With the opportunity of the release of Uriah Heep’s new album “Wake The Sleeper”, their first studio album in a decade, Solid Rock talked to guitarist and founding member Mick Box, about their new album, their long tours and female pirates…

Solid Rock: Hi Mick! How’s the weather over there in London?

Mick Box: Well, it’s raining which is normal for England.

Solid Rock – It’s sunny in Greece now but we’re getting into autumn.

Mick Box: That’s one of the amazing things about Greece. It’s always sunny over there

Solid Rock – What’s the feedback you’ve had on the new album, both by the press and by fans?

Mick Box: The feedback’s been wonderful, both by the fans and by the press. It’s been so good in fact that I just hope this isn’t all just a bubble. But the fans and the press are lovin’ the album which is great.

Solid Rock: You recently had a change in personnel. Long time member Lee Kerslake had to bow out of the band and Russell Gilbrook took his place on the drum stool. How did this affect the writing and recording sessions for the new album?

Mick Box: Not really. I mean that Russell came into the band before we started recording the album so it was a fresh start for all of us. I mean I thought Lee and I would be in the same band until we died with our boots on, but unfortunately Lee had various health issues. He’s much better now. I ring him up every week to see how he is doing and he’s slowly getting better.

Solid Rock: Is he still playing?

Mick Box: Yeah, he did a Heep convention in Spain recently. But he’s still recovering.

Solid Rock: Anything on the album, apart from Russell of course, that’s making its debut appearance? Any new techniques or sounds you never thought of using before?

Mick Box: Well, the difference this time is that this time we recorded the whole album live. And that’s really up to our producer, Mike Paxman who decided we needed to capture that live atmosphere that the band has. ‘Cause with the last album we’ve been doin’ it piecemeal, you know, recording the drum parts and then the guitar parts and then the bass parts. With this album we just went in and recorded one song each day, we’d rehearsed it up to a point where we were all happy with our parts and in one, two, three takes we had it.

Solid Rock: The album seems to be an all-encompassing review of Uriah Heep’s career. From the first to the last track there seems to be, to my ears at least, a lot of nuances that you can trace back to various albums in your discography. Was this a conscious effort?

Mick Box: Now you mention it I can see what you’re saying but when we were writing and recording the album we didn’t have something like that in mind. So no, it wasn’t really a planned thing, but it does come up. And it’s only reasonable because we’re still the same band with the same sound and the same feelings.

Solid Rock: So it’s not like “Sea Of Light” which was planned as an anniversary album for the 25 years of Uriah Heep?

Solid Rock: The lyrics are as always pretty upbeat and yet rebellious. Is this a overview of the message Uriah Heep want to give the fans?

Mick Box: Well, there’s a bit of a philosopher and a bit of a storyteller in me. I mean "Overload" is about the computer age, just a comment on that and "Tears Of The World" is a reflection on the state of the world and the environment and what we’re doing to it.

Solid Rock: Still it’s an upbeat song?

Mick Box: Well, yes because I’m a person that doesn’t get dark for more that 30 seconds. (laughs) And then you’ve got "What Kind Of God" which is about the American Indians who were living off the land very peacefully and then came the soldiers with their guns, telling them what religion to worship and all that and if you were an Indian you'd be saying "What kind of God do you worship?", so it’s written from the point of view of the Indians. Another one was "Ghost Of The Ocean" which is about female pirates…

Solid Rock: Female pirates?

Mick Box: Yes. You see apart from all the Johnny Depp type of pirates roaming the seas there were also a lot of female pirates. I don’t know whether they looked like Pamela Anderson but they were around.

Solid Rock: Hopefully they did!

Mick Box: Yeah, then you’d definitely want to be caught between two of those! (laughs). And then there’s they opening track, “Wake The Sleeper”. When we first recorded it we planned to put as a closure to the album. But then, once more, Mike Paxman stepped in and said that we had to put that songs as the opening track to the album, because it summed up all that we were about in just three minutes. And it’s also the title track of the album, because we have an expression in England which is “wake the sleeping giant”. And we cut that down to “wake the sleeper” because it sounded better to us.

Solid Rock: There is a much heavier and more guitar oriented sound on this album. Also very auspicious on the album is the lack of a purely acoustic ballad, in the style of “Dream On” and “Question”. Is this a taste of what to expect of Uriah Heep in the future?

Mick Box: Well, with this album we went for a heavier sound. It’s also the fact that all the guitar parts are only 2 tracks. And that’s again due to Mike Paxman, ‘cause usually what producers do is they make you lay down three or four guitar tracks for each song and that usually makes the guitar sound less powerful. On this album we went back to basics, we recorded the whole thing live and mostly analogue and we didn’t use any synths or samples on it, just guitar, bass, drums, Hammond and of course our vocals. And I think this album came out more heavy cause that’s what we were feelin’ like when we recorded it. That’s not to say that we don’t still feel that there isn’t power in an acoustic song with just an acoustic guitar and a piano.

Solid Rock: Like “Lady In Black” or “Dream On”…

Mick Box: Yes, and like “Question”…

Solid Rock:  Definitely…

Mick Box - Well, we’ve got a lot of more albums in us and maybe with the next one we’ll explore those paths.

Solid Rock: You’re currently signed to Universal records, after a number of years in recording limbo. Do you think that it’s now become equally hard, if not harder, for older bands to secure record deals and that all that the industry is interested in is your back catalogue?

Mick Box: That’s true. I mean with us it was Sanctuary Records which owned our back catalogue and decided to do a new release of Uriah Heep. We recorded the album and gave it to them and they scheduled a release date. Then they got taken over by Universal; that is the fragile state of the music industry. With the advent of the internet, lots of companies have disappeared, and others have gotten smaller, some have merged and there have been loads of firings.

Mick Box: Well the thing with the Internet is that when whole Internet explosion thing happened, ten years ago, the record companies took Napster to court and tried to close them down and then they realized they couldn't possibly police it 'cause there's a million of them, so they had to embrace the Internet. And with a band like us, because we have fans in 53 countries, we need both the Internet side and the traditional record company side on our side, so to speak, if that’s not to many sides in one sentence. (laughs) We need that whole structure to get the music to the fans.

Solid Rock:  Uriah Heep have always been known for their long tours. Is their somewhere you haven’t played yet and want to?

Mick Box: Oh, well… I mean I’d love to play Egypt, but I don’t know whether there enough Uriah Heep fans there.

Solid Rock:  You guys must have spent half your life on the road. With all this touring experience do you feel that for the music to stay alive it has to be played live?

Mick Box: Definitely. I mean when you’re a young band you spend 10 years of playing live in order to get into the studio and record. And we’ve been lucky. I mean we’ve played so many countries. And we’ve been the first to play Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and South Korea. I mean we played in East Berlin while the Wall as still up. And when we played Moscow, it was amazing. It was the period of glasnost but still it was an unbelievable experience. I mean in most of these countries were almost part of their folklore. In the band we have always had a saying “If we can’t get the people to the music, we take the music to the people”. But it’s been an amazing ride. It’s the best job in the world. When I started I never imagined that what I did as a hobby would last this long.

Solid Rock:  Is there any message that you would like to send to your Greek fans?

Mick Box: Well, first of all I’d like to thank you personally and solidrock.gr for all your support. Hopefully this’ll make the promoters in Greece think “Hey, Uriah Heep! We haven’t had those guys over for a while!”. But I’d also like to thank all the fans that have bought the album. And I hope we’ll be back to Greece soon. We’re starting rehearsals for the next leg of the tour soon. And we know how powerful nostalgia is so I can say now that even though we’ll be playing a lot of stuff from “Wake The Sleeper” we’ll still play all the classics!