This is the thread where we talk about Iron Maiden!!

"Aces High" is the single greatest song to sing at the top lungs at 3am in your underwear...

"The Trooper" is their masterpiece though.

Also Brave New World is probably the best 'comeback' album by a metal band ever.

-- Roger Fascist (RogerFascis...) (webmail), November 11th, 2002 12:06 PM. (Roger Fascist)

lol

They are touring US again, and I am so fukcing there, .. i won't miss this for the fucking world

most rulest

MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE!!! Oh, c'mon Bruce ... please do 1 or 2 songs for the headz...

As mentioned in the rolling metal thread, their five Western Canadian dates all sold out within a couple hours today...60,000 tickets. The Calgary pre-sale outsold the one for MSG. We've missed them a lot out here. Can't wait for June 8th!!!

"flight 666" is showing here tonight, i think it's sold out though ;_;

Dying to see that.

i got "the early years" a 2-dvd thing from netflix in the mail yesterday and watched 30 min of concert footage from a gig in late '80 or '81 (copyright) from a place called 'rainbow'? where they played iron maiden the song. it was paul di'anno, adrian smith and clive burr with dave murray and steve harris. they looked so much like fuckin spinal tap! my mouth was open when i wasn't head-banging. so awesome! can't wait to see the rest of this thing

Early Years is great! You are in for a treat and a half. But 'Beast Over Hammersmith' blows Rainbow away. Hearing/seeing Bruce with full pipes back then...glorious.

oh man i can't wait to get to my dvd player, dudes

Why did we never talk about this:

http://www.metalsucks.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/eddie-jessica-parker.jpg

From metalsucks back in 2008.

i'm shocked (shocked!) the final frontier is being ignored in year-end roundups. it's too bad, since "isle of avalon" is one of their great epics

It's really good but a combination of High On Fire and Cathedral has booted it out of my end of year list.

that cathedral album is GREAT and i cannot knock high on fire ever. seems like maiden somehow always gets the shaft though

Yes. YES. They're touring North America this summer...

http://www.ironmaiden.com/maiden-on-the-charge.html

V. sad news -- Clive Burr has passed on:

http://social.entertainment.msn.com/music/blogs/headbang-blogpost.aspx?post=f7aff587-1038-49c6-9d83-e27c0b007e53

So sad. Such a lovely-seeming guy, and man what a beast of a drummer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVmswOIYWlg

ah fuck it, play this whole thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfU_zLWsh6I

ragh screw that link, it's way out of sync

this one's better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWF-B95qZj0

got home from a morning appointment and my daughter immediately runs up to me and says "I have something very sad to tell you. One of your drummers died"

:(

:(

yr daughter is the cutest

That guy could pull off drum fills like no other. I remain a big fan of Nicko's, but Clive really did bring a lot of personality to those early Maiden songs.

Yeah Nicko is terrific. I do think there was something special about Clive's drumming though (possibly sheer nostalgia for him talking but I'd like to think not) - I feel like he helped to set the speed and the punk feel of that first album and helped informed their early style through full-out metal transition with Dickinson and NOTB. I don't know if you could do that with just any drummer.

definitely

RIP Paul.

He had a rough life, but what an impact he made on those two colossal records. That East End snarl of his, nothing like it.

really love the early maiden stuff, he gave it a real punk toughness, great singer

dude was just a real rocker

When I first became a Maiden fan there was nearly as much Di'Anno material available as there was Dickinson material, so me and my friends had a lot of fights about who was better. I eventually came to prefer Di'Anno, probably because I began to like punk rock too. RIP.

those two records really changed my life. I love Iron Maiden throughout the years but when I heard those, after I'd heard Number and Piece, a sense of metal's depth and range was clearer to me. and the fuckin hooks. Di'Anno had an ear for a chorus hook, one for the ages.

listening to the first record now, what a ripper 2 tuff

obv he's the gruff belter to bruce's operatic thing but i find his clean, melodic singing here to be very affecting and almost touchingly naive in a way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fkD-jzgMXE

i like what the guy contributed very much and love the era of maiden he emblemizes, but there's a lot of "the first and best maiden singer has died" today, and it comes from people who say they're all about metal and maiden now, but who very obviously looked down on maiden, metal and metalheads in the 80s.

and that is true, UMS, that at the time he and thus surely Harris were invested in projecting a hard man/ world weary POV, and the music makes it clear that it was transparently but touchingly not so.

xpost yeah otm i think there is a lot of truth to that

The first two Maiden albums are really good. But if they'd never changed vocalists, they would have never gotten bigger than, say, Motörhead. When you listen to Di'Anno's post-Maiden work, his limitations (vocal, creative) become very apparent very fast.

Yeah I only care for the first two records nowadays but clearly they made the right choice in binning him off and getting Brooce in. Also he was completely unreliable.

yeah that’s what i was half-saying upthread - there’s only so far you can go with that. It is sort of self-limiting

xpost

At least from where I was from, you had to be a pretty serious head to know those first two Maiden records in the 80s as they were imports for a long time.

i'd forgotten how much killers is just souped-up and speedier deep purple. i haven't heard it in a zillion years.

i never listened to iron maiden much. they were always "my brother's band". back when you laid claim to bands. he got maiden and motorhead and i got priest and black sabbath. he got aerosmith. i got rush.

Same deal in my house; I listened to Judas Priest, my younger brother listened to Iron Maiden.

This was a fun time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvHb7q5UXYI

Nicko retires! I heard Steve Harris's son-in-law will be the replacement.

https://www.ironmaiden.com/an-announcement-from-iron-maiden/

genuine shock when i saw that. A shame but unsurprising. Hopefully he pops up for a song or two at least at the big London 50th anniversary show next summer?

Nicko did have a stroke in early 2023. He recovered nicely and adapted quite well, he changed his mechanics to minimize arm movement. I saw Maiden in September 23 and October 24, and he held his own very well.

But time catches up to all of us. I remember Rod telling me years ago that Nicko's age was the one big concern when it came to planning, because they plan things years in advance. This seems like a lovely way for Nicko to end his 42 year run. He's a true gentleman, the kindest fellow, and will be missed.

(also it would not surprise me at all if Maiden indeed keep it in the family regarding a new drummer)

yeah he’s had a rough go of late, i am glad he’s going to be taking care of himself

and what a fucking legend
42 years! he still feels like the new guy lol

The farewell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J39JgVCMpLc

And the final live song and goodbye:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VxufJ8pqR0

Wonderful clips!

Simon Dawson from British Lion (Harry's side project) will be taking over as Maiden's touring drummer.

Now he just has to grow some extra arms or something.

Formerly of Dearly Beheaded!

No double kick drums allowed. Right foot only. No cheating.

I love how Janick Gers is no longer the newest bandmember, having served a 34 year run of hazing involving getting the other members' gear or whatever.

Finally watched the recent “Burning Ambition” doc — man, it’s a good one.

I want to see it, but it's a $20 rental from Amazon, so gonna wait a few months.

in a lot of ways it’s somewhat cursory, but there’s a lot of great footage & I really loved the fan involvement — the section on the Poland 1984 show is worth it on its own.

I saw the Run For Your Lives show in Montreal last night, a glorious time with 40-50,000 diehards.

The show was great! It's Maiden! Maiden is fun! Practically a spiritual experience for me personally, each show is a pilgrimage.

But the mix was weird AF, they isolated the three guitarists' solos beautifully, but I could barely hear any rhythm guitars during the entire show, just 'Arry's bass.

And as fun as Maiden is, they have absolutely taken a step back with Simon Dawson on drums. I miss Nicko badly. It's like they replaced several cannons with a pea shooter. "Right mate, just keep time and don't do anything crazier than a brief 16th note fill. And during meter changes, segue SLOWLY and CAUTIOUSLY." Fucks sake. They went from Expert setting on Guitar Hero to Beginner. Some excuse Simon by saying he plays behind the beat, but dude, on that tiny weekend warrior kit he is not the person for the job. They'll never play "Where Eagles Dare" again because HE CAN'T DO IT. No nuance, no groove, no flair, no personality. He struggled on every single Clive Burr track. His segue from the first half of Hallowed to the galloping climax was PAINFUL. Nicko kept the songs teetering on the edge, and even in 2024 he was able to keep the energy up.

The rest of the band were awesome. All the epics were immensely pleasing: Phantom, Powerslave, Mariner, 7th Son, Infinite Dreams. The Hallowed visuals were crazy good. Beer was consumed, all the fans were friendly, a fabulous time was had. Up the Irons.

Really glad I saw them when I did (five times between 2003-2010, mercifully dodging the bullet the year they played all of A Matter Of Life And Death live, even though I like that album).

Post-stroke Nicko still mopped the floor with the new guy.

But the mix was weird AF, they isolated the three guitarists' solos beautifully, but I could barely hear any rhythm guitars during the entire show, just 'Arry's bass.

And as fun as Maiden is, they have absolutely taken a step back with Simon Dawson on drums

Saw the show here in Minnesota yesterday. I was also thinking about the mix. They really did have the guitar solos coming through beautifully. This was my sixth(?) time seeing Maiden, and while of course it's always fun to hear them rip the solos out, I'd never enjoyed hearing them as much as I did last night.

And I also got the impression that the new drummer had a strangely meek and hesitant way of playing. But as it went on, I started to wonder if the mix had something to do with that too. During some of the climactic drum fills, the volume on the drums would suddenly jump dramatically, in a way that didn't seem like it could just be due to how hard the guy was playing--and it sounded good. Then he would go back to sounding muffled again. Made me wonder if he was being ill-served by the engineering.

Revisiting Dance Of Death and... why didn't they just give it new cover art when they remastered it in 2015? This album rules, but the cover is so bad.

Yeah, I was genuinely shocked that it didn't get a new cover when they remastered it.

It would have even been better with the first draft, without the extra computer graphics added:

https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cb/IronMaiden_DanceOfDeath_OriginalCoverArt.jpeg/250px-IronMaiden_DanceOfDeath_OriginalCoverArt.jpeg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=parser&utm_content=thumbnail

why did they stop working with Derek Riggs?

why did they stop working with Derek Riggs?

In a 2010 interview, he said it was problems with management.

MetalSucks: What I've read says that you ended things with IRON MAIDEN and walked away. This has included giving them Eddie without further claims on it. How do you look on that decision?

Riggs: Well, it probably wasn't the smartest business decision, but I didn't really care. I couldn't work with their management, and I still can't really. At that point, it just became too painful to keep doing it. I'd had enough. There was so much bullshit around "Fear Of The Dark". I just said, "Forget it, I've had enough." I mean, they gave me some money. But the rights to the character haven't been bought or sold — so that's still all floating out there. But the bottom line was that I'd had enough of doing it. Fuck it. And I wasn't going to be doing anything else with Eddie, so why not let them have it?

MetalSucks: You could have held it hostage, right? Weren't you leaving money on the table by not being an asshole?

Riggs: Well, I've done a few paintings for them since then. But they asked me to sign another contract with them. Initially it looked all right, but then I thought the better of it. Look, you can have an art director who wants to see six different versions of something because he's ten years old. But I can already tell you — "That's not going to work." Fucking around with different options… when I tell you it won't work, it won't work. And I got into artwork to do good artwork, not to satisfy an art director by making boring crap. Really, I've done zombies. At this point, it's like, "How do you want your zombie? Would you like him with a burning city behind him or with lightning? Do you want him boiled or fried?"

this is as much as I know, a dispute over the Fear of the Dark cover, from wiki:

According to the band's biographer, Mick Wall, the Fear of the Dark album cover by Melvyn Grant depicts their mascot, Eddie, "as some sort of Nosferatu tree figure leering at the moon". It was the group's first not to be designed by artist Derek Riggs, who said in 2006 that he had a dispute with Smallwood and Steve Harris over the cover art concept. He submitted over 20 sketch ideas ranging from Eddie being a werewolf to a vampire and then a monster leaning over the foot of the bed, to which all were rejected. In frustration, Riggs told the manager to "find someone else," hung up the phone, and would not work with the band for some time.

oh unperson beat me to it

Watched a doco last night about Paul D’ianno (streaming on Night Flight Plus) called “Di'Anno – Iron Maiden's Lost Singer”

It’s mostly about the final 5 to 10 years of his life but also a retrospective. Fairly low budget affair but good interviews & lord almighty it’s definitely warts & all - fucking hell he really did it rough. Not exactly easy to be around it seemed. And I had no idea that 2 fans crowdfunded a large part of his healthcare & were pretty much with him right to the end. crazy!
There’s some good footage of later performances, one or two that remind you he still had the juice.

But it’s such a gnarly cocktail when you have chronic illness, substance issues, chronic mental health problems & it just all fucking spirals so easily.

Anyway. Good interview from
a few months ago w the director here:
https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/filmmaker-wes-orshoski-interview-paul-dianno-documentary-1236252362/

https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/filmmaker-wes-orshoski-interview-paul-dianno-documentary-1236252362/

Oops so nice I posted the link twice ffs

The director is a friend of mine - he also did the Lemmy movie, and invited me down to South by Southwest in 2010 to interview Lemmy live onstage.

!!

awesome!