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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