![]() “Traveller in Time” opens with a bang and has a rad melody, but Byron’s high-pitched vocals almost ruin it for me. Then some harmonies that remind me of Styx come along, and I’m not so crazy about them, but the very happening melody soon returns and turns into a long fade-out heavy on the vocals (“Aaaa-aaaah”), organ, guitar, and drums. The song begins slowly and then speeds up, and while Clarke sings lots of annoying tripe about the Wizard’s “cloak of gold and eyes of fire,” Hensley’s organ and Box’s guitar produce a Wunderbar sound. In any event, the LP’s first cut is “The Wizard,” which opens with some cool acoustic guitar and lots of freaky echo on Clarke’s vocals. At the time of Demons and Wizards, the band’s line-up included Byron on lead vocals Mick Box on lead guitar and vocals Ken Hensley on acoustic, electric, and slide guitars, as well as vocals, keyboards, and percussion Lee Kerslake on drums, percussion, and vocals and Gary Thain on bass, although Mark Clarke both played bass and sang lead vocals on “The Wizard.”Ī Hensley note on the album sleeve reading that the LP was “just a collection of our songs that we had a good time recording” put to rest the idea that Demons and Wizards was a concept album. Over the years The Heep has boasted such disparate musicians as Elton John drummer Nigel Olsson, Spider from Mars bassist Trevor Bolder, King Crimson/Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry bassist John Wetton, and never played for anybody interesting vocalist Bernie Shaw. ![]() The band was formed in 1969 and released its first LP (the wonderfully titled … Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble) but didn’t really hit pay dirt until Demons and Wizards, which made them (in somebody’s words, not mine) “one of the Big 4 of Hard Rock” along with Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and the Donny Osmond Experience. ![]() ![]() What does Uriah Heep play? Well, you can call it progressive rock or art rock or hard rock (which I prefer), and it’s heavy on the organ and lots of impressive vocal harmonies and some very cool guitar, over which the flexi-voiced David Byron made like an opera star. I suppose it’s considered Uriah Heep’s best LP for a reason, but I really believed it was one of those albums listened to only by unwashed 32-year-old dungeons and dragons fanatics who smoke schwagg nonstop while sprawled out on the ratty bean bag chair in their parents’ basement, where they still live. So imagine my amazement when I listened to Demons and Wizards and actually like it-a whole lot. If so, they didn’t make much of an impression upon me and I couldn’t have listened to the 8-track much, although it wasn’t so bad my brother and I ran it over with his gold Dodge Duster, which was the fate we reserved for albums we considered too completely stinko to live. So I’ve always kept well away from Uriah Heep, for fear that the band might be catching, although listening to their tunes now many of them sound strangely familiar, and earlier this morning I was struck with the phantom memory of buying their greatest hits (on 8-track!) in my early youth at a mall outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, so perhaps I have heard some of them before. Oh, and the Heep’s lead singer David Byron sometimes sang like a girl, which I find off-putting, which is a friendly way of putting it. All that Middle Ages and Middle Earth bullpucky bores me more than reality television, unlike say the decadent and decaying Roman Empire, where you could drink until you puked and never had any trouble getting a good orgy up. Oh, and I know they’re obsessed by-as the title of 1972’s Demons and Wizards amply demonstrates-Fisher Kings and swords and sorcery and gallant knights charging on snorting steeds to the rescue of virginal damsels in dewy merkins in peril of having their maidenheads stolen by evil princes, which is why I never bothered to listen to them in the first place. What else did I know about Uriah Heep? Well, I know (and like) “Easy Livin’,” the band’s only U.S. He was beaten to death outside a Chicago bar in 1972. Take Bobby Ramirez, the drummer for Edgar Winter’s White Trash. One of the few things I know about them-and the only thing about them that interested me until very recently-was that bassist Gary Thain was electrocuted on stage at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas, Texas on Septemand had to be carried off stage, “stiff as a board.” I love macabre stuff like that, and can fill you in on every horrible rock death ever.
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