where is the love for URIAH HEEP?

Their classic lineup (Demons and Wizards through Wonderworld lineup of Hensley/Byron/Box/Thain/Kerslake) had one of THE great and undersung rhythm sections in Gary Thain and Lee Kerslake.

Uriah Heep C/D

Uriah Heep C/D

and just to head you off at the pass:

Nazareth: C or D

We missed you mark!!

haha, this was my first ever post to ILM! (warning, massive Alex in NYC cover picture thread)

(too bluesy i suspect)

(actually also they were surely bigger in the us than the uk)

Vinegar Joe, Greenslade, Steamhammer, Gracious, Gravy Train: Who does what and did they do it well?

this of course explains nothing

David Byron insane-vibrato yeesssss!

i bought it in the midst of my Heavy Riffage - s/d phase

My favorite is probably the double live album, Hensley organ and the guitars are really sludgy. "I've got some chewing gum on me boot".

I have Hensley's Dusty Words on a Dusty Shelf (is that right?), it was still sealed when I found it about 7 years ago...

Does anyone have David Byron's solo album?

Uriah Heap - C/D / S&D

yeah, the first Byron album is actually not half bad! Take No Prisoners, that is. It has Box and Kerslake on it. He had another one which I have not heard. There was also an album that came out under the name "The Byron Band" in the 80s, which IS bad. Best avoided by all but the hardest of die-hards. But Take No Prisoners is a nice little record if you are a fan of David's vocals. It's worth the 3 or 4 bucks you ought to be able to find it for...

And yeah, Proud Words on a Dusty Shelf is also required listening for all Heepsters. Real pretty version of "Rain" on there!

Listening now to Classic Heep: An Anthology (Mercury, 1998, two discs.) Somehow I'd forgotten how funky "Tears In My Eyes" from Look At Yourself is. Holy moley.

Like the Dickens character.

Ha-ha. That's the one tune with the guitar/organ stabs (bomp! bomp!) and Ken Hensley's just a little out-of-place and amphetamined crazy slide all over the rest of it, right? Of course, didn't know it was a bit of a style clash back then. But it was the trademark Heep sound and it surely gave them an attack and tone which no one imitated.

Byron at his drunken best in this clip, kicking Thain in the butt, sticking his hand on the strings while Hensley is trying to play, etc .. :

all of the clips i've found from that show are amazing. Byron is annihilated.

"Wizards and Demons" pwns.

I just got a nice German pressing of Look At Yourself with the mirrored cover. Love that album. Haven't heard any other Heep I liked half as much.

http://www.stjohns-edinburgh.org.uk/uploads/images/mural_dec03.jpg

title track of look at yourself slays. some serious urgency in this music

been listening to Magician's Birthday recently. great album. a bit proggier, though

much love for the epic title track on that one, though tbh i could do without the orchid orchestra singing "happy birthday" to the magician

The "Happy Birthday Dear Magician" stuff counts as real-life Spinal Tap. But I really love "Sunrise" and "Sweet Lorraine." (Refreshed my Magician's Birthday memory when I spent 50 cents on a cassette of it this summer.)

Live in Japan link above no longer works, but here's... Mick Box on gee-tar...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBuNB5EZfkQ

I have a half dozen of their studio albums (Very 'Eavy Very 'Umble, Salisbury, Demons & Wizards, Magician's Birthday, Look at Yourself and the recent one, Wake the Sleeper) and the double live disc in my iPod. I should revisit them sometime soon.

Look at Yourself and Magician's Birthday are great. I just bought an original copy of LaY and it sounds sooooooo damn good.

Recently started discovering them. Long thought they were a heavy rock band like Deep Purple, but they were probably sitting more somewhere in-between heavy rock and symphonic rock, which makes them more of interest to me.

One of the booklets that came with a deluxe 25th anniversay edition Deep Purple CD explained they practiced right next to each in the same building for awhile. And Heep heard DP coming through the wall and it influenced them a bit. Early DP did a symphony recording which everyone pretty much graciously ignores.

May be because the idea was better on paper than in practice.

Well, their 'symphonic' album is Salisbury. One side, the title track. The rest of it a collection of typical Heep cuts. Then they went back to organ and guitar boogie rock for Look At Yourself.

"salisbury" is the finest fusion of rock and symphony, true or false?

their floydest jam?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vBumfuaBo4

RIP KH: remmebering you by listening to a spotify playlist put together by some random and this music is mostly much gentler and more melancholy than i think i expected

(maybe that's just the random's specific tastes tho)

bird of prey is grebt in a very absurd way

What Should Be Done on Look at Yourself is a highlight of Uriah Heep's "introspective side", it could very easily fit on a contemporary Fleetwood Mac or Elton John record.

Ken Hensley's death leaves Mick Box as the only remaining member of the classic Heep lineup. The lesson is... stay in Uriah Heep or you'll die.

Whenever I think of UH, I always think of Keiji Haino's claim in an interview that they were the loudest group he'd ever seen!

Ken Hensley's death leaves Mick Box as the only remaining member of the classic Heep lineup.

Would have absolutely sworn he had already passed and that ^^^ this had been the situation for some time. Weird.

Hensley was a far better guitarist than Box, who quite frankly can't play, and all the more competent acoustic parts are played by him afaik.

He was also at least as competent a vocalist as David Byron!

a friend of mine pointed out that "mick" & "box" are both slightly archaic vulgarisms for the female pudenda

classic for this reason

I had a couple of their albums when I was a kid. I remember liking them, but without researching their discography I couldn't tell you which albums they wree.

I saw them open for Priest on the "Screaming for Vengeance" tour. They were . . . competent, I guess. It was a big venue, and everyone was there to see Priest.

*were

xp Mick Box is, apparently, his actual name (well, it's Michael Frederick Box). Their current bass player is Dave Rimmer.

nice

I am sure one of the albums I had was Demons and Wizards, which is a solid record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCxwx0J-_14

Best guitar riff or best organ riff?
Trick question.

best album cover

evokes an era of brutality & superstition, unchecked disease & unwiped arses

rimmer is a fine name but their former bassist's name was bolder.

Turns out David Byron's real name was David Garrick, how disappointing

"What Should Be Done" on Look at Yourself is a highlight of Uriah Heep's "introspective side", it could very easily fit on a contemporary Fleetwood Mac or Elton John record.

Put a mirror between your face and the screen for full effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY5kDgaIA_A

"today is only yesterday's tomorrow" is maybe one of the dumbest lyrics I've ever heard...surely if you're using the word "only" you'd want to say, "today is only tomorrow's yesterday"?

These lyrics are dumber:

I was only seventeen
I fell in love with a gypsy queen
She told me, hold on!
Her father was the leading man
Said "You're not welcome on our land"
And then as a foe, he told me to go

He took me to a little shack
And put a whip across my back
Then told her, leave me
I was out for quite a time
Came back with her on my mind
Sweet little girl, she means all the world

Though I want my gypsy queen
Will she still be torn between
Her father and lover?
One day I will go to him
Strong enough to fight and win
The kind of a man, that he'll understand

I retain much love from my teenage years for THE HEEP

I wrote about them a year ago, and said at that point

Now, look, the one thing I must point out is that the songs are about nothing. I don’t know if Shaw or Box is writing the lyrics, but whoever’s doing it is absolutely stocked up on empty but inspirational lyrical tropes, and they’re really into the sun as an image. There are three songs on here that mention the sun in the title: “Silver Sunlight,” “Hail the Sunrise,” and “One Nation, One Sun,” and the first two of those come back to back. (I haven’t decided whether “Golden Light” counts.) We also get “Age of Changes,” “Fly Like an Eagle” (not a Steve Miller cover), “Freedom to Be Free”…these are all basically placeholder song titles which allow you to throw down three verses that say nothing but sound good enough. (Scorpions are the absolute masters of this, and their most recent album, 2022’s Rock Believer, kicks ass.)

I've been watching this vinyl-hunting YT channel recently, which led me to other suggestions, and it's weird but I noticed that Uriah Heep seem to be some kind of perrenial band among this kind of Record Fair dwelling dude (all dudes so far) having never heard them I checked them out for the first time last week.

yea every vinyl guy I know likes them too, idk what it is I think they just hit a good cross section of what those dudes usually like, plus they're ridiculous enough that you don't have to take them seriously

I've heard their recent albums are actually quite good, in fact I remember hearing their recent single ("Save Me Tonight"?) and thinking it was probably better than any of the classic tracks. minus "The Wizard" of course

Gatefold sleeves is another reason for their popularity among collectors. And the mirrored sleeve on Look At Yourself.

I was just listening to the live 2xLP from '73 and couldn't help but notice how nice the packaging is - front cover is boring but inside there's a nice photo book and neat little bios of all the members. also dig how they end the set with a medley of old timey rock n' roll tunes, can't imagine any other prog/hard rock band would do a thing like that

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/cf/3a/d9/cf3ad9912ca539c9377ee0d5f4ebf82a.jpg

"today is only yesterday's tomorrow" is maybe one of the dumbest lyrics I've ever heard...surely if you're using the word "only" you'd want to say, "today is only tomorrow's yesterday"?

I wonder if they got it from Lothar & the Hand People?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LzbwIhUIXc

Oh wait, they're on Vertigo with the swirl and all that, that's maybe why they're desirable, same with those early Sabbath records.

Funny that this came up. I was just trying out a new cocktail bar in my Brooklyn neighborhood where their calling card is having a great vintage sound system on which they play vinyl at every hour. Uriah Heep came up on the turntable (I thought it was Vanilla Fudge at first). Some album track I didn't know. But I remarked to my friend, "I really didn't expect to hear Uriah Heep on a Friday night in the neighborhood."

I was in an Irish bar in Shibuya one time and the vinyl-lovin' proprietor put on "The Magician's Birthday", that was my strangest Heep-in-the-wild experience. Hammond + Leslie can never fail on a decent system.

"today is only yesterday's tomorrow" is maybe one of the dumbest lyrics I've ever heard...surely if you're using the word "only" you'd want to say, "today is only tomorrow's yesterday"?

I wonder if they got it from Lothar & the Hand People?

plus the meter is better the way they sing it?

look at yourself is beyond underrated

they end the set with a medley of old timey rock n' roll tunes, can't imagine any other prog/hard rock band would do a thing like that

What about Zeppelin interpolating Elvis and other older songs onstage, or Deep Purple doing "Lucille" as an encore? Admittedly I can't imagine Yes, Tull or ELP doing this, but Heep weren't really full-fledged prog in that sense anyway.

dumbest lyrics

I'd say the lyrics of "Circle of Hands" are dumber than those of "Gypsy" due to their pretensions of significance and philosophical import.

Their worst lyric of all was "Seven Stars" on Sweet Freedom where they start singing the alphabet backwards and forwards going up and down the major scale. Talk about giving the game away! Even Uriah Heep fans don't like to see that kind of brazen contempt for songwriting craft.

"Easy Livin'" is a jam for the ages