In 1972 Demons And Wizards launched British prog-rockers Uriah Heep onto the international stage, and as guitarist Mick Box fondly recalls, got the KGB a little worried during the band’s Russian debut.
In 1972 Demons And Wizards launched British prog-rockers Uriah Heep onto the international stage, and as guitarist Mick Box fondly recalls, got the KGB a little worried during the band’s Russian debut.
“I remember hearing our song Gypsy [Very ‘Eavy…Very ‘Umble, 1970] on the radio while I was driving,” lists Box. “And when it came on I nearly had a car accident and killed myself! My second highlight was when the band got our first gold and platinum records. But the biggest ever highlight was when we got to play Russia in the 1980s. One minute you’re hearing all these things about Russia at school and you’ve just never thought you’d go there, let alone go and play music for them some day.”
In fact, Uriah Heep were the first ever Western band to play Gorbachev’s Russia under the ‘glasnost policy’ – and according to Box, the band was greeted as such. Upon entering the stage, the guitarist recalls a sea of 180,000 eager Russian fans. The memory still sends a shiver down his spine, he claims.
“We played in an Olympic-sized stadium, it was just fantastic! We were in complete shock because we never realised we were such a big band on their black market – that’s how they got access to our music. It was electric and it was strange but at the same time it was beautiful… There were a lot of worried people standing around though, I’ll tell you that. Lots of officials and security, lots of people scared about having a 180,000-strong audience all in one place at the same time. All we could hear was loud roars all the way out into the distance. I honestly couldn’t help myself, so I had to run out in front of the people and shake their hands in the front row – and you could see all these police with guns and rifles trying to burst through and control it. We were told that the KGB were there, which was extremely strange.”
It’s little wonder Uriah Heep inspired such an enthusiastic reaction from such an overwhelming amount of fans – while the crowd numbers may have been somewhat smaller on their Australian visit some 25 years ago, the hysteria was just the same.
“We were surprised by Australian fans as much as the Russian fans,” says Box. “We didn’t know how popular we were until we got there. It’s been way too long, though, and I’m glad that we are coming back because I also have family in Sydney. I’m also a fan of Australian music. We’ve covered a Jimmy Barnes song [When The War Is Over] and some of my favourite songwriters are Tim and Neil Finn. Bands today could take a lesson from them.”
To celebrate the band’s upcoming Australian greatest hits tour, the guitarist says Uriah Heep are bringing a special record for their fan base down under. “We’re going to try to run through the 40 years of the band – if we can!” laughs Box. “We’ve got a record called Celebration, which is basically some of our most famous tracks. We’ve also included a couple of new tracks, like Corridors Of Madness and Only Human. The album serves as a way of looking back but also looking forward. A lot of our fan-base is also unbelievably younger than we thought. With each decade that goes by, new fans have come along and at the moment it’s a large cross-section of people that come to the gigs. People who were fans of the band bring their children, then they start going through their parents’ record collection and the cycle continues.”
URIAH HEEP play the Melbourne leg of their Greatest Hits tour at the Palais Theatre on Saturday April 2. Tickets available through Ticketmaster or check palaistheatre.net.au for more information.
