Stealin' Blind Eye Easy Livin' Simon The Bullet Freak Uriah Heep

Stealin' Album: Sweet Freedom (1973)
Blind Eye Album: The Magician's Birthday (1973)
Easy Livin' Album: Demons And Wizards (1972)
Simon The Bullet Freak Album: Salisbury (1971)
by Uriah Heep

Stealin' was written by keyboardist Ken Hensley. The lyrics tell the tale of an outlaw on the run, and points out the regrets that come with living a self-obsessed life.

The line, "I've done the rancher's daughter" got the song banned from radio airplay in some areas.

Despite "Stealin" having some of Uriah Heep's most intriguingly literary lyrics, writer Ken Hensley said in his Songfacts interview that there wasn't actually a real deep meaning to the song, at least when he wrote it.

"We had just come off of our second of third US tour experience and my imagination was really charged with the American 'experience,'" he said. "None of this story is true of course and it's really what the band do this song in rehearsal that made it such a huge hit!"

Still, art has a way of transcending the artist, and "Stealin'" continues to have deep meaning for Heep fans, no matter what Hensley intended. These lines tend to connect with listeners:

Stood on a ridge and shunned religion thinking the world was mine
I made my break and a big mistake stealin' when I should've been buyin'

Shunning religion calls to mind something mystical and profound, while "a big mistake stealin' when I should've been buyin'" could be described as Dylanesque. On one level it's very simple, yet is just ambiguous and mysterious enough to set the imagination flying. It's a technique used by many of rocks' great songwriters.

Hensley wrote the song at the flat of Heep bassist Gary Thain.

The B-side for the single was "Sunshine."

"Blind Eye" is one of Uriah Heep's most philosophically interesting songs. The "blind eye" in the song is "man's desire." It's overwhelming, "fiercer than a rainstorm," yet ultimately hollow and leading nowhere, leaving us grasping again for new meaning and new experience.

Blind Eye was written by group member Ken Hensley. "The 'human condition,'" Hensley told Songfacts, "as it's frequently and loosely referred to, has always fascinated me. I have always been acutely aware of my own weaknesses and aware that I am not alone in them and that's basically what this lyric speaks to."

The sun is used frequently as a symbol in Blind Eye. It appears to be the antidote to the "blind eye," but also seems tortuously elusive. It's there one morning and gone the next.

Hensley explained: "As far as the 'sun' thing is concerned, the word appears repeatedly in my songs and I know that's because I am its biggest fan. I love 'light' and I am not too fond of 'dark' and the sun is one of the reasons I like living in Spain. Perhaps the only one actually!"

"Blind Eye" was the first single released off of their fifth studio album, The Magician's Birthday. The B-side was "Sweet Lorraine."

"Blind Eye" was recorded and mixed at Lansdown Studios in London, England, September 1972.

"Easy Livin" has long been a fun-time party song, a go-to for small-town cover bands on Saturday nights, sure to win over the crowds. It makes sense, as the lyrics seem to about living a comfortable, stress-free life. Like Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" and Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing," however, the song is actually meant to be ironic.

Uriah Heep member Ken Hensley, who wrote this and most of the band's biggest songs, talked about the inspiration for this one.

"After a few long days in the studio, some of us were sharing a taxi home, and the conversation drifted to the fact that most people see our lives as easy. That we just show up at a venue, play, collect a million dollars and go home!"

The words "life" and "easy" stuck in Hensley's mind, and that night when he got back to his flat, he wrote "Easy Livin" in "about 15 minutes."

Hensley had no idea that "Easy Livin" would be such a hit. He said, "I knew we had a great song for the band and it translated into a great live song but, since I never wrote (nor write) with a particular 'destination' in mind, I hardly ever considered that a song may succeed to any extent at all."
This was the only Uriah Heep song to crack the Top 40 in the United States. It was an even bigger hit in the Netherlands and Finland, two countries that proved to be longtime bastions of Heep fandom.

There's a live version of Easy Livin on the 1988 album Live in Moscow that was released as a single in the UK.

"Simon the Bullet Freak" was written by Ken Hensley, who was with Uriah Heep throughout the '70s and wrote most of their hits. He explained, "It's an early song and a little angry, looking at the futility of war. It bears some philosophical similarities to other, quasi anti-war songs I wrote at the time ('The Park,' 'Lady In Black'), although I learned over time to say such things in a rather more eloquent way."

In regards to the lack of eloquence, as far as Hensley sees it, he's probably referring to lines like "ashes of destruction spread out so far" and "blackened others crying me," which sort of uses a mallet to get its message across.

Still, Hensley's probably a bit hard on himself, as there are also some intriguing images and plays with words in the song. One in particular is "tears of the flower man fill the sea."

When asked about whether or not that flower man was meant to represent the hippies (the song came out in 1971 after all), Hensley said, "No! He's an innocent street-seller and just another casualty!"