[Heeplist] 1981 cassette recording?

[David Amendolara]

Tapio brings up some interesting points! I never really pondered the fact that Heep must have been auditioning singers after Sloman, and to my ears whoever is singing these tracks, is neither Sloman nor Goalby. And like Tapio, I also don't think it is Trevor singing. His voice may have changed a bit over the years (as most singers' voices do) but not to this degree. 


So either it was an audition tape of sorts, or someone (Greg Dechert was mentioned, I believe?) put a guide vocal to the backing tracks. And god, I still cannot believe how awful the backing vocals were on the first track :-D

As an aside, I do hope the unreleased Sloman album gets some sort of release. Wish they'd do a Kickstarter / crowdfunding of sorts for it, or allow a sort of "internet only" pre-subscribe release via the website. Put out the Sloman and Goalby rarities as an official bootleg or something - whatever! They bothered to re-release the original Conquest and Goalby albums (twice?) so why not go ahead and put it out there?

D.  





________________________________
 From: Tapio Minkkinen <tapio at uriah-heep.fi>
To: heeplist at travellersintime.com 
Sent: Sunday, August 10, 2014 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: [Heeplist] 1981 cassette recording?
 

Very interesting tape. People seem to be pretty narrow minded as the  
discussion for example in Facebook has been mainly a debate of whether  
it's Sloman or Goalby. At least to me it was clear after a couple of  
listens that the person singing on the tape is neither one. The first  
option I then thought was it could be Trevor Bolder as Think It Over  
is credited to Bolder and Sloman and if this was Trevor's song  
originally then it would be quite normal for him to sing lead on the  
demo. However, it does not sound like Trevor either. The backing track  
of Think It Over sounds the same as the original single version  
(axcper this is longer, the single version was edited shorter) so I  
have no doubt this is from the 1980 sessions with Greg Dechert. Who,  
where and when has lead down the lead vocals is then anybody's guess.  
I remember reading from somewhere that Think I Over was used to test  
the vocalist candidates when Goalby was chosen so the most logical  
explanation would be that this is a tape by someone who auditioned at  
the same time in 1981. This would explain also why there are only two  
songs on the tape when it is a know fact that Heep recorded an album's  
worth of material at these sessions. Hopefully this will be clarified  
sometime and the "mystery vocalist" revealed.

-- 
TapioM.
tapio at uriah-heep.fi

www.uriah-heep.fi