| May 1999 'Wondrous Stories' The journal of the Classic Rock Society issue 88 Uriah Heep's Mick Box Interview Thanks to André Steyns of Paperlate Classic Rock Radio He's probably a bit heavier here in 1999 but he's no more humble than he was back in 1969 when Uriah Heep formed. Last year WS talked to keyboard player Phil Lanzon about the band and the new album. now it was chance for one of the founder members to give us an update on how Sonic Origami. the bands latest album. is ticking along! MH talks to Mick Box! It was down to David Byron and Mick Box to create a band that was to go on and sell millions of albums and ride it's way through three decades or rock and pop music. Where other bands have fallen by the roadside Uriah Heep have carried on to become one of the most consistent and prolific bands ofthe past thirty years. The list of albums produced by the band is almost endless but "Sonic Origami", released last year, saw the band continue to do their bit, not only for Uriah Heep, but for rock music in general, First of all, that album "Sonic Origami", an album that again proved to be part of the Heep formula. "I think the formula we created early on has stood the test of time", proclaimed Box, "We still use it to today. Basically what it is is just getting good melodic rock songs together with strong lyrics and making it very positive. 'Me energy has to be very positive, there's nothing doomy and gloomy about anything we do. 1 think that has helped us get the lasting power, Then of course we utilize the Hammond organ and the wah-wah guitar and also thc,. fact that five of us are all vocalists creates a lot of strong harmony work together. That itself has become a bit of a trademark and we've utilized that with good melodic rock songs and it seam to have stood the test of time". That was more or less how Phil Lanzon had summed Uriah Heep up last year when we spoke to him. 'Me fact that the band all sing is something unique. "Well when we all started in the 70's we were coming out with bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelit4 Black Sabbath and all, and they all only had one singer. Our trademark very early on became our vocals and we could use them in a very soft dynamic way or a very hard way, but it was always a part of our a sound. that's what stood us apart from everyone else". The words soft and dynamic very rarely sit together and bands like Sabbath were not to go in such a direction. Uriah Heep did and care as many of us know, just as easily take the pace down and produce the ballad as easily as hitting the hard stuff. "Yes, you can show as much strength with a soft acoustic number and great lyrics as you can with all the power in the world and that's always been a part of Uriah Heep. Dynamics has always been an integral part of our music and that's why the first album was called "Very Eavy, Very Umble", because very heavy was taken care of with tracks like Gypsy', for instance, and very humble was taken care of with songs like 'Come Away Melinda which was a very anti-war song done on acoustic. So we have always had that string to our bow". And so on and so forth, you might say, because Uriah Heep have never been a band to be held up purely in a heavy metal vein. You can, for instance, mention Yes quite comfortably in the same breath. "Sure, the heavy metal side is only a percentage of what we do. Generally we're not heavy metal at all. In fact when we first came out all we wanted to do was write melodic rock songs and then the term 'hard rock' came and then the term 'heavy metal' came. Those terms actually developed way after we started writing our music". So how did Mick Box and David Byron meet originally? "Well I was actually in a band called Stalkers and we were just doing local stuff and getting a bit of a reputation and quite a lot of work. The drummer in that band was a guy called Roger Penlington and every time we went to a show often people would just get up and do a little jam or something and David used to be one of those. David was actually Roger's cousin. Anyway we got to a point where we were fed up with our singer and he was about to move on to be a fireman or something (laughing). He didn't want to take it any more seriously while we wanted to go into the professional side of it. David used to come and sing and we held some auditions at Roger's house and David was there. So we got him up and he had a go and we said that's it then (laughing). That was it and we never looked back". Sadly David Byron died in 1985. Did Mick miss David? "Very much so. Very much him and Gary, tremendously, yes. I did a lot of growing up with David and we came through all the hard times. The sleeping in vans and all of that sort of stuff to achieve great successes, so yes I miss them very much. That's why we wrote the lyrics for "Between Two Worlds" on "Sonic Origami" about that. It is about how great it would be in the world we live today and the spiritual world, it would be nice if you could meet just in the middle for a short time and see if everyone's OK". Since then the band have been through many changes before settling down with this current line up, a line up that has been together now for a good few years. "Yes I think the thing that carried us all through those changes was the fact that the musicians that were involved were quality musicians. We never had a dud one in there". Coincidentally I had met up with a former Heep member recently in Croydon when I saw Colosseum. Bassist Mark Clarke, lasted three months with the band. "Mark Clarke came in very quickly and left very quickly. He co-wrote The Wizard with Ken and really that's about all he gave to the band. I met him not so long ago, we were flying out to do some shows in Europe and he was flying out with Colosseum and we met at the airport. It was nice to give him a big hug after all these years. His involvement was very short lived because he saw our touring schedule and felt he couldn't be a part of that. "This line up now is twelve years on and is a very sound line up and we're very happy with where we are. We feel we're moving forward. we feel we're creating and the chemistry's there and that is a word that gets overlooked. We have a fine band now which we're very proud of'. And there's a lot of albums in the Uriah Heep cupboard? "(Laughing) Yeah there's a few isn't there. People often ask me how many and I just don't bother to count. There isn't a favorite one, I couldn't even pick the new one or whatever. I can't be that judgmental and tend to let everyone else make those decisions". As I had mentioned with Lanzon 'Sea Of Light' is one of my personal favorite Uriah Heep albums - just a little diffrerent. "Well it was sort of tailor made that one. It was almost like the 25th anniversary album without putting any emphasis on it. We wanted to encompass all the sort of music that Uriah Heep's been known for and put it on one album and I think we achieved that successfully. When we did "Sonic Origami" we were trying to widen our audience somewhat because we realized the necessity to get some radio play. In that regard We've doubled "Sea Of Light" and so it's been successful, then again there's still a stigma attached to Uriah Heep when it gets to radio. 'Mey'll play the Easy Livin's and the old stuff but won't allow the new stuff to come through". But it is tough work promoting a rock band in the late 90's. "It is tough. but only in England to be honest because in the rest of the world there's a loyalty, and I don't mean that with the fan base but throughout the industry. They still revere the band and we go out there and do some great shows and work many, many months of the year. In England it's a continual grind because England's seen as the shop window to Europe, it's so fast moving musically and the charts change all the time. The only loyalty is to the next new thing and so we suffer in that regard. We're on a bit of a plan at the moment to try and re-focus the band in the UK We came earlier in the year and did a support to Ronnie James Dio at the Forum and recently we just headlined there ourselves and it was successful. We did Wolverhampton and Norwich and then we're looking at trying to put some dates together for November. So we're trying to re-focus the band but it's just trying to fmd promoters that are willing to go with the classic rock act rather than something that's probably more current". Mick Box talks there about an old chestnut that rock music in general suffers from. It is a pity as "Sonic Origami" has a freshness about it that could reawaken interest in classic rock. "You obviously attempt to create a fresh sound that's very much in your mind and the nicest thing we heard when we went on the promo tour through Europe was that it's a typical Uriah Heep album but fresh - using those exact words. That's really great and that's what we try to achieve. We don't want it to be stale,.boring and harking too much on the past, if you like. We play quite a lot of songs from "Sea Of Light" and "Sonic Origami" in our live show and the reason we do that is that although we're very proud of our past and our history, we know that we have to move forward. When you have a record company that's invested in you they don't want to come along to shows and hear you just playing back-catalogue (laughing). The nicest thing about Uriah Heep is that we have so much back-catalogue that we can come along next time and however how many old songs we did before, we can change them and do another bunch again. That keeps it fi.esh for us and the fans". A new record company with enthusiasm can spark a new life within any band. In this case it's Eagle, Records. "Yes Eagle are a new record label but they are steeped in a history of what bands like Uriah Heep are all about. We didn't want to be with a label with an A&R department that has an eighteen year old kid that just lives for the new bands and has no idea what we're about at all. But everybody at Eagle Rock from the Managing Director down all understand what Uriah Heep's about and even when we were recording the album they didn't interfere at all, they just let us get on with it, which is wonderful". Now for those who remember the Pfil Lanzon interview you will remember he told as about how he and Mick record some tracks to....... Walkmari, in this technological age! So did Eagle put anything to the Walkman???? "(Laughing loudly) Of course they didn't, (laughing)". 99% of the material on Sonic Origami is their own but they did record a song, 'Across 'the Miles', written by former Survivor mainstays, Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan. "Yeah that was a look at the American market, but there was a few other songs knocking about and we just heard that one and thought we'd knock it about in the studio and see what we could come up with. It came out pretty strong and so we decided it deserved a place on the album. It actually came about because we were getting involved with some American management and they came over to the studio and a guy called Donny Frizzell said he'd got some songwriting friends who happened to be Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan. We had no idea that it had anything to do with Survivor at all but they were the writers for Survivor. They sent over a tape and just that one song caught everyone's imagination and we gave it a go. It kind of fitted into the format of the album in the long run and so it deserved its place there. It would have been easy for us to put one of our own tracks on but we tried to be objective and look at the overall picture. It looks like it could be our f" American single followed by 'Only The Young"'. And knowing Uriah Heep it's pretty certain that they weren't scratching for another song of their own just for the sake of it. Ale album was produced by Pip William's, who did a great job. "I'd love to work with Pip Williams again. He was just a wonderful man to work with and I wish I'd met him years ago. He's a top class player himself, session guitarist He's the sort of man who can be comfortable with a rock band, a country & western band, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, because he writes scores. He's just a multi-talented man and it was lovely to be a part of him." Within the realms to the CRS, Sonic Origami has been given the big thumbs up but what about around the globe? "We haven't got the full facts and figures yes in fact we haven't had the first royalties statement yet (laughing), to be very honest. Obviously there are territories that the album is only just being released in. The American release comes up in April and so we don't have any fair figures yet but suffice to say that as far as Europe is concerned the record company have already surpassed what they thought they were going to sell to the point where they are going to re-launch it again in Europe. That's wonderful and if we'd have been with any other record company and we'd have surpassed what they thought then generally those record companies just drop it and go for the next product. Eagle Rock have seen the longevity of what we're doing and coupled that with our touring plans - we've got another big run through Europe obviously they see a chance to re-launch it. That just shows that the record company is behind you and back you all of the way". To date the band have done a whole European tour - the Double Trouble tour with Nazareth taking in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and also Sofia in Bulgaria where they did one big festival. More recently the band have done Scandinavia, starting out in Latvia before the recent English dates. "Now we have a break before we start again in the Ukraine and then Russia. In May we'll be back in Germany, Holland, Belgium Luxembourg, Poland and then some more stuff in Stockholm and Helsinki. Then there's the three sold out shows in Berlin. Then we're looking to go out and do a couple more Russian things". Uriah Heep were one of the first bands to break through into places like Russia - again a subject covered quite extensively by Phil Lanzon in our interview last year. "We were one of the first to go there in December '87 and we've been back many times. The difference now is that the KGB is now the Mafia (laughing). The difference now is that when you go to places like Moscow and St Petersburg they are like any European city or city in the world, but get outside of those places and it's back to old Russia again. We did a whole tour for about a month or six weeks right through Siberia. Uriah Heep's always had the policy that if the fans can't come to the band the band will take the music to the people and it was lovely in places like Siberia where the people were lovely and some of them were just crying their eyes out. They never thought they'd ever get the chance to see the band and music's meant so much to them over the years. After it all the only thing I could say to people was just be thankful you were born where you were born. "Now America is opening up for us. We've got Spitfire Records which are now owned by Eagle Rock and they've bought another label called Mayhem out there. So they've got a number of artists on their rosta. 'Thee Megadeth's and Testament's are there and now they're getting the classic rock section in there and it's looking great. So we're looking to get out there and then at the end of September go out to Australia, New Zealand and then come back and do the UK dates and have our break and celebrate the Millennium with everyone else". 'That touring schedule is incredibly full and has to take it's toll on the band and the crew. Does Mick ever get fed up with it? "I think in any job you do get fed up with parts of it but the bottom line is it isn't a bad job, is it (laughing). It is a stock answer but it's one that I really do believe in. We are in an enviable position. We're doing something that started as a hobby and then that becomes your career and then to do that for twenty eight years and see the world as we do it. Lot's of people are in jobs today and they're doing those jobs to pay the bills and aren't particularly happy with the job, but it is a job. So we never lose sight of how lucky we are. The other thing is when most people finish a days work they go home, when we finish people stand up and clap (laughing) and then we retreat into a room full of foods and booze and everything else (laughing). Never the less some of the travelling does wear you down a bit". And in conclusion I asked Mick when we might expect the follow up to "Sonic Origami"? "I think we'll have to look at next year just because of our touring schedule. We had a meeting with our management recently to try and find out where we're going and so we've kind of left our plans loose. If we do get the reaction we're looking for in America - and all the signs are hopeful - then rather than come back and start recording, writing etc. we'll carry on promoting "Sonic Origami" in America. If we start to get a bite there it would be silly not to capitalize on it. So in the interim period we're always writing". And what of using other peoples material again? "Well those things turn by fate really, we never really look out for it. If they just turn up and we feel they deserve a place then that's it really. Who knows, you know we're more than capable of writing it ourselves, but it's never planned". Well more power to Mick and the fellahs in Uriah Heep and in this months issue we have a review of the bands performance at The Forum in London last month. Look out for that and then look out for the band later in the year.............. wherever you are!! You can keep up with Uriah Heep matters by writing to The Uriah Heep Appreciation Society, PO Box 268, Telford, Shropshire, TF2 6XA, UK |