Uriah Heep Say Farewell in Belgrade with Lady in Black
The British hard rock band played a Belgrade stop on its farewell tour, and singer Bernie Shaw told the crowd from the stage that the band does not live on past glory alone.
When “Lady in Black” started at Sava Centar, only two men were left on stage, singer Bernie Shaw and guitarist Mick Box, while the whole hall took over the song. That is how the British hard rock band Uriah Heep closed its Belgrade stop last night, November 10, 2026, on “The Magician’s Farewell” tour, which the band itself has billed as its last.
The portal Nova.rs presented the Belgrade show back in June as the band’s final concert in the region, and Shaw revealed from the stage that the group had played in North Macedonia the night before. “Last night we were in Macedonia and it was great, but I believe you can raise even more dust,” the singer told the audience.
What did Uriah Heep play in Belgrade?
The evening was opened by Heavy Pettin, a Scottish hard rock band founded in Glasgow in 1981. Its singer, Steve Hayman, introduced the song “Sole Survivor” and thanked those who had bought the album “Rock Ain’t Dead”. The headliner then played for about an hour and a half, according to Telegraf’s report, with the lineup the audience knows: founder Mick Box, singer Bernie Shaw, keyboardist Phil Lanzon, drummer Russell Gilbrook and bassist Dave Rimmer.
The program, according to the same report, ran like this:
- main set: “Grazed by Heaven”, “Save Me Tonight”, “Shadows of Grief”, “Stealin’”, “Hurricane”, “The Wizard”, “Sweet Loraine”, “The Magician’s Birthday” (from the 1972 album of the same name), “Gypsy”, “July Morning” and “Lady in Black”
- encore: “Sunrise” and “Easy Livin’”
“Grazed by Heaven”, “Save Me Tonight” and “Hurricane” come from the band’s most recent albums, while “The Magician’s Birthday” dates to 1972, so the set covered both the newer and the oldest layers of the catalog.
What did Box and Shaw tell the crowd?
Box reminded the hall where the band comes from, in a line that could have fit into any farewell speech:
“Uriah Heep, as a band, began to exist in 1970, but the good thing is that you are still here, we are still here, and the music is still alive.”
Shaw stuck to numbers too, but with more irony about his own band’s biography. “You will agree with us if we say that 56 years of Uriah Heep means being busy,” he said, then added: “We have many classics, but you should know that we do not live on old glory alone.” He also announced a new song from the album “Chaos & Colour”, which he said was written by drummer Gilbrook, and added that the band has been on tour since June of last year. Of Belgrade he said: “Belgrade was a place we circled on the list of places where we would play from the very start.”
A farewell tour that claims not to live off the past has a hard task, because the audience comes precisely for it. The answer to that question arrived only in “Lady in Black”, when Shaw and Box left the singing to the hall.
What happened before this concert in Serbia?
The band has previously played in Serbia at the Pionir hall in 1977, at the Gitarijada festival in Zajecar in 2016 and at Sava Centar in 2019. For that last show, Danas reported that more than 2,000 people filled the hall, and the concert was then part of the tour for the album “Living the Dream”. The same paper noted that on “Lady in Black” back then, too, the microphone was turned toward the audience.
Sava Centar states that the band has more than 55 years of career and more than 40 million albums sold, and that it debuted with the release “Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble”. Sava Centar was not the organizer of the concert: tickets were sold exclusively by Ticket Vision and Efinity, and entry was from Vladimira Popovica Street, through the ceremonial entrance of the Blue Hall.
