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Post by tazz1973 on Sept 22, 2007 16:16:56 GMT 10
There was info in Beat this week etc... Been lots around. Heard the ad just before 1pm Friday on Triple M  |
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Post by Wrathchild on Sept 26, 2007 11:17:03 GMT 10
Triple M oh fantastic Thanks stevek for the post on beat I got informed this morning too. Any one picked up beat today? Nick informed me there is a double page tour poster and interview. |
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Post by Wrathchild on Sept 26, 2007 11:34:58 GMT 10
Iron Maiden Date: 26 Sep 2007
Issue: Beat #1083
by Nick Snelling
It’s been 16 long years since those mighty yeomen of ‘Evy Metal’ Iron Maiden deigned to visit Australia, but getting a genuine reason from frontman Bruce Dickinson is not going to be easy. “Well, we were waiting ‘til we could beat you at cricket,” he mutters. “But we decided it might take too long, so we’d probably better just get on with it and come.”
One of the founding bands of the so-called New Wave Of British Heavy Metal that emerged from the early ‘80s, in their halcyon days, Iron Maiden were the living embodiment of metal’s more celebrated clichés – thunderous drums, galloping guitars, leather jerkins, operatic vocals, an over-the-top theatrical stage show, lyrics drawn from a heady mix of Gothic literature and fantasy, and band members whose cockney accents, feudal dress-sense, Cro-Magnon looks and atrocious mullets became the stuff of both legend and parody. Indeed, Iron Maiden were Spinal Tap before there even was a Spinal Tap.
“Back then, the funny side didn’t twig to me until someone came and said ‘umm, that was actually quite ironic,’ and I went ‘…..ahh, oh dear.’” Dickinson can laugh fondly now at the more unintentionally funny moments of Maiden’s past pomposity, but he also adds that you have to take it all in context. “Look at the old Hammer horror movies. You watch them now, and they’re hilarious, and to think we used to be really scared of them back in the day. But they’re still classics, because they were done with a great deal of love and absolutely seriously, and because of that they stand the test of time. It’s the same thing with Maiden,” he points out. “I mean, Jack Black is very funny, very talented. As much as he might have the riffs, be paying homage or taking the mickey out of what bands like us used to do, it is essentially a joke. People see that, and so in five years time, Tenacious D will be gone.”
Iron Maiden, meanwhile, lives on. Regarded as one of the most influential metal acts ever, if anything their fan-base had multiplied rather than died out. What’s more, the band are made all the more curious by Dickinson himself – lead singer of world dominating metal band, an Olympic-grade fencer (and yes, by ‘fencing’ we mean fighting with swords!), a two-time novelist (his nickname is ‘Conan The Librarian’), an airline pilot (he’s First Officer for Astraeus Airlines) and a successful solo artist (a mere nine solo albums!). Talk about high achiever, it’s a wonder the Scientologists haven’t propositioned him to join. He seems both amused and horrified by the concept. “Oh god, no chance.” He erupts in laughter. “Definitely not interested. In fact, Scientologists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and cults of all persuasion need not apply!” Still, while Dickinson hasn’t ever pondered what kind of psychological profile he’d make, he accepts at being categorised as being a driven person. “Yeah, I must be driven by something, but if I actually found out what it was,” he chuckles, “I’d probably stop, and I think I quite enjoy being driven.”
Amongst the mountain of PR material trumpeting the impending Iron Maiden invasion, is the news that Dickinson will be personally commandeering a specially modified Boeing 757, fitted out to carry the band all the way to Australia. Not content just to front the band, he’s also going to captain the plane out here. “Well, this is my day job, after all, so this is business as usual for me,” he says calmly. “It’s not just adapted to carry stage gear, it’s all of us – the band, the crew, TV people, journos, wives and girlfriends. It’s the flying Eddie tour bus, basically.”
It’s inevitable that any conversation around Iron Maiden will revert to their infamous mummified mascot, the character of Eddie. In fact, according to Dickinson, he’s the real star of every Maiden show. “Completely,” deadpans the singer. “We’re just his backing band.”
Speaking of their ghoulish grinning avatar, the worldwide ‘Somewhere Back In Time’ tour sees the band reprise their Ancient Egyptian theme, one which heralded the Powerslave album and boasts an extravagant backdrop of sphinxes, pyramids, and of course, Eddie. It’s a stage show enough to make your average Vegas casino blush. Likewise, the setlist will revisit almost exclusively the so-called ‘golden era’ of Iron Maiden. Dickinson explains the decision not to play any new songs, saying it’s what the fans want. “We’ve had a lot of success in recent years with new material, and we even just came off a tour where we played the new album (A Matter Of Life And Death) in it’s entirety,” he qualifies. “But we’ve always said we were going to do tour our back-catalogue in two chunks, if you like. We had the ‘Early Days’ Tour which went down a storm worldwide,” he says, referring to the tour that saw him reunite with the band after years pursuing solo projects, “and then we did a couple more albums. This is ‘Part Two’ of that tour, taking it onwards from late ’83 to the end of the ’88.” That means, according to the vocalist, tracks from Powerslave, Somewhere In Time, Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, and even some from Number Of The Beast. “Even though it’s slightly out of period,” he admits, “there’s a couple of tracks that we really have to play. But there’s also songs that we haven’t played for years like Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner and Powerslave that will be a complete blast to perform live again.”
Dickinson adds that the band have definitely recaptured their old chemistry again. “The vibe of the band, honestly, has never been better. Getting back together with these guys, what nearly eight years ago now, was more than I expected. I remember thinking ‘this is going to be pretty good’ but it was so much better,” he gushes. “It’s been jaw-dropping – I never imagined that we’d be playing two football arenas to 50,000 people in a row, all sold out, all just coming to see Iron Maiden. Not coming to see a festival, just us. It’s amazing.”
Would it be fair to say Iron Maiden are almost bigger now than they were in their glory days? “Well, we’re not almost,” he assures me. “We are WAY bigger than we were in the ‘80s. Back then, for example we’d be headlining large arenas in Europe….but now we’re filling soccer stadiums. It’s at least three times the size we ever were when we were allegedly at our peak.”
For the cynics who regard Iron Maiden’s renaissance as a bunch of old dinosaurs cashing in on their legacy, Dickinson response is vehement. “That is manifest bullshit,” he exclaims. “This is not about money. The first thing we did when we reformed is said, ‘ok, we’re going to do this Early Days tour, just to re-cut our teeth and so everyone can see that we’re getting on, and then we’re going to do a great new record.’ And sure enough, everyone went ‘oh yeah, sure. They’ll tour, spit out a cheap album, and that’ll be it.’ But we did exactly what we said we’d do. Brave New World was a great Maiden album, and when people were surprised, I spent all my interviews saying ‘I told you so – we said we were going to do this last year, but for some reason you didn’t believe it.’”
Dickson controversially left Iron Maiden in 1993 to purse a solo career, and was replaced by Wolfsbane vocalist Blaze Bayley to a rather lukewarm reception by fans. So, what was the pivotal moment that saw him want to reclaim his role? “It had reached the point where I had a couple of consistently good records. Chemical Wedding was the last one, and it got great reviews had tons of good will, and I was doing a run of clubs and small theatres, and I could have continued quite happily doing that, and artistically it would have been ok. But it wouldn’t have been Maiden,” he says candidly. “It was actually my song-writing collaborator Roy Z that turned around to me after we’d put the final touches on Chemical Wedding, and said ‘you know, you’ve kind of done everything you set out to do. You proved your point. But now the world needs Iron Maiden back.’” The singer laughs fondly at the moment. “And I thought for a minute, and went ‘You’re right. It’s true. It does. And if we got back together now, what a great record we could make.’
“So bugger the money. I mean, of course we were going to make a shitload more money back together than we would individually, but bugger that. I actually just thought ‘imagine what it will mean to all the old fans, all the smiling faces, if we do it.’ And when we make the decision to reform, the response was …overwhelming. The outpouring of support was amazing, so we didn’t want to let people down. We didn’t want to do something cheap and cheesy as we’d seen lots of bands get back together and some of them more successful and some of them more cynically than others. We didn’t want that. We wanted it to be really classy and something long term for the future.”
Even with his years in the wilderness, was the singer worried when the band reformed that people might fall back into conditioned behaviour, that personalities might end up rubbing and old grudges resurface. “Umm, well, dare I say it – we’re all really quite chilled-out grown-up down-to-earth people,” he answers, simply “We all know what’s at stake, and we’re all aware of what people might have said in the past, so we just didn’t go there. There were no moments of recrimination, we didn’t employ a fleet of psychotherapists, we just went down to the pub and had a few beers. No one tiptoed around anything, and I think now, our relationships are closer than they ever were.”
The announcement of the Australian tour includes a rather honest testimony by drummer Nicko McBrain, where he relates his thoughts on the Maiden reformation, and discusses his feelings of hurt and betrayal when the singer originally walked away from the band. Was Dickinson aware of the pain he caused at the time, and does he regret anything at all about that time? “It’s always difficult when you walk out on something,” he says carefully, “Just like a husband or wife leaving their partner, especially when there’s not third party involved. In my case, it wasn’t like I left for another band, it was a case of waking up one day and thinking ‘I need to go and do something else, prove myself.’ That was the whole story, and whether you get that or not depends on how you’re wired as a person.”
Maiden fans have come to accept that if Dickinson hadn’t of left when he did, the band would not be going as strong as they are now. “Absolutely,” he agrees. “I think I could say that is 100% accurate. The thing is, it is easy when something is successful to go sleepwalking artistically without thinking about it, and I can’t explain that feeling to anyone who wouldn’t get it. Sometimes you need to just shake things up.”
As a bonafide legend and veritable grandfather of metal, how does the singer perceive the evolution of Heavy Metal and the various stages and sub-genres it has moved through – he is in a good position to track its progress after all? “At the moment, to me, it seems like it’s in continual growing pains,” he hedges. “The whole growling aggressive singing with really heavy riffs, I actually understand because my oldest lad is in a band and they do it all, so I’m constantly exposed to it. But there’s so many bands that are starting to sound very similar, and I think there has to be a bit of a breakout in songwriting.
“The thing is, all of these guys in metal bands have got musical chops that are way in advance of anything Iron Maiden had when we started. We got better as we went along,” he admits, laughing. “But the songs always came first. Whereas, I think there are guitarists, drummers and bass-players doing stuff at 14 or 15 that is simply outrageous musically, but all these kids have all got way WAY overdeveloped technique…but not much in the way of songs. Too much technique can hold you back. Kids get obsessed with technique, when there’s a big chunk of life experience that you’ve got to get. The problem is, by the time half of them figure it out, they’re too old and there’s whole bunch of new gunslingers there to replace them. I think that’s sad. Young bands need to start deconstructing their technique and looking at songs and themes, and I think it’s starting to happen.”
He cites one band, though in particular as being his personal favourite – Kilswitch Engage. “I think they are a band that have successfully married the two.”
Could it be that he’s just getting a tad old now? “Well, I sit and listen to my own lads jamming, and think ‘oh my god, that’s amazing!’ But when I say to them ‘where’s the tune?’ they look at me and go ‘huh?’” He laughs loudly. “They think Dad is being old and boring with out of date concepts like a tune.”
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Post by Mr Damage on Sept 26, 2007 12:00:05 GMT 10
Great interview, i loved the sly dig at Metallica - "There were no moments of recrimination, we didn’t employ a fleet of psychotherapists, we just went down to the pub and had a few beers."
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Post by tazz1973 on Sept 26, 2007 12:12:05 GMT 10
That is a good interview/article, better than most which have just re-hashed the press release.
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Post by akalilith on Sept 26, 2007 14:29:39 GMT 10
Triple M oh fantastic Thanks stevek for the post on beat I got informed this morning too. Any one picked up beat today? Nick informed me there is a double page tour poster and interview. Is Beat available on other states apart from VIC?? Ho do I get one..  |
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Post by stevek on Sept 26, 2007 14:53:45 GMT 10
Triple M oh fantastic Thanks stevek for the post on beat I got informed this morning too. Any one picked up beat today? Nick informed me there is a double page tour poster and interview. No worries Wrathchild anytime if i see or hear anything else will let you guys know i am still waiting for my mate from musically incorrect show to get confirmation on interviewing Maiden or if my Mates end up supporting Maiden |
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Post by Wrathchild on Sept 26, 2007 15:27:30 GMT 10
Triple M oh fantastic Thanks stevek for the post on beat I got informed this morning too. Any one picked up beat today? Nick informed me there is a double page tour poster and interview. Is Beat available on other states apart from VIC?? Ho do I get one.. MaidenOz is getting a whole heap from work today so she said she is gonna grab a bunch for all of us |
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Post by akalilith on Sept 26, 2007 15:33:39 GMT 10
Is Beat available on other states apart from VIC?? Ho do I get one.. MaidenOz is getting a whole heap from work today so she said she is gonna grab a bunch for all of us That's cool!! MaidenOz rocks!!! |
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Post by MaidenOz on Sept 26, 2007 22:50:03 GMT 10
I got 4 spare copies today and I can get more if anyone wants one.
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Post by Wrathchild on Sept 26, 2007 23:11:27 GMT 10
I got 4 spare copies today and I can get more if anyone wants one. Hold me one please ;D I can get some later if needed but for now I said *Its all Mineee* first  lol |
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Post by MaidenOz on Sept 27, 2007 10:39:44 GMT 10
Cool
done
That's 2...anyone else want one?
The entire inside of the cover is a big tour poster.
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Post by stormster on Sept 27, 2007 13:07:23 GMT 10
Might as well save me one angie. Keep it in a corner or something till i come down in feb!
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Post by MaidenOz on Sept 27, 2007 13:51:02 GMT 10
I can send ya the article & the poster in the mail bub. The rest of the mag is pretty shit all techno dance club stuff. Is that ok? send me your address and I'll mail it up to ya
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lol
