Uriah Heep Album: “Sweet Freedom [Bonus Tracks]”

I have been listening to this band since the summer of 1980 when my brother's group used to perform both "The Wizard" and "Stealin'" in their stage sets. It was the same year I discovered UFO, another truly fine British metal band, and the wondrous Moodies, so I would say it was a very useful and productive year for rock discoveries as a teenager.

This was my first Heep album, definitely not my last, and I'm very pleased to say that, after all these years, this album still stands up as solid and consistent a Heep classic lineup opus as any of the others often bantered about verbally. Now, a lot of people dismiss this as the album with "the hit" on it, but it's my second favorite in the Heep catalog, and I still feel the magic each time I play it from that great summer so long ago. okay, I confess, this album is a treasure to me for the most unapologetically sentimental reasons. I hope someone else out there feels the same, regardless of what Ken Hensley and others have said about it.

"Dreamer:" A good, funky blues rock opener that's not a favorite track, but it definitely far from sucks. Check David Byron's great, spirited vocal performance, the best thing about it.

"Stealin':" The hit, and what a hit. Still played in heavy rotation here in the States after all these years, one cannot deny every classic moment of this fun cowboy song. I just think it's very funny that they tried to ban this song because of the line, "I done the rancher's daughter." Please, it seems so polite compared to...well, I can't say that here, so how about nailed? That's borderline rude, at least. Mick Box's guitar solo and Ken Hensley's organ are what really make this one of the greatest Heep songs ever recorded, and without the distinctive vocal stylings of Mr. Byron, it just wouldn't be the same.

"One Day:" It's hard to believe the band was going through all kinds of personal mayhem while recording this album with such uplifting, emotional songs as this in the mix. Considering that fact, maybe lines like "And though I've traveled across the desert of despair, I knew I'd get there one day" need to be read into more.

"Sweet Freedom:" Among the strongest songs on SF, the song is as powerful as it is touching and sweet in its forgiving breakup stance. It is a classic heep ballad with all the hallmarks of those from other albums during that era, and is still a favorite of fans today.

"If I Had the Time:" Beautiful melody and always a personal favorite of mine. Play this a few times when you're in a bad mood, really channel into it, and see if its message doesn't work on you:

"If I had the time to relive my life

I don't think I'd care to change a thing

As long as I find just a little peace of mind

I can dream and laugh and I can sing."

"Seven Stars:" This song is just great, and I love Ken's organ on it. Lee Kerslake's drum fills are really brought to the foreground here more than other tracks, and you imagine he was pretty much winded after the final take. Check out Byron singing the alphabet backward and foreward nearing the song's end!

"Circus:" Always my favorite track, a lowkey acoustic ballad with a latin jazz influence copenned by Box, Kerslake, and Gary Thain who also happens to be one of the best bassists from the 70's rock era. The song sounds just a bit like ELP's "From the Beginning," and describes the weariness and fatigue I often feel at the phoniness of some of the people I know.

"Pilgrim:" What a great wah-wah guitar, grinding organ driven epic about the disasters that befall someone who is all wrapped up in a power trip after starting out with good enough intentions. The pilgrim tells his tale of how he compromised his values of love and freedom for the egotistical headtrip of being a ruler through his wartime victories. "Those of us who don't know war," he states, "We shouldn't try to make it." He tells of how the cheers of the crowds made him swell and he lost the woman he loved over it. The last lines are the most revealing:

"I only knew I had to win and build a world where I was king

But leaders come and leaders go and that's the truth I came to know.

Love or war I couldn't choose, and so both I had to lose."

One can take that on an symbolic personal level as well: Be wary of what you're after, or you will lose the things that you discover all too late really matter. Well done!

As far as the bonus tracks go, I can live without "Sunshine," a throwaway B-side from the "Stealin'" single, and definitely one of the band's most unfocused cuts from that time. Extended versions of both "Seven Stars" and "Pilgrim" are welcom treasures, and the piano driven demo of "If I Had the Time" is interesting if a bit raw and awkward. The live recording of "Sweet Freedom" sounds so close to the studio recording, you really get an idea how good a live band this lineup was, and the live version of "Stealin'" is also very well done and more fun than the studio recording.

I would like to add that this version includes great liner notes, photos, and the lyrics,so you're really getting a great buy here. I would also like to express my regret that I wasn't old enough to appreciate this lineup because I was a little kid, and regret that, due to Gary Thain and David Byron's passing, we will never get to experience a reunion. Heep have gone through several vocalists over the years and, though they were all capable, there was nobody like David Byron. He was one of a kind, and I have never heard anyone who sounds quite like him. Buy Sweet Freedom, even if you don't feel the same passion for it that I do. It's a quality album in any decade.

Sweet Freedom is yet another offering by the band's classic lineup full of magical music. This album is best known for "Stealin'" the band's second all-time best-known song next to "Easy Livin'" from Demons and Wizards. That one is a classic rocker. However, there are other great musical monents on this disc: The raveup guitar of "Dreamer", the gorgeously beautiful arrangements of the title track and "If I Had the Time", the physchadellic spaciness of "Seven Stars", the gentle acoustic guitar of "Circus" and the rock-theatre epic "Pilgrim". A standy in the Uriah Heep catalog and of seveties music.

I have been a Uriah Heep fan (Ken Hensley period) for years, and find their style and abiltities as musicians the best in the business and sadly one that is still underrated,(as one reviewer rightly put it, it is the band that you will not admit listening to).

I believe the departure of Hensley from the band did affect it greatly, for although the Heep are still producing decent rock albums, the songs that he contributed and (in some records like Firefly, he did almost all the writing) have an added edge that put Uriah Heep apart from the many dozens of rock bands that rose and fell during rock's golden age (late60s-late 70s).

What gave Uriah Heep a certain power to support and complement Hensley's compositions was David Byron's voice! His sad early death was in my opinion a blow not only to the band but to the rock industry as a whole.

Now Sweet Freedom is another classic from the golden period of Uriah Heep, similar in tone, atmosphere and style to Return To Fantasy with a mix of epic songs, traditional 70s rock and ballads. But for me personally, what distinguishes this record is one song that is one of the best I ever heard, Circus.

I can never tire listening to this gorgeous, brilliantly written song,just over two minutes long, acoustically drenched with Byron in absoluetly top form.

I would buy Sweet Freedom just for this song alone and it will be worth every single penny!

Ken Hensley's solo career has not been that successful, but maybe the knowledge that he was responsible for writing songs that remain to this day classics of rock (Circus, July Morning, Lady in Black),will surely make him one of the greatest musicians in any genre.

After recording the landmark "Demons and Wizards" and "The Magician's Birthday" albums in the space of a year, mostly during a grueling tour schedule, Heep's definitive lineup (Mick Box, David Byron, Ken Hensley, Lee Kerslake, Gary Thain) withdrew to a chateau in France in 1973 to take a breather while recording the band's sixth studio album, and delivered another winner. Retreating for the moment from the Zeppelinesque mystical allusions of the previous two, Heep came out with an album that sounds like it was as much fun to record as it is to listen to. Humorous touches abound in the lyrics and music; the opening track "Dreamer" begins with an almost bizarrely woozy guitar flourish that becomes more understandable with the entrance of the tongue-in-cheek lyric: "I've got a dollar deal hidden down in my shoe", similarly, "Stealin'", the FM-radio standard from the album, features a sardonic David Byron telling the listener (with a nudge and a wink) "I done the rancher's daughter, and I sure did hurt his pride... (hah!)", while "Seven Stars" features an outtro of Byron repeatedly singing the alphabet forwards and backwards (trust me, it works!).

On the more serious and musically substantial side, the title track is another of primary songwriter Ken Hensley's seemingly limitless supply of gorgeous epic ballads, with one of Byron's best vocal performances; "If I Had The Time" is a dreamy, atmospheric tune, with some excellent and innovative keyboard sounds, and "Circus" is an absolutely stunning acoustic piece with intricate guitar work from composers Mick Box and Gary Thain, and a beautifully subtle vocal from Byron. The album originally concluded with "Pilgrim", an epic, multi-sectional heavy rocker, with an incredible guitar solo from Box, and quite possibly the best vocal David Byron ever recorded; the CD follows "Pilgrim" with the bonus track "Sunshine", which was inexplicably left off the original LP release, most likely for time constraints, as it easily holds its own amidst the rest of the excellent material featured here.

All in all, a classic album, and an absolute must-have for Heepsters.

No matter what the people said about Uriah Heep. In fact, Uriah Heep sold out their albums from 1969 until 1996 circa 120 million copies worldwide. The same case like Zeppelin and Deep Purple, Black Sabbath did.

The songs are excellent, stealing, pilgrim and circus are masterpiece! need I say more??