Skachkov and Zemlyane had the special distinction of performing as the opening act when Uriah Heep made its first trip to Russia, in 1987. All the same, these songs were very popular as dance music at gatherings like that." "It was funny to watch people struggle as they tried to dance to this music, with its jagged guitar riffs. "There were these clubs where it wasn't mandatory to ask for program approval," Skachkov says. Petersburg - something that was possible only when Komsomol authorities neglected to check the playlist.
Sergei Skachkov, frontman of the veteran rock group Zemlyane (Earthlings), said his band was playing "July Morning" and other Uriah Heep covers during mid-1970s performances in Moscow and St. Local Russian bands quickly began mimicking Uriah Heep's style. "It was that kind of cheesy harmony which is very close to the heart of all Russian and Slavic listeners." Like that song - it was called 'July Morning,' right? They had this sentimental, dramatic sound, emphasized by the vocals," he says. Sunrise at Kamen Bryag on Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast on July 1, 2007"As strange as it sounds, Uriah Heep played a very melodic kind of hard rock. It was a kind of music, Troitsky says, that resonated well with the natural Slavic inclination toward sentimentality. "It all sounded very glamorous at that time." "They had this impressive, flashy sound, all those virtuoso guitar solos, all those keyboards and synthesizers, all those vocal harmonies, all of that," Troitsky says. Even more surprisingly, it won them fame behind the Iron Curtain, a market that until then had been considered largely closed to Western musicians.Īrtemy Troitsky, a prominent Russian rock critic, compares Uriah Heep to Deep Purple, another English band whose most famous anthem, "Smoke on the Water," enjoys cultlike popularity in the countries of the Soviet bloc.īoth bands, he says, sounded new and exciting in the 1970s and '80s, when people in Russia and elsewhere had limited exposure to Western music. and Europe, but "Look At Yourself" put them on the map in the United States. The band was already well-known in the U.K. The release of "July Morning" and the 1971 album "Look At Yourself" marked a creative high point for Uriah Heep.
But in the end, it was the first try that made it onto the album. You know, 'Looking for love.sound of the first bird singing,' and all that stuff."Īfter that, Hensley says, it took just one day in the studio for him and his bandmates to record the song. So the rest of the song is my imagination. "And I was playing the guitar and writing this thing, but I didn't want to say, 'There I was on a July morning, sitting on a bus.' That's not very romantic.
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