There are rock stars who act like lifers. Then there’s Mick Box, who is one. The Uriah Heep guitarist sounds more like a grinning bulldozer than a reflective elder statesman as he cheerfully rips through five decades of history, his band’s sprawling new 23-disc box set, and the art of not letting the pop trends win.
“Not many bands have got to this point,” Box tells me, with the tone of someone who can’t quite believe they haven’t been taken out by a meteor yet. “We have, and we’re very proud of it.”
The box set, 50 Years in Rock, includes every damn album, four personal compilations curated by the band, and a reimagined Magician’s Birthday cover by Roger Dean himself—because when you’ve been around this long, you get to call in the big guns again.
But it’s those curated compilations that show what makes the Heep engine run. “Everyone was gonna pick the hits,” Box shrugs. “So I picked the deep cuts. It’s more interesting for the fans.” A more diplomatic musician might’ve called that “insightful curation.” Box sounds more like a guy who saw “Easy Livin’” on one too many lists and just said “sod it.”
Starting in a band called Spice (which they chose to signal they weren’t going to be pigeonholed, well before the other Spices made it a brand), Heep’s sound evolved fast—from the genre stew of Very ’eavy… Very ’umble to the progressive ambitions of Salisbury and the rock juggernaut of Look at Yourself.
“That’s when we found our direction,” Box says. “We decided we wanted to be a straight-up rock band. Then we threw in the fantasy lyrics and the Roger Dean artwork and boom—off to the world stage.”
He’s quick to clarify they didn’t become a Ren Faire house band. “We only took the fantasy lyrics on two or three albums,” he says. “Then we let them go. Other people picked up the mantle.”
Even as trends shifted, Heep never chased cool. “We had to bend a little in the ’80s,” he admits. “That whole era of taking a month to get a drum sound… drove me crazy.” Still, he defends even their slickest records: “It sounds like an ’80s production, but in a good way.”
The band’s sound—wah-wah guitars, five-part harmonies, and Box’s trusty hammering organ—has become a sort of accidental brand. “If you put those elements on any song, it becomes ‘Heepy’ real quick.”
Of course, not everything’s been easy livin’. The poppier Fallen Angel gets side-eyed by Box even now. “It got a bit too polite,” he says. “We lost our way in the rock field but found it in the pop field. Still good songs, but not full-on rock.”
So what keeps him writing 25 albums in? “I write every day,” Box says, like it’s brushing his teeth. “A riff, a title, a lyric. Something. When it’s time for an album, we throw it all in and go.”
Even Living the Dream, their 2018 record, was tracked live in the studio. “We can play the whole album from top to bottom, no problem,” he says, clearly itching to prove it.
And despite COVID shuffling studio time for their next record, they’re still writing and ready to move from lockdown to “rockdown,” as Box puts it—sounding like someone who just high-fived himself for saying it.
But perhaps the most honest moment comes when I bring up fans hearing shades of “Easy Livin’” in the newer “Falling Under Your Spell.” Box nearly falls off his chair. “I can’t see it,” he laughs. “But nostalgia’s a powerful drug.”
So is longevity. And Uriah Heep, against all odds, is still kicking—wah pedals and all.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
