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There's no doubt that generally, when a band are out on stage, they pull out all the stops, with the result being that very often, live versions of studio songs take on a whole new life, get a totally different treatment, and sound often much better. In some cases, the live version becomes the definitive one, the one we're used to hearing, the one we want to hear.

I'm not talking about concert footage here, per se, as I'm quite aware (as I'm sure you are) that a certain song can be changed from tour to tour, even night to night, sounding subtly (or not so subtly) different each time it's played. Those versions are to be treasured, for those who are lucky enough to attend the gig and hear them, perhaps for the only time in that format. But what I'm referring to is a live version of a song that is released, perhaps charts, but at any rate, becomes popular, so popular in fact that it eclipses the original studio version.

To illustrate this, look at our first example in this new section. We all know the live version of Bob Marley's famous “No woman no cry”, even those of us who are not fans. But how does it compare to the original? Or perhaps I should say really, how does the original compare to the live version, if that's not a contradiction in terms! Here are the two versions, original first, for you to judge for yourself.

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Corridors of power --- Gary Moore --- 1982 (Virgin)


One of Gary Moore's best ever albums, this one has it all. It was the first of his albums to bring him any sort of commercial success, but is in fact his third solo effort. He drafts in a lot of top-flight talent to help him out on this recording, though notably not Phil Lynott, although he did duet with him later on the single “Out in the fields”. The album is a mix of great rockers and lush ballads, with a cover version thrown in too, and as a whole it works really well, with hardly a bad track to be found.

It kicks off with a great rocker, the headshakin' “Don't take me for a loser”, with powerful drumming from Deep Purple's legendary Ian Paice, and naturally Gary handles all guitar duties himself. A good singer too, he was a pretty rounded package. He also wrote all except one of the tracks on this album, apart of course from the cover version. As you might expect, there are plenty of guitar solos, and this is no exception with a great one halfway through. Things settle down into a nice relaxed groove then for the first of three ballads on the album, and one of the standout tracks.

“Always gonna love you” is a desperate, heartfelt promise to a lover, and starts off with lovely piano courtesy of Tommy Eyre, who is perhaps most famous for his contribution to Gerry Rafferty's career-defining smash “Baker Street”. Nevertheless, like all of the songs on this album, the ballad is driven by Moore's expressive guitar, giving it perhaps a harder edge than it would have had, had he just played it as a piano song. It always seems to be on the verge of becoming a hard rocker, but then slips back into its smooth mood with more restrained guitar, and of course there's a great and evocative solo near the end.

The cover version is next, and it's a retreading of Free's classic “Wishing well”. It's a great song, but hard to mess up, which Moore does not do. His version is good, though I think I perhaps prefer Blackfoot's version off their 1979 album “Strikes”. Things stay heavy then for the superb “Gonna break my heart again”, with truly amazing guitar from this much-missed master of the axe. It's powerful from the start, opening with a great guitar break and angry vocals as Gary sings ”I don't care what you say to me/ From the things that I've been hearin' now/ It's plain to see/ You're gonna break my heart again.../ Just like you broke my heart before.”

Then we're into the second ballad, with a great guitar intro, a real blues track called “Falling in love with you”. Lovely solid keyboard backing here, this time thanks to guest keysman Don Airey, with perfectly-paced (no pun intended!) percussion. Gary Moore does the blues so well, he's in his natural element when doing so, and here this really comes across on a fine, fine track. It's followed by a real epic, starting on low synth and ominous guitar, “End of the world” features perhaps the best guitar solo on the album, close to, but not quite, shredding. Moore could certainly have taught some of the young pups a thing or two!

Two minutes out of the almost seven of the track are given over to Moore's guitar histrionics, and it's time well spent. The rest of the track is a powerful, emotional cautionary tale, in the mould of “Nuclear attack” from his “Dirty fingers” album released the following year, and also “Murder in the skies” from “Victims of the future”. It's a great track with some killer vocals, including a guest appearance by the great Jack Bruce, and an urgent beat, great bass playing from the legendary Mo Foster, and featuring some messing around on the guitar too, like where Gary makes the sound of an ambulance siren on his fretboard.

The next track is a straight-ahead, no-frills rocker, but then, with a title like “Rockin' every night”, what would you expect? It has a certain resemblance to Purple's “Highway star”, not surprising since it's the only track on which Paice collaborates with Moore in the writing. It's a fun track, but a little formulaic, which is something you certainly can't say about “Cold hearted”, a big, dirty, snarling slice of cold hard rock, a real cruncher in which Moore spits out the lyric: ”Every hungry woman has tried/ To make a fool out of me/ Every hungry woman/ Stick around and baby you'll see/ I'm cold hearted.” It's a real heavy blues number, like BB King after he's had ten whiskeys and is feelin' MEAN!

The best is, however, yet to come, and the album closes on one amazing song, the longest on the album and a terrific finale. Clocking in at just under eight minutes, “I can't wait until tomorrow” begins on a slow, bluesy organ melody, the vocals sung in a relaxed sort of way so as to fool you into thinking this is a ballad. Well, maybe it is. It's hard to be sure. The song is balladic up to about the three-quarter-way point, then it changes. Ian Paice's drums kick in on about a minute and a half and add a power and tension to the track as the keys get more strident and the guitar, up to now, has had a very minor role in the song.

Until about three minutes in, that is, when Gary rips off a fine, emotional solo and the song gets more solid, all the instruments beginning to mesh perfectly. Four and a half minutes in, Moore's guitar starts to really speak, and the whole shape of the song changes, getting more powerful, punchy and heavy to the fadeout end. Brilliant closer.

The world of music lost yet another fantastic talent this year when Gary Moore was taken from us. Like many of the rock legends who have gone before their time, thankfully we can console ourselves that he left a large body of work behind for us to remember him by. “Corridors of power” stands as as fitting a testimonial to the genius and talent of the man as any other album I can think of.

TRACKLISTING

1. Don't take me for a loser
2. Always gonna love you
3. Wishing well
4. Gonna break my heart again
5. Falling in love with you
6. End of the world
7. Rockin' every night
8. Cold hearted
9. I can't wait until tomorrow

Suggested further listening: “Victims of the future”, “Wild frontier”, “Still got the blues”, “Run for cover”, "Back to the blues", "After the war", "Dark days in Paradise", "After hours", "Close as you get", "Bad for you baby", "A different beat", "Power of the blues"

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Random Track of the Day
Friday, September 23 2011
TGIF! Well, not me. I don't really care, as I don't have to go into an office/warehouse/shop etc.; although I do work, it's my home that's my workplace, and I guess as such I don't ever really get to “go home”, or even have a weekend, but enough of my moaning. For those of you who have had a hard week working, Friday is always welcome as the weekend is ushered in.

Taking us there, today's RTOTD is from Symphony X, and is in fact the first I have heard from them. It's the closing, and longest track on their last-but-one album, “Paradise lost”.

“Revelation (Divus pennae ex tragodeia)” --- Symphony X --- from "Paradise lost" on InsideOut


This is a real slice of proto-prog rock, with heavy classical influences --- you could probably tell that was going to be the case from the somewhat pretentious title, and don't ask me what it means. Sounding something in the mould of I think Dream Theater, Symphony X have been going for seventeen years now, so by the standards of some prog bands they're just starting out! But they have an impressive catalogue of albums, this being from their ninth of ten. It's a long song, going through some changes along the way, with some really good instrumentation.

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The worm is sad today, on hearing the news that mega-band REM are to break up. Not an actual fan of the guys, the worm nevertheless mourns the passing of any good band --- these days, there are so few genuine bands around, the loss of one diminishes us all, to quote someone. The Earworm isn't sure who: you'd have to ask his brother the Bookworm. But it's still true.

So, in a mark of respect for the passing of REM, here they are featured today with one of their huge hits, this is “Losing my religion.” Well done guys: you'll be missed....

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The idea of a live person singing with a dead person is, on the face of it, intrinsically creepy, there's no doubt, seeming just a stunt to sell records. However, this particular team-up “beyond the grave”, as it were, could not be further from that idea. There's a heartbreaking sense of rightness about a loving and famous daughter singing with her famous and well-loved late father, as Natalie Cole proved in 1992 when she sang a duet with her dad onstage.
Natalie Cole and Nat "King" Cole --- Unforgettable


Nat “King” Cole has been long established as one of the kings (sorry) of smooth jazz, with hits like “When I fall in love”, “Embraceable you” and “Mona Lisa” etched into the consciousness of the world and forever enshrined in the halls of music. But it's for one song in particular that he's most remembered, and that is “Unforgettable”, both in name and in content. Although not written by him (I don't believe he was a songwriter), the song was and is forever inextricably linked with the man and his legend, so it was only fitting that it be the one chosen by his famous daughter to inject new life into.

Remixed and edited by Joe Guercio, most famous for being Elvis' musical director, the song was performed at a special tribute to Nat “King” Cole, aired by PBS in 1992. With a videoscreen behind her showing her father, in his youth, singing the song, she joined with him and together the two performed one incredible, and, yes, unforgettable duet. The performance won three Grammys, as well as other awards, and was a huge hit when later released as a single.

The thing that makes this duet stand out --- other than the fact that it's the only one I can recall of its type --- is that you can see quite clearly that it was not a publicity stunt, a moneymaking venture or a cheap shot. The pure love and respect in Natalie's eyes as she gazes at the image of her father on the videoscreen, the passion in her voice, and the beautiful melding of the two performances make it obvious that this is, as the concert was billed, a tribute to Nat “King” Cole, and something that his daughter, had her father lived long enough and been able to perform live with her onstage, would have loved to do while he was alive.

This was the next best thing. It's unique, it's heartfelt, it's honest and it tears at your heartstrings, unless you have a brick there in your chest.

And it is, without doubt, a marriage made in Heaven.

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Time to go deep into the history and music of another of my favourite rock icons, give you a flavour of what they're about. As these profiles are as in-depth and complete as I can make them, they usually exceed the character count allowed for one post, and this one is a monster! So it's split up into four parts, which in fact mirror the four incarnations, as it were, of the band in question.

Though there will be few who will not at least know the name Iron Maiden, it's possible that some of you younger 'uns may not realise that the “classic” lineup we see today is not how it always was, Indeed, of the current band members, only Steve Harris and Dave Murray were there at the beginning.

Part One: Killers runnin' free on the Rue Morgue: Formation and the Di'Anno years
Formed in 1975 by bass player Harris, Iron Maiden went through a few guitarists, singers and drummers before they came up with what would be their first “real” lineup, under which they would record and release their first ever recording, an EP called “The Soundhouse Tapes”, which rapidly sold out. Two of the tracks on that EP, “Prowler” and the eponymous “Iron Maiden”, would later feature on their first album, which they would also self-title. In 1979 Maiden signed to the huge label EMI, and had two other tracks included on a heavy metal compilation album called “Metal for muthas”. These were “Sanctuary” and “Wrathchild”, the latter of which would again feature on their debut album for the label.

In 1980 Maiden had the following lineup: Steve Harris (bass), Dave Murray (guitar), Clive Burr (drums) Paul Di'Anno (vocals) and Dennis Stratton (guitar), though Stratton left the band a few months later, to be replaced by Adrian Smith, who remains with them to this day. The album was a huge hit, with its raw power and yet melodic tracks, and Iron Maiden became one of the bands to spearhead the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) which signalled a renaissance of the heavy metal movement in the UK and led to the formation of some major bands.

The debut album featured a scary creature on the cover, a half-skeletal, half-humanoid monster with long spiky hair, who would become the band's mascot and sigil, and would feature, in different guises, on most Iron Maiden album covers. They called him Eddie the 'ead, though he was usually just known as Eddie. In keeping with the theme/layout of each album Eddie would take on different characteristics. For “Powerslave”, for instance, with its mystical and eastern themes and its title track written about an Egyptian god, Eddie was a pharaoh on the cover, while for “Somewhere in time”, with its futuristic setting, he was an alien hunter. Here, he is just seen looking out at you from the cover, standing in a street at night and looking very evil and scary. He looks like he's ready to kill.



Eddie was the creation of artist Derek Riggs, who would go on to illustrate all the Maiden sleeves and bring his often warped sense of creativity to each new one. One thing was certain: a Maiden cover was never boring! But what about the music? Well, as mentioned, it was raw and powerful, with a double guitar attack that would become the trademark of Iron Maiden, but I personally found the production very shoddy. Notable tracks from the album are “Phantom of the opera”, with its instantly recognisable guitar intro, which found fame when it was used for a Lucozade ad in the 80s. At the time, it was also their longest and most ambitious song, clocking in at over seven minutes and with distinct sections, or movements within it.

Also on the album is “Transylvania”, an instrumental, one of very few that Maiden ever wrote. It's punchy, powerful and very much part of the Iron Maiden sound. They also included a ballad on the album, which again would be few and far between as Maiden reached for the heavy metal stardom that would be theirs. “Strange world” features some really nice echo guitar work from Murray and is almost prog rock in its theme of a world without laughter. It's also a very good vehicle for the softer side of Di'Anno's vocals, which apart from this song always seem to be a snarl. “Remember tomorrow” actually fools you into thinking it's a ballad, but you're soon disabused of that notion as it kicks into top gear and Di'Anno starts screaming.

The album also features, as mentioned, “Prowler” from “The Soundhouse Tapes” and also the title track, which would become something of an anthem for the band. Their second album, “Killers” was released the following year, and this time Eddie is seen as a homicidal maniac on the cover, sporting a bloodstained hatchet, and indeed referred to generally in the lyric to the title track. Another old song, the one featured on the compilation album, is included on this album, and indeed after the short opening instrumental “The ides of March”, it's “Wrathchild” that opens the album proper.



This album was very much a Steve Harris project, as he wrote every song on it bar the title track, which was co-written with Paul Di'Anno. The album also features “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, based loosely on the Edgar Allan Poe horror short story, and another ballad, the superlative “Prodigal son”, but the title track is the crux of the album, and features Di'Anno in full madman mode, revelling in his narrative as the shadowy killer who ”Walks in the subway/ His eyes burn a hole in your back!/ A footstep behind you/ He lunges, prepared for attack!” The guitars on this song need to be heard to be believed. Di'Anno goes out in a blaze of glory, roaring his lungs out on the closer “Drifter”, and in fact his scream is the last sound on the album, bar the final guitar chord.

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Part Two: No prayer for the powerslaves, somewhere in time: Bruce Dickinson and global domination

After “Killers” Di'Anno was asked to leave the band due to various disputed reasons, and they hooked up with Bruce Dickinson, who had been singing with Samson. It was with him at the mike that they recorded their ultra-successful 1982 album, “The number of the Beast”, which shot straight to number one and is recommended as one of the “1001 albums you must hear before you die” in the book of the same name by Robert Dimery. The whole style of the album is different, perhaps due to songwriting being shared, perhaps due to the presence and charisma of Dickinson, or perhaps it was just a natural evolution of the band. But the overall feel of “The Beast” is of polished production, excellent songwriting, powerful and technically-proficient playing and indeed a band who are all on the same page. Possibly the conflicts with first Dennis Stratton and then Paul Di'Anno may have strained the atmosphere during the recording of the first two albums, but there is no such tension evident here.

Featuring songs like “22 Acacia Avenue” (subtitled “The continuing adventures of Charlotte the harlot”, who is seen in a song titled with her name on the first Maiden album), “The Prisoner”, for which the band had to gain permission from Patrick McGoohan to use audio clips from the cult TV series in the intro, and of course the two singles, “Run to the hills” and the title track, this was, in all ways possible, a monster album. “Run to the hills” shot to number seven in the charts, and is a powerful indictment of the treatment by the White Man of the Native Americans, featuring a killer guitar solo from Dave Murray and some singing which would earn Bruce his nickname of “Air-raid Siren”! The title track, and indeed the album title and artwork, earned Maiden the tag of Satanists, and true to form, the Religious Right in America sought to ban the sale of the album (and all Iron Maiden records, extended of course to other “questionable” metal bands), boycotted the gigs and burned their albums. What was that they said: “Where they burn books (or albums), they will later burn people.”


Laughing at this accusation, but nevertheless hurting from the adverse publicity and the boycotts of and protests at gigs, Steve Harris, as the face of the band, declared that far from being an anthem or prayer to the Devil, “The number of the Beast” was based on a nightmare he had after watching one of the Omen films, and the track even has a passage from the bible preceding it. But you can't tell the Moral Majority they've got it wrong, and the mud stuck.

Nevertheless, fans and heavy metal pundits alike loved the album, and it still stands as Iron Maiden's best. It also contains one of my own favourites from them, the epic “Hallowed be thy name”, which closes the album and runs to just over seven minutes. It tells the story of a man about to be hanged, and his thoughts as they lead him out to the gallows. It's quite an introspective piece for such a heavy song, starting off with doomy church bells (actually referred to in the lyric when he says ”I'm waiting in my cold cell/ When the bells begin to chime.”) and featuring some great guitar work from both Adrian Smith and Dave Murray.

For the next decade Iron Maiden were prolific in their releases, a new album usually being no more than two years from the previous. In between they of course toured extensively and released some live albums, of which “Live after death”, released in 1984, is regarded as their best. 1983 however saw the emergence of their fourth studio album, “Piece of mind”, with the obvious play on words in the title. It features this time Eddie in a straitjacket and imprisoned in a “rubber room”, with part of his brain missing, ergo the title. Despite the obvious imagery of madness, however, the album did not deal with the subject of insanity: rather, the songs were mostly influenced by or about books or films the lads enjoyed.



“Piece of mind” was the first album to feature new drummer Nicko McBrain, ex-Trust, who is still with Maiden to this day. It only featured two singles, but they were both very successful, just missing getting into the top ten. “The trooper” is a powerful, rollicking story of the Charge of the Light Brigade, while “Flight of Icarus”, with its heavy guitar intro, tells the legend of Icarus. Other good tracks on the album include “Die with your boots on”, “Where eagles dare” (based on the WWII movie) and “Sun and steel”, loosely based around the sword-and-sorcery heroes of fantasy literature like Conan and Kull. There's another epic on the album, again closing it, this time taking as its subject matter the Frank Herbert sci-fi series “Dune”. Called “To tame a land” it runs for nearly seven and a half minutes, and is again evidence of Maiden's dabbling in prog metal, towards which they were sliding closer with every album.

Only one year later and they released perhaps their most openly prog album to date, 1984's “Powerslave”. While it included “boys-own”-type adventures songs like “Aces high” and “Flash of the blade”, and a return to “The Prisoner” from “Number of the Beast” in the song “Back in the Village”, it was the two closing tracks that really characterised this album. The first being the title track, written from the point of view of an Egyptian god or pharaoh, and evidenced on the sleeve of the album with Eddie depicted as a huge stone statue like the Sphinx, being worshipped as a god. The lyric tells of the pharaoh/god's reluctance to give up life, as he moans ”Tell me why I have to be a powerslave?/ I don't wanna die/ I'm a god, why can't I live on?” but he realises at the song's conclusion that he has no more sway over life than the lowliest of his worshippers, as he accepts ”In my last hours I'm a slave/ To the power of death.” Not surprisingly, the music is eastern-tinged, to give the effect of being in Egypt.


The other standout track is their longest to date, the epic in every way “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, based on the epic poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It features a great bass solo halfway through that really gives the feeling of isolation and fear, and quotes much of the famous poem in the lyrics. There must have been some trepidation on the part of the band that metallers would listen to a song which runs to thirteen and a half minutes, and moreover, is based on a poem over a century and a half old, but it went down a storm thanks to the heavy riffs, powerful singing and, to be fair, gripping lyric, even if they were half-inched from the poem.

1986 and “Somewhere in time” hit the shelves. Different to previous albums, mostly due to the writing of Adrian Smith, it features more long compositions, like “The loneliness of the long-distance runner” (6:31), “Heaven can wait” (7:21) and the title track, “Caught somewhere in time” (7:26). In fact, the shortest track on the album is “Deja vu”, at 4:56, and even at 7:26 the title track is not the longest: that honour goes, once again, to the closer, this time called “Alexander the Great”, and clocking it at a massive 8:36! Again, despite the cover art depicting Eddie as a futuristic bounty-hunter/cyborg killer, the themes on the album range from madness to history to reflections on life. There are two sci-fi/future themed songs, in the title track and “Stranger in a strange land”, based on the novel by Robert A. Heinlein. With the comparitive lengths of the tracks, there end up only being eight in total.


You could I suppose say that this was also a very prog metal album, with its long compositions and its varied themes, and very few of the “rock till I drop” songs --- although even on their earlier recordings Maiden tended to eschew the generic metal themes like beer, women, fighting and who's the loudest. Some of these would find their way into later releases, though Maiden would more or less continue on the road towards total prog metal with each new album. “Somewhere in time” also pioneered their use of the guitar synth, belying a legend that had once appeared on the back cover of “Number of the Beast” --- “No synthesisers or ulterior motives”. With the move towards prog metal, it was perhaps inevitable that Iron Maiden would need to introduce some sort of keyboard sound, and this was how they went about it.

This culminated in what became the pinnacle of their progressive metal leanings, 1988's “Seventh son of a seventh son”, on which the guitar synths were swapped for actual keyboards, played by one Michael Kinney. This album also featured only eight tracks, although the longest, the title track, came in at just under ten minutes, with the next longest, “Infinite dreams”, a mere six minutes. The power and energy was still there, the great melodies and the hooks, and the interesting themes, though many of them were linked or semi-linked in a kind of a fairytale. Some of the better tracks on it, for me, are “Moonchild”, the title track, “The evil that men do” and “Only the good die young”. It's the first album since “Number” not to feature an epic closer, with “Only the good” clocking in at a mere 4:42.



It was also the last album to feature Adrian Smith, who left the band to return in 2000 for their triumphant “Brave new world”, an album I look on as their “comeback” album after years in the metal wilderness, of which more later. “Seventh son” also gave Maiden some of their highest-charting singles, with “Can I play with madness” going to number 3, the highest they had ever achieved.

Rather ironically, Smith had left the band because he was unhappy with the prog-metal direction Maiden were going in, but as soon as he left the next album, 1990's “No prayer for the dying” changed the musical direction and returned to a more hard-edged, rock/metal sound, with shorter songs and more of them. Despite the fact that it was panned by critics, it did yield Maiden their only ever number one single, in the Bruce Dickinson-penned “Bring your daugher... to the slaughter”. There are no songs over five minutes on the album, the longest being again the closer, “Mother Russia” being a paltry 4:45.



“No prayer” is probably the first Maiden album to feature a whole host of sub-standard songs. The likes of “Public enema number one”, “The assassin”, “Fate's warning” and the aforementioned “Mother Russia” just don't cut it for me, and although there are good tracks in “Tailgunner” (basically “Aces high” from “Powerslave” revisited) and “Holy Smoke”, with its stab-back at the Christian Right, and of course “Bring your daughter...”, there's a lot of dross on this album, probably the least impressive of any Maiden album --- at least, under the Dickinson regime --- I have ever heard. Maybe they needed Adrian Smith's songwriting abilities more than they realised! On guitar, Smith was replaced by Janick Gers, and there were more changes to come in the years ahead.

Things came to a head in 1992, with the release of their ninth album. “Fear of the dark”, although superior to its predecessor, was still not a patch on previous opuses. Retaining the short-song format, and eschewing the prog-metal epics for more basic rock fodder, it nevertheless featured themes like the Gulf War, on the Steve Harris-penned “Afraid to shoot strangers”, a great track which begins slowly and gets into high gear halfway through, as well as the cowboy-themed “Be quick or be dead”, which opens the album, but the vast majority of the tracks are still sub-standard, and if I listen to this album at all, it's very much a cherry-picking operation, and there are a LOT of tracks I skip over.



“Fear is the key” and “Childhood's end” are decent enough tracks, though both “The fugitive” and “The apparition” fail to impress, recalling “The assassin” from the previous album, and although this is the first Maiden album in some time to feature an actual ballad, “Wasted love” is, well, wasted really: not a very good song, and adds nothing to the album except a slowing-down of the general mayhem. The best track for me is “Judas be my guide”, with its soaraway guitar, and the closer, the only long track on the album, and indeed the title track, again written by Harris, and coming in at 7:45. The album is also the first not to feature cover art by longtime illustrator Derek Riggs, and the last produced by Martin Birch, who had been with the band from “Killers”.

Shortly after the recording of the album, Bruce Dickinson decided he had had enough, and left the band to pursue a short-lived solo career. He would not return until 2000,and in between the band would go through some changes, most bad, and risk losing a large part of their fanbase, before the "return of the king" would take place and sort everything out.

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Part three: The Virtual X Factor: Blaze and the wilderness years

Following the departure of Bruce Dickinson, Maiden were left with the job of finding a replacement for the charismatic frontman. This was no mean feat: Dickinson had helmed the band for ten years, and fans had got used to his powerful presence, and voice, so it was really no great surprise that the idea of someone taking over from him was greeted with mostly scepticism and in some cases outright anger by the faithful. Nonetheless, on October 2 1995, three years after Bruce's departure, Iron Maiden released their tenth studio album, the aptly-named “X-factor”, featuring new singer Blaze Bayley, recently of Wolfsbane.


The album was quite a departure from standard Iron Maiden fare, and much different to the last few releases. It was, for a start, a lot darker, something that might be expected given Dickinson's mostly unexpected departure, and Harris returned to writing most of the material, with input from the new guy and the “other new guy”, guitarist Janick Gers. I found most of it not to be up to scratch, and whereas “Fear of the dark” had suffered from its share of problems, I could find few songs on this album I liked.

It probably doesn't help that the guys turned their usual practice upside-down, having the longest track at the opening of the album rather than closing it, and the eleven-minute “Sign of the cross” just didn't pique my interest, leaving me with a long time to wait, getting more and more frustrated as the song went on, and on, and on, before the next track up hit my ears. That was “Lord of the flies”, and to be fair, I really liked that, more like the Iron Maiden I knew. Following that was “Man on the edge”, the first single from the album, and to be fair it's not bad: kind of reminds me of “Back in the Village” from Powerslave.

It's not that the album is terrible, but given the heights Maiden were capable of reaching (and had reached), this just felt like a very lacklustre album. I also personally felt (and I wasn't the only one by any means) that Blaze Bayley was no replacement for Bruce Dickinson. Oh, he could sing, sure, but to replace THE voice of Iron Maiden they were going to have had to come up with someone very special indeed, and he wasn't it. Always felt to me like he was constantly dealing with (as he probably was) the stigma of being Dickinson's successor, and trying to live up to that. I would not have wanted to have been in his place, that's for sure.


It was three years later before Maiden tried again, with the release of “Virtual XI”, the last album they would record with Bayley. To give him credit, the guy seemed by now to have found his place in the band: he sounded more confident, more sure of himself and probably felt like he belonged. Rather ironic then that after this album he would leave the band. My problem with the “Blaze” Iron Maiden was twofold: first, there's no Bruce Dickinson. I only really got into Maiden via “Number of the Beast”, and then backtracked, and whereas I could tolerate Paul Di'Anno, he wasn't a patch on Bruce. The second problem I have is that in a very real way they seemed to be retreading old ground, taking bits from previous songs and recycling them into new ones.

There was a third problem, although personally I didn't see it as such, but it was something of a surprise to see the sudden emergence, even dominance of keyboards on Maiden albums. You can hear this very clearly on “The angel and the gambler”, where the guitars are pushed very firmly into the background, with the result that what you get is a very commercial-sounding song, but then Maiden had had great commercial success with singles like “Flight of Icarus”, “The Trooper” and “Run to the hills”, to mention but a few. And they had never had to compromise on their sound. Here, they begin to sound more like a seventies prog band than a hard-hitting veteram heavy metal legend.

This album was also the shortest, in terms of tracks, since 1988's “Seventh son of a seventh son”, with only eight tracks, although on overall length it was well up there with the best, at just over fifty-three minutes, yet still nearly twenty minutes shorter than its predecessor. Still, every album to follow it (so far) would be much longer. There's also another point: listening now to the almost ten-minute “Angel and the gambler”, I notice that of those ten minutes, the closing THREE are taken up with the same refrain, with a few guitar solo bits in there, but come on! Did it need to be that long, if all they were going to do was repeat the same line to the end? Like I say, lack of imagination and originality, which had never previously been a problem for the boys.

It's probably quite possible that I'm doing “Virtual XI” a disservice, as I only really listened to it the once, didn't like it, and am only listening to it for the second time now for this piece, so maybe my opinion would change on repeated listens. The fact remains, however, that every album, from “Iron Maiden” to “Fear of the dark”, I was able to get into on the first listen. That did not happen with either of these, which is why I was overjoyed to hear the announcement in 1999 that Blaze was out, and Bruce was back!

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Part four: The return of the King: Dancing in the brave new world

I've written extensively about Bruce Dickinson's comeback Iron Maiden album, 2000's “Brave new world”, so I won't go into it in any more detail here (if you want to read my review it's on page one of my journal), but the return of both Bruce and longtime guitarist and founder member (almost) Adrian Smith breathed new life into what was in some ways becoming a tired band who seemed unsure of the direction they were heading in. Janick Gers remained, so that Maiden now had three guitarists, and the new sound was a joy to behold.


“Brave new world” was well-titled (although it is of course the title of Aldous Huxley's novel), being released in the first months of the new millennium, and with most of the original Maiden lineup back in the fold. The fans reacted as expected, and sellout tours resulted. The album was critically acclaimed as one of Maiden's best ever, ranking up there with “Number of the Beast”, “Powerslave” and “Seventh son”: high praise indeed!


2003 saw the release of “Dance of death”, which while retaining the heavy classic sound of Maiden, expanded on “Brave new world”'s leaning towards longer, more epic songs and complex structures, tipping the scales towards progressive metal rather than outright metal. Although this came as something of a shock to some, it serves to underline and address the problem I laid out earlier, that the Blaze-era Maiden had little in the way of new, original songs and seemed to be falling back on older melodies and ideas, which served to make both the albums he recorded with Maiden seem a little stale and unimaginative.

Now, to be fair to Blaze, there was definitely a need for a change: “Fear of the dark” was largely an unremarkable album, and Dickinson's time away seemed to only have done him, and the band, good, giving them a new zest for their music and a whole host of new ideas. It's sad in a way to see Blaze Bayley as a “placeholder”, marking time for the return of Dickinson, but the truth of it is that that's how it turned out, even if that wasn't the original intention. Whatever, the re-energised Iron Maiden were going from strength to strength, and “Dance of death” was another step along that path to regained glory, with some excellent tracks in “Rainmaker”, “Montsegur” and of course the title track.

The guitars are back in charge! Steve Harris plays keyboards on the album, but they're nowhere near as much in evidence as they were on the previous album. A track like “The angel and the gambler” from that album was basically built on the keyboard melody: here, the keys are very much ancillary, a backup instrument to enhance, not take over or change, the sound. As it should be. Even the longer tracks, like “No more lies”, “Paschendale” and the title track, which could have been filled out with synth and keyboard, are instead crammed with guitar. And why not, with three great axemen?

Let there be no doubt however: Iron Maiden were moving, and continue to move, in a more progressive metal direction, away from the harder, “pure” heavy metal of their early days. They added to their sound, expanding upon it and writing longer and more complicated songs, like the title track, and “Paschendale”, both over eight minutes long. Of course, Maiden have never been a stranger to epic songs --- “Rime of the Ancient Mariner" still stands as their longest ever, at just over thirteen minutes, but whereas albums prior to the Blaze era had generally tended to have shorter, snappier, more commercial songs --- the last really long track before “X Factor” was the title to 1988's “Seventh son of a seventh son”. Since the departure, and return of Bruce Dickinson, Maiden tended to shy away from the shorter songs, with seven out of ten of the songs from “Brave new world” being over six minutes, and six, almost seven of those on this album being of that length (“Montsegur” is 5:50). In fairness, the Blaze albums produced a total of 5/11 for “X factor” and 5/8 for “Virtual XI”, whereas “Fear of the dark” boasted a mere 2/12, while not one of “No prayer for the dying”'s eleven tracks were over that length, so there has been a definite progression into longer tracks since 1995.

“Dance of death” also distinguishes itself from other Maiden albums in being the first album of theirs in twenty years to feature a totally acoustic number, the closer, “Journeyman”, very much a departure from form for Maiden, but it works exceptionally well, the more for the fact that it's so unexpected. I think the last acoustic song they did was “Prodigal son” on 1981's “Killers”, but don't quote me!



Another three years later saw the release of “A matter of life and death”, with a somewhat similar title to the previous album, and no doubt a nod back to the live opus “Live after death”. No matter what criticism is levelled at them, no-one can deny that Maiden remain the potent force in British Heavy Metal that they always have been, and despite ageing (as we all do), their music is still relevant and powerful, as opener “Different world” shows in spades. Recent Maiden albums have all tended, if not to be actual concept albums, to have a certain theme running through them, and here it's the horrors of war, driven home powerfully by the artwork on the album cover, showing an army of dead marching before a tank, like a modern version of Brueghel's El triunfo de la muerte.

This album maintains the high ratio of long-to-short songs, with songs over six minutes coming in at 7/11, three of these being over eight minutes, with five, almost six over seven minutes. The song structures became more complex and intricate over the last few albums, and here you can certainly see that in tracks like “Brighter than a thousand suns”, “The longest day” and the closer, and longest (at over nine minutes long) “The legacy”, but even the shorter, snappier songs have their place. “The pilgrim” is a great little song, although in my own nitpicking opinion Maiden write too many songs with the word “the” in the title!

“Out of the shadows” revisits one of their favourite themes, that of prophecies and chosen ones, and “The reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg” features some of Dave Murray's best work since “Powerslave”. The album is certainly dark, though to be fair so was the previous one, with its obsession with and examination of the process of death, but it's also an angry album, and there's nowhere the vitriol comes to the fore more than in “For the greater good of God”, where writer Steve Harris spits out his contempt for the idea of religious wars. This is also the longest track on the album, beating out closer “The legacy” by two seconds!



Last year, 2010, Iron Maiden released their fifteenth, and to date, most recent album, the critically acclaimed “Final frontier”. This is also their longest ever album, clocking in at an amazing seventy-six minutes thirty-six seconds, with the opening track almost nine minutes long and the closer one second off eleven. Not surprisingly then, the ratio is again 7/10, almost 8, as “Coming home” runs for 5:52. It's also their best effort since “Brave new world”, perhaps even since “Number of the Beast”. Yeah, it's that good!

Opener and almost-title track “Satellite 15... the final frontier” lays down the gauntlet, with a multi-layered, complex and intricate composition, introduced on a lengthy instrumental passage more expected of a prog-rock band. It's actually quite understated and restrained, taking almost four and a half minutes before it finally takes off. “El Dorado”, on the other hand, kicks right off from the start, with a very familiar guitar riff (from “Wasted years”, I think) and a great vibe.

The more complex arrangements shine through on tracks like “Isle of Avalon” (which has definite echoes of the title track to “Powerslave”), “The talisman” and the epic closer, “When the wild wind blows”. There's definitely a sense of Maiden maturing, growing and learning new tricks over the course of the last three or four albums. You can of course hear the common themes leaking in, but there's more than enough new ideas there to make every song stand out on its own merits.

All through their career Iron Maiden have led the field, turning out classic album after classic album, building on their fanbase, playing bigger and bigger venues and opening up the world of heavy metal to successive younger generations. There are few metal bands around today who would not admit to owing at least a little of their success to the venerable elder statesmen of heavy metal, whether it's that they listened to them when younger, or they influenced their style, or even just showed that a bunch of guys from London can scale the heights of worldwide fame with nothing more than their innate talent and some perserverance.

It would be wrong to say Iron Maiden created heavy metal --- of course, it was around, though mostly known as hard rock at the time --- for decades prior to their arrival. But what is in no doubt is that they were one of the shaping forces behind metal, indeed behind rock, and remain so to this day. After over thirty years together, Iron Maiden show no signs of slowing down. They've had their problems, they've been through their changes, btu they've come out the other side stronger and more potent than ever before. They've innovated, moved with but not been shaped by the changing trends, and have always remained true to themselves, their fans and their own unique sound.

What was it Ozzy Osbourne said? You can't kill rock and roll? Truer words were never said, and Maiden go from strength to strength, proving that good old-fashioned honesty and hard work is sometimes all you need to make it in this world. Lessons some other bands would do well to take to heart.

Long live the Beast!

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Random Track of the Day
Saturday, September 24 2011
Ah, not long now before the noise of rockets and bangers starts shaking the neighbourhood, as we edge closer to my least favourite evening of all, Halloween! Hang on, I think I hear the first explosions in the distance...

Anyway, today's Random Track of the Day comes from another album already reviewed by me, some little time ago. It's Australian band Icehouse, with a track from their “Man of colours” album, which you really should make a point of listening to.

Nothing too serious --- Icehouse --- from "Man of colours" on Chrysalis



It's a good poppy rocker from the album, with an interesting lyric. “Nothing too serious” is probably one of the fastest, most manic tracks on the album. It's good fun.

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