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Uriah Heep - Demons And Wizards 1972 MERCURY AC4 8-TRACK TAPE
Demons and Wizards is the fourth studio album by British rock band Uriah Heep, released May 19, 1972 by Bronze Records in the UK and Mercury Records in the US. The album was a success and has sold 3 million copies worldwide.
The original vinyl release was a gatefold sleeve, the front of which was designed by Roger Dean. The inner sleeve had pictures of the band and notes by Ken Hensley, while the liner featured printed lyrics.
The songs "The Wizard" and "Easy Livin'" were released as singles in the UK and North America as well as many other markets. "Easy Livin'" entered the US Top 40 reaching No. 39, making it Heep's first and only American hit. "Easy Livin'" was also a mega-hit in the Netherlands and Germany, countries which were becoming strong markets for the band. It reached a disappointing No. 75 in Australia.
New Zealander Gary Thain, at the time a member of Keef Hartley Band, joined Uriah Heep as a permanent member halfway through another American tour. "Gary just had a style about him, it was incredible because every bass player in the world that I've ever known has always loved his style, with those melodic bass lines," Box commented later. Another addition, of drummer Lee Kerslake (a former bandmate of Hensley's in the Gods and Toe Fat), solidified the rhythm section. Thus the "classic" Uriah Heep lineup was formed and, according to biographer K. Blows, "everything just clicked into place".
The result of Heep's newfound chemistry was the Demons and Wizards album, which in June 1972, reached No. 20 in the UK and No. 23 in the US. In Finland, the album hit No. 1 in May and remained on top of the charts for 14 weeks. While the album title and Dean's cover art both suggested medieval fantasy, Hensley's notes declared the album to be "just a collection of our songs that we had a good time recording".
Hensley recalled: "The band was really focused at that time. We all wanted the same thing, were all willing to make the same sacrifices to achieve it and we were all very committed. It was the first album to feature that lineup and there was a magic in that combination of people that created so much energy and enthusiasm".
Two singles were released from the album: "The Wizard" and "Easy Livin'". The latter, a defiant rocker, according to Blows, was "tailor-made for Byron's extrovert showmanship" and peaked at No. 39 in the Billboard Hot 100.
Demons and Wizards was remastered and reissued by Castle Communications in 1996 with three bonus tracks, and again in 2003 in an expanded deluxe edition. In 2017, Sanctuary Records released a two-disc deluxe edition.
Rolling Stone which printed an infamously negative review of the band's debut album, ran a positive assessment of Demons and Wizards. Mike Saunders said: "These guys are good. The first side of Demons and Wizards is simply odds-on the finest high energy workout of the year, tying nose and nose with the Blue Öyster Cult...they may have started out as a thoroughly dispensable neo-Cream & Blooze outfit, but at this point Uriah Heep are shaping up into one hell of a first-rate modern rock band". According to AllMusic, the album "solidified Uriah Heep's reputation as a master of gothic-inflected heavy metal".
The album also served as partial inspiration for Hansi Kürsch and Jon Schaffer's side project Demons and Wizards.
Uriah Heep are an English hard rock band.
The band released several commercially successful albums in the 1970s such as Uriah Heep Live (1973), but their audience declined by the 1980s, to the point where they became essentially a cult band in the United States and United Kingdom. Uriah Heep maintain a significant following in Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the Balkans, Japan and Russia, where they still perform at stadium-sized venues.
Uriah Heep were the first Western band to play in Soviet Russia, under Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uriah_Heep_(band)
AC4
Comes to you fully restored with a 7-day money back guarantee.
The original vinyl release was a gatefold sleeve, the front of which was designed by Roger Dean. The inner sleeve had pictures of the band and notes by Ken Hensley, while the liner featured printed lyrics.
The songs "The Wizard" and "Easy Livin'" were released as singles in the UK and North America as well as many other markets. "Easy Livin'" entered the US Top 40 reaching No. 39, making it Heep's first and only American hit. "Easy Livin'" was also a mega-hit in the Netherlands and Germany, countries which were becoming strong markets for the band. It reached a disappointing No. 75 in Australia.
New Zealander Gary Thain, at the time a member of Keef Hartley Band, joined Uriah Heep as a permanent member halfway through another American tour. "Gary just had a style about him, it was incredible because every bass player in the world that I've ever known has always loved his style, with those melodic bass lines," Box commented later. Another addition, of drummer Lee Kerslake (a former bandmate of Hensley's in the Gods and Toe Fat), solidified the rhythm section. Thus the "classic" Uriah Heep lineup was formed and, according to biographer K. Blows, "everything just clicked into place".
The result of Heep's newfound chemistry was the Demons and Wizards album, which in June 1972, reached No. 20 in the UK and No. 23 in the US. In Finland, the album hit No. 1 in May and remained on top of the charts for 14 weeks. While the album title and Dean's cover art both suggested medieval fantasy, Hensley's notes declared the album to be "just a collection of our songs that we had a good time recording".
Hensley recalled: "The band was really focused at that time. We all wanted the same thing, were all willing to make the same sacrifices to achieve it and we were all very committed. It was the first album to feature that lineup and there was a magic in that combination of people that created so much energy and enthusiasm".
Two singles were released from the album: "The Wizard" and "Easy Livin'". The latter, a defiant rocker, according to Blows, was "tailor-made for Byron's extrovert showmanship" and peaked at No. 39 in the Billboard Hot 100.
Demons and Wizards was remastered and reissued by Castle Communications in 1996 with three bonus tracks, and again in 2003 in an expanded deluxe edition. In 2017, Sanctuary Records released a two-disc deluxe edition.
Rolling Stone which printed an infamously negative review of the band's debut album, ran a positive assessment of Demons and Wizards. Mike Saunders said: "These guys are good. The first side of Demons and Wizards is simply odds-on the finest high energy workout of the year, tying nose and nose with the Blue Öyster Cult...they may have started out as a thoroughly dispensable neo-Cream & Blooze outfit, but at this point Uriah Heep are shaping up into one hell of a first-rate modern rock band". According to AllMusic, the album "solidified Uriah Heep's reputation as a master of gothic-inflected heavy metal".
The album also served as partial inspiration for Hansi Kürsch and Jon Schaffer's side project Demons and Wizards.
Uriah Heep are an English hard rock band.
The band released several commercially successful albums in the 1970s such as Uriah Heep Live (1973), but their audience declined by the 1980s, to the point where they became essentially a cult band in the United States and United Kingdom. Uriah Heep maintain a significant following in Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, the Balkans, Japan and Russia, where they still perform at stadium-sized venues.
Uriah Heep were the first Western band to play in Soviet Russia, under Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. They have sold over 30 million albums worldwide.
Retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uriah_Heep_(band)
AC4
Comes to you fully restored with a 7-day money back guarantee.
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