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Mid-December 1987: Uriah Heep flew into the sub-zero temperature of snow-covered Moscow and prepared to become the first Western rock band to play in this vast country, simultaneously marking a unique episode in the band's 18 year history and opening a whole new chapter in the History Of Rock.
The tremendous significance, particularly in the Soviet Union, of this event is reflected in Uriah Heep's relentless schedule of press conferences, television appearances (to audiences of 200 million!), radio and press interviews - blanket coverage from the Soviet media, as well as daily international phone interviews.
For ten consecutive nights, Uriah Heep played sell-out shows at Moscow's Olimpiskij Stadium, thrilling and delighting delirious audiences of Muscovites lucky enough to have obtained their six-ruble tickets. For the massive audiences, totalling 180,000, Uriah Heep took to the stage as heroes; they left as messiahs.
The band have many shared memories - being mobbed wherever they went by frenzied crowds in scenes reminiscent of Beatlemania; hands bruised and sore from being squeezed and shaken hundreds of times each day; nightly car rides for the several hundred yards from dressing rooms to stage. The list is endless, but mostly it comprises images of the unforgettable fans.
The footprints that Uriah Heep made in Moscow's snow-covered streets may have by now melted away, but far deeper impressions that they made on the country and its people, in bringing Western rock music to the Soviet Union, are much more permanent.
In terms of live Western rock music being taken to its many Soviet fans, this album records and represents the laying of the foundation stone on which others can now build.
Paul Henderson
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Content Copyright © 1998 Jay Pearson
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