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Once again, words and lyrics are not required. Let the music do the talking: here are three lovely instrumentals to ease you into another week.

First we have Dan Fogelberg, from his collaboration with Tim Weisberg and a lovely piece called “Paris nocturne”.


A classic from Elton John. Okay, it has some words at the end, but in fairness, they don't get in the way of this spectacular and moving tune.


To finish up then, here's the title and closing track from Tom Waits' first album; this is, rather appropriately, “Closing time”.

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Oh! How we danced! Well, the worm didn't, but he wriggled a lot! Unfortunately for Yazz, the title somewhat belied the truth, as this was her biggest hit.

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Appropriate, with the Euro Championships taking place at the moment, this is the music you'll hear before each match. Why? The worm has no idea, but it's a great song. This is the Alan Parsons Project, with “Sirius”, leading into “Eye in the sky”.

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Another from the great Dave Edmunds, this is “I hear you knockin'”.

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Ole, ole, ole, oh look, it's over. Well, for us anyway. Can't say the boys didn't give it their all … oh, wait, you can. Pretty poor performance all round, must be our worst ever in Europe. Still, at least the fans did us proud: best in the world! This is for them, who maintained Irish pride even in the face of what has to be admitted a substandard team and a total lack of effort. Our last and enduring memory, besides four nil to Spain, and Torres bearing down on Given, will be the strains of “The fields of Athenry” being belted out across the stadium as strong and enthusiastically as if we were winning the match. Well, done, ye supporters of the boys in green!

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If you look down past all this blurb to where the album review begins, you'll note that, like the previous and indeed first album I featured in this series, this one comes from the early eighties. Is that a coincidence? Well, no. 1980 was when I began my working life, and so became exposed to a lot more music than I had ever dreamed possible, and the early 80s was when I first dipped my toes into the hot waters of heavy metal, and found I liked it. Prior to starting work, at seventeen years of age, I had what you might call a sheltered musical upbringing. My mother's family were always having a “sing-song” whenever they gathered (which was relatively often) but they would natually sing Irish traditional songs, and songs from their own youth --- Sinatra, Holliday, Lee, things like that --- and I hated these sessions with a passion, not least of which was because I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but also I knew nothing of these artistes. They held no interest for me, brought back no memories and their music --- at least at that time --- meant nothing to me. It was long dead. (Yeah, I was immature and naïve: I was only probably fourteen or fifteen at the time though, so I have some excuse).

Terrible as these sing-songs were though, there would be my uncle Reggie with his accordion, someone on a banjo; people who knew how to play music and did so pretty much effortlessly. It made me want to learn, but hey, I was a lazy teenager, and there was just no way I was ever going to put in the hours and concentration required to learn a musical instrument! I picked up a guitar once, but couldn't hold down the strings enough to make a chord: they were digging into my fingers so much that I gave up almost right away (all you guitarists are free to laugh and chuck rotten fruit). Back in our house, it was a different scene altogether. My waste-of-space father ruled with a tyrannical hand and a disarming smile that could be turned on for visitors, his hands having been only minutes before around my mother's throat. He refused to allow us any sort of “frivolous” items, so there were no record players, and few radios.

There was a hulking oak (or some sort of wood; I always assumed it was oak --- looked like a direct nuclear hit wouldn't even scratch it!) gramaphone in our sitting room, and come Christmas --- and Christmas only --- it would be fired up by him and he would load on his awful, ugly 78s with names so obscure that I can't even recall them. All I remember now are labels: His Master's Voice (he had a lot of those, blue and red labels) and Decca, probably others but they're the ones that stick in my memory. The songs were bland, generic rubbish like you'd hear someone perhaps play in “It's a wonderful life”: music that harked back to a happier, simpler time, and which he no doubt thought he could revisit here, in the 1970s. Of course, those happy singers weren't beating up their wives (well, maybe they were, but it was not mentioned) and dominating their children, but hey, it was his world and that was how he chose to see it.

Other than that then, we had a radio: just the one, in the kitchen, and we would be made listen to the national radio station, RTE, which played --- you guessed it --- Irish music and older stuff from the 40s and 50s. No pop music here! And the pirate radio stations, those that dared flout convention and play “questionable” music, music that wasn't seen as being fit for decent ears, were strictly banned from the dial. It was only when I managed to win my own tiny little transistor radio around 1976 that I was able to move beyond the stale confines of my father's chosen music on the radio and hear other things. One station which captured my attention and opened up a whole new musical vista for me was Radio Luxembourg, as I'm sure it holds a place in the heart of many a teenage boy or girl who would otherwise not have been aware of such music. I used to listen to this in bed, the radio pressed to my ear, its tiny, one-piece earphone jammed in my ear, the cold plastic bringing to my brain music I could never have known existed. This was my first real personal music experience, and it was mine alone, no-one could take that from me, not even him.

Later my sister got her own record-player, but that was jealously guarded behind her bedroom door, so it would only be muffled melodies I would hear drifting from her room, the occasional guitar or piano passage, or a few snatches of words as her door opened as she came out then closed again, forever sealing the music in once more, like treasure glimpsed but never available. When she got married she took the record player with her. It wasn't until my father finally did the best thing he could for us (other than dying, which he unfortunately still refuses to do, with my mother over twenty years gone before him, and to I hope a much better place than he will find himself in when he can finally cheat Death no more) and left us that I was able to think about getting a record player of my own. The palpable sense of relief when he left is something I still remember today, and though I know some small part of my mam was sorry to see him go --- probably more a sense of failure on her part, though there was none, than any real regret, and sorrow too that we would all have to grow up without a father, not that we'd ever really had one, in truth --- we all rejoiced and restrictions were not only relaxed, but given a good kicking and told to get out and never come back.

But enough of my family history. What that was all leading up to was that after my so-called father left, I was eventually able to get a record player and begin buying records. Of course, at the time I was still at school and had little or no money for such things, and my mother was doing her level best to make ends meet. In Ireland, there is no divorce --- wasn't then, still isn't --- and so a woman who separates from her husband is entitled to nothing from him, nor from the State. He got away scot-free, in terms of having to pay any sort of maintenance; he started a new life, while my mam did her best to hold our own lives together. It saddens me to think, not only of how hard it was for her, but of how uncaring and selfish I and my brothers were, interested only in why we couldn't have this or that, so rather than go too deeply into that I'm going to wrap this up now.

I had seen the covers of Iron Maiden albums (the debut and “Killers”) and to be honest they had always scared me. I couldn't guess what the music behind those covers could be like, but I had a feeling it would be loud, raucous and nasty. For someone whose current favourite bands were Genesis and ELO, with a bit of Supertramp thrown in, that didn't sound like the sort of music I would be into. But then they appeared on “Top of the Pops”, and my worldview was turned around. Having heard “Run to the hills”, I fell instantly in love with it, with this band, with this sort of music. The image, the power, the passion, the melodies. I just loved it all. I went right out and bought this album, and it certainly changed my life.

The number of the Beast --- Iron Maiden --- 1982 (EMI)


Of course, I didn't know it at the time, not having heard the other two albums they had put out, but Maiden had just gone through a major lineup change and were heading in a new commercial direction that would take them to the very top of the heavy metal tree, influence a generation and make them the best known and loved metal band in the country, and then the world. Fresh from his previous band, Samson, singer Bruce Dickinson had replaced Paul Di'Anno, whose more gutteral, punk-styled vocals had certainly suited the more visceral, angry and punkish two previous albums, even though on “Killers” you could see early evidence of Iron Maiden's shift towards more melodic, insightful songs and away from the somewhat thrash metal of the debut. It was also the last album to feature Clive Burr on drums (though what a way to make your exit!) and the first to include lyrics by Adrian Smith, as well as a contribution by the departing drummer to the final track.

Although lambasted as an “album for devil worshippers” by the ever-funny Religious Right and their cohorts, “The number of the Beast” has no songs about Satan, other than the title track, and that's based on a nightmare Steve Harris had after watching “The omen”. The album sleeve probably doesn't help to dispell this myth, of course, but then, Maiden were never about backing down in the face of controversy. The album also features a lot of songwriting by Dickinson, though due to contractual obligations with Samson he was not allowed to be credited for them, but when you look at later Maiden albums on which he was credited, the evidence of his influence on the lyrics on this album is certainly there.

The album opens strongly, with the pounding drums of Burr and the twin guitar attack of Adrian Smith and Dave Murray, with “Invaders” detailing the attack of vikings on a small English town. Dickinson's different vocal style to Di'Anno's is immediately evident; more controlled, fluid, sounding more trained and professional. The song is hardly a masterpiece, being a general metal song of marauders, though seen through the eyes of the invaded rather than the attackers, almost narrated as either a warning or even a bulletin: ”They're coming over the hills!/ They're gonna attack!/ They're coming in for the kill!/ There's no turning back!” It dashes along at breakneck pace, the sense of panic and fear transmitted through both the music and Dickinson's shouts of warning.

Of course, the vikings, having attacked, later settled in England (and Ireland), but naturally that's not mentioned in the lyric. Wouldn't have looked too good, would it? ”Invaders! Settling down!/ Invaders! Raising a family!” Great guitar solo in the middle, and then things slow down for “Children of the damned”, based on the John Wyndham novel “The Midwich Cuckoos”, with a slow strummed guitar while another wails in counterpoint, and Dickinson sings in an almost tender voice, pumping it up for the chorus. It's almost a ballad, but then halfway through it picks up speed, changing direction to perhaps mirror the burning of the man in the lyric, as Dickinson asks ”He's dust on the ground/ What have we learned?” Another great solo and the song powers along to its climax, a change which really took me by surprise when I first heard it. It's also the first time we get to really hear that “air-raid siren” voice that was to earn Dickinson the nickname, as he screams out the ending.

Having asked permission of the star of the original show, Patrick McGoohan, to use a clip from the intro to the TV series, “The Prisoner” begins as a slower cruncher, with Dickinson as the title protagonist vowing he will get away and take revenge on the people who put him in “The Village”. It quickly ramps up though, and becomes a rocking metal song, with a lyric which would be revisited in some form later, in songs like “The fugitive” and of course “Back in the village”. There's a long guitar part in the fourth minute which allows Murray and Smith to further hone their partnership, then chugging guitar takes us into “22 Acacia Avenue”, which is in fact a continuation of the song written by Dave Murray on the debut, and originally written by Smith for his previous band.

It's a really interesting track, as it goes through a total change halfway through, both musically and lyrically. When it starts, it's a simple recommendation for Charlotte, a well-known prostitute who will do just about anything: ”Beat her, mistreat her/ Do anything you please/ Bite her, excite her/ Make her get down on her knees!” and sung with lascivious pleasure and heavy metal chauvinism by Dickinson, but halfway through it becomes something much more, as Bruce pleads with Charlotte to give up this life and come away with him. He tries to point out to her the dangers in the career she has chosen, and eventually as the guitars power away excitedly behind him, decides to take the initiative and pack her bags for her.

In this way, Iron Maiden exploded the accepted image of metal, and indeed, rock bands, who generally if they wrote about women did so in an exploitative way, grinning at their helplessness, seeing them only as objects of pleasure. This is probably not the first song to do so, but it was certainly my first experience of a rock band empowering, to some extent, a woman, especially a lady of the night, trying to get inside her head rather than just her knickers, and saying something positive, important and relevant about these women, the majority of whom do not choose this path, but are left with no choice if they want to survive.

Iron Maiden became, I believe (with hindsight of course), with this one song, the “thinking man's heavy metal band”.

Although they had wanted horror icon Vincent Price to intone the opening to the title track, a quote from the Book of Revelations, they could not afford his, er, price, and so another actor was chosen, but he does a very good job declaring how the Beast will be recognised, by the number 666. The song powers along on hot guitar work from Smith and Murray, a real headbanger with some great solos, and the lyric certainly seems to concern satanic worship, which is obviously why the guardians of morality came down so hard on Iron Maiden. It's a great title track, and made a great single, but it was the next one that gave them their first hit top ten single, and indeed, as mentioned, the track that encouraged me to go out and buy this album, and so start a lifelong love affair with this band.

Heavy thumping drums and squealing guitars that sound like horses, or Indian braves whooping (yes, I know they're supposed to be called Native Americans. Sue me.) open the song, then the guitars get going and Burr's drums trundle along like a steam locomotive, as Dickinson relates the tale of the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans (there! Happy?) from the Old West by the white man: ”Selling them whiskey/ Taking their gold/ Enslaving the young/ And destroying the old”. In the middle of a heavy guitar build-up, Bruce again winds up that powerful voice as the song rockets along, but it's in the closing that he really gives it free rein, reaching notes even the late Bee Gees would probably be proud of!

If there's a weak track on the album --- I say if --- then it's “Gangland”. It's fast and heavy enough, and it's not filler by any means, but against the other excellent tracks on this it just doesn't cut it for me. It sounds more like something that would have been more comfortable on “Killers” or even the debut, and in fact the main melody is very similar to “Invaders”, with the lyric certainly lacking: ”Dead men tell no tales/ In Gangland/ Murder's up for sale!” It's perhaps telling that this is the only song on “The number of the Beast” that features no songwriting at all from Steve Harris, who keeps a fairly tight rein on things otherwise, either writing or co-writing every track.

The difference is immediately evident when we hit the closer. One of the most famous and loved Iron Maiden songs, “Hallowed be thy name” has gone down as a must-play at almost every gig ever since, and is indeed one of the band's own favourites. The closest they come to progressive metal here, it's the longest track on the album by some way, clocking in at over seven minutes, and starting off with slow doomy guitar and dark, pealing bells as Dickinson takes the persona of a criminal waiting to be hanged. Shortly, as Bruce's voice rises, the guitars wind up and get faster and more powerful, the whole song taking off into perhaps the second movement where Bruce shouts out his desperation against mostly start/stop guitar, then there's a pretty long instrumental as the guitars of Smith and Murray take the song into its third minute. Dickinson comes back in then for the final verse as he is marched to the gallows, and the twin guitar attack runs with the song to almost the end, getting more and more intense, with solos and changes as it goes along, until Dickinson finally comes in at the end with a heartfelt rendition of the title, more pealing bells and a final machine-gun volley from drums and guitar to end the song, and take the album to an incredibly satisfying close.

Did this album, then, change my life because it introduced me to Iron Maiden? Well, yes, partly, but more importantly, it showed me that you literally could not judge a book by its cover, nor an album by what was on the outside. I had looked at Iron Maiden albums before, as I said at the beginning, and been disgusted and a little scared, certainly put off by what I had seen, and truth to tell, the sleeve of “The number of the Beast” doesn't do much to assuage that. But the music I found within, both in this album and in earlier Maiden releases, when I went back to them, hungry for more (and a little disappointed to find Dickinson did not feature and the music was markedly different) showed me that sometimes, it's worth walking into that dark room or opening that box, for who knows what you might miss otherwise?

But more than that, this album showed me that I was probably going to love heavy metal, if it was all like this. And I did. Bands like Saxon, Tygers of Pan-Tang and Black Sabbath followed, then Rainbow and later Dio, Def Leppard, Anvil, Diamond Head, Tank, Lizzy, Y&T all followed as the world of heavy metal and hard rock opened up to me like some dark, loud, enticing flower. I still listen to metal today, though there is a lot of it I don't like, but this was my baptism, my induction into the hallowed halls of the heavy, and it began a love of the music of Iron Maiden that has lasted to this day, and an enduring love of heavy metal and rock music.

For that, I will always be grateful, and I will always look upon this album as one that changed my life.

TRACKLISTING

1. Invaders
2. Children of the damned
3. The Prisoner
4. 22 Acacia Avenue
5. The number of the Beast
6. Run to the hills
7. Gangland
8. Hallowed be thy name

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