![]() “Yeah, it was tough,” he says with a grin. For Box, who has now been flying the Heep flag for five decades, it must have been torture. As Box states, touring has been the band’s lifeblood over the years, and so the abrupt, covid-inspired cessation of just about everything in 2020 hit him and his colleagues harder than most. We’ve become great friends as well, aside from the working relationship, and that’s the essence of it all, really.”Īharmonious and productive unit since 1986, Box, Shaw and Lanzon have weathered plenty of sea-changes in taste and trend over the years, buoyed by loyal support from all over the world. But the way the fans warmed to Bernie, I felt we were on to something here. “We were out on the road, fans were coming to me and saying: ‘At last you’ve found a Heep singer!’ It never occurred to me, because all the other singers we’ve had were so good, in my eyes at least. When Shaw got married, Box was his best man. Once again, it was almost like it was meant to be.”Īs a bonus, Uriah Heep’s loyal army of fans later confirmed that Box had made the right decision, particularly regarding Bernie Shaw – with whom Box has a strong relationship. “Well, I thought: ‘Oh, he’s done his homework! This is going to work, so let’s move forward with this…’ Little did I know he’d been singing all our songs with a band called Cold Sweat back in Canada, so he knew them already. So we did, and he came along and did three or four songs.” I said let’s get an audition together, and he said he’d love that. “It was their last gig, and we ended up at his apartment in Deptford somewhere, and we had a few brandies too many and I think I woke up under his coffee table. “I went and met them after,” Box recalls. In the case of Canada-born Bernie Shaw, Box saw him singing at the Marquee with (short-lived hard rock ‘supergroup’) Stratus, and thought their voices would blend together well. I said: ‘I’m not trying to poach you, but if you’re not happy over there and you want to move on, let’s have a conversation.’ He said: ‘Give me the info now!’” So I traced him to, would you believe, Tasmania, where he was working with the Sweet,” Box recalls. “Back then I knew Phil was hugely talented, but he was busy too. ![]() ![]() As he notes, some things are written in the stars. As Chaos And Colour demonstrates, the chemistry between Box and his bandmates continues to spark and fizz all these years later. The musicians he chose – singer Bernie Shaw and multi-instrumentalist Phil Lanzon – were plainly the right men for the job. Thirty-seven years ago, Box was looking for a new singer to replace the departing Peter Goalby, and a new keyboard maestro to take the reins from previous incumbent John Sinclair. The key to Heep’s ongoing state of rude health can be traced back to the most significant line-up change in the band’s history. While Mick Box’s crew are arguably the least celebrated of that unofficial Big Four of Big Rock, they steadily proved themselves to be the most dogged and resilient of them all, and have been touring, releasing albums and generally behaving like a good rock’n’roll band should, with very few breaks of note ever since. Nostalgia demands that Uriah Heep will always be most strongly associated with the hard rock explosion of the late 60s and early 70s – when Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath strode the earth, blowing minds and eardrums by the million.
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