Blind Eye

Album: The Magician's Birthday (1973)
Charted: 97
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Songfacts®:

  • "Blind Eye" is one of Uriah Heep's most philosophically interesting songs. The "blind eye" in the song is "man's desire." It's overwhelming, "fiercer than a rainstorm," yet ultimately hollow and leading nowhere, leaving us grasping again for new meaning and new experience.
  • The song was written by group member Ken Hensley. "The 'human condition,'" Hensley told Songfacts, "as it's frequently and loosely referred to, has always fascinated me. I have always been acutely aware of my own weaknesses and aware that I am not alone in them and that's basically what this lyric speaks to."
  • The sun is used frequently as a symbol in the song. It appears to be the antidote to the "blind eye," but also seems tortuously elusive. It's there one morning and gone the next.

    Hensley explained to Songfacts: "As far as the 'sun' thing is concerned, the word appears repeatedly in my songs and I know that's because I am its biggest fan. I love 'light' and I am not too fond of 'dark' and the sun is one of the reasons I like living in Spain. Perhaps the only one actually!"
  • "Blind Eye" was the first single released off of their fifth studio album, The Magician's Birthday. The B-side was "Sweet Lorraine."
  • "Blind Eye" was recorded and mixed at Lansdown Studios in London, England, September 1972.

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