A really fine concert review, for once a bit of positivity in the NME when writing about this great band. Read on!
Heep big appreciation
Concert review by Paul Weir
Uriah Heep opened their British tour at the Rainbow on Sunday to scenes of, would you believe, Heepmania. But first Silverhead started the evening with a driving set of real rock n’ roll. Irradiated by beams of coloured light, Michael Des Barres displayed all the attributes of a future rock star: namely, confidence, an ability to move and a seductive, evil leer. “Sold Me Down The River” chugged along nicely and the guitar of Rod Rook-Davies was mixed effectively from one side of the stage to the other. During “Underneath The Light”, Silverhead’s other guitarist, Steve Forrest, fell off the stage. Bloody good job they filled in the orchestra pit after Frank Zappa’s mishap. “Will You Finance My Rock an` Roll Band” is a plea Silverhead don’t need to make these days but, working on a pretty cold audience, it was this number which finally had everybody getting it on. Negotiations between Uriah’s Mick Box and myself to curtail their set after one song (so that I could catch the last train home) never came to fruition — with three thousand Heep fans out there rooting for them the band had to give a good show. This was definitely a case of playing to the converted. At up to £1.50 a ticket it needed to be. “Sunrise” was met with a wave of applause before the first note had been played and, like the bulk of Heep’s set, was very very `eavy. “Sweet Lorraine” featured some haunted-house-type synthesiser from Ken Hensley and plenty of tight choreography between Mick Box on lead, Gary Thain on bass and vocalist David Byron in his silver suit. “July Morning” was a mixture of music and showmanship: Mick Box displayed a Townshendesque respect for his guitar and a nerve like a brain surgeon. (You’ve got to have nerve to throw a good guitar fifteen feet into the air.) Whether it was Mick striding across the stage or David kneeling down and singing a la Jolson, it was all designed to get the energy going. And it did. Heep were getting standing ovations long before the end of the show. Over to David: “All having a good time?” “Yeah!” shouted the £ 1.50s. “Are you all having a good time UPSTAIRS?” “Yeah!” shouted the £1.25s, the £1s and the 75pS. “Gypsy” was overpoweringly heavy — apart from the break, in which the spot fell on Ken Hensley playing an evil organ and synthesiser solo, looking not unlike the mad organist who comes up through the floor in horror films. Mick Box continued to throw his guitar around and kicked a mikestand over now and again just to keep the aggro flowing. The essential element of Heep’s music remains unchanged — from the first album to the fifth, from Farx Club to the Rainbow, Heep are HEAVY. Man. “Circle of Hands” saw Gary Thain riding David like a horse, Mick worshipping the drum kit and another ovation. Everyone stood up at David Byron’s command and clapped along with “Look At Yourself” as the spotlights swirled around the auditorium. An encore of “Love Machine” brought the audience surging onto the stage and many valiant attempts were made to slip through the line of bouncers. One girl dodged through and the whole band before leaping off the stage in triumph. Two girls got to kiss David Byron (sneaky — they rushed him from the side) and he also had the pleasure of being dragged into the front row by a mass of grabbing hands. Uriah Heep have returned to England, very ‘eavy indeed, but not so ‘umble anymore.
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The very first Uriah Heep album and the review it got from the NME. What can you say? I think Heep, despite this and other awful reviews, have the last laugh. Still a going concern in 2021, their place in the history books are secure. Read on!
URIAH HEEP: VERY ‘HEAVY… VERY ‘UMBLE (Vertigo stereo 6360 006 42s 6d).
Record review by N.L.
I’m afraid not. ‘Eavy ‘ere obviously means loud, and if the concept is hit ’em with dramatics and a monster sound then they are way off beam. Lacking the subtlety to make that idea work this album is a veritable pain to listen through. It’s too loud, too repetitive, too predictable and the distortions intended to blow your minds, you ‘eavy freaks you, are simply offensive to the ear. They have a song called Gypsy, for instance, which is an acceptable group composition. Then they start laying on the guitar distortions, the overbearing organ, the repetitive riffs… with the result just a noisy chaos. And that’s the way it goes on. Other titles: Real Turned On, Come Away Melinda, Lucy’s Blues, Dreammare, Walking In Your Shadow, I’ll Keep On Trying, Wake Up (Set Your Sights).
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In this interview it seems that Mr. Byron in some way wished that his band were different to what it was. While being proud of the coming album, he seemed to have listened to much to critics saying his band were too loud and un-sophisticated. This band was more than good enough at the time and if a band like Heep came up today we would absolutely and whole-heartedly just love it. Bands like Heep should get a lot more credit than they have, and there are many who can`t get enough of their recorded output of those glory years at the start of the 70s. With good reason. Read on.
High and mighty Heep
Heavy, but subtle. That`s Dave Byron`s description of Uriah Heep`s new album. Dan Hedges reports.
MENTION the name Uriah Heep to a random sprinkling of Britain’s rock writers, and the overall reaction is likely to consist of the same sort of sneering, eyes-rolled-skyward-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-isms ordinarily reserved for an unusually bad joke. To put it plainly, Heep’s traditional brand of cram-it-down-your-throat-an’-if-you-don’t-like-it-it’s-too-goddamned-bad rock ‘n’ roll has never quite measured up as the Critic’s Choice. With 10 LP’s behind them however (each of which has sold an average of a million copies each), it’s definitely a case of five more Englishmen laughing all the way to the bank, and with a string of sell-out concerts in the world’s biggest venues in their wake, Heep can legitimately lay claim to being one of the most successful bands anywhere, critics or no critics. Like most bands that’ve reached a reasonable level of success in attendance and sales terms, Heep fall prey to the occasional bout of solo-albumitis that creeps in during those off-duty hours, and hot on the heels of keyboard man Ken Hensley’s duo of solo outings (`Proud Words On A Dusty Shelf’ and ‘Eager To Please’), front man/vocalist Dave Byron’s come up with a just-released solo project of his own called ‘Take No Prisoners’. Although the album isn’t radically different from what Byron’s been peddling via Uriah Heep over the past six years, there was an obvious attempt to branch out from their relentless onslaught of destructo-rock – a bit of gospel, a dose of what you might call ‘funk’, and even a flamingly sentimental ballad or two. Fair enough, it’s not likely to alter the course of rock ‘n’ roll by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s at least an indication that Heep might be a collection of thinking individuals after all, and not the mindless, heavy-metal machine that they’ve been accused of being. “In the past,” Dave says, ceremoniously pouring a glass of beer in Heep’s record company’s office, “Uriah Heep’s tended to get into very grandiose productions — which I enjoy doing, but I wanted to do something that was virtually a backing track and a voice. “A funky backing track with a minimum of overdubs – very simple. Sling the voice on, and keep it very straightforward. This album was, to me, almost a way of experimenting to see what it’d sound like with a slightly different, looser approach.
“People who’ve heard the album, and who know Uriah Heep well have made various points to me about it in the six months since it was finished. Some have said that it sounds more like Uriah Heep than Uriah Heep does, others have said that it sounds more like how Heep should sound than the way it has sounded over the past couple of albums. “It’s got the rawness of early Heep, but it also has more diverse elements. But that comes from having different musicians playing on it.” It sounds as if there might actually be a seed of discontent in Byron’s mind over the state of the band’s music up until now. “Well, I felt that Uriah Heep was getting pretty stylised, and the only way to do something different was to do it on a solo album. If you try and do some of those things on a Heep album, people go, ‘Yeah, it’s a great song but …’.” The fact is that Heep’s eleventh album, the tentatively titled ‘High And Mighty’ is rapidly nearing completion, and though the bulk of their past output has been stamped out to the same straight-jacketed, stomach-churning, sure-it-all-sounds-the-same-but-it-sells specifications, Mr. Byron is of the opinion that this forthcoming one has started to shatter the mould. “What’s happening on the new Heep album, which was never allowed to happen before, is that more of our ideas are being allowed to come out.” But then, that tried and trusted formula’s obviously been selling a ridiculous number of records to somebody, and since Heep have never really been the cat’s pyjamas in this country, the vast majority of those somebodies are obviously concentrated over in the colonies. They’re one of those bands that are tailormade for that peculiar breed of out of their heads and hanging from the rafters ‘concert-goers’ that thrive on the acoustically abominable highway robbery of the American music scene. As a veteran among veterans, of the American Campaigns, Byron seems to have the situation over there pretty realistically sussed out. “I think American audiences go to a gig because it’s an event. Once a week, there’s a show at the Municipal Auditorium, and a certain percentage of the audience’ll go no matter who’s on.” The old Saturday night, drive-in movie syndrome, 1970’s style.
“Right. They like the atmosphere, they get stoned, and they enjoy the whole collective thing about it. We also get a lot of radio play over there, which we don’t get in England. We’ve somehow managed to cross the line so that both AM and FM play us, and we’ve had a couple of minor hit singles that’ve turned a lot of people onto coming and seeing us.” The critics on either side of the Atlantic are, by and large, quite another story. Far from dismissing the slaggers with a caustic ‘they don’t know what they’re talking about’ however, Dave actually sympathises with the groaners. “We do come off as an arrogant, showy band, I suppose, and our music is very intense and dynamic. It’s the kind of thing you’ll either instantly hate or instantly like, and get off on what we’re trying to put across with our arrogance — though there’s a lot of humour in there. “If you’re a journalist though, and you go to 10 concerts a week, listen to records all day long writing about rock ‘n’ roll, and then you’ve got to go to a Heep concert… I mean, you’ve had to put up with that stuff all day long, and if you suddenly walk in at eight o’clock and get pinned to the back wall, you’ll go `Aw, fuck this.’. “Unless you’re particularly into the band, you are likely to say that it’s blisteringly loud and not your kind of thing. But that’s exactly what the kids want as a kind of release. “I can see why we alienate a lot of people, because we’re the type of group that’s very intense and has to be paid attention to one hundred per cent, both visually and musically, and I think that’s why we get such an enormous amount of slagging.” On their last British tour, Heep managed to surprise a fair number of the sceptics with an approach that’s much more, er,`professional’ — largely resulting from the enlistment of John Wetton, one of the finest bassists in England. “We did get sloppy for a while, but we noticed the difference immediately when we got John. “I think this next album is going to blow away a lot of people that’ve knocked the band before,” Dave says, getting ready to dash down to the studio to lay down some vocal tracks. “I had the chicken pox for a week, and they recorded two tracks without me. I heard them and I just couldn’t believe it. They were just so powerful, and so different, and so good. I couldn’t believe it was them, and I’m in the group! “The Heep fans’ll absolutely love it, because it’s got all the power they love. I think, and hope, and pray that the press who haven’t liked us in the past will see that we are capable of playing some fucking incredibly heavy music, because what I’ve heard so far is some of the heaviest music I’ve ever heard done by any band. “But it’s clever too. It’s got subtlety and a lot of colours about it. Like in a picture, if the basic sketch is good, you don’t want to muck it up with too much colour. You just want to bring out the best parts of the picture, and that’s what we’re trying to do now.”
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I didn`t know that the guys in Heep were so emotional as Mr. Byron expresses in this interview, but I`m glad they were if that meant that they were able to create all that wonderful music. “Look At Yourself”? Phew…what a FANTASTIC album that is. One of my favourites! Read on!
Uriah Heep: High energy music
David Byron talking to NME`s Julie Webb
URIAH HEEP have needed to be thick skinned in the past because of all the back biting and criticism they’ve come in for. A poor man’s Deep Purple, or a more subdued Black Sabbath is how they’ve been described and because it’s destructive, rather than constructive criticism, it hurts. I felt sure, that when I met lead vocalist David Byron this week, if I’d started making comparisons between them and the afore mentioned groups he would have felt like clocking me one! I didn’t make comparisons because after listening to their new album “Look At Yourself” it’s clear that Uriah Heep are not trying to ape other groups but have arrived at a point where their music has a brand of it’s own. David describes their music as “high energy music” and considering the energy they must use up on stage he’s doubtless right! “I don’t think you could ever describe our music as heavy and the nearest I can think is high energy music. You could even describe us as a teenybopper band because when we did the Sha Na Na tour earlier this year we found the audience were rushing us on stage. “I’ve noticed a lot of our audiences are getting younger. You see it’s like a new generation of people coming through. Bands like us and, say Wishbone Ash, or whatever are the new teenybopper bands. When we do a concert with say Colosseum, our audience are in the back seats, they can’t afford to set near the front. But they are an important audience just the same because they are going to, or have just started, going out to work and they are the ones who’ll buy the albums. “College audiences haven’t a lot of money to spend so they won’t go out and buy the albums. Whatever name we’ve made for ourselves we’ve made through clubs — not through the colleges because we haven’t done that much work on the college circuit.” Soon the group begin their own concert tour of Britain but after it finishes, David informed me they won’t work here until June. He explained: “We’re doing some concerts in Italy and then America and Japan and Australia and then we’ll start recording the next album around March.”
As the band seem to get so much work abroad I asked David if he preferred working out of Britain. “No — but if you’d have asked me three months ago I would have said yes. At that time it was better to work abroad simply because we were better known, the audiences were larger and we got a good response abroad. Now we like playing in England — it may be our smallest market but we’d like to make it in England if only because England is our homeland. And it’s getting better for us over here all the time — we’ve just graduated into concerts here – although we’ve been doing them in Europe for over a year.” Is there more money for you if you play abroad? “Oh yes — we can get three times as much there but you do get tired of playing in one particular place.” On stage, everything the group plays is original and they include numbers from from all three albums — predominently from the new album “Look At Yourself.” “Basically we know we’re out on stage to entertain and that’s what we try our hardest to do. I think our lyrics are based on things that have happened to us and if the audience can get into the lyrics that’s great. “One girl who came to see a gig of ours had to be taken out because she was crying her eyes out. She freaked out completely – okay so it may be only one person who we got through to – but that makes it for us.” David describes the personality of the group as emotional and went on to explain: “We’re all very emotional — either very up or very down. When we are down we write our best songs. One of the best moods you can have, I think, is to be pleasantly depressed. If we play badly we feel really down but when we get it on and it all happens we stand out on stage and get a great feeling. “We get so carried away at some gigs when we go down well that we feel we don’t want to stop playing and just go on for ever. I’ve come off stage on some occasions crying because I’ve been so overwhelmed by the audience.”
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I can`t agree with this review. I think “Salisbury” is a fine album and that the title track is a really good and long composition that has more than some nice moments. Deserves to be heard regularly. Read on!
No, it`s not as bad as the first, which just had to be a gross parody of all the worst excesses of heavy music. But perhaps, thinking again, what I really mean is that this second set is less offensive to the senses. It certainly gets off to an appalling start with a stage number called Bird Of Prey which harks back to the first album in that it revolves around a riff that has all subtlety of the Centurion tank used in the sleeve design. For the most part after that however it`s a softer, more subdued Heep, with a couple of songs, Lady In Black and High Priestess, while not outstanding, suggesting that the group might be capable of producing something worthwhile on their third attempt. Title track is a 16-minute orchestral group piece using an arrangement for brass and woodwind. Individual group contributions, David Byron`s vocals, Ken Hensley`s organ, Paul Newton`s bass and Mick Box`s guitar, provide some nice moments. But as a whole the material doesn`t possess the attention-gripping quality a work of this length and nature requires. Other titles: The Park, Time To Live.
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My Things - Music history for those who are able to read. 