A long-time member of one of the United Kingdom’s most venerable and prolific rock bands, Phil Lanzon of Uriah Heep has enjoyed great success with the band as it’s keyboardist and one of its primary songwriters since joining the fold back in 1986.
Many tours of the world, critically acclaimed albums and lots of fun have brought great joy and artistic satisfaction to the veteran musician and songwriter, as have his many dalliances with other artists as a collaborator both before and during his stint with Heep over his more than four decades in the music industry.
But it took more than 30 years for Lanzon to finally choose to bring all his musical influences to bear and write, record and release a solo album under his own banner, focusing on his own dynamic musical vision. What resulted was his first solo album, If You Think I’m Crazy. Now, two years later, in the midst of seemingly constant touring by Uriah Heep, Lanzon has assembled and powerfully compelling and rollicking second solo outing, 48 Seconds, which was released in August through his own label PLD (Phil Lanzon Ditties) with distribution through Cargo Records on CD and vinyl.
Lanzon has cultivated a wide and diverse musical palate throughout his lifetime. His significance to the creative output and continuing excellence of the music divined by Uriah Heep allows him to keep those compositional chops honed, but 48 Seconds and If You Think I’m Crazy, released in 2017, allow for unfettered creative exploration.
“You realize when you work within the structure of an established band for this long, like I do working with Mick Box and doing whatever we do as Uriah Heep, there is a set blueprint as a band, because it’s so established now – coming up to 50 years. There is a blueprint of the sound that Heep makes and we have to adhere to it to a very large extent,” said Lanzon.
“And because of that, a writer like myself who has interests in other fields needs an outlet. This gives me a chance to have totally complete control and the freedom to write any style I would love to do it in. And that’s exactly what I am doing. My interest in film soundtracks has always been prominent in my head, for example. Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved the way music enhances the visuals on the screen. That to me is a fantastic opportunity to be able to do something like that, and I would like to venture into that realm at some point.
“I have been inspired by so much music over the years. There are lodes of composers and creators whose music has inspired me in the way they have arranged the music around the visuals – sound and vision married together. I haven’t pursued that avenue yet. I have spent most of my time digesting what I hear and writing what I feel but I haven’t put myself out into that field. I have to say, from what I know of it, it’s a pretty well closed shop and you pretty much have to be married to a director to actually even think about writing a not. But it continues to inspire my own writing, the way people have used sound and vision and how they have fused the interpretation of the words in a script to a musical background and underscoring. I find all those things so fascinating that I often lose interest in the movie because I am listening so intently to the soundtrack. That’s the beauty of music. You’ve got the highs and the lows, you’ve got the dramatic, heart-rending stuff, and then the really subtle, quiet, moving background melody that grabs your attention and you don’t even know it.”
The cinematic element of storytelling shines through in different ways on many of the songs on 48 Seconds, including the title track, which examines the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.
“It’s a thing that I had in my head for a long, long time. For years and years – decades really – I wanted to create a song or a piece that was connected with the disaster, not because I like disasters but because it resonated with me, from when I first read a book about it when I was 10 years old. Over time, I had the intention of creating a song, but I tried an it wasn’t very satisfactory to me. So, it put it on the shelf, as you do, and came back to it occasionally, and it still didn’t happen,” Lanzon explained.
“This time, as I was diving into my material again, I found this song that I didn’t like the lyrics to, but I did like the way the music flowed. So, I decided to try using that and very quickly it came together as a song regarding the earthquake. Because I already had the basic lyric written in an old style, I just brought it up to date, and added two characters into the story and it very quickly took shape.
“And I wanted it to be orchestral, with choir and everything. I gave all the instructions to Richard Cottle the arranger, and we worked together to build the intro, we worked together through the whole thing regarding the orchestral arrangements. And it came out just the way I wanted it to be. It’s got its own life now.”
The song Blue Mountain, again, is very cinematic, but more so in the lyrical content and imagery it engenders. It is interesting for people who live in Southern Ontario such as the writer of this article, because they have an actual Blue Mountain – the ski resort community near Collingwood – as a reference point. Lanzon was thinking about a completely different hemisphere when penning this tune.
“It’s actually based on the Blue Mountains near Sydney, Australia. Because my partner is Australian, I have spent a lot of time there over the last few decades. I have often paid a visit to the Blue Mountains and often on my flight back to England from Australia I would feel sort of a sadness and sense of loss over leaving that area. And that’s what the song is about really, literally that sensation. It’s a song dedicated and written for the Blue Mountains, plural that is. I called it Blue Mountain singular because for the purposes of the song it sounded better,” he said.
As much as Lanzon would love to tour his solo material, it isn’t in the cards for the foreseeable future.
“The realistic situation is that I wouldn’t want to do it without an orchestra and at least a small choir, because then otherwise what’s the point? The amount of time to get the musicians together and rehearse and see if there was enough interest to book some shows would be a bit of a feat, I must say. And it’s just not feasible at the moment,” he said.
“We’ve got a big schedule with Heep because we’ve got the 50th anniversary next year. So, we’re going to be planning all sorts of stuff – tours and festivals and things are lined up already. January and February, we will be doing Scandinavia, March and April there’s a big Russian tour, the festivals start in May and go through to September and that’s when we really star the big touring and special events for the 50th festivities. I think some of the things in the Heep pipeline include a coffee table book, all sorts of odds and sods coming out coinciding with that event. And we will tape some shows for release later. We have got a show booked at the London Palladium next November, so that’s going to be a big one. I imagine we will get the cameras in for that one.”
As if Lanzon wasn’t already impressive enough with his creative musical output with Uriah Heep, his solo and many other collaborations over the years, he is also now a novelist, recently publishing his first book, Curse of the Mudchalk Devil through Pegasus Publishers in the U.K.
“It seems like it’s been on the back burner for a while. It didn’t take me 20 years to write it, it took me 20 years to decide how to present it in the correct manner. I previously had a book of short stories published and I enjoyed doing that because it’s stuff that I did while on the road with Heep – quick sketchy stories. But this story began to grow on me and grow on me and grow on me. And it’s based on the notion of children being more empowered to have these great adventures. Magical realism is, I think, the best way to describe what the story is about. It’s magical realism, where the item of magic is actually real, as opposed to in your head or illusory,” he explained.
“The main character is a girl who can see music, what better theme is there than that? It’s for nine to 14 year olds, but the readership is for adults too because it has the same appeal as the Harry Potter things did. Adults can read it and get the same pleasure out of it. It’s not strictly a children’s book. I just finished the first draft of the sequel already. It will need a few more drafts before it’s presented. And I will continue on from where the other one left off. And there’s going to be a third book; an idea for this third book is already in my head. I will definitely consult with my publisher as soon as I get the sequel up and running. I need them to know that I have it in hand and then we can sit and talk about how we can go down the route for possible television or movie adaptations.”
Besides all this, Lanzon said he is also in the very early stages of developing the themes for his third solo album.
“I have so many melodies going through my head. And with songwriting, first and foremost it’s the melody that grabs you – the hook, whatever it may be. There’s something in that nut then you know you’ve got a starting point. And it builds from there. As a writer you just extend it and find something that connects to that and starts presenting itself as a song, or at least a piece of music that you can build a song around. That’s how it goes for me,” he said.
“I am keen on finding different angles, and I have already found a different angle for the third album. I haven’t worked on it enough to even present it yet. It will involve orchestral work, because that is my love, and choir work as well. I love a collection of human voices: you can’t beat a lot of people singing together at the same time. To me, it’s spine tingling stuff.”
In the interim, fans can stream, download or order physical copies of 48 Seconds from Cargo Records UK, and find out more information at www.phillanzon.com or www.musicglue.com/Phil-Lanzon
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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