He's The wizard. He's so exquisite keyboardist, guitarist and singer! Uriah Heep is one of my favourite bands, and while he was in the band, he was the writer of lots of songs. Slow ballads, hard rock songs, no matter, his lyrics were always full of poetry. I first heard a Uriah Heep album when I was 17. It was Look at yourself. It was a great impression to me. Till today, it still is my Heep favourite album. I loved all the things there: David Byron's superb voice, Paul Newton's great bass lines, Iain Clark's furious and fast drum playing, Mick Box's killer guitar riffs ... and those fantastic keyboards played by Ken. Songs like "July morning", "Look at yourself", "I wanna be free", etc., are classics to me.
Next Heep album I bought was Demons and wizards, another superb album. There were some changes in the lineup. To my sadness, Iain Clark wasn't there, although his replacement, Lee Kerslake also was a very good drummer, and the bass role was filled with a fantastic player, the late Gary Thain. Hey, this was fantastic, how he could play bass like that? Some superb songs again, like "Rainbow demon", the fantastic "The wizard" (co-written by Mark Clarke), "Circle of hands" and a very beautiful instrumental part in "Paradise/The spell". Love it!
My next album to buy was Sweet freedom. With more great songs, such as "Dreamer".
Later, when I started buying CDs, I bought three more Heep albums with Ken, Live 1973 (a fantastic live album), High and mighty and Fallen angel. But the great thing came when all classical Heep albums were remastered (thanks to Rob Corich for his great work there!), always with bonus tracks. I started buying them all, and I've enjoyed lots of hours of great fun with them. Particularly, I prefer the older the better, but that's not a strict rule.
But Ken's superb work is not restricted only to Heep albums. He has four fantastic solo albums, where you can find great lovely songs. My favourite is the first one, Proud words on a dusty shelf, and From time to time, but I'd recommend all of them to anyone.
In August 1980, he left Uriah Heep, to work in his third solo album, Free spirit. Then, he assembled a new band, Shotgun, including Denny Ball.
Ken is involved in a new project, called Visible Faith, which I hope it will release some album soon. Somewhere in the summer, a Best Of Ken Hensley album with three new songs will be released in the US.
Ken, we the Heepsters, are waiting for your new material!
Solo albums that I have:
Albums where he plays:
Collective albums that I have where Ken plays:
Uriah Heep videos (with Ken) that I have:
Links:
Pages in my site somewhat related
Thanks section
Thanks to: Ken Hensley, for his music and real kindness; Boris Shnitzer, my friend, for all the music and support you've given to me; Rodrigo Werneck for his hard work on spreading Ken's work to the Internet community; to my friends: Alex Gitlin & Graham Hulme, without you, I should have never started my website. And to my Heepsters friends: Vladimir Milovidov, Avi Rosenfeld, Darrell Sensing, Moshe Lavi, Dave White, Stefan Pawlata, Hani So, Mac Steagall, Dale Fredericks, and many, too many others to mention them all. Thanks for sharing your Heep feelings with me, and thanks for encouragement.
If you can contribute (with additions, corrections, opinions, etc.), please, send me an e-mail message at mterol@myrealbox.com
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Page created by Miguel Terol on: 23/April/1998. Last modified on: 09/February/2000.