Some great valid points here: I never considered bad management, and yet it's obvious now, was it Gerry Bron? Peter Grant was indeed a force to be reckoned with! I kept tabs on Kerslake over the years and time wasn't kind to him- I suppose, unless you are made of iron, booze, pills and powders do catch up. Good point about 'comfort blanket' recgord Heep Live- Lizzy Live and Gallagher '74 are my go to albums. Strangely...not a single Stones live album, apart from a 1978 bootleg in Memphis.
When the boys are on point. Live videos have to be Moodies at Isle Of Wight and The Who...back to Heep, I remember the excitement of their new release days, I recall getting shop posters for High and Mighty and got laughed at by mates for buying Ken's first solo album...philistines!!
I haven't seen the various article(s) for years, but I do remember the band were seriously P-O'd at Bron for "poor management" of his label in general and hyping the band specifically.
From Wikipedia:
"Soon after going out of hospital, Thain, in
Sounds, openly accused manager Gerry Bron of having turned Uriah Heep into a mere "financial thing" and was fired two months after the group's final gig of 1974 at New Theatre in
Oxford, England on 14 December."
"A meeting at the manager's office concerning the songwriting dissent was the last straw and, in September 1980, Hensley quit. Gregg Dechert, a Canadian who had worked with Sloman in Pulsar, came in and the band went on a 23-date tour of the UK. After that Sloman left, citing musical differences for a reason.
[25] He would later go on to work with
UFO,
Gary Moore and
Robert Palmer. Hensley's acrimonious departure left the group in a state of collapse. Box and Bolder visited David Byron with attractive propositions. "We couldn't believe it when he said he didn't want to know," the guitarist remembered. Bolder, who by that time, "...had had enough of Gerry Bron and the management,"
"By this time Gerry Bron was Uriah Heep manager no longer (they were looked after by Neil Warnock in Europe and Blue Oyster Cult's management team in the US) and then, finally, Bronze Records collapsed under the weight of debts, which, according to Box, "...cost Heep a lot of money."