In the compilation’s press release, keyboardist Ken Hensley says that, when he first played ‘Lady in Black’ for his bandmates, everyone found it a bit ‘out of character’.
Feelgood and ‘Lady in Black’, one of the band’s biggest hits, is a foot-stomping barroom singalong.
‘Come Away Melinda’ is a saccharine folk-rock track with echoes of Love and Scott Walker ‘Bird of Prey’ betrays a hitherto-hidden interest in the blues, a la Dr. ‘Gypsy’ rocks with the organ-driven, cosmic energy of mid-’70s Hawkwind, with the band’s original singer David Byron (1969-1976) dramatically setting a vocal paradigm for Rob Halford to follow. The compilation’s first four tracks set the scene nicely: each one-‘Gypsy’, ‘Come Away Melinda’, ‘Bird of Prey’, and ‘Lady in Black’, all from Uriah Heep’s early years-confidently inhabits its own musical universe while having very little to do aesthetically with the tracks surrounding it. Ultimately, Your Turn to Remember-unhinged in its variety, yet consistent in its clever melodic sensibility-captures a band lunging after every glimmer of an idea and, against all odds, often hitting their marks. Like Led Zeppelin in particular, Uriah Heep have always been sure-footed on any number of diverse stylistic terrains, from post-Fairport Convention folk to proto-Judas Priest heavy metal. But what Your Turn to Remember lacks in evidence of qualitative equivalence, it makes up for with a sprawlingly heterogeneous mix of lucid rock songs. At this point, they only retain a cult appeal-especially fervent in Eastern Europe and Japan-that receives a boost from the multi-platinum 1972 magnum opus Demons and Wizards, a vital document of the epoch that ranks alongside Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult’s first few albums.Ĭonsidering the strength of Demons and Wizards, are the oft-maligned Uriah Heep due for reconsideration? Does Your Turn to Remember: The Definitive Anthology 1970–1990, a 32-song compilation that kicks off a massive reissue campaign of LPs from Uriah Heep’s ‘definitive’ period, try to posit the band as a group among equals in the aforementioned foursome? If so, it sets itself up for failure: even at their best, Uriah Heep simply have never been as good or important as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, or Led Zeppelin. And while their name is likely familiar to today’s classic rock fanatics, Uriah Heep pale in comparison to the three other bands in terms of popularity, influence, and critical regard today. In their five-decade career, they’ve sold only about half as many records as their closest competitor, Black Sabbath, and ten percent as many as Led Zeppelin. But, besides their kinship in era, genre, and country of origin, Uriah Heep don’t quite measure up. The great track “Gypsy,” was released in 1970 on the …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble album.Long-running London outfit Uriah Heep are sometimes lumped into a foursome with fellow British hard rock pioneers Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin. What better way to open our top 10 Uriah Heep songs list than with a song from their debut album. Our intent is simply to publish an article that showcases some of their best material in order to turn people on to this great band who may have never heard of them before. With such a large catalog, any top 10 list is only going to scratch just a small surface of the band’s material. Uriah Heep has also released twenty live albums with the majority of them being released post 1986. In between those two albums, the band has released twenty three more studio albums for a total of twenty five. in 1970 entitled …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble. The band’s most recent album was released in 2018 called Living The Dream. Uriah Heep’s first album was released in the U.K. Uriah Heep will go down in classic rock history as one of the most prolific bands releasing albums on a consistent basis from 1970 to 2018 and still going strong.
Photo: Ralf Schulze () cc-by-sa, from Wikimedia CommonsOur Top 10 Uriah Heep Songs list takes a look at a band that has successfully balanced the genres of rock, heavy metal and progressive rock to formulate an original sound that the band has stayed true to for close to 50 years.
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