Uriah Heep were one of the seminal early hard-rock bands in the 70′s but never earned the laurels of Led Zeppelin or Deep Purple, perhaps on account of their pretentious and uncatchy name. Everybody knows that headbanging and literacy are mutually exclusive, right? Not that Page and Plant weren’t literate, but they mainly stuck with counterculture-approved Tolkien and Crowley. Nor perhaps, were Uriah Heep as well read as their name implies. Now I’m a little dense on Roma culture, but I thought one of the primary tenets of being a gypsy was not owning land. My understanding is that if you’re a gypsy and don’t own land, you can’t drive anyone from the land that you don’t own by virtue of being a gypsy. Maybe gypsies are extremely territorial about their wagons and temporary encampments? I can accept that they may have certain rules governing whom the chieftain’s daughter is allowed to consort with. I don’t know, either I’m completely confused, or Uriah Heep is. Either way, the central conceit of this song seems factually tenuous. On the other hand, heavy metal songs aren’t for learning stuff. They’re for fun and headbanging your way to a concussion. (On an unrelated note, there are more pictures online of the literary Uriah Heep than there are of the band.)
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