Hard, Heavy and Worth a Mention 1975
Uriah Heep Return to Fantasy 1975 (Warner Bros.)
Hard Rock
A return to fantasy by one of the decade's best bands.
It actually pained me to leave this album off my top 10 list for the year and I also thought that the album deserved more than being just mentioned in the “Albums that missed the cut ….….” section for the year as well. For the simple reason that Uriah Heep through the strength of the albums
Look at Yourself,
Demons and Wizards,
The Magicians Birthday (all with full reviews already) and their first two albums
…Very ‘Eavy and …Very ‘Umble and
Salisbury had essentially made Uriah Heep one of the best and most pivotal bands of the ‘heavy genre’ for the first half of the 1970s, therefore deserving that the band went out on something of a high! Of course the band were not ending and would release a huge amount of albums right up to the present day, but this may well be the last chance that they get to feature in this journal….. but that of course will depend on what I think of the rest of their discography, when I either re-listen to it or listen to it for the first time.
The band had reached the zenith of their creative and commercial peak around the 1972 period, and like a lot of bands were starting to dry up creatively. To address this decline, the band on their sixth studio album
Sweet Freedom decided a change of direction was in order. Uriah Heep now moved away from their core proggy hard rock sound that had constantly been fleshed out with both gothic sounds and mystical lyrics. The new direction of
Sweet Freedom saw the band putting out a more even-keeled rock sound, which was then enhanced with more diverse rock elements along with writing more contemporary lyrics, all possibly in an attempt to impress new label Warner Bros. The overall result of
Sweet Freedom, had been an album that promised much but actually offered the listener a middle of the road experience, despite its obvious penchant to try and impress.
Wonderworld its follow up continued in much the same vein, but suffered from sounding like a tired effort, despite the fact that it had classics in “Suicidal Man” and “ I Won’t Mind” and most importantly it was the final album that featured what was regarded as the classic line-up, as after this bassist Gary Thain was sacked from the band for his heroin addiction, an addiction that would sadly kill him in 1975. With John Wetton now on board (ex-so many bands) but best known for his stint with Roxy Music and for the classic
Red period of King Crimson. The band now decided to return to their
Demons & Wizards era, whilst maintaining the sound of the last two albums. The end result was an album that encapsulated all the aspects of the band’s sound and despite not quite reaching the heights of their aforementioned three classic albums,
Return to Fantasy still ranks as one of the band’s best albums and also one of their most diverse. Just listening to some of its tracks like the title “Return to Fantasy” and “Beautiful Dream” amongst others are evidence of this.
Return to Fantasy should have been a kind of creative rebirth for the band, as the creative hunger seemed to be there again, but in the end it just proved to be a final flurry for the band, as they moved into mediocre territory for the rest of the decade. Just the following year two of the band’s key players Dave Byron and Ken Hensley would be at loggerheads thus continuing the band’s internal problems.
David Byron- Vocals
Mick Box- Guitar
John Wetton- Bass
Ken Hensley- Keyboards/Organ
Lee Kerslake- Drums
Production- Gerry Bron
I've also added two songs from the previous albums Sweet Freedom and Wonderworld because they are great songs.