iconic as the band and its music is its maniacal, mischievous mascot, Eddie the ‘Ed, or simply Eddie. And while the world is waiting with baited breath for the new Iron Maiden album, THE FINAL FRONTIER to be released on August 17, we thought it might be fun to explore how Eddie came into his current space-aged incarnation.We reached out to THE FINAL FRONTIER cover artist Melvyn Grant to give us some insight into this strange and gruesome metamorphosis. This is not Grant’s first endeavor into the realm of Iron Maiden. He also provided the cover art for FEAR OF THE DARK, VIRTUAL XI, DEATH ON THE ROAD, and “The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg” single. In addition, he was originally asked to sketch a cover for “The Wicker Man” single cover, but prior commitments made that impossible.
Read on, as we peel back the skull cap of current Iron Maiden cover artist, Mr. Melvyn Grant!
How many drafts do you typically go through when creating an Iron Maiden cover? I know the guys are very particular about everything they do.
It’s not so much particular; they actually have a rough idea of what they want. They know sort of what they want, but they don’t REALLY know what they want. When you start doing things, that is what triggers their imaginations, and that’s when they want something changed. With THE FINAL FRONTIER, I was supposed to finish in April, and I think it went well into May; and that was the final painting. You try it one way, and they go, “Can we change this?” or “Can we move this around slightly?” So the whole this is repainted time and time again.
What we have on the cover image for THE FINAL FRONTIER, is that the full, complete image, or is
there more to it? I ask, because when I perused your website, I found the full image for the DEATH ON THE ROAD cover, which was massive, but the actual album cover came out almost bland.Yes, that is the complete image. But yeah, they messed up the colors a bit on DEATH ON THE ROAD. I guess they didn’t want to show a green guy driving along somebody’s colon.
The first two paintings I did for Iron Maiden were for FEAR OF THE DARK and VIRTUAL XI. They were both actually oil paintings, and I dealt with Iron Maiden directly through my agent. And that was fine. And then with DEATH ON THE ROAD, it came through a design studio, and that’s how it’s been ever since. And I think when you’re going through 3-4 people; that’s where things get muddled and changed around. That’s what takes up too much time.
DEATH ON THE ROAD came to me as a sort of color sketch; it was very rough. And they had, in the background, a regular sunset sky. And I felt that they wanted me to do a rough draft to show them how I would do it – Maiden always like to hedge their bets; they want people to try things, even though they are going to go with you anyway. And I felt that a sunset, stormy sky is not going to be good enough for Maiden fans. So I thought, “Okay, let’s turn the clouds into guts, with intestines lying about!” And that’s what I did. Maiden liked it, and that’s how that painting came about. Otherwise, it would have been really bland!
As there have been many different incarnations of Eddie that you have painted, how much of his metamorphosis has been your imagination, and how much was input by the band?
Well, Derek Riggs and his style of artwork never appealed to me, so naturally I wanted to change it and do my version of Eddie. But that was stopped by Maiden, who didn’t want me to stray too far from the original style, which obviously all of the band’s fans like. You get so used to something that it becomes your “thing,” and you fall in love with that version of Eddie. I did try to change him a bit, in a way that suited me and made me happier with it. The latest version on THE FINAL FRONTIER is not Eddie, as such. I’m not going to say anything more on that, because I don’t know what Iron Maiden have got planned, so I’m not going to tread on any toes or mess up any surprises. Okay, I’ll tell you, he is actually an alien. The old Eddie might still come around.
I enjoy working with the Maiden crew, but it does exasperate you when you have to keep changing things. Rod [Smallwood, Iron Maiden’s manager] and I get on pretty well; I haven’t met him for years. But after I did the first one, the teaser “Eddie head,” he called me and said how much he really liked it. His words, I think, were “f***ing amazing!” Which was very nice of him to do, because they were very busy setting up this tour. Everything’s happening all at once, and yet I find that they are very nice people to deal with. On the copyright agreement side, we worked out mutually good things. And if they plan on using things that they like, they pay for it. They don’t mess around.
From where do you draw inspiration for your visions of Eddie? It seems that when you aren’t doing a
single or a live album, you tend to stray away from the “human” aspect of the Eddie character.The original Eddie seemed to be very happy causing all sorts of chaos and hacking people to bits with axes and things like that. I did want to put more psychological tension in it. For instance, on FEAR OF THE DARK, the first one I did, I don’t think many people realize that Eddie is not actually sitting in the tree. He’s actually coming down the tree. So you can really look at it either way. The body is coming down from the tree, and it looks like Eddie has a tail close to the moon. I try to put a little more depth into it aside from utter brutality.
On THE FINAL FRONTIER, I did various sketches based on the title alone. Then they came up with the idea of doing something on the space craft. Originally, when I did it, it wasn’t Eddie reaching in like he is; he was more meaty-like and stealthier in a more evil way. Originally, they didn’t want the space craft all ripped to shreds. They wanted it to look like a hatch had come off and there would be a skeletal crew inside. So I wanted to make Eddie almost slither in. But gradually, it molded into the more brutal one, which is what you see now.
When I was showing them the several sketches of my ideas, Rod liked the head on one of the Eddies, and he asked me if I could do a front-view of that head, one with the mouth closed and one with the mouth open. So I did a pencil of that, which he and the studio really liked. But then it got passed over to Steve [Harris] and Bruce [Dickinson], and they weren’t happy with it, because it wasn’t gruesome enough. Steve didn’t say much, but Bruce gave a lot of comments on it. So then I did one with half the head putrefied and diseased while the other half was okay, sent them over, and they really liked that. That then became the teaser poster.
What is the significance of the key?
I don’t know. It’s no good asking me lots of things about this, because I don’t even think Maiden know. And that’s another good thing, I think, about Maiden. They always want to give their fans something fresh; something new. They take chances. With this Eddie I’ve just done for THE FINAL FRONTIER, as someone said to me at the beginning, “You’ve already split the fan base in half!” Some people really hate it. And the things some of them wanted to do to me on the forums, you wouldn’t believe it. “Bring back our Eddie! Bring back our Eddie!” Quite frankly, I think they wanted Eddie to stab me and eat me!
When you are putting the artwork together, do you do it with spaces for the logo and the title in mind? I was kinda shocked to see that half of the FEAR OF THE DARK cover was plain black.
Well, yeah, actually, a lot of that comes from things they send to me. But now that I’m dealing with the design studio (Peacock Studio in London), they will do that. If I submit a sketch, they will drop the logo and everything in behind it. So I will have an idea of where it is going, and we can all work around it. It really is a synergistic thing.
Did you also do the “El Dorado” single cover?
No, not as such. When I was finished with the album cover, I was absolutely exhausted and took a couple of weeks off. When I came back, they said they were doing a line-drawing for a single cover, like the old 1950s comic book artwork. And they asked if I could do a penciled image of Eddie – the head and the hands – so it would match correctly to THE FINAL FRONTIER cover art. And that’s all I did. Then another artist used Illustrator to make a line-drawing out of it. I didn’t know anything about it outside of what they had asked me to do.
It wasn’t until one of the fact-checking Wikipedia editors got in touch with me that I knew what the cover was. It turned out that the cover was actually done by someone else who worked at Peacock Studio who also did the text and layout for THE FINAL FRONTIER. His name is Anthony Dry, and he’s actually done a lot of line-drawings for DOCTOR WHO.
Someone asked if Iron Maiden was going to do a comic book. I don’t know, but I think it would be fun to work with Anthony Dry on a comic book, because he does good line work, and I could do the cover and a few splash pages with full artwork, which would make quite a good book, I think.
For more info: Check out more on Melvyn Grant and his artwork at his official website.
THE FINAL FRONTIER is currently available for pre-order at Amazon, iTunes, and CDUniverse in several configurations.
And keep current on all things Iron Maiden at the band’s official website!
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