Published on Dec 11, 2000
In 1977, it wouldn’t have surprised me if people had written off
Uriah Heep as a band caught in a black hole. The British stalwarts
of progressive-based rock had lost several key members, and both
their music and sales were suffering. With the sacking of founding
member/lead vocalist David Byron (and the subsequent departure of
bassist John Wetton), some people might have been ready to pull the
plug on Uriah Heep.
But something happened in 1977, with the release of
Firefly. Uriah Heep, in effect, was reborn thanks to the
addition of vocalist John Lawton and bassist Trevor Bolder. The
music sounded fresher, and the end result showed a group still
struggling with who they were, but suggesting they had gotten back
on track.
Latwon sounds a lot like Byron, which helps the transition but
doesn’t make it sound like the band is trying to replace Byron with
a carbon copy. What this does, in effect, is re-energizes the
music, making these songs sound as if many of them came from Uriah
Heep’s glory period.
For well over half of
Firefly, it’s almost as if Uriah Heep can do no wrong.
Tracks like “The Hanging Tree,” “Who Needs Me” and “Wise Man”
suggest that these tracks could have been as big of a hit as “Easy
Livin'”. Why some of these tracks weren’t given a fighting chance,
I just don’t understand. (The only exception to the praise: I could
have lived without the falsetto vocals on parts of “Been Away Too
Long”, but it’s otherwise a very good song.)
One thing which helps
Firefly is bringing Bolder’s bass up to the forefront; it
almost is as if more muscle has been added to the classic Uriah
Heep sound, and it’s a change which works well for the band.
The difficulty for
Firefly is that the band soon dips back into the overblown
style which nearly sunk the band before. Tracks like “Rollin’ On”
and “Firefly” are treated as if they are magnum opuses by the band;
unfortunately, the songs turn out to be all glitz, little substance
– and that’s a bit disappointing, especially seeing how much
progress the band had made.
However, when you take everything into account,
Firefly is a better album than the statistics say it should
have been. The progress that Uriah Heep made with this disc is
astounding, especially when compared to
Return To Fantasy and
High And Mighty. Whether the band would be able to maintain
this progress remains to be seen… and we’re working our way to
those albums as fast as we can.
Of the four bonus tracks included, “Crime Of Passion” is a
pleasant surprise, and is a track which most definitely should have
been included on
Firefly in the first place. “A Far Better Way” is a decent
enough track, but it doesn’t really feel like it fit the general
mold of the album. The two alternate versions of songs, “Do You
Know” and “Wise Man,” are pleasant enough, but they break no new
ground.
Firefly is the kind of album that Uriah Heep should have
been making all along, and even with its weaknesses, suggests that
great things were to be expected again from one of Britain’s most
unsung bands of the ’70s.