The Rebirth Of HEAVEN With LAURIE MARLOW

There aren't many true old school Aussie rockers left these days, but the ones who are remember the 1980s with fond memories. For all of the household names to come out of that time, such as AC/DC, INXS, Cold Chisel, there were just as many, if not more, that were at least equally as talented. Bands like Buster Brown spring immediately to mind, but there's also another who may have faded from the minds of even those fortunate to have lived those times. Not because of their relevance to Australian music, but just because of Father Time and their relative inactivity.
And that band is Heaven.
Just one of many bands forming in and around the turn of the decade, Heaven were always a class above most others, a combination of talent and good representation seeing them earn the right to do a national support tour of Australia with Iron Maiden after just one album. The inevitable growth from an experience like that took Heaven to the U.S, where they would record their second and most popular album, Where Eagles Fear To Tread, an album which featured guest spots by an unnamed Ronnie James Dio, Lita Ford and Glenn Hughes.
During their time abroad, Heaven supported many more leading bands of the era, from Black Sabbath to Judas Priest to KISS to Motley Crue, but following the 1985 release of Knockin' On Heaven's Door, the band returned to Australia, lasting just one more tour before the tolls of the last 5 years proved too much and the band went their separate ways. A couple of fleeting attempts at getting the gang back together followed over the ensuing years, with no bad blood between the band enabling them to get together when timing and schedules aligned. The loss of frontman Allan Fryer to cancer in 2015 seemed to permanently shelve plans of a fairytale reunion, until the seeds began to grow around the same time as COVID enveloped the world.
Not to be deterred, bass player and founding member Laurie Marlow persevered in his quest, ultimately reassembling Heaven in what seems for all intents and purposes to be a fully fledged crack at restoring them to their former place amongst this country's elite rock acts. HEAVY sat down with Laurie for an in-depth chat about the past, present and future of Heaven, starting with the formation of the band.
"I'd been a musician around Adelaide for a number of years and decided that if I was going to get anywhere and move forward with things, I had to move somewhere like Melbourne or Sydney, so I picked Sydney," Laurie recalled. "When I got here, I just started looking around for players. And one guy... I lived around the corner from him, actually... and I used to go and see this band play, and that was a band called Swanee, which was Jimmy Barnes' brother. I struck up a friendship with the guitar player, Kelly, and I used to take him to gigs, because I had a car and he didn't. We just started talking about things, and he said that he wasn't happy staying with what he was doing, and he wanted to move into something different. And I said, well mate, what's your interest? And he said, I love this band Van Halen that's just hit the scene in the last couple of years. I said so do I, why don't you come and join me, and we'll put a band together. So that was the first step in the evolution of Heaven."
In the full interview, Laurie provided a comprehensive overview of Heaven's history, detailing the band's formation in 1980 and their evolution from performing as Fat Lip to adopting the name Heaven. We spoke about them getting signed and making the transition to the U.S., and how their music progressed from there.
Laurie talked about some of the bands Heaven has toured with and some of the memories of those times, noting how important being from Australia was in the early days in America. He reflected on Heaven's second album, Where Angels Fear To Tread and the contributions from notable artists like Ronnie James Dio, Lita Ford and Glenn Hughes, as well as the funny tale about how they came to be on the album.
He recounted the initial break-up of Heaven and the subsequent flirtations with regrouping, including a tale about how the Australian version of Heaven lost their name to an assembled American version spearheaded by Fryer. He shared details of the current reunion and plans to record new music, explaining how it might differ slightly from older material due to inevitable modernisation. Laurie also discussed the band's two upcoming Sydney shows, including one where they will pay homage to Black Sabbath and more.


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