One Iron Maiden Fan's Tale

August 09, 2002

I was living in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when I first heard of Iron Maiden. It was 1980, and I was 13 years old. Before moving to Saudi from Colorado, the hardest rock I had ever heard was Kiss; I remember somehow talking my parents into buying the Love Gun for my brother Braad and I. My friend, Tim and I used to go down to this store called Hussams and buy cool looking rock and roll albums. Tim was 18, and was my hero over in Saudi. He listened to Ozzy Osbourne, and Robin Trower. I picked up cool looking albums, which were all black marketed; every piece of music you could buy in Saudi were all copied right there in the store; wild to think about that shit now.

While living in Saudi, I got into UFO, AC/DC, and of course Iron Maiden. I picked up the Killers album because I thought the hatchet wielding creature on the cover looked cool. Killers quickly became one of my favorite albums, and listening to it today still takes me back to my days in Saudi Arabia when I was only 13. I got hooked quick, and I read Circus magazine to keep up with the latest UFO and Iron Maiden releases. When I returned to the USA in the Washington DC area, I was still hooked on Iron Maiden, so I bought Number of the Beast as soon as it was released. I absorbed myself in that album; Prisoner was probably my favorite song of that one. Around the same time, I was still going to the record store and buying cool looking albums. One of them I picked up was by "some band" called Metallica called Ride the Lightning. Funny, back then I didn't really care for any of their songs except for Fade to Black, which was my teenage wanna-kill-myself, have-sympathy-for-me song. My record player set of 45 size would handily land the needle right at the start of Fade to Black, so I was going to put it on repeat and play that song over and over and kill myself. Then, everyone would feel sorry for me. What a schmuck I was then. As you can tell, I didn't kill myself since I am now writing this some 20 years later. Back to Maiden!

I returned from Saudi pretty much a metal head. I had a denim jacket that I hand drew logos on. I believe Iron Maiden was across the back, and it also included the cool Van Halen VH, UFO, AC/DC, and the Scorpions. So, I was enthralled with metal music, and Iron Maiden were always the Gods to me. It's funny looking back because when I was only 13 in Saudi and bought Killers, Iron Maiden was engrained in my head as the best in heavy metal. Now, I realize I was right there at the start since it was only Maiden's second album. I wish I could have been there for the real start watching them tear up a little club in England; the people that got to witness that should feel truly honored. I believe it was the Number of the Beast tour in 1982 that I conned my parents into letting me go see. I remember bragging to everyone how I was going to see the two best metal bands in the world "Iron Maiden and Judas Priest". I was shocked and surprised that Iron Maiden opened for Judas Priest; really! Again, I thought Iron Maiden were at the top in metal and Judas Priest were up and coming. I learned later I had it reversed, badly! The members of Iron Maiden actually saw Priest in concerts before joining their tour! I saw the concert at the Capital Center in Landover, Maryland. I don't remember a lot about the show or even who I went with, but I do remember the giant Eddie walking out on the stage. That was a long ass time ago!

I read a lot of article in Circus about Steve Harris and his soccer (futbol) passion, and all of the band members seemed to be really nice guys (blokes). I think that was a big reason I became such a fan in the early 1980s. My Mom thought I was evil. She scratched up the cool picture of Eddie on the Number of the Beast album because she thought it was an invitation to Satan or something. Hey, no ill feelings towards my Mom; she did the best she could for me, and I love her for it. I knew that Mom thought Maiden was evil, as most church going folk in the US did. So, I used to try to talk Mom into liking them by reading her stories from Circus magazine. "See Mom, Steve Harris is the bass player, and he is just a happy soccer player; they're not evil." But, Mom never accepted them.

Of course, I bought the next album, Piece of Mind, which featured Maiden's new drummer, Nicko McBrain. I remember feeling kind of let down because for whatever reason I really liked Clive Burr. I thought Nicko's last name was made up since it kind of matched the theme of the Piece of Mind album. I got really into this album. I remember listening to it really loud and being taken away by the music. It really opened my mind up and created all kinds of wild thoughts, images and story ideas. I started writing a story about some secret underground world after listening to Still Life over and over.

he next album was Powerslave, which I also bought as soon as it was released. I was in the 9th grade at Langley High School in Langley, Virginia and not doing well in school. My worst subjects were Math and English; that was an unfortunate coincidence since those are the two subjects needed to go to the next grade level, D'OH!! Well, I remember my English teacher, Mrs. Bachman I think; she was old and looked like what you'd expect an English teacher to look like. She hated me, but I don't hold anything against her because I'm sure I was a handful. She used to make me and this trouble maker guy, who I want to call Steve, stay after class all the time and she would make us read sections of books. I think she was trying to help us. She would comment on how I read sometimes in comparison to Steve, who could barely read. It was weird I was into the heavy metal scene, but I wasn't into the drugs, skipping, gang fights, killings, and all that shit that the people I was grouped with were into. So, sometimes I think I surprised my teachers by appearing to be a boy that was pretending to be a dropout perhaps (I would prove them wrong!) So, I sucked at English, mainly because I didn't care. I actually always liked writing stories and considered myself a good writer. At the same time I was jamming to Powerslave and picked Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner as my favorite song, my old English teacher assigns us Samuel Taylor Coldridge's poem, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner as a reading assignment. Sweet! Hey, maybe my old English teacher was into Maiden! Well, I already knew the poem, I have been singing it! I remember on the test writing down the quotes used on the Maiden song, which I had memorized long before getting the assignment. My teacher flipped! She had accepted me as one of the loser, drop out, druggie kids, and here I go getting one of the only As I ever got in English. I think it was that alone that got me into the 10th grade. Thanks Iron Maiden!

It must have been my dropping out of high school after failing the 10th grade in 1985 that changed my musical tastes, I don't really remember. After quitting school, Dad said "Go get a a job", so I worked a myriad of jobs including gas station attendant, armed guard, and I finally ended up working at Heckler and Koch as a warehouse technician. I guess I was maturing and listening to less metal music. At that time (mid to late 1980s), I was listening to John Hiatt, Toy Matinee, slower stuff like that. I still jammed old Maiden, but I kind of retired from buying the new Iron Maiden album immediately after it was released before Live After Death and Somewhere in Time.

Years went by with only my Maiden memories of Killers, Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, and Powerslave lingering and an occasional listening. I was trying to figure out my career and had just bought a house. Finding a career hard without education, I got a GED and went back to college in Kentucky. I returned to more of a party life, but I still listened to slower music like Queensryche. My brother, Braad, had bought Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son; I listened to them briefly, but I said "They're just not as good as the old classics." Braad was also into Metallica and Megadeth, and I had pretty much transformed into a slower music listener still listening to John Hiatt and Blues Traveler.

In 1993, I finished a 2 year degree and moved to Detroit, Michigan to study engineering at University of Michigan - Dearborn. This was about the time of Fear of The Dark, and I recall Bruce Dickinson going solo. I still didn't think Fear of the Dark was as good as the old classics, and I didn't care for Bruce's Tattooed Millionaire at all. Now, with Bruce Dickinson gone, I really thought Iron Maiden was just a metal memory.

I had a rough time with school in Michigan. I wasn’t doing so good in my classes, and I really hated the work I was doing, so I began to get really depressed and wonder what I was going to do with my life. The type of work I was doing that was engineer related was awful, so it took away from my motivation in school; I thought “If this is the type of work I am going to do when I graduate, maybe I shouldn’t be an engineer.” I dreamed of having a job that did not require me to wear big ugly safety glasses and steel toed shoes. One night I was driving to my Quality Inspector job at Dunnage Engineering in Brighton, Michigan. I was mulling all this over and listening to my usual Toy Matinee or John Hiatt light rock type music when I noticed a tape laying on the floorboard. I picked it up and realized Braad had left his Megadeth “Count Down to Extinction” tape in my car. Needing some sort of change, I plopped it into my tape player. That was the moment that re-motivated me. The harsh pounding of the music expressed exactly how I was feeling. I proceeded to buy Megadeth’s Euthanasia, and White Zombie’s “Astrocreep 2000”. The music motivated me to begin work on producing my board game, and my company Real Action Games. I would work nights at Dunnage, jam my music at night and play video hockey with passion, then wake up early the next morning to research my business.

I returned to Kentucky in 1995 giving up on school in Michigan. I had a re-found passion for metal music. I soon after began listening to Metallica, which I made clear to Braad that I did not like despite his love for the band. He nearly lost his mind when he heard me voluntarily listening to Metallica. Some party nights, Braad and I would load up the CD player with the earliest Iron Maiden CDs, which we both knew all the words to by heart. Our video hockey or football game would be paused as we would air drum and guitar The Prisoner, or Hallowed be Thy Name, or my Favorite Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Even with this new found passion for metal, I could not bring myself to listen to the albums made after Powerslave feeling they just weren’t as good. After thinking Iron Maiden was retired after Bruce Dickinson went solo, I was shocked to see the new album X Factor in 1995. I thought, “Hey, Maiden is back!” I bought it and was very disappointed. It appeared to be a different band entirely; the music seemed slow and morbid in bitter contrast to Maiden’s earlier “romantic” tales of war like The Trooper or Die With Your Boots On. I was crushed to find out Bruce Dickinson was not the singer! “Blaze Bayley! Who’s that? You can’t replace Bruce Dickinson! He is Iron Maiden!” I dutifully listened to the entire album kind of liking Man On the Edge especially since I had liked the movie the song was clearly made after, Falling Down. But, I told Braad “It’s not hockey music.” Hockey music is what we referred to as fast paced music that could keep us in a high adrenaline mode to play video hockey.

A few years later, I met a girl over the Internet from England, Phillipa. As we built our relationship and tried to find things to share, I thought “Iron Maiden, everyone in England loves Iron Maiden!” But, she didn’t. However, when she came to the USA to visit, I played some Iron Maiden for her, and I was motivated to buy and listen to the Maiden albums that I had ignored. I bought all of them and repurchased CD of my old favorites. I briefly listened to Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son still thinking they were ok. Then Phillipa and I really grew to love Fear of the Dark, which really became “our” album. That was in 1997, about the same time I bought Bruce Dickinson’s Accident of Birth giving Bruce another try and still searching for another Piece of Mind album. I was pleasantly surprised by Accident of Birth; that was the closest I had come to finding another Piece of Mind. It was different though, the music more rich and gainy than Maiden’s. It was like a mix between Metallica and Iron Maiden, very cool music. I started to think of Bruce Dickinson’s solo efforts as “what Iron Maiden should be today.” His follow up album, Chemical Wedding was even better.

In 1998, I noticed Iron Maiden’s Virtual XI album come out, and I dutifully bought it like I had the X Factor hoping the previous was just an anomaly. I was disappointed again seeing Blaze Bayley was still singing, and I still didn’t feel like it was up to par with the older albums. I listened to it once and filed it away. Around this time, I got into a concert craze. Braad and I went and saw Metallica play in Detroit with Kid Rock, Ted Nugent, and Sevendust at a kick ass New Year’s Eve Bash on December 31, 1999. When everyone else was afraid the world was going to blow up when the year rolled over to 2000, we were watching Metallica jam the Pontiac Silverdome! That was awesome! In a short span of time we also saw Blues Traveler and Johnny Lang, Green Day, and Metallica again. In 2000, I again bought the new Iron Maiden album Brave New World. This time I was expecting it to be slower and darker. The fist song The Wicker Man started playing, and I thought “That doesn’t sound like Blaze Bayley” So, I looked at the jacket wondering “Who is singing on this album” in a disappointed tone. “Oh my God, Bruce is back!” Sure enough, Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith had returned to the band! After the first listen, I thought “It’s not Piece of Mind, but it’s not bad.” It was not the raw power of Metallica or Megadeth I had grown to love, but it was Maiden. As a sort of duty, I put the CD in my car and listened to it over and over, and eventually I really began to like it. Today, I would have to say Brave New World is one of Maiden’s best albums. It has very deep lyrics and the music is orchestrated like they never had before.

I moved to the Boston, Massachusetts area in 2001, and just missed the Brave New World tour. I am still bumming over that. Braad and I went to a Megadeth concert in Cincinnati, Ohio and saw a few people with the Brave New World tour t-shirts on, and I sighed. In 2002, I was at a point where I really really liked Brave New World and decided it was time I gave some of the older albums another try. I grabbed Virtual XI, put it in my CD player and let it play over and over. My girlfriend Melissa’s 7 year old daughter Samantha began singing along to Don’t Look In The Eyes of a Stranger and now says she loves Iron Maiden and wants to see them live. I really started liking Virtual XI especially Futureal. Then, I did the same thing with the other albums I owned but rarely listened to. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is an awesome album and one of my favorites now. I love the song Wasted Years from Somewhere in Time. All of the albums are awesome, and I am ashamed to admit I ever thought Iron Maiden was washed up. Some of my favorite songs are the B Side songs from the bonus disks, which were included with the 1995 pressings. The Nodding Donkey Blues is a kick ass, fast paced, bluesy, funny song, which has a lot of piano in it; the first Maiden song I’ve ever heard with pianos! Rainbow’s Gold is a great song that starts out with drums then slowly introduces lead then rhythm guitars, and Black Bart Blues is a funny jamming song.

So, now I am all caught up with the gap of time I was not being a true Maiden fan, and I am ready for some more! I can not wait for the next album and tour; I will be there! Up the Irons!