Up the Irons: A Personal Tribute to Iron Maiden

It was pretty much pre-ordained that I was going to be a rock'n'roller.   When I was just seven a friend of my older brother introduced me to Alice Cooper and "School's Out."  If there is a hard rock song out there accessible to a seven year old, it has to be that one. 

           

            No more teachers, no more books

            No more teachers dirty looks...

            School's been blown to pieces

I could relate, you want I mean?

I don't remember the guy's name, even what he looked like, but I still remember exactly what his room looked like. It was in the basement with not much light and wallpapered with rock posters.  He  had a picture of Donny Osmond on his dart board.  And he had an Alice Cooper poster that probably looked like this:

It was this or Donny Osmond

And I remember the guy telling me that Alice Cooper had a certificate proving he was insane.  It made sense to me--who on Earth would change their name to  girl's name?  Ugh! 

Then, in England, another older friend introduced me to Queen, playing some tracks he liked from Queen II.  This was just before Queen hit superstardom with "Bohemian Rhapsody" and they were still very much an underground band.  Although, at ten, I was too young to really "get" Queen, I had never heard anything like Freddie Mercury's operatic vocals, and, as a student of classical piano, the symphonic sound appealed to me.

Note the lighting effect to hide the fact that they are all butt-ugly.

 Then, as a teenager, I was at a party when someone played a song that started with the immortal Vincent Price intoning "Woe to you, O Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends the Breast with wrath..."  That went into a frenetic, galloping sonic assault called "The Number of the Beast."  Pretty mellow in comparison to later bands like Metallica and Avenged Sevenfold, but by contemporary standards, this was sheer heaviness.   I was hooked right away.  Soon after, they even got radio play (rare for a heavy metal band at the times) with "Run to the Hills."

Where would people get the idea that Iron Maiden was Satanic?

Iron Maiden was one of the earliest concerts I went to.  These guys put everything into their live show and toured relentlessly.  I saw them four times in as many years, I think.  They always had the greatest productions and put 110% into every show.  I was never disappointed. Well except maybe when they hired Twisted Sister to back them up.  Poor Dee Schneider, Twisted Sister's singer, got beaked by a pizza box when he played in Vancouver. No offence, Dee, but that nose of yours was an easy target.

See what I mean, with the schozz?

The lads in concert.

Iron Maiden's musical style again appealed to my classical sensibilities from all those years of piano.  (By now I'd switched to guitar, much to my mom's chagrin, but bless her soul, she went out an bought me an electric guitar.)  Most of the heavy rock'n'roll up to that time--Led Zeppelin, Motorhead, Aerosmith--was based on the pentatonic, or five-note, scale that gave it that blues-oriented feel.  Iron Maiden guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray used the classical seven-note scale, primarily in the minor keys, combined with complex guitar harmonies.  The rhythm section--Steve Harris on bass and Nicko McBrain on drums--were fast and incredibly tight.  And Bruce Dickinson, the singer, had incredible range and power and leaned into every syllable.  He also had a great sense of dynamics building from a baritone growl to a gut-wrenching scream.

Steve Harris, the bass player, was also the band's primary songwriter.  They got into a lot of trouble with "Number of the Beast" as  a band of Satanists, and their records were promptly burned in some areas of the southern US.  But (unlike, say, Alice Cooper) their entire stage presence and songwriting wasn't exclusively dedicated to evil.  Even if you listen to their "horror" songs, lyrically they are more akin to, say, an Edgar Allen Poe story than "Let's all go get bent and worship the devil." 

Many of their best songs were actually about wars.  The Trooper is based on the Charge of the Light Brigade, an epic poem about the Crimean War. Aces High is about World War II flying aces.  And Run to the Hills is about the war between the North American Indians and white settlers from Europe.  They’ve also done heavy metal versions of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and the old British TV classic The Prisoner.  Quite eclectic.

Iron Maiden went out with the 80s.  A new age of metal heralded by Slayer, Pantera and especially Metallica, with a more raw, heavier sound and without the spandex.  Iron Maiden suffered from association with the 80s hair bands, which was unfortunate.  Iron Maiden pushed musical boundaries and were one of the hardest working acts in rock'n'roll.  They deservedly enjoyed a resurgence in the early 2000s, selling out stadiums again world-wide.  Sure there were more beer guts and balding pates in the crowd, and their sound was now decidedly "retro," but good music never dies.  And Iron Maiden was, in my opinion anyway, a bright spot in the cultural dead zone that was the music of the 80s.

While other rock stars were busy picking up various drug addictions, Bruce Dickinson was busy becoming an internationally competitive fencer and a jumbo jet pilot.  In 2006, Dickinson flew in a Boeing 757 and rescued about 200 stranded British citizens caught in Lebanon during the Israel/Hezbollah crisis.  

Flight 666.  

My son watched the Iron Maiden documentary Flight 666 about five times on a flight from Vancouver to Cape Breton, and was quite enamored with Bruce Dickinson.  So as for Oscar having a role model who's a rock, star, swordfighter and heroic pilot--I'm OK with that.

Have a listen to Maiden playing "Run to the Hills" at Rock in Rio" in 2001.  To a crowd of 350,000.  Incredible energy.   Up the Irons!