I’m using the gig I saw just a few weeks back for a bit of further inspiration today as I look at one of the standout songs Uriah Heep played that night. Stealin’ comes from Heep’s sixth album Sweet Freedom, which hit way back in 1973. Today’s song was the lead single from the album. The song had a few low chart positions through Europe. The album did score US gold and UK silver certifications and a handful of desirable chart placements.

This was a period of transition for Uriah Heep. While they remained on independent label Bronze for their native UK affairs, the band were now distributed in the US by major Warner Bros. It also saw the band move away from prog elements and implement more conventional hard rock passages, though the guitar and organ nucleus of the band’s sound was still in tact, as it always has been.

The band’s line-up was unchanged from their prior effort. David Byron handled singing duties, Ken Hensley did keyboards and guitar, Gary Thain was the bassist and Lee Kerslake was on drums. Mick Box played lead guitar and is the only surviving member of this line-up, as well as a present-day member of Heep.

Stealin’ opens with a quiet organ while David Byron spins a tale of a guy who started more crap that what he bargained for. He hooked up with the rancher’s daughter and got chased across the land by the vengeful father. He has to run and only has his life left to save. The lyrics reach their point quite nicely with the line “I was stealing when I should have been buying,” which can be taken literally and also figuratively in the case of the girl he could have courted properly instead of seducing.

The story remains open-ended, we never find out if the guy got away from his predicament or if the pursuers caught up to him. But the song does go into a hefty jam to round everything out. It’s definitely more of an FM radio hard rock thing than the prog-minded fare UH offered up earlier in their career but it’s still a nice, groovy jam.

Stealin’ has been a staple of Uriah Heep setlists since its introduction 51 years ago. It has been played 789 times live, according to setlist.fm, and the band have a summer tour coming up with no signs of slowing down. It was a treat when they broke this one out early in the set when I saw them recently on their just-concluded tour with Saxon. I’ve included a clip from another show on the same tour below.

That’s all for today, hopefully everyone is having a fruitful life of buyin’ rather than stealin’. But it did make for one hell of a song.

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