Uriah Heep is an English rock band formed in London in 1969 that became one of the seminal hard rock acts of the early 1970s.
Their progressive/art rock/heavy metal fusion featured a lot of keyboards and strong vocal harmonies including in the early years' the vocals of David Byron.
Of their fifteen albums
, it was Demons & Wizards
that was the most successful. One of their radio hits was "Easy Livin'
."
They were often grouped with Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin as "The Big 4" of hard rock, and although they became more of a 1980s cult band in the United Kingdom and the United States, they still have a significant following and perform at arena-sized venues in the Balkans, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia.
They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide with over 4 million sales in the U.S.A.
As a four-piece band, they went into the Lansdowne Studios in London under the name "Spice." They changed the name to Uriah Heep, a character from Charles Dickens' classic novel David Copperfield and the change occurred along with the new keyboard-based larger sound. According to biographer Kirk Blows, Dickens was in the news then (December 1969) due to it being the hundredth anniversary of his death.
The character of Uriah Heep is not a pleasant one being the antagonist for the second half of the novel and notable for his "cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own 'humbleness" and his name has become synonymous with being a "yes man."
."
They were often grouped with Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin as "The Big 4" of hard rock, and although they became more of a 1980s cult band in the United Kingdom and the United States, they still have a significant following and perform at arena-sized venues in the Balkans, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia. They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide with over 4 million sales in the U.S.A.
 |
| an illustration of Dickens' Uriah Heep |
The character of Uriah Heep is not a pleasant one being the antagonist for the second half of the novel and notable for his "cloying humility, obsequiousness, and insincerity, making frequent references to his own 'humbleness" and his name has become synonymous with being a "yes man."
Perhaps not the best image for a hard rock band, but nevertheless...
Band site: http://www.uriah-heep.com
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