In her review of the American version of Very ’Eavy… Very ’Umble, the debut effort from Uriah Heep, Melissa Mills of Rolling Stone made the following declaration: “If this group makes it I’ll have to commit suicide.”
So, yeah… tell us how you really feel, Melissa.
I don’t know if she ever followed through with her threat, but based on listening to the eight tracks that vocalist David Byron and company proffered on this first release, one would be hard-pressed to say that this group was going places, so hold off on the floral arrangements for Ms. Mills. Musically, the album is all over the board, and the band’s lack of a solid musical direction is what eventually sinks this album.
The harmonized vocals that Uriah Heep became noted for is present already in this release. The problem, though, is Uriah Heep is a band without a musical map. Were they prog-rock? Were they pseudo-doom rockers in the vein of Black Sabbath? Were they pop rock? Were they jazz rock? The answer—often found in just one song, was “all of the above”—and, had Spinal Tap existed back then, I can imagine this is what they would have sounded like.
It’s not that tracks such as “Gypsy,” “Dreammare” or “Lucy Blues” were bad songs. There were hints of promise in these tracks, but the bombastic approach of throwing several musical styles against the wall and seeing if any of them stuck ends up sinking them before they had a fighting chance. “Real Turned On” is a prime example of this; pick a fuckin’ style, and commit to it.
The American version, simply titled Uriah Heep, differs only in the replacement of “Lucy Blues” with the song “Bird Of Prey.” I can’t even begin to address why they thought this was a good idea, with Byron going for falsetto notes that even King Diamond might have found to be unnecessary. For an album that was already struggling with identity issues, “Bird Of Prey” certainly doesn’t help their case whatsoever, and “Lucy Blues” never should have been replaced.
And yet, underneath the ultimate failures of this album, there lay a glimmer of promise. Mick Box’s guitar work is strangely reminiscent of Gary Green’s from Gentle Giant—which I consider to be a good thing. Ken Hensley’s organ work sometimes feels over the top (as heard on “Gypsy”), but suggests something good lies underneath a bit of the sonic sludge.
Overall, Very ’Eavy… Very ’Umble (or Uriah Heep, or whatever the hell you want to call it, it was your eight bucks) captures Uriah Heep struggling to find just where they fit in a musical landscape that, in 1970, tended to accept all comers. The issue, though, is they didn’t have to try to cram every genre into one album—hell, they sometimes tried to do this in one song—and might have benefited from taking a little more time to slap a few more coats of sonic paint onto these songs. It’s interesting from a historic viewpoint, but that’s about it.
