byron's extrovert showmanship") peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Six months later, in November 1972, Uriah Heep's fifth studio album The Magician's Birthday (No. 28 UK, No. 31 US) came out, with "Sweet Lorraine" released as an American single and the title track (a multi-part fantasy epic featuring Hensley–Byron vocal duel and Box's extensive guitar solo in the middle) being the album's highlight. "Uriah Heep used to have an image, now they have personality", wrote Melody Maker in 1973. Much of it stemmed from the flamboyant Byron. "David was the communication point, the focal point of the whole group's stage presentation. He had so much charisma, so much ability", admitted Hensley many years later. But Hensley too developed into a sophisticated instrumentalist and stage persona, whose writing and keyboard flair ignited the rest of the band.