July Morning is one of the finest tracks ever recorded. It is the third track on Uriah Heep’s third album Look At Yourself, released in September 1971.
The track is a genuine tour de force. It starts with a grandiose organ intro, the band joining in for an extended instrumental section which gives the song an early crescendo. In time for the first verse, the song quietens, leading to an emotional and almost vulnerable vocal delivery before the song slowly starts powering up again. While the song is bigger on grandiose and emotional musical and lyrical statement than, say, progressive elements, it is still a varied composition with several transitions between distinctly different musical parts. Light and shade continually provide ebb and tide. The trademark five-part harmonies also add a lot to the song’s expression, as usual for Heep. It all ends in a powerful playout section with guitar and keyboard solos, going into the most epic highs of aural assault.
And with that, the first side of the album ends, as the track closes out the original side A on the vinyl record. This is a perfect placement, as following the track with silence is almost the most meaningful option. You get to draw your breath, compose yourself, and get ready for more before flipping the record over and continuing. Or just restarting that album side.
In the CD and/or digital age, this has obviously changed. But this was how the track was placed originally.
July Morning is the second longest album track Uriah Heep ever recorded at ten and a half minutes, only beaten by the orchestral track Salisbury which filled an entire record side on their previous album of the same name. Unlike Salisbury, though, July Morning would go on to become a mainstay in the band’s concert set lists (and consequently on their numerous live albums). It has taken on a meaning of its own, even to the point where it became the inspiration for, and anthem of, a country’s national holiday. We’ll get back to that, but suffice to say, it is one of the most important tracks the band ever did.
The main portion of the song’s verses and choruses were written in July 1970 by the band’s keyboardist Ken Hensley. The song was not yet the 10-minute behemoth it would become, but the verses and choruses were mapped out, which was a good start.
“I wrote it a year before it came out, in the very early ’70s,” Hensley told Fuzz Music. “We were touring the world a lot at the time. And then we were in England. I don’t remember why, but I was left all alone on the bus – I was waiting for the other guys who were running around somewhere. I sat all alone for a long time, and then I finally got bored and picked up my guitar. I plucked the strings, played something unobtrusive, and gradually the song came to me…”.
In a Songfacts interview in November 2018, Hensley remembered a bit more: “Uriah Heep was on tour in the UK with an American band named Sha Na Na and we were sharing a bus, which meant we had to wait for them to finish before we could go home. This was boring!”
To entertain himself, Hensley started noodling around with his acoustic guitar. “I found some interesting chords and thought about a lyric,” he said. “It began with a true statement, ‘There I was, on a July morning,’ and then my imagination took over.”
The title phrase had been put in the song as a matter-of-fact true statement: “It really was a July morning, and a very early one at that – 3 a.m.!,” Hensley told Fuzz Music.
In talking to Radio Free Europe in 2010, Hensley added: “I was playing the guitar and writing this thing, but I didn’t want to say, ‘There I was on a July morning, sitting on a bus.’ That’s not very romantic. So the rest of the song is my imagination. You know, ‘Looking for love…sound of the first bird singing,’ and all that stuff.”
Hensley worked the song out over the next few days and played it for the rest of the band in their rehearsal room. “I played it to the band on my acoustic guitar and, by the end of the day, it had become the song that so many people grew to love,” Hensley said. “That was magic!”
It ended up being expanded on, and would include further ideas by Hensley and vocalist David Byron. The band noticed that they had three separate parts of compositions that were all in C minor. Taking an approach frequently used by the Beatles, they tried combining the different parts together in the hope that they would complete each other. They turned out to fit together like hand in glove. The song thus gained a grandiose organ/band intro, a new chorus-build-up, a guitar bridge between the first and second part of the song, and a mighty playout section including several guitar and keyboard solos.
Once the song had gotten its final structure, the band – which in addition to Hensley and Byron consisted of Mick Box (guitar), Paul Newton (bass), and Ian Clarke (drums) – just needed one day in the studio to capture it. They recorded several takes, but in the end it was the first attempt that made it onto the album.
There I was on a July morning
Looking for love
With the strength of a new day dawning
And the beautiful sun
At the sound of the first bird singing
I was leaving for home
With the storm and the night behind me
And a road of my own
With the day came the resolution
I’ll be looking for you
On the surface, the lyrics detail someone’s search for love. There has been some turmoil in their life, with metaphoric references to the darkness of the previous night and a storm that has passed, but there is a newfound sense of determination in the face of a new day.
The search is ambiguous, starting out by looking outward, trying to find it somewhere in this world. (“I looked for you where I never dreamed / The world has gone around, where else could I go.”) This was not successful, but it made the person realise that it was necessary to seek this feeling from within – in the heart, in the mind, in the soul.
We are likely talking about love in a broader sense – not necessarily to a specific person, but to oneself, to life, and to the world as a whole. (“Though I have searched for you in a thousand faces / But no one knew about the burning fire / In my heart, in my thoughts and in my soul.”) They resolve that they will be looking for love with the coming of the new day. The chorus of the song encourages us all to look for love in our hearts, minds, and souls, so that we can find the resolution for which we’re searching.
The song is a powerful and optimistic ballad of self-discovery and redemption.
Manfred Mann played Moog synthesizer on the song. This would turn out to be a bone of contention for the song’s main writer. Hensley was obviously very invested in this track, which clearly was going to be a massively important song for the band. Having written most of the track and arranged all of it, he felt more than ready – and definitely capable – to play the required parts himself. He was appalled when Manfred Mann was invited to play one of the main parts of the song.
The idea to invite Mann belonged to the band’s producer/manager Gerry Bron, who later said that Manfred played a crucial role in the song’s development and in it becoming a hit.
“It was my idea to invite Manfred and his Minimoog,” Bron said, “and I never regretted it. Although I had to go out of my way to persuade him to stay and play – at first he flatly refused, saying, ‘It’s one chord, what can I do with it?”
In an interview with Dmme.net in November 2004, Bron expanded on what happened: “When Manfred played on July Morning, Ken was not very happy about it. I think Ken was jealous of Manfred. But the reason we did that was, the song had taken very long [before Manfred came in] and nothing was happening, so I suggested to them that we get Manfred to come in and play on his ‘Moog,’ because that was something new. He came into the studio and heard the music and went, ‘I can’t do anything with this, it’s just one chord!’ But I said, ‘No, Manfred, I know you can do something. Go down in the studio and play something.’”
After quite a bit of coaxing, Mann would walk out of the control room, climb the long stairs down to the studio below, and do a take. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be the only walk up or down those stairs that day. He came back up to the control room still filled with doubt about the suitability of his contribution, only to be met with enthusiasm.
Bron continues: ”He comes back up again and says, ‘No, it’s not going to work.’ I said, ‘Manfred, what you played was absolutely fantastic!’ He said, ‘Really? Do you think so?’ I said, ‘Absolutely! That’s terrific!’ He said, ‘Oh, it was nothing, I can do much better than that.’ So he went back down again, played another solo, and he said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s pretty good but, actually, the first one was better.’ He said, ‘Oh no, no, was it better? No, no, I can do it better than those two.’ And he played five different solos! Each one was different; they weren’t anything like each other. So he came back again and said, ‘What do you think?’ ‘You just played five amazing solos, and what we’ll do is use a bit of this one and a bit of that one, and that will be the record.’ But he was never convinced he could do it.”
Mann also ended up making a contribution to the track Tears In My Eyes, which is probably close to how Hensley felt about this whole situation. He was not happy to be set aside in this manner. Subsequently, his resentment towards Mann was aggravated. The story goes that during a concert tour where Manfred Mann and Uriah Heep found themselves on the same bill, the audience greeted Mann with enthusiasm. Later, when Uriah Heep came on stage, they were booed.
Gerry Bron confirms this story: “We did one gig in America with Uriah Heep and Manfred Mann. Manfred Mann went on first. When Uriah Heep followed, they were booed and had to stop playing. Ken was in tears, he absolutely hated it, so whether it’s because of that or whether it’s because of what happened with July Morning, I never found out, but they didn’t get [on] well together.”
At the same time, it was a highly unusual and noteworthy step of Bron at the time to set aside his keyboard wizard and main man in favour of someone else. Hensley was extremely talented and could play anything, across several instruments, and Bron is quick to pay tribute to his talent and importance for Uriah Heep: “Ken was the strongest in Heep, by far. No question about that. You’ve got to remember that Ken was not only an outstanding personality, he’s a great looking guy – long hair, right way down, very, very long hair – he looked fantastic, he sang as well as David and higher, he wrote all the songs, he played guitar, he played all the keyboards, so he definitely was the strongest person in the band. No one [came] anyway near!”
In addition to the song’s many outstanding instrumental parts, the vocal performances of David Byron deserves some praise. Like the rest of the band, he was often not appreciated by critics and the press of the time. Byron had a wonderfully flamboyant voice (and personality) which could rub people the wrong way, but on this track, his performances truly show the depth of emotion that he could bring to a piece. The five-part harmonies provided by the band were also out of this world.
The release of July Morning and the album Look At Yourself in September 1971 marked a new creative high point for Uriah Heep. The band was already well-known in the UK and Europe, but Look At Yourself put them on the map in the United States.
The band and everybody around them knew that July Morning was the finest track they had created so far, and as such it would have been a prime candidate to release as a single, but its length made that problematic. Heavy edits would have been required, which would have made the song lesser than it was, should be, and deserved to be. It did not matter – they had another ready-made candidate in Easy Livin’, which went on to be a tremendous single success for the band.
The Japanese record label was insistent though, and eventually went ahead with an edited version of July Morning as a single release in late June 1972 – obviously planning to have it in the shops in time for July to set in. The Japanese single edit was later used on the greatest hits album Your Turn To Remember in 2016.
Venezuela followed suit, opting for the creative yet practical (or is that impractical?) approach of splitting the song in two across the A and B side.
America would get their own single release of the song in May 1973, using the version from the double live album Uriah Heep Live from the same year.
The most amazing story related to the song has been left for last: the song went on to become a Bulgarian holiday. For four solid decades, Bulgarians have gathered on the Black Sea coast to greet the sunrise on the morning of 1 July. The anthem of the event, which everybody sings along to as the sun emerges, is Uriah Heep’s July Morning.
The tradition is known in Bulgarian as Julaya, and started as a subtle protest/show of resistance against the repressive Soviet communist regime. The song has no political messages of protest, but it became a vehicle for a more spiritual rebellion against the joyless Soviet state with its focus on finding love and a sense of purpose. The search for something more meaningful and better.
As Bulgaria broke out of Soviet rule, the festival continued, the song continuing to be its focus. The event first became a celebration of freedom – of roads travelled and goals achieved – but for a long time now it has mostly signified a celebration of the summer holidays and meaningful times with friends and loved ones.
The annual festival has only grown more popular with every passing year. Every 30th of June, Bulgarians of all ages from all over the country travel to the coast of the Black Sea to watch the rising of the sun on the morning of the 1st of July, singing the song while the celebration takes place. The event is considered a significant cultural event and is shown live on Bulgarian national TV.
The event has turned the song into an anthem for millions of Bulgarians, from rock music aficionados to general folk who embrace the song and its words in a wider sense. Many of them probably don’t know who Uriah Heep are and may not know any of their other songs, but they all know this one.
Ken Hensley was flabbergasted when he first learned of the Julaya seashore ritual. “I go there every July 1st for the July Morning celebration. It’s one of the most incredible things,” Hensley told Radio Free Europe in 2010. “And so I go there for that, play a concert there, and then get together with all the Bulgarian people and just watch and listen as they sing July Morning when the sun comes up. It’s quite an amazing experience.”
Other Uriah Heep members have also traveled to Bulgaria to participate in the Julaya celebrations. One-time Heep singer John Lawton has been a frequent visitor, having performing the song to the crowds several times.
The song may only be a national holiday in Bulgaria, but it has struck a universal note and is popular all around the world. No matter where it is performed, it is one of the emotional highlights of the evening. In his wildest dreams, Hensley never imagined that a song he started crafting while waiting on a bus would ultimately endure through multiple generations across every region – and regime – in the world.
“Here I am, 40-odd years later and still playing those songs and still seeing joy in people’s faces,” he told Radio Free Europe in 2010. “It’s kind of ironic that I can go to a place like Russia or Bulgaria and play for 10,000 people who don’t speak English but can sing every word of July Morning. It’s all a phenomenon to me. I don’t understand it and I don’t try to understand it. It’s just a wonderful thing that something which I wrote so many years ago is still alive and still so meaningful.”
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