Uriah Heep are an English rock band formed in London in 1969. Twelve of the band’s albums have made it to the UK Albums Chart (Return to Fantasy reached No. 7 in 1975), while of the fifteen Billboard 200 Uriah Heep albums Demons and Wizards was the most successful (#23, 1972). In the late 1970s the band had massive success in Germany, where the “Lady in Black” single was a big hit. Along with Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, Uriah Heep had become one of the top rock bands in the early 1970s. The band maintains a significant following and performs at arena-sized venues in the Balkans, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, and Scandinavia. They have sold over 40 million albums worldwide with over 4 million sales in the U.S. (More from Wikipedia)
Scorpions for example were fairly prominent in the early days of MTV and had several hit songs in that period. After Uriah Heep at the end of the previous year, they were only the second Western rock band to perform in the Soviet Union (in 1988).
(April 2013)
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Drummer Michael Tegza was the only original bandmember left when he reinvented the band H. P. Lovecraft under the name Lovecraft and released an album called Valley of the Moon in 1970. Joe Viglione, writing for Allmusic says of this album: “For this 1970 Reprise release, they are dubbed Lovecraft and have abandoned the psychedelic Jefferson Airplane sound for a progressive Crosby, Stills & Nash-meets-Uriah Heep flavor.”
(June 2014)
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Before releasing his monster hit album in 1971 called Bat out of Hell, Meat Loaf was in a duo called Stoney & Meatloaf that was signed by Motown the year before. Others include Crystal Mansion (a white psychedelic/R&B band that is a future UARB), Toe Fat (a British band that included two future members of Uriah Heep), Love Sculpture (a Welsh blues-rock band that was led by Dave Edmunds), and a Dutch band called the Cats.
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With the success of the album Red Wave (1986), Russian rock bands were able to tour in other countries, and Western rock bands began playing concerts in Russia as well. As I have noted in an earlier post, Uriah Heep was the first, in 1987, followed by the German band Scorpions in 1988.
(April 2015/1)
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