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Baker's Dozen

After The Flood: The 13 Favourite Albums Of Howe Gelb, Aged 12-16
Stewart Smith , June 11th, 2012 08:21

In a neat twist on our 13 favourite albums feature, Giant Sand's Howe Gelb talks Stewart Smith through his formative records from his teenage years in Pennsylvania

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Uriah Heep – Demons and Wizards

Then it might be Uriah Heep, Demons and Wizards. I didn't have an older brother at all, let alone one in college to turn me on to cool records. I stumbled my way through and absorbed certain records I probably had no business in buying, and just lived with them and eventually something about them would settle in. Some of then didn't stick but I remember playing that one quite a bit.

Who was the keyboard player? Ken Hensley, right. Yeah, the way he was putting the songs together I found intriguing, 'Cos y'see at that point I didn't play guitar, and I was trying to figure out what to do with the piano and how to make it make sense in rock & roll. I was intrigued by bands that had a lot of keyboard action. I didn't really care what the music was about.

Then I find this Uriah Heep band and this one guy is playing all these kinds of keyboards, not quite Rick Wakeman, but that kind of thing that was going on with a lot of bands at the time where they had a bunch of different keyboards, and he's in this little corral on stage playing these different keyboards. I thought 'What's going on there, that's interesting, that guy is applying some kind of piano thing to rock & roll', so that's why I stopped at Uriah Heep for a little while.