SLAVING AWAY WITH IRON MAIDEN

SLAVING AWAY WITH IRON MAIDEN

Karen Schlosberg

Catching up to Iron Maiden along the road of the band’s 13-month, 28-country “World Slavery Tour” is not the easiest thing we’ve ever had to do. The strenuous nature of the band’s schedule leaves you wondering whether it’s the world or the band that’s the slave.

But this intrepid reporter managed to arrange it so the band actually played in our city of abode! Otherwise unspectacular (remarkably so) Worcester, Massachusetts is the home of the Centrum, not a bad venue but a bit of an oddity! The big orange concrete building has no sign; it sits, looking rather surprised, seeming to have popped up out of nowhere one day. And New Englanders, typically laconic, decided to ignore it.

Deep in its bowels, away from the sight of the three arrests and the one flashing ambulance that greeted my arrival, we discussed the state of the world with the Maiden’s lead singer, Bruce Dickinson. Iron Maiden’s fifth and most recent LP, Powerslave, has gone gold and is well on its way to going platinum in the States, which would be a welcome first for the nearly 10-year-old band. The five members (Dickinson, bassist/founder Steve Harris, guitarist Dave Murray and Adrian Smith and drummer Nicko McBrain) have put together an elaborate stage production based on Egyptian themes: the set needs to be transported in six 45-foot trucks: there are 700 lamps and close to 200 pounds of amps. Now that's heavy metal.

Mythology is something you’ve touched on before, as in an Egyptian theme (“Flight of Icarus" and “Revelations," both from 1983’s Piece Of Mind). Is that a long-standing interest of yours?

That’s a throwback to the good old English classical education system. You get taught Latin and Greek and a pile of myths and legends along with it. Egypt was something that wasn’t really taught, but was something that I was interested in. It did have a very interesting religious system which formed the basis of Christianity, really, or a lot of Christian beliefs. It’s one of the first modern religions. You’ve been writing more since The Number Of The Beast (1982).

I haven’t been writing more, it’s just that I’m legally allowed to write now. I was all messed up with contracts, shit like that, on The Number Of The Beast. After that album, I was free. I write loads of stuff.

Do you have a song you’re most proud of?

“2 Minutes To Midnight” and “Die With Your Boots On.”

“2 Minutes" seems to be one of the first metal songs with a "message."

Most metal songs have messages in them of one description or another, this one just happens to be what most people would recognize; it is a political message, in that respect.

Is being political something you have consciously shied away from in the past?

I was always trying to get the right approach, really. It’s not that we don’t have any views on that sort of thing. It was trying to find something where you could be in some way political without one, preaching at people, and two, being pompous, and three, doing something that everybody agreed with in one way.

I mean, ”2 Minutes To Midnight” takes as its basic position the idea that killing people, for whatever reason, is generally a bad idea—which almost every sane person on this earth would agree with. From that level it then degenerates into arms corporations, governments, soldiers of fortune, everything else, all agreeing that they don’t want to kill anybody and all manufacturing or making huge amounts of money out of weapons of mass destruction; and all their various motivations and excuses for doing it: money, gain, fun, adventure. And they’re all very human and fallible motives, as well. It’s not like they’re monsters; it’s not like most of the people that do all the killing in the world are monstrous psychopaths. They’re not. They’re ordinary people. The song’s all full of contradictions, that’s the whole idea. Paint it as accurately as you could from a human point of view.

Iron Maiden's repertoire doesn 't include the basic boy-meets-girl-love-hurts songs that are most other bands' staples. Is there a conscious decision to stay away from “relationship” songs, or would you do one if offered?

If it was good. Well, I’ve got a couple of ideas for “relationship” songs, but they’re very different...’course they would be different! (laughs) Yeah, I suppose some people are more interested in love; I’m more interested in death.

Is that something that's fascinated you for a long time?

Apart from birth, it’s the most important thing that happens to you. And I’ve already done birth. (laughs)

I’ve read that you remarked that you’d rather win an Olympic gold medal for fencing than get a platinum album.

Yeah, that’s probably true.

How long have you been fencing?

Since I was 14 or 15. I train every day.

I broke off for about six or seven years, and started again at the beginning of last year.

Course I compete. That’s why I train. I don’t do it for—I was going to say I don’t do it for love—I do do it for love, but I mean, I don’t do it for recreation. I do it to kill. (laughs) I did a whole pile of competitions last summer.

How’d you do?

Seconds, thirds, that sort of thing. I was fencing as good as I could, I was fairly beaten—well, you beat yourself in fen-

‘‘I think the problem with American audiences is they tend to get too drunk or something before the shows. ” -Steve Harris

cing, you see. The only reason you get beaten is ’cause you’re not good enough, not ’cause the other guy’s better. Couldn't you say that about anything, then?

Yeah. That’s the way I look at things. You don’t have to be good at things, but you have to accept that’s why—accept your level, when you really don’t think you can improve any more. And when you accept it, that’s fine.

But fencing, like singing, is a multifaceted sport. There’s many, many different ways to kill a cat. If you can’t go fast enough to beat the fastest fencer on earth—go slower. Fuck with his timing, mess with his head. In singing, you can have a five-octave range, be the loudest singer on God’s earth, and be a lousy vocalist. Nobody will come and see you. And you can have a shitty voice, and be a great entertainer, and everybody will come up and you’ll sell out 12,000-seat arenas. So who’s won—who’s the better entertainer? Who’s having more fun? Who’s communicating? Who’s expressing their personality?

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Foiled again. Time to trek into the— gasp—crowd, and see “the eyes of the Nile opening,” as it were. The set truly was impressive. Illustrator/artist Derek Riggs (who has designed all of Maiden’s album covers) has done a wonderful, dare we say artistic, job of creating backdrops, props and detail work, down to hieroglyphic scrims covering the speakers, rows of mummy cases, a couple of copies of statues we’ve seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and several carefully and crisply rendered backing vistas. We’re very glad we saw the King Tut exhibition. And of course there’s Eddie, appearing in various guises (and his mummy). He is beginning to look rather like E.T. Iron Maiden also has the singular distinction of being one of the few bands to use dry ice effectively.

The band put on an enthusiastic, energetic show that was received well by an audience full of regulation T-shirted youths. The only problem—as is unfortunately the case in too many metal shows—was the crowd. “One reason heavy metal gets a bad reputation,” my (young male) companion astutely noted, “is this!” At which he swept his hand over the audience.

So when we tracked down bassist Steve Harris, this time on the phone from New York, where Maiden was three nights into a seven-night run at Radio City Music Hall, we decided to ask him—is heavy metal its audience’s keeper?

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One thing I’ve noticed is that the English heavy metal crowd is quite different from the American—generally they’re much less nastily rowdy, I saw three arrests and one kid being taken away in an ambulance before the show even started. And that, unfortunately, is par for the course here.

We don’t generally get that sense from the audience when we’re up there. Quite often, unless we see a fight or something, we don’t really get much feeling of there being tense situations going on. I suppose you’d feel it more being in the audience. I think the problem with American audiences is they tend to get too drunk or something, sometimes, before the shows. They go into liquor stores and start drinking in the parking lot, and I think in England they don’t tend to do that. They might go down to the pub and have a couple pints of beer, maybe, but generally not. They just go and have a good time, see the band, hear the music; and they don’t tend to get really out of it. A lot of people over here associate a concert with getting out of it. I think it’s really—well, it’s not what we’re into. We’re not into drugs and stuff, anyway, especially drinking beer before a concert. But I suppose it’s different people’s ideas of having a good time. Sometimes in Europe it happens, in Italy. But I think it’s really in the States where they seem to be associating concerts with getting out of it. It’s a shame, really.

[Writer’s note: We heartily commend Harris on this comment, and must enphasize in the strongest terms that this is not meant as a criticism of America— you jingoistic yahoos can put the crayons down—but of a trend that’s all-toofrequently seen in the States. Iron Maiden loves the States and most of the fans. And now back to the interview, already in progress.]

The little symbol that’s on all the albums (three circles with an arrow and a line; look for it), what does that mean?

Derek Riggs has adopted that as his sign, and I did ask him one day what it meant. He went into some—he’s a bit weird; I mean, he’s an artist, I suppose I would’ve been a bit disappointed if he wasn’t, since my idea of an artist is a bit strange—he went into some rap about,

I don’t know, some ancient symbol meaning this, that and the other, and he lost me after about half an hour, (laughs) Do you have a favorite song on the album?

Two, really. I think probably "Rime” and "2 Minutes.”

Ever since I heard, and saw, Monty Python’s “Albatross” skit I haven't been able to think of “Rime” in the same way.

(laughs) Yeah. When we did five nights in London, what we were going to do was each night get a different person—our manager, a couple of our friends—to actually walk in the audience shouting, “Albatross! Albatross!” In the end it didn’t come about, but we should’ve done it. It would’ve been pretty funny.

Why aren’t you singing more?

I used to do a lot more on the first couple of albums, but since Bruce joined the band, he’s got such a strong voice that you can’t sing any harmonies or anything against him because it sounds pretty weak in comparison. I still do a bit of backing vocals, mainly on the old songs. Are you very prolific?

I tend to write songs when they need to be written, if you know what I mean.

I can’t just sit down and write to order. I need to have basic ideas first.

Do you write on guitar?

No, on the bass.

That's interesting. Do you think that contributes to the way your songs sound to a significant degree?

It makes the songs sound quite a bit different to a lot of other bands. There’s definitely a different structure, not like the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eightguitar solo-verse-chorus-then out. That’s a pretty standard sort of thing, written on guitars. I'm not saying that it doesn’t work; it works for a lot of bands, but we just don’t tend to write that way.

Do you think you've felt a lot less pressure now that there are more contributions from the rest of the band?

Oh, definitely, yeah. The first two albums, all the songs were me, really. Since then it’s been gradually getting better, as far as pressure goes.

Ever think of doing something separate from the band?

Well, I’ve thought about it, but not much more than that, really, nothing further than that, because I don’t get the time, you know.

Are there songs that you’ve written that wouldn’t fit Maiden's style?

No, not really. The songs that I write are all for Iron Maiden. I’m very happy with what we do. If I did a solo album, it’d probably end up sounding really like Iron Maiden, because I can’t really write in much of a different way.