Guitarist Dave Murray's defining memory of being in Iron Maiden is from 2001, when the ageing English headbangers headlined a night at the world's largest music festival, Rock in Rio. With about 250,000 Brazilians surrounding the stage, the band took the elevator to the roof of their luxury hotel and boarded a helicopter. As they approached the site they could make out an unexpected fog bank, which they realised was actually steam coming off the crowd.
"We landed backstage, did the show and then flew back to the hotel," the genial Murray recalls. "I remember thinking at the time that it was certainly a huge leap from growing up in East London."
Oversized achievement and polite self-possession are defining elements within Iron Maiden. The band, touring Australia for the first time since 1992, have sold more than 100 million albums since their 1980 self-titled debut. Along the way they've relied on well-honed musicianship and a sense of mutual identification with their fans. Iron Maiden was always about denim, not leather, while the teased locks of the American hair-metal generation would have gotten them laughed out of their local pub.
They have been as popular on their Somewhere Back In Time world tour as they were in their '80s heyday, neatly sidestepping the '90s, when key members including singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith left the band and then returned. Today, band, crew and backline travel in a converted 757 - customised with an image of the band's skeleton-like mascot, Eddie - that is co-piloted by Dickinson.
"Twenty years ago the only exercise we did was to jog down the pub, have a few beers and jog home again," Murray says. "These days most of the guys do some form of sporting activity, whether it is tennis or football, to keep themselves fit."
Murray's preference is golf, a sport he plays on the courses of Hawaii, where he and his family have lived for several years.
"I'm generally a nice shade of red," jokes the 51-year-old expatriate.
The truth is that Iron Maiden in 2008 is a collection of extremely wealthy middle-aged men. It's now a quarter of a century since Christian activists in American publicly burned their 1982 album The Number Of The Beast for perceived Satanic messages; these days bassist Steve Harris's daughter Lauren is the group's opening act on tour and they do charitable endeavours.
"When you go out on tour you're surrounded by all this stuff but we just like to have a few beers or a glass of wine now and we've never really been interested in excess," Murray says. "Drugs have been part of the music culture since the 1960s but this band has just never gone down that route. We always thought playing music was the best way to have fun."
The set for their tour is heavy on material from the mid-'80s, a favoured period of a fanbase that now spans several generations. Galloping basslines, time changes, epic lyrics and intricate solos - all at great volume - are the order of the day, with Murray certain that muscle memory and dedicated rehearsal will help him remaster Iron Maiden's anthems for frustrated male adolescents.
Not that he feels the pressure to succeed any more.
"The first big cheque I got for being in Maiden was in 1981," Murray says proudly. "I bought a house for my mum and dad and got them out of South London. After that nothing else really mattered - if we failed I'd already had that deeply satisfying moment."
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