Never been a huge Heep fan but I do like Look At Yourself a lot. RIP Ken Hensley.
Never been a huge Heep fan but I do like Look At Yourself a lot. RIP Ken Hensley.
RIP Ken. I'm a big fan of the first 6 Heep albums.
Tu veux un camembert?
One of my top favourite organists, often comes to my consciousness when I'm doing an organ part.
Check out the organ solo on this one (starts at 2:40) from 1973:
https://youtu.be/kQl8VQbbb9E
Great example of using the terrific beast that a Hammond+Leslie is!
His organ sound was really powerful and also had a "magical" quality. The organ intro of Circle Of Hands is a great example.
Bob, this is lovely.Originally Posted by Bob Drake
The song itself is a pillar for heavy rock music, and the rendering here is a punch in the stomach.
The song "Rainbow Demon" from the same album is another example of what you say. It's the same few chords over and over, but every time he goes from that Eb chord to the Bb chord it just gives me a big thrill.
Rainbow Demon is the best 4/4 in rock music. When the whole band enters it's like a bear waking up out of its cave and going for its first spring walk. This song is heavy, but surprisingly the heaviness effect is created by the organ, not the electric guitar. I would only place Vincent Crane of Atomic Rooster next to Ken in this context.
Yeah the Hammond was the thing which first drew me to them. I think the first song I heard by them was 'Gypsy', which is a good place to start. The first song on their debut album, it has the big Hammond riff, the harmonies and the gothic lyricism which would define them from that point.
The others were a band previously- Hensley was brought in some way into the sessions for the first album. So it was always more of a 'professional' relationship. But it was one which worked.
There was a time in my mid teens when Heep were right up there for me and my school friends. We had come out of the glam years (Bowie, Bolan, Mott, Queen, Slade, Sweet), and we loved the obvious classic bands (Yes, Genesis, Floyd, Purple, Zep). It took us a while to explore the margins of prog, there was just so much happening in the "mainstream" at the time, and then in no time at all we had punk and new wave, and everything changed again. It was a startling decade for musical change and development.
There were a few bands that I viewed as my own personal discoveries, Hawkwind, Gong, Todd & Utopia, and Uriah Heep. They were popular enough with my crowd and "Live" was a pretty constant Summer Holiday listen for us. I span it yesterday in remembrance of Ken and it really connected me to the memories of those carefree days, and it's still a great recording of a special band in full flight.
^The double live album is a classic. And it captured them at a peak of sorts, with the most popular line-up on top form.
I get the impression they were bigger in the US than here in their homeland. Their highest charting album in the UK was- surprisingly- 1975's Return To Fantasy (the first with John Wetton). That was where they started to fade a little in the US. Return To Fantasy has its moments, but isn't one of their better albums IMHO.
Last edited by JJ88; 11-09-2020 at 05:13 PM.
Not true according to what I see in Wiki. The albums were charting a bit better in UK, although it's very close.
I am pretty sure they were really huge in Germany.
^A 20-something chart placing in the US presumably adds up to more sales than a 20-something in the UK.
yeah, but to how many electoral seats?
I still find the album Demons and Wizards to be a masterpiece. I rode my bike as a pre-teen to buy it and had to ride home with no hands to carry it while I came home. It's really almost a perfect album. RIP.
Jon Lord had that too. Listen to Space Truckin'. That's Lord on the intro, Ritchie doesn't even start playing until the vocal comes in.
Excellent album. "I've got chewing gum stuck to my boot. I keep sticking to the stage".
My teenage idol.
Very sad day...
Uriah Heep looms large for me. A massive favorite from my teenage years that remains so into my middle age. I saw them open for Kiss in early '77 and then again in '80 or '81 when they were doing club and theatre shows. Unfortunately I suffered an anxiety attack that ruined most of the night for me. I was a weird kid in the 80s. No matter, I remain a massive Heep fan. The album that sealed the deal for me was Uriah Heep / Live. Other favorites include High And Mighty, Firefly, Magician's Birthday and Demons And Wizards. I also really dig David Byron and Ken Hensley's solo albums.
They have some really nice, belatedly-released outtakes from the early 70s.
The latter unfortunately has that 80s-style reverb, I'm not sure it's ever had another mix.
Probably something where they only mixed in the 80's (or 90's) for a boxset or some other "best of the leftovers" compilation.
One of the outtakes I liked best was Crystal Ball, which apparently was something Gary Thain had written and put forth circa The Magician's Birthday. It's a pretty good song, but apparently the only recording they did of it was a rough demo, which was used as a bonus track on the mid 90's reissue of The Magician's Birthday that I got back circa 1999:
Has anyone ever heard the 11 minute version of Why, from the Look At Yourself sessions? I guess it was released on some boxset or something, and I gather has appeared on a subsequent reissue of the album (it's not on the one I have), but I've always been curious to hear that.
^^ I think "Why" is on the Demons and Wizards Deluxe Edition as a bonus track clocking in at around 10min or so. I didn't care for it and it didn't have the same sonics as the rest of the album.
Descanse en paz Maestro !
15 years ago ... what a special night, a great gig!.
Pura Vida!.
There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind. ∞
Duke Ellington.
There's an extended version on the Look At Yourself remaster from the 2000s as well as D&W. Not sure which is which! The LAY one again suffers from a very 80s-sounding drum mix. Is it a drum trigger effect, or what? I hear that same crappy snare sound on those Free remixes and John Lennon's Live At NYC album. I think the first appearance of these Heep outtakes was a 90s collection called The Lansdowne Tapes.
ISTR 'Why' features Mark Clarke on bass, a friend/collaborator of Hensley's. You also hear him singing the bridge on 'The Wizard'.
The version I copied on my CDr compilation is 7:40 long, but I thought it was the best thing on that remastered album (AFAIWC), precisely because it sounded different from D&W. TBH, I never really totally fell in for the their two Dean-covered albums. I like them well enough, but I much prefer their two previous albums.
I never knew if was from the LAY sessions, though - which might explain thesonic difference from D&W.
Last edited by Trane; 11-08-2020 at 05:24 AM.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Well, like I said, the CD's I have are from the mid 90's, but the version of D&W I have has a different version of Why, which was something like 6 minutes long. That then got used as a B-side, but faded out early. Whoever put that particular CD together apparently felt obliged to give us both the B-side version and the full length track.
The 10 minute or whatever it was version of Why was recorded, I believe, during the Look At Yourself sessions, but it doesn't appear on the LAY CD that I have. I think there's some comment in the D&W liner notes to the effect that it appears on a boxset or some other compilation (probably The Lansdown Tapes, since that title sounds familiar). Checking Wikipedia, there's a LAY reissue from 2003 that has an 11 version of Why, and the 2017 double CD edition has a fourteen minute version!
He's on the version of Why that was recorded during the D&W sessions, the one that got used as a B-side, and The Wizard. I never knew that was Clarke singing on The Wizard, though I knew he had played bass on it. I gather that when Paul Newton first quit the band, Clarke was the initial replacement. He stayed long enough to co-write The Wizard and play on that and the second version of Why, then quit, and then Gary Thain came in.ISTR 'Why' features Mark Clarke on bass, a friend/collaborator of Hensley's. You also hear him singing the bridge on 'The Wizard'
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks