“If we were to rent the Royal Albert Hall, we could fill it up with all the musicians who’ve been in this band over the years,” chuckles the ever-cheery Mick Box. “It’s amazing – we celebrate our thirtieth anniversary this year, but what’s given us our longevity is that they’ve all been musicians of the highest calibre.”

Uriah Heep’s current line-up has been together for over 13 years, making them the group’s most durable in their long history, but our incredible tale begins at the end of the 1960s when guitarist Box was a member of The Stalkers.

That band’s vocalist quit suddenly and drummer Roger Penlington suggested his cousin might fill the gap. Enter one David Garrick, stockbroker by day and hell-raiser after dark.
“The Stalkers would do rugby clubs, 21st birthday parties – anything to get experience,” remembers Box, who was then working for an export firm in the City.
“David had got up and sung a few rock ‘n’ roll numbers with us while he was tanked up, so we asked him to audition. He didn’t need much persuading, he always had more front than Woolworths!”

“When I overheard Gerry Bron saying, ‘I am Uriah Heep’ that really pissed me off”
Lee Kerslake

After completing the last of the HP payments on his guitar Box threw in his day job and turned professional. Garrick joined him, changed his surnamed to Byron and the pair formed Spice. Resisting the covers route, the new four-piece made quick progress under the management of bassist Paul Newton’s father, but struggled to secure a record deal. Finally, in 1969, they lucked out when Newton Snr wrote to producer/manager Gerry Bron and persuaded him to attend a Spice gig at the Blues Loft in High Wycombe.
“I often wonder would have happened if I’d ignored that letter,” muses Bron now. “I went along and decided to sign them and we spent nine months recording, but something wasn’t quite right.” Bron insisted that the band needed a full-time keyboard player, and the band claimed to know somebody who fitted the bill, but were hesitant to bring him in because they felt the producer wouldn’t like him.
“When I finally met Ken Hensley I thought he was great, but they still wouldn’t explain the problem,” says Bron now, scratching his head.
“Ken was an unusual bloke,” reflects drummer Lee Kerslake, not yet a Heep member but an ex-bandmate from a previous Hensley act, The Gods. “Tell Ken to turn left and he’d always turn right. He was clever, but devious. For instance, he convinced Gerry to buy Hendrix’s ‘Flying V’ because he wanted to play guitar on a couple of numbers, but a couple of weeks later at the Marquee he was playing a Watkins Rapier. He’d sold the other one and put a couple of grand in his pocket – and we were still paying it off!”

It was Bron who suggested calling themselves after Uriah Heep, the character from Dickens’ David Copperfield novel), and it was certainly a better option than others that were on the table, including Corrugated Dandruff and Bollards. Over the years, of course, the name would be misspelled and corrupted many times, including by a taxi driver in America’s deep south who believed the group he was picking up were called Dry Heaves.

The new line-up gelled instantly. Combining the influence of Vanilla Fudge’s aggressive keyboard work and the sensational harmonies of Three Dog Night, the first track Heep completed was ‘Gypsy’. Based around Box’s stunningly powerful riff, Hensley’s colossal, colourful Hammond organ, Byron’s theatrical vocals and some stunning multi-tracked harmony vocals, it quickly crystallised their sound. Although Heep didn’t exactly conquer the world with 1970’s debut album, ‘Very ’Eavy, Very ’Umble’, they famously prompted one US reviewer to remark: “If this band makes it I’ll commit suicide. They sound like a third-rate Jethro Tull.” Such comments were made despite Heep’s lack of flute players, and ability to stand on one leg!1971’s ‘Salisbury’ album was a big improvement.

Having contributed odds and sods to the debut, Hensley was making up for lost time and wrote half of the follow-up, also co-writing the rest! The 22-minute orchestral title track won them few friends with the British media, although spending 13 weeks on top of the German charts secured Heep’s immediate future.

“On the day I found out that Gary Thain had died I went out and did cocaine.
I thank God for destroying that addiction”
Ken Hensley

“We had bodyguards – the lot,” relates Box. “But whereas the rest of us were in it for the ride, it started getting to David a bit. And the cracks began to show. Management were only listening to one person [Hensley] and the frontman felt upset by that. There was some game-playing going on. Ken was writing some great songs and Dave was singing ’em, but Dave was getting all the attention.”

“We hadn’t been able to get into the venue, so David had kicked through a glass door and given it the whole ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ routine,” sighs Box. “I think even he’d resigned himself to it by then.”

Still an alcoholic, David Byron died of a heart attack in February 1985, after a pair of solo albums and his new band Rough Diamond had failed to rekindle his popularity. Paul Newton among others believes that the singer’s demise was speeded up by the fact that he was no longer a rock star.
“He carried on in the belief that he was still a big star, but Paul’s probably right,” Box concurs sadly. “It was never the same for David. The lesson that he and perhaps Ken would have learned is that you can be very big within the context of a name like Uriah Heep, but outside that you don’t mean quite so much.”

It’s a sentiment that Mick Box, who has clung onto his prize asset with formidable tenacity, understands only too well. And it would serve him well in years to come.

After Byron’s death, Uriah Heep appointed ex-Lucifer’s Friend singer John Lawton. Bassist John Wetton, too, was succeeded by former Spiders From Mars man Trevor Bolder – a faithful servant to this day apart from the brief spell with Wishbone Ash. The appointment of Lawton, who was not exactly pin-up material, came as a shock considering David Coverdale had expressed an interest and, according to Box, performed “a good audition – at which he drank a bottle of Remy… himself! But the offer to finance Whitesnake came in and he was off.”

“Ken Hensley become a born-again Christian… what bollocks. He did evil things, and I’ll never forgive him”
Lee Kerslake

The legal wranglings between Kerslake, bassist Bob Daisley and the Osbourne camp over disputed credits on the ‘Blizzard Of Ozz’ and ‘Dairy Of A Madman’ albums continue to this day. “Ozzy’s a betrayer,” Kerslake insists darkly. “Again, I could never forgive him, he’s got no backbone.” Nevertheless, fate had intervened and a new line-up of Box, Kerslake, Daisley, keyboard player John Sinclair and former Trapeze singer Pete Goalby pulled the phoenix from the flames with a series of 80s releases like ‘Abominog’, ‘Head First’ and ‘Equator’. The line-ups weren’t always rock solid, but the group’s commitment always was.

In 1987, the trio of Box, Kerslake and Bolder were joined by ex-Grand Prix keyboard player Phil Lanzon, who suggested the band try out Canadian singer Bernie Shaw as a replacement for the “desperately bad” Stef Fontaine. The new-look Heep played to 180,000 fans over ten nights at Moscow’s Olympic Stadium, and have never looked back since.

“If we weren’t called Uriah Heep we’d be Sketchleys, because we’ve been taken to the cleaners so often”
Mick Box

Granted, there have been moments of humiliation, 1991’s ‘Different World’ was a definite low-point, and supporting Yngwie Malmsteen at Hammersmith Odeon didn’t do the legend too many favours, but label-hopping and bad management have dogged Heep’s career for so long that Box has now been forced to handle the group’s affairs himself.
“With ‘Different World’ we signed to a record label with an office, but by the time we finished it there was one car left in the car park. I ended up mixing it myself in a shed in Hull at six o’clock in the morning, seeing the milkman and wondering what was going on here. Another record company had shat on us. If we weren’t called Uriah Heep we’d be Sketchleys, because we’ve been taken to the cleaners so often.”

Hensley has stated that Byron’s death in 1985 was partly responsible for him quitting his next band Blackfoot and retiring from the road. He’s also gone on record as saying that Heep have turned into a glorified covers band. Meanwhile, the fact remains that if fellow pioneers like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin have gone on to become legends, but Uriah Heep have been left with the shitty end of the stick. Why?
Replies Box: “We came out just after all of those bands – it may only have been a matter of months, but the press just went, ‘Oh no, not another one!’ It’s just something we’ll have to live with.”
“At the end of the day, the Byron days were a golden era for this band, but I honestly feel that this line-up has the same chemistry and vibrancy,” smiles Box in conclusion. “Only with none of the problems.”