URIAH HEEP, NOT HEED!

URIAH HEEP, NOT HEED!

FEATURES

Andy Hughes

As the '80s proceed, modern music becomes an increasingly mediamotivated hoopla where youth and speed are all-conquering, the concept of having “paid your dues” with any degree of longevity isn’t even sneered at, it’s just not even in the plan. Unless, of course, your music is rock—where a degree of experience and a collection of seminal albums are still worth holding your head up for, as the video revolution zaps by on the other side of the tracks. That said, British band Uriah Heep are right in the premier league when it comes to longevity, with a track record the envy of the young upstarts they’ve helped to influence along the way.

Taking their name from a character in Charles Dickens’s classic novel David Copperfield, Uriah Heep are christened with the moniker of the most repulsive character the novel has to offer. Uriah Heep was a slimy, snide toad of a man, constantly reminding the hero, and the world at large, that he was “very ’umble sir, so very ’umble.” Which explains why Heep came to release their debut album in 1970, with the tongue-in-cheek title of Very ’Eavy, Very 'Umble and how a legend, as they say, was born.

In those first years, Heep were as prolific with their output as any of their contemporaries, producing two and occasionally three albums a year to keep up with their growing army of fans’ insatiable desire for their brand of melodic hardedged material. In 197'1 the album Salisbury was rapidly followed by the seminal Look At Yourself and the band began to amass a large degree of success. Plenty of bands would have been content to continue in the same vein; having spent enough time trying to find a successful formula, it’s always a great temptation to turn out more of the same. Heep were to develop their reputation for change while increasing their reputation as a “progressive” rock band by changing their style to what amounted to a semi-acoustic format for the Demons And Wizards album. With its mystical connotations and its Roger Dean (Ves. Greenslade, Osibisa) cover art work, it is regarded by many original Heep fans as their best work. The peak of Heep’s early career followed with The Magician’s Birthday—and as so often happens, the nebulous thread of success seemed to stretch almost to the breaking point. As if to sum up the definitive selection of Heep’s career, their record company released a live set in early 1973, which was followed by their last, really cohesive album for some years—Sweet Freedom.

The next three years were a difficult phase in Uriah Heep’s checkered career. Wonderworld and Return To Fantasy received severe critical maulings and sold correspondingly small amounts. The record company, once again scenting trouble, put out a Best Of Uriah Heep compilation. But soon the entire progressive scene was chewed up and spat out with some relish by the advent of “new wave,” as it grandly called itself, but we just called it “punk” and left it at that.

In keeping with any band which expects to have any sort of lasting success, Uriah Heep remained philosophical about their change in fortunes. Despite their fall from grace (critically, at least) in their homeland, worldwide they were still a viable proposition. Certainly there was more than enough interest to enable the band to continue, and to develop overseas audiences, a move that their ’80s pop successors have been more than happy to emulate. Perhaps the irony of an album entitled High And Mighty was lost on the often sour-faced British music critics, who were so busy chasing anything with a spiky haircut and neat line in profanity and three-chord thrash that they missed the humor and accordingly savaged it, and Firefly and Innocent Victim (another wasted dig?) which followed. The net result of the relatively fallow period in Heep’s history was one of their most important line-up changes: when vocalist David Byron quit the band to be replaced by John Sloman in 1978.

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Sloman’s aggressive vocal style signaled a new era for Heep, and their Fallen Angel album represented something of a critical and commercial return to former glory. After a two-year layoff, the Conquest album was followed up by a sell-out British tour. If nothing else, Uriah Heep had learned to tailor their product to their most lucrative market—and so the “Americanization” of Uriah Heep took place with Abominog in 1982, followed in the same vein by Head First a year later.

And now, 15 years after they started, Uriah Heep are back at the top of their tree—with a highly successful album on both sides of the Atlantic, and a major record deal to sell it with. For newcomers to Uriah Heep via their excellent Equator album, it may be fun to check out their development through the history of their recorded output—an object lesson in how to keep a band one step ahead.

Since guitarist Mick Box is the only surviving original member from back in 1970 (is it really 15 years?) it made sense to corner him on the band’s successful British tour and find out the secrets of keeping a band—as well as body and soul—together throughout the inevitable peaks and troughs that make up a career of any worth at all.

“Well, the current line-up has been going for four years now,” said Box. “We’ve done Abominog, Head First and Equator together. We must have had enough lineup changes to fill Carnegie Hall by now, but we’ve been changing musicians since we started, really. In the very first line-up, we had Alex Napier on drums, and then we had Nigel Olsson, who went on to Elton John’s band, of course—people do seem to come and go, we just get on with it and work new people into the band as and when they are needed.”

With the signing of a major deal with CBS Records, Uriah Heep are poised to consolidate their success in the States. Just how successful are you in America, then, Mick?

“Well, the Abominog album went Top 40 over in the States, and MTV adopted us for about six months—so we’re about ready to make that vital step up now, and we re hoping that Equator will do it for us. At the moment we can go out on our own and headline 5,000-seater venues, but what we are doing is to go out as special guests on major tours that do 20,000or 30,000-seaters, and that way we can get over to a much larger potential audience.”

It’s sad but true that so many people assume that if a band isn’t pushing Wham! off the top of the popula: ity stakes, it must be dead and buried. For so many people’s subconscious, there is no middle ground: it’s mega-stardom or total failure. Mick Box knows better, as the last 15 years have proved.

“Dead right it’s not like that at all! I’m a working musician, and that’s all you can really expect to be in the long run. The band spends about eight months of the year on the road—in the last 12 weeks, we’ve been to 18 different countries, so it’s full-steam-ahead.

“I like to think we’re an international band, but very much British influenced. We’re all English and very proud of it. Some bands do what they call a ‘world tour’—when they play Germany, America, the U.K. and that’s it. When we do world tours, we go everywhere. We do the Far East, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, places like that. We don’t sell vast amounts of records there, but there are plenty of rock fans who live there, and enjoy seeing live bands. We don’t make any money, but it’s a good thing to stop off and see different countries and different cultures and to play places like that en route to places like Australia and New Zealand, where we can make money and our record sales are good.”

Another less fortunate feature of life in a long-term band like Uriah Heep has been the death of two of its members. Original bassist Gary Thain died some years ago, and former vocalist David Byron passed away more recently. The news obviously hit Mick Box very hard indeed.

‘‘It was dreadful. OK, he wasn’t in the band, but we were still the best of mates, and I spent a third of my life writing songs and playing music with that guy. I think I stayed drunk for two weeks, I couldn’t handle it at all. He was just too young and too talented. We’ve had several singers in the band, but it’s only really now we can say we’ve found a replacement for David, if such a thing were possible— certainly as close as we’re going to get. The thing is not to dwell on the past, you have to keep looking forward.”

Amen to that. On the subject of looking forward, Uriah Heep are in a position to be able to influence plenty of the new young bands that make their style of music today.

‘‘Right,” agreed Mick, shaking himself out of the sadness of the memory of his friend. ‘‘We were over in the States recently, and I was doing some radio interviews with Joe Elliott, and he said that he and the other guys in Leppard used to come to Uriah Heep shows when they were younger. I thought that was great!”

The obvious question to ask a man who has enjoyed a successful recording and playing career for 15 years is—how do you find your material, and what are your influences?

‘‘Inspirations? They haven’t changed very much over the years, in fact. Songs seem to fall out of the air really. I do think that touring makes life a lot easier when it comes to writing—meeting people, seeing different places, hearing certain words and phrases that can stick in your mind and become the germ of an idea. When you play as often as this band does, a riff at a rehearsal can become a song—but you have to catch it at the time and get it down somewhere, or else it gets lost. That’s what inspiration is.

‘‘What else did you ask? Influences? Well, I like a lot of jazz players, Larry Carlton, Django Reinhardt, people like that. I don’t like a lot of heavy bands these days, actually. I tend to find that the odd song grabs me now and again, and I'll keep playing just that one track. There was an Australian band called Cold Chisel and they did a song I liked...I can’t think of the name of it now! I still think that for any band to last and stand the test of fads and crazes, there still has to be good songs. It’s a cliche I know, but good material is still at the root of any success of any worth in music.”

There speaks a man who knows what success is about. If results are based on personality and enthusiasm, then Uriah Heep should be set up for the next 15 years—always assuming those songs still keep falling out of the air.