Their 1970 debut album, …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (released as Uriah

Their 1970 debut album, …Very ‘Eavy …Very ‘Umble (released as Uriah Heep in the United States), introduced Hensley’s heavy organ and the band’s guitar-driven sound, with David Byron’s theatrical, dynamic vocals soaring above thunderous sonic backgrounds, although acoustic and jazz elements also featured in the mix. The album’s title references the signature phrase of the Dickens character (“very ‘umble”). Hensley had little to contribute to the debut: Box and Byron wrote most of the material, including “Gypsy”, in many ways (according to Blows) “a marriage of contrasts” that, in time, became their trademark. In a 1989 interview, Mick Box recalled: “The funny thing was we wrote it at the Hanwell Community Centre and Deep Purple were rehearsing in the room next door to us. You can imagine the kind of racket we were both making between us.” During the winter of 1970, three-quarters into the recording of the album, drummer Alex Napier was replaced by Nigel Olsson , recommended to Byron by Elton John . The debut was not popular with rock critics (especially in the US, where Rolling Stone reviewer Melissa Mills infamously promised to commit suicide “if this band makes it”). In the course of the album’s making the writing relationship between Box, Byron and Hensley was beginning to develop. “It was very quick, because we were all into the same things. It was like it was meant to be, there was that kind of chemistry”, Mick Box recalled.