Kyiv: On Tuesday, October 2, a press conference was held by the former leader of the British super-group Uriah Heep, the author of Ken Hensley’s most famous hits. At the end of this tour, a 77-year-old musician plans to move away from regular concert activities.
Ironically, according to the laws of show business, the person of any famous team, its frontman, becomes a singer, not the one who writes music and the words of songs.
This also happened in the 1969 British group Uriah Heep (Uriah Hyp), whose name was borrowed from the Dickens character. In fact, all the main things of the early and middle period of history were written by the multi-instrumentalist (keyboardist and guitarist) Ken Hensley, and in the rays of spotlights and glory basically swimming vocalists-David Byron, and later also John Lawton.
Ken Hanceley has won many teams for his long musical career, but he has gained worldwide popularity in the “Hipahs”.
Here it should be recalled that in the late 60’s, after the completion of the general career of the Liverpool Beatles Quartet, there was a real boom in rock music in Britain, and, remaining true to the rhythms of rock’n’roll and blues, new teams expanded genre diversity, and they use the technical sound more boldly, which gave the power tools of sound, borrowed a lot from the classics.
It was then that every self-respecting team intended to release for music fans not just a set of songs, namely a conceptual album, where all the compositions are subject to the development of a common theme.
Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Yes, Electric Light Orchestra, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Genesis, King Crimson, Jehtro Tull, Procol Harum, Moody Blues, Queen and some others have raised performances of virtuosity and creative fantasy at such a high level that allowed rock music (and later came out of its metal depths) to distract the genre from the mere popular youth dance music that dominated the pubs, the concert clubs and the music radio in the 50s and 60s.
Against the background of the listed grands, Uriah Heep was not lost, and hits by Ken Hensley such as Rain “,” Sweet Freedom “,” Lady In Black “,” Free Me “,” July Morning “have forever entered the golden anthology of rock.
Although, the musician was born on the Independence Day on August 24, he was in Ukraine for the last time before EuroMaydan.
Yesterday he performed in Chernigov, today he gives a concert in the capital of the KPI, on Wednesday – he will be in Poltava, October 5 – in Kharkov, on the 6th – in the Dnieper, on the 9th in Nikolaev, and he will complete the Ukrainian route with a concert in Odessa, October 10.
By the way, on December 6, in support of the new album, Uriah Heep will perform in the capital’s palace “Ukraine”, but among the musicians of the first composition there will be only guitarist Nick Boxing.
Actually, through this group, almost three dozen musicians passed, and here it can compete with it except that the Soviet VIA “Funny guys” under the direction of the deceased now, Pavlo Slobodkin.
But the most prominent musicians, according to critics, were the Ken Hensley in Uriah Heep, and also John Watton, who had left the world a few years ago. Ken and John have already accomplished many successful joint projects in the post-Hippic period.
And to a question from our agency: is there a memorial concert in memory of John going to be made in England? – Ken answered, it depends on his relatives and producers.
“The time is now, alas, not sentimental, pragmatic. Who will take this?
“Besides,” Ken added, “John had an addiction to alcohol, as our first singer David Byron used to do, who also died prematurely because of alcohol.
And while communicating with Kiev journalists, Ken Hensley admitted that after departing from regular touring activities, he will participate only in some festivals and anniversary concerts of teams that he previously played in, but he will stop touring.
He also admitted that he would be out for memoirs, in which he promised to tell a little bit of British rock, with the total dependence of his heroes on drunkenness, drugs. And about how he, the son of a military sailor, born in the year of the end of the Second World War, came to the faith.
By the way, Ken Hensley, very humorously processed the romance “You at dawn you wake up” by composer Alexei Rybnikov from the rock opera Junon and Avoise, but instead of the verses of Voznesensky, he offered his lyric poetry his words, with love not so much to the Woman as to God …
By coincidence, today there was an autograph session of outstanding boxers of the present day, but Hensley (like that lyrical hero from the song of Vysotsky about the sentimental boxer, “Beat the person on the face I do not like from my childhood”) to the box is indifferent, but football likes and In the last championship he was sorry for the Englishman who lost in the semi-finals to the Croats.
Alexander Voronin, FNI
