URIAH HEEP's BERNIE SHAW On Artificial Intelligence In Music: 'It Absolutely Scares The Pants Off Me'

In a new interview with Poland's Brudne Brzmienie (The Dirty Sound),URIAH HEEP lead singer Bernie Shaw weighed in on a debate about people using an A.I. (artificial intelligence) music generator as a tool to create melodies, harmonies and rhymes based on artificial intelligence (A.I.) algorithms and machine learning (M.L.) models. Bernie said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "It absolutely scares the pants off me. I don't do much, I've not messed around with A.I. or the app much, but a friend of mine, very good friend of mine, he has this on his phone and he did. He said, 'Write a song in the style of URIAH HEEP,' and in less than three seconds, his phone starts playing this song. It had all the little increments that URIAH HEEP had, it had in this manufactured song. It didn't have vocal, but the music, it had Hammond organ, it had wah-wah guitar, it had dynamics, and it sounded not 100 percent, but damn close to what something [URIAH HEEP guitarist] Mick [Box] and [keyboardist] Phil [Lanzon] would write. And that does scare me, because, first of all, the writers of the original idea of a song, they get their money from the publishing of this music. Well, who writes it if it's A.I.? So you get an album of music that it's all done by computer and A.I. — who gets paid? Because it's coming out of nowhere."

Bernie continued: "But you can't beat the emotion from a song written and recorded by real human beings. That's why I don't listen to any of this modern stuff that comes out of the computers. Even — oh boy — every pop band in the '90s had computers somewhere. I remember the band DEPECHE MODE. Now, they're a good band — they're very successful — but I remember they had to cancel a concert in London because someone stole the backing tapes. And the keyboard player, they'll play one note, because everything's on sample. And even some bands — I mean, I even heard that KISS, their drum sound, he's hitting the drum, but it's not that drum. It's all a sample of another drum. It could be a [John] Bonham snare drum sound that they're using or whoever. It's not his drum that you're hearing.

Shaw added: "That's what happened with all this computer stuff and everything that was going on with [Napster at the turn of the century]. And with the death of sales of recorded music, 'cause you don't get much in royalties anymore, everybody's gotta go out and play live. That's where the money is, is on live concerts and on merchandise, selling t-shirts. Now, if you're a studio band that are used to just using computers and samples and everything, you can't replicate that live, really. It'd just be just a bunch of machines on stage. So everybody was out on tour, but playing live, you see the difference between the real musicians and the studio guys, and never the twain shall meet."

The Canadian-born Bernie relocated to the U.K. in the late 1970s and went on to record with such bands as GRAND PRIX, PRAYING MANTIS and STRATUS before joining URIAH HEEP at the end of 1986. The 69-year-old musician has appeared on the band's nine studio albums since 1989, as well as numerous live albums.

In September 2024, URIAH HEEP announced that the band would embark on a lengthy farewell tour in 2025. The trek, which is expected to run for approximately two or three years, will include performances in all parts of the globe.

URIAH HEEP's 25th studio album, "Chaos & Colour", was released in January 2023 via Silver Lining Music. The LP was recorded during the summer of 2021 at Chapel Studios in London with Jay Ruston (ANTHRAX, COREY TAYLOR, BLACK STAR RIDERS) at the helm.