Published: 5:19PM BST 28 Jul 2010
Most gig-goers consider it overkill to wear a band’s tee-shirt to their concert. Iron Maiden fans, as in much else, are the exception to the rule. The entire 15,000 capacity crowd at the preposterously named Jiffy Lube Live amphitheatre in Bristow, Virginia, seem to be wearing Iron Maiden tee-shirts, most portraying the band’s zombie-like mascot Eddie The Head. They also sing along as one, a vocal army, even drowning out the band during the 1992 song 'Fear Of The Dark’. Iron Maiden lap it up, all six of them responding with a frenetic agility that belies their fifty-something ages.
It’s not a dauntingly large crowd for Maiden. They regularly play to upwards of 50,000 and in South America they’re superstars, mobbed in the streets. Make no mistake, Iron Maiden are huge. Thinking of them in terms of a patch on a sleeveless denim jacket, hastily sewn between Saxon and Twisted Sister, is outdated. The reality is that Iron Maiden have sold more than 80 million albums and often play the same stages as U2 or The Eagles. In 2009 they even won the Brit Award for Best Live Act over Coldplay, The Verve and others.
It’s not a dauntingly large crowd for Maiden. They regularly play to upwards of 50,000 and in South America they’re superstars, mobbed in the streets. Make no mistake, Iron Maiden are huge. Thinking of them in terms of a patch on a sleeveless denim jacket, hastily sewn between Saxon and Twisted Sister, is outdated. The reality is that Iron Maiden have sold more than 80 million albums and often play the same stages as U2 or The Eagles. In 2009 they even won the Brit Award for Best Live Act over Coldplay, The Verve and others.
“I don’t see why anyone would want to photograph us,” he muses, “It’s not like we’re budding George Clooneys. We don’t want to be recognised really, except for what we do. The celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan – what’s she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair. Maybe we’re some kind of antidote to that.”
Dickinson has short hair nowadays but his bandmates have proper metal manes. Foremost among them is bassist, founder and the band’s driving force, Steve Harris, who writes most of the songs. The other members are gregarious boxer-nosed drummer Nicko McBrain, and virtuoso guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. Their sound onstage is dynamic, all topped with Dickinson’s screeching vocals. It’s also a musical gumbo. Rather than the bludgeoning blues riffing of ACDC and other heavy rockers, Maiden major in prog rock’s portentous storytelling, all tinted with folky mysticism, literary references, from Samuel Coleridge to Raymond Briggs, and a hefty dollop of death (“Always a theme with metal because it’s the great mystery,” says Dickinson). Yet, what makes it exciting is their relentless galloping rhythms, triple-headed guitar attack and a sonic aggressiveness redolent of punk.
Harris is having none of it. “Punk was only important in that we hated it and didn’t want anything to do with it,” he says backstage in his affable London geezer accent, “Punk came out at the time we were doing pub gigs and it was very difficult for us to get work because we didn’t look right. We were around before punk, from ’75, and then when punk began to really happen in ’77 people started making those comparisons which really annoyed us because we didn’t want them.”
Whether he wanted them or not, in the wake of punk, Harris’s fast, energized vision for metal found an increased audience. In 1980 Iron Maiden started to have hits and, when they replaced singer Paul Di’Anno with Bruce Dickinson in 1982 'The Number Of The Beast’ album put them in rock’s major league. It was accompanied by much controversy over supposed Satanic influences but dark occultism simply doesn’t fit Maiden, they’re more Terry Pratchett than Alistair Crowley. When a giant animated Eddie arrives onstage, Dave Murray, whose genial ruddy features are creased with an ever-present grin, prods the animatronic creature with his guitar. Far from scary, it’s very British, good-natured entertainment.
The true drama for Maiden was the 1990s when metal went out of vogue in the wake of grunge. There was worse to come. Dickinson left in 1993 to pursue a solo career becoming, in his own words, “a respectable global cottage industry.”
“I was a bit down when Bruce left,” recalls Harris, “going through a divorce, probably at my lowest ebb ever, and for a couple of hours I thought about it [finishing Iron Maiden]. Then I thought, 'What are you doing? Just get out there and bloody do it’.”
He hired another singer, Blaze Bayley of the band Wolfsbane, now best known for his appearances in hair restoration adverts. Iron Maiden’s popularity went down but was far from out and when Dickinson re-entered the fold in 1999 the band’s ensuing career made them bigger than ever. A couple of years ago they toured from India to Costa Rica and beyond, entirely on their own customised Boeing 757, Ed Force One, filled with tons of equipment alongside the band and crew. Eddie, naturally, was painted on the tailfin and Dickinson was pilot.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, Maiden are not a nostalgia act. The current tour concentrates mainly on their last three albums, while concerts in 2006 consisted of them playing the whole of their new album from beginning to end. This would be suicidal for many bands but Iron Maiden fans are a breed apart, constantly welcoming new young blood.
“We seem to have more regenerations than 'Dr Who’,” says Dickinson, “What’s good is that when each new generation discovers the band it’s usually on the cusp of a new album, then they work their way though the older albums.”
Their latest album has a raw quality akin to their most popular early '80s material, and the Virginian crowd respond enthusiastically to the sole new track, the rampaging 'El Dorado’. Iron Maiden close their set, however, with their 1980 debut single 'Running Free’ then rush through the backstage area to a convoy of vans and limos that screech off into the night accompanied by a police escort. This sight certainly doesn’t hinder their A-list credentials yet the key to their appeal is not glamour and excess. Bruce Dickinson may have hit on something earlier when he said, “There’s a bit of old-fashioned stagecraft to this and we’re very proud of that fact. All our backdrops are painted. People have tried to sell us the latest wingding video walls and we went, 'I’m afraid it looks crap, it looks like you’re standing in front of some garish fruit machine in Vegas – awful.’ Our backdrops are 2D on canvas but they have a more 3D effect than anything that’s quote-unquote modern.”
Anyone who’s seen the spectacle of, say, a Chemical Brothers show, would agree this perspective is dubious and yet it nails the appeal of Iron Maiden. They do things their own way and are willing to graft for it, offering old-fashioned entertainment to a ballistic rock template. Iron Maiden are not the “garish fruit machine” Dickinson refers to; they are instead closer to pinball, occasionally given a graphic makeover and eventually unexpectedly classic.
SOURCE
No comments:
Post a Comment