Ken Hensley
Proud Words On A Dusty Shelf

Fate can sometimes be strange and unpredictable: he who truly charted the organ's coordinates in hard rock is a... guitarist.

It just so happened that the young Hensley only came across gigs in bands that already had their six strings sorted. In the Gods, year 1968, there was already Mick Taylor, imagine that, a "pro" who was leagues ahead; if Mick had found a more democratic band than the Stones, had been less shy, and above all had snorted a few tons less of white powder, by now he would be as famous as Clapton.

In Toe Fat, shortly after, Hensley even had to cover both roles, guitar and organ; not bad but for some reason it lasted only for one album. When, at the dawn of the seventies, he was called to complete the lineup of the nascent Uriah Heep, there was already the immovable (still there!) Mick Box in formation, wearing a big Gibson with skill and noise. Ken was asked to settle almost permanently on the Hammond B3 seat, an instrument he could handle decently without being a virtuoso by any means.

However, reasoning as a guitarist, and since he had joined guys who wanted to play loud and heavy, he thought it wise to extract as much nastiness and drama as possible from the dual keyboard right away, fiddling with the stops and helping himself with a few distortion boxes fished from his guitar effects bag. The organ attack of "Gypsy", the first track of Heep's first album, is a snapshot, a dazzling focus of how it should be and will be done, turning that dark wood liturgical cabinet and its inseparable rotating horn amplifier partner into an eruption of riffs brimming with grit and a destabilizing punch.

Jumping three years forward, Uriah Heep are now at their fifth album, and Hensley has composed eighty percent of the material, mostly on guitar naturally. He suffers from hyper-prolificity... two albums a year with the group and he still has plenty of songs left, especially ballads since it's not appropriate to go beyond two/three per album if you want to remain macho and tough. Another small frustration: Hensley is also an excellent singer, only that as the frontman in Heep there's a certain David Byron who boasts a four-octave vocal range and a fabulous timbre. No Way... It's already great that in those first five albums he could interpret a couple of ballads and some lines here and there, in addition to the tons of (splendid) backing vocals, often in falsetto, performed to support and enrich the unmistakable Heep sound.

The solution, the outlet, is a solo album. "Proud Words On A Dusty Shelf" is quietly released in 1973; it is roughly produced, poorly distributed and advertised and so it doesn't sell at all. Truly an album of urgency, made on the fly in the few spare moments, without too many expectations, for himself but without particular soloist ambitions. Hensley is doing well (for now) in Heep but doesn't want to give up publishing some of his material not suitable for the group and so he does this almost entirely on his own, except for bass and drums. It's a simple work, made on the fly, the production is as mentioned little refined, the technician is stingy with reverb and echo, there’s a pleasant homemade, naive atmosphere.

And naturally, it’s full of guitars, particularly acoustic ones because it's mainly with them that Hensley loves to compose. And full of ballads, with the Uriah Heep vibe clearly perceivable, demonstrating the weight his voice and his compositional and executive style have in the band. The best pieces are "From Time To Time", simple and lyrical, with a minimoog drone that today feels tender, then "Black Hearted Lady" built on an already heard descending arpeggio but always irresistible, as well as the Pink Floyd-like "Fortune", a true oddity since the lead guitar work in the intro is identical to David Gilmour's style, yet it happens that when everything calms down and the acoustic guitars start, they sound exactly like a passage from "Animals" (released four years later): 1 to 1 between him and Dave, then!

When Hensley is at the piano, he demonstrates all his being a guitarist, with a very mechanical and schematic touch ("A King Without A Throne", "Cold Autumn Sunday"). "Rain" finally, is the same appeared a few months earlier in that "The Magician's Birthday" released with his bandmates: where there it was the electric piano and Byron's sublime voice, here now are on the proscenium the acoustic piano and Ken's beautiful voice, first solitary and then, for the last refrain, accompanied by full-blast church-like Hammond and gospel choirs for a Day of Judgment finale.

Respect, gratitude, and admiration is what I feel for this composer, arranger, singer, guitarist, keyboardist who has taught to play and made many people fall in love with rock.