For nearly forty years Uriah Heep has continued to forge ahead making new music and playing their classic tracks live to audiences from America to Russia. Now, after a ten-year hiatus, Heep has returned with a powerful and guitar drenched album titled Wake the Sleeper that should keep them on the touring circuit for the next decade.

The album’s artwork was created by iconic rock artist IOANNIS and captures both the spirit of the music and the spirit of the band. In this interview, Heep band leader and guitarist Mick Box explains the meaning behind the title, discusses the new music and tells how difficult it was to replace longtime drummer Lee Kerslake. We also discuss the low point in the band’s history as well as how they got to be on a major label, Universal, in America in 2008. As always, Mick is well spoken and a joy to interview.

Jeb: Let’s talk about Wake the Sleeper. Before we even talk about the music, let’s talk about art work from IOANNIS.

Mick: It is fantastic, isn’t it? He did us really proud. He came up with a fantastic concept that fits perfectly with the concept of Wake the Sleeper. There is the female Buddha coming out of her meditative state with enlightenment in her head. It could be looked at that we have been asleep for ten years, in terms of the recording process. The enlightenment is the new songs. It is a great cover and we can’t wait to go out on the road. We have a great backdrop of it and tons of great merchandise. He did the best job and I was absolutely thrilled.

Mick: We started off with a couple of ideas. This one stuck immediately. He sent over two or three ideas and everyone just said, "That’s it." There was no fighting or squabbling. Everyone of us, down to the last standing man, loved it. It is world class.

Mick: The artwork will apply to everything really well, including backdrops, drum skins and T-shirts. It is quite iconic. When you see it then you will know it is us.

Mick: I thought Lee and I would be in the same band until we died with our boots on but it wasn’t meant to be. We had done a long, acoustic tour that went right through Scandinavia and Germany and I sat down with Lee and said, "I think we need to assess a few things. If you haven’t got your health, then you haven’t got anything." I told him that he needed time to get a few things in order. To be honest with you, he agreed. It was almost like a big weight was taken off his shoulders. I told him, "We are going to take some time and start writing for the new album and then we are going to go on an 18-month tour. You really need to get a few things in your life in order." It is not just one thing or another; there were other things as well, but my concern was his health. If he were to continue like this then who knows what could have happened. Having made that decision, which was very difficult, we had always said that we were mates first and musicians second. I ring him up every week to see how he is doing. He is in a good head space now; he is brighter and more vibrant than he has been for a long while.

Mick: Like most of these things happen, he came by chance. He teaches drums at Brighton College in the south of England. He also does a lot of drum clinics; he is well-renowned for his clinics. He did one up in the north England, where Trevor [Bolder] lives. Trevor thought he was an amazing drummer but thought no more of it. They exchanged numbers and that was it.

When we started putting drummers together, the one thing we didn’t want was a Lee clone. It would be very difficult to find one because Lee is quite stylized. We wanted someone who would bring his own style to the band. We went through 240 applications and got them down to about a dozen and fixed up a load of rehearsals. In the meantime, Russell lost his phone and just gotten a new mobile. He thought he would ring up Trevor and give him his new number. Trevor said, "We are auditioning drummers." Russell said, "I would love to have a go at that." Russell had a gig at a pub down where he lives and Bernie [Shaw] and myself popped down there and met Russ. He was playing a lot of covers so it was hard to judge what kind of style he would bring to the band. I said, "We will give you three songs that we have given to everyone else. This is the harmony we want you to sing and we want you to bring your own drumming energy to it. The three songs were "Easy Livin’," "Between Two Worlds" and "July Morning."

After a couple of days of listening to drummers who couldn’t sing when they said they could sing, or couldn’t play as well as they said they could play, or who just copied Lee’s licks and brought nothing original to the table, it was pretty depressing. I told everyone that I thought we were in for a year haul. I said, " I don’t think we are going to get what we want quickly." Russell came on the last day, and was the last drummer. He set up his drums and made the drum stool his. He had not only learned the three songs – some of the guys had not even learned all three – he said, "What about ‘Gypsy’?" We played several more songs that he learned and it was of the caliber that we could have gone out and played a gig. At the end of it, the crew just stood up and applauded and they had been there for days being bored shitless. He really brought an energy to it. Our producer, Mike Paxman, was there and he was jumping around and Trevor broke a bass string, which he hasn’t done in years. We knew the music worked and after a couple of rounds out on the road, he has fit in nicely. We are not the sort of band that can work on friction. We work on a family sort of thing and we enjoy what we do and we enjoy life while we are doing it. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Mick: A lot of that comes from the fact that I was also managing the band and being the tour manager. Previous to me taking over that role, we were very unhappy with management because you get ripped off on all sorts of things. With me doing it, my heart and soul were in the right place. When other people were making the decisions, this was not always so. I made a vow halfway down my career that I would only work with people that I really liked — including crew members, agents and everything. I have stuck to that and it has worked really well for us. Everyone likes being in the band and everyone wants to be in the band.

Mick: After ten years, Phil [Lanzon] and I had a stockpile of ideas. We were trolling through them and "Ghost of the Ocean" was one of them. We had two-thirds of the music done and no lyrics at all. We said we were going to write a three-minute song that had to be rock and had to have a guitar theme and that was it. We started going through our other ideas, and in the end, we decided that we knew we had a new drummer with a lot of energy and we could just go in and write fresh. The first five songs were written two weeks before rehearsals. It went really quickly and we went with the momentum and it turned out brilliant.

Mick: That is a Trevor song. He brought a couple of songs with him that were very outside-the-box of what we were thinking. Once we got a hold of them then they became inside-the-box very quickly. It is a feather in his hat that he can do that with his music.

Mick: We were going to put that as the last track on the album. We had written more verses and it was a complete song. Our producer, Mike Paxman, told us, "If you just get to that chorus and leave the rest out then you have still said everything you are trying to say. You should also open the album with it." We said, "No, no, no. We are going to close the album with it." He said, "No, open with it. The one thing that song does is showcase that you still have the same passion you have always had from note one. It has all the trademark sounds, the wah-wah riffs and solo, the Hammond organ and the vocal harmonies." I thought about it and I agreed with him in the end. It really shows that we really do still have the passion for the music.

Mick: The difference between the two is really the producer. Pip Williams went the piecemeal route where you go in and do the drums, then the guitar and then keyboard. Whereas Mike Paxman came in and heard the songs and told us to record everything playing together. We would go in every day, choose a track, and rehearse it a few times and then hit the record button. This is a very funny thing to say about a producer, but Mike uses his ears to produce. He didn’t look at a screen and ProTools, instead he listened. If it was good then he didn’t want to fix it.

Mick: I think we have a lot of strings to our bow. There are a lot of areas that are very Heep. Some of them are full on and some of them are poppy, if you like. I think you have to have those things side-by-side. If you have an entire album of songs like "Wake the Sleeper", then I think you would get bored with it and lose the magic. But if you make an impact with it, and then move on to another area, then it has the impact again. We look at dynamics over the entire album and not just putting songs on an album.

Mick: Occasionally, when we are writing, we say, "Maybe we shouldn’t stay in this area. Maybe we should go somewhere else to create more impact."

Mick: I can never pick them, but basing it on what people have said to me, it would be "Tears of the World" and "Shadow." "Wake the Sleeper" was a one-off run. We were all in the same room and had the same vibe. Mike Paxman was even in the room while we played. Unlike other producers, he didn’t stay in the control room and read magazines. He put his headphones on, came into the room, and it was a loud room. He was just soaking up the vibes. He is a real music fan. I mean he is doing a job and getting paid for it but he brings the spirit that I wish a lot of other people could bring.

Mick: We started this as a hobby and it became our career. You travel around the world meeting wonderful people and you get to experience all these different cultures and you realize that this is the best job in the world. I have been blessed to do it and I have been blessed to continue to do it. People ask me what the greatest success I have had is and I tell them that the greatest success is that we are still doing it. You get your first platinum album and you get to hear your songs on the radio but the success is the fact that you are still doing it. What I find absolutely amazing is that there is a marketplace out there for Uriah Heep in fifty-three countries.

Mick: Thank God they do! I totally agree with you. We are very proud of our fans and they are faithful right down the line. Circumstances sometimes dictate whether an album is good or bad. A lot of people point to Different Worlds. We started that album with a record company and by the time we finished there was not a record company anymore. It went down to one man, one desk and one parking space. The budget was not there and we had to continue under adverse conditions. The power of the band is that we actually came out with something. Nothing will stop us from moving ahead.

Mick: The only time I ever thought that was around the Conquest album. I folded up the band because it wasn’t working. John [Sloman] was not being accepted by the fans, and Ken [Hensley] left to go solo and found out that while he was really big in Uriah Heep, he was not so big outside of Uriah Heep. There was a lot of turmoil and I was questioning whether the spirit was still there. I was getting offers to go do a Mick Box band and do an album.

It was the Heep fans who were sending me letters – in those days, it wasn’t emails, it was sacks full of letters. I had gone to the office to pick the mail up and I certainly didn’t expect to pick up that much mail. I threw it in the car and took it home and sat there with a glass of wine and went through them all. It was amazing to me how many people wrote in and said, "You have been the landscape of my life. Please don’t let Heep go away." I sat there for awhile, probably after one glass too many, and I thought, "If I can get the right caliber of musicians, and the right songs that can stand the test of time then I can keep this going. This will keep the legacy of what Gary [Thain] and David [Byron] did in their time in the band." I thought about how Gary and David were no longer with us and how keeping the band alive would give people a chance to go back in time and discover what a great bassist Gary was and what a great vocalist David was. That was the turning point for me.

After Conquest, I spent two days in my flat in London drinking vast amounts of vodka. I woke up one day with the biggest hangover in the world, but once that subsided, I had come up with a plan to keep the band going. I do have to interject that when I lost my hangover, I phoned up Lee to wish him all the best on his upcoming tour of America with Ozzy Osbourne. Lee said, "I’m not going to America with Ozzy. He has decided to have an all American band." I told Lee, "I am thinking of having another go at Heep. Do you want to come along?" He asked, "Is the management still involved?" I told him, "I am managing it. I have all the gear and I have work." He came over and we had dinner. I asked him, "What’s Bob [Daisley, Lee’s bass player in Ozzy’s band] doing?" Lee told me nothing so I said, "Let’s give him a call." Very quickly I had formulated the whole band again.

Mick: To be quite honest with you, it is very difficult. The music is a breeze for us but the business side of it is a troll through hell; it always has been. We have learned, over the years, from all the things that have happened to us. You get very wise and you don’t let it happen again. We have got a strength between us now. I think you have to be a bit clever about it. When I went out on the road in the seventies, I came back and found my finances were not handled so wonderfully.

Mick: We have the brand name and we have kept this going and if people didn’t like it then they would quit coming. They still like to see this version of Uriah Heep. I, also, actually own the name so no one else can call it Uriah Heep. It is Uriah Heep under all of the different guises that we have had. The bottom line is that we have had songs that stand the test of time, and people love hearing them played live. Nostalgia is a very powerful drug. Every musician that has been in the band has been of the highest caliber.

Mick: I think that is the best answer. We do our best speaking on stage.

Mick: Sanctuary Records in the UK owned our back catalog. They told us that they were a back catalog record company but they were thinking of doing a front line release of Uriah Heep and a few other bands. We recorded the album and gave it to them and they loved it. We couldn’t wait for the fans to hear it. Just when Sanctuary had given us release dates, 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, and there have been loads of firings. While we were waiting for Universal to decide if they were going to release it or not, we had a nail biting year. I think the first sign we knew that we had a strong album was when they decided to go with it.

Mick: We start in October in Germany with Thin Lizzy supporting us. Next, we go and do the Czech Republic, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Finland and that whole run. In December, we are going to India. They are looking at a mid-January tour of America. Whether it comes to fruition is another thing, but they are talking about The House of Blues. If we can do a House of Blues, then maybe we can come back later with a really strong package. The American market is on our agenda. Universal in America are working the release and doing a great job of it.

Mick: Even when we were at our height, doing the ten thousand-seaters in America and Canada, we had a motto that said, "If the people can’t come to the music then we will take the music to the people." We always went that extra mile. We were the first to play in Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary and South Korea. We were the first to play in East Berlin. It is really hard to get into these places. They go through your gear and they take your cameras off of you, and they even take your magazines. They put mirrors under the seats to see if you’re smuggling people. It really took an unbelievable effort to get to these places, but when we played, and saw the reaction of the people, then it made it worth it. The world has changed, and these places are all much easier to get to now, but we really were Rock ‘n’ Roll pioneers at the time. After all these years, we have become part of their folklore and that is why we have been able to build this 53-country fan base.

Mick: They are absolutely more alike. It is quite funny, when you go to places like Moscow now, it could be any European city. Back when we went in 1987, it was Russian Moscow. It is amazing how quickly they caught on. There is even a lot of color there now. I am not sure the money is being used for the infrastructure but there is certainly a lot more smiling.

Mick: We will be touring the whole world in 2009. We also will play all the festivals in Europe and hopefully the festivals in America. I think the band really suites America, and I think the album suits America because it is straight-ahead rock. If there is one country that loves rock music, it is America.

Mick: We are not doing too much at the moment because the Wake the Sleeper tour will take 18-months. We are coming up on the 40^th anniversary of the band so I am sure we will do some special stuff then. I think we have run the gauntlet of having the Musician’s Birthday Parties and having past members come up and play. We have documented that and it is on loads of DVDs. I think it is time to get this band going where it should be going.

Mick: Yes, mate. I remember.

Mick: We are that sort of band. We will put the same effort into the show whether we play in front of fifty people or fifty-thousand people. Before we go, I want to thank you for all of your good work and for helping to raise our profile. I think that gives us every reason to come over to America and play.

Listen to Samples of Wake the Sleeper: www.wake-the-sleeper.com

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