Maiden
September 1986. A British band by the name of Iron Maiden release their sixth studio album called Somewhere in Time. I was 11 years old. Not long afterwards, I’d be holding that vinyl in my hands, whilst browsing the shelves of a record store. And ten minutes later, I’d be carrying home the record that would change my life.
Of course at the time I hadn’t the faintest idea who Iron Maiden were or what sort of music they played. Metal was a genre that had not yet fallen under my radar; the actual concept of genres was totally alien to me. I loved music, period. I’d grown up listening to my mother’s Beatles records, among a myriad other things, mostly 60s and 70s pop/rock. That background accounts perhaps for my eternal leanings towards clever, tuneful melodies, and a lifelong fascination with synth-heavy 80s’ new wave / new romantic bands, particularly Duran Duran. Yet I always craved what, in my mind at least, were darker, heavier sounds, although at the time I couldn’t quite figure out what exactly I was looking for. One thing I knew though: it had more to do with rock than pop.
In my quest to find the elusive dark side, all I could hope for was some kind of serendipity - these were the early 80s, long before the web, and I lived in a small village, which made discovering new music (particularly outside the mainstream) not the easiest of endeavours. Upon telling my mum that I’d like to hear something that was “more rock”, as I put it, she suggested, in her admittedly pop-oriented mindset, that I should try Rod Stewart. You may laugh, but at the time his persona was that of a true rocker, besides having a very unique voice - harsh, and therefore closer to the “aggressiveness” I sought. I still love the guy, seriously. Bryan Adams would become a later favourite, with his 1984 release Reckless, together with several hard(er) rock bands, like Scorpions for instance, but most importantly it was around that same time that I found The Rolling Stones through the Undercover album and the Rewind compilation. Whilst I’ve never been a huge Stones fan, they still sounded “dangerous” in 83/84 and therefore epitomised that outside-the-norm, rebel attitude that I found so alluring in rock. Things were starting to fall into place, and the distance between the powerful sounds I was surrounding myself with and a seed that had been planted in my mind years before, was becoming ever narrower.
That first contact with a true heavier side of music happened indeed much earlier, at some long-forgotten date (I must’ve been 6 or 7 years old). My godfather was my dad’s younger brother and he passed away when I was still very little - I have no recollection of him at all. Following his death, my grandparents kept his memorabilia in a place that always had a certain aura of mystery to me - a kind of shrine, a room adjacent to their house, which was kept locked most of the time, but was occasionally used by some people as a sort of library. I never really understood why nobody ever asked me if I wanted to see it, or why it was even open to the public in the first place, or indeed why, years later, all its contents were donated to the community and neither me, nor my parents as far as I know, had a say in that decision. The events surrounding my godfather’s death were rarely (if ever) discussed in front of me, apart from the occasional and intriguing comments about our similarities in look and personality, so in my mind they remain shrouded in a strange mystique.
Being a rather introvert kid has always been one of the great hurdles to satisfying my (ever immense) curiosity, but I somehow must have gathered enough courage that day to ask my father if I could take a look inside the so-called library. I was beyond terrified, but my bravery paid off and I was given the opportunity to see my godfather’s belongings for the first time. Among shelves filled with books and other things, there was something that caught my attention almost immediately, as if it had been there waiting for me all those years: his record player and vinyl collection. Browsing through it, my heart racing, one record stood out among the others - on its cover, a photo of a very unusual-looking band playing on a stage and, in the corner, the words “Ramones - It’s Alive”. It was none other than the punk pioneers’ classic double live album from 1979.
Oblivious to my own shyness now, I asked if I could listen to it - and it floored me instantly! The loud, fast, manic 2-minute songs were the most insane thing I’d ever heard and, in that moment, my godfather became the coolest guy I never knew. There was a slight problem with that assertion, though. If you take a closer look at the chronology, you clearly see that something’s not quite right. The Ramones record couldn’t have belonged to my godfather, as it was only released after his death, so it must have been left there by one of the individuals that occasionally used the library. I only realised this, to considerable dismay, years later. So maybe my godfather wasn’t the cool punk rocker I pictured that day, but in hindsight what truly matters is the impact that moment had in my young mind and the thirst it instilled in me to begin a multiple-year search for what was, unbeknownst to me then, called Heavy Metal.
My mother always bought me a lot of music. I remember getting LPs for my birthday and/or Christmas from her, since I was very little. Unlike most kids, who were crazy about all kinds of toys, I’d be in seventh heaven whenever I got a record shop gift card, that I’d use to keep on building my record collection. The trip to the record shop, usually a few days later, always filled me with anticipation - never knowing what I would eventually bring home, it opened up a world of exciting possibilities. That occasion in late 1986 was a little different though, for this time I had a very good hint of what I might be looking for.
Where I lived, there used to be a small stationery shop where, among other things, we took photocopies and bought all our school materials. Unused scraps of paper from the copy machine were often used to wrap and hold together our own purchases and on this one occasion I happened to get a cut out piece that looked more or less like this…
I was transfixed. It was the eeriest and most awesome thing I’d ever laid my eyes upon. Thrilled with my astonishing discovery, I showed it to my friends at school the next day and they too went crazy over it. But what nobody was able to gather was what it was exactly. Where was it from? Was it a book? A poster? A record maybe? Well, I had to find out, so the next time I went back to the stationer, I promptly asked the owner, whom I knew rather well. He wasn’t entirely sure, but was almost certain that it had been his son (who attended the same school we did, but was a few years older) doing some experiments with his records in the photocopier. So it was a record, after all. And that’s when it clicked. Only a little bit remained visible in that piece of paper, but I knew I had seen that unmistakably angular logo on the top before - Iron Maiden, if I remembered right. So now I knew… There was a band called Iron Maiden and they had the most amazing album cover I’d ever seen. And I couldn’t wait to hear what they sounded like…
And that brings us back to that day in 1986, when I was looking forward to redeem my newest record gift card. Or was I? Well, no, because I didn’t have one. My birthday was still a month or two away, so that left me with no other choice - I had to ask my mum if she would buy it for me. And, lovely as ever, she did. I remember it so clearly… I told her I’d like to go in the shop alone. So she gave me the money and there I went, straight to the letter “I”, and there they were - two Iron Maiden records, although none of them had the legendary cover (we’ll come back to that one shortly). There was a double album - 1985’s Live After Death - but the money I had wasn’t enough to buy that, so I picked the other one. It happened to be the newly released Somewhere in Time, with an even more extraordinary cover, inspired by the opening scenes of a strange film I hadn’t seen yet, but that would later become one of my all-time favourites - Blade Runner.
Holding it in my hands, I went up to the record shop clerk and asked if I could listen to it. And that was the moment everything changed for me. As the first track, Caught Somewhere in Time, started playing, I was immediately taken aback by the incredibly dark and futuristic-sounding intro. A guitar break followed, with blistering speed and heaviness, yet complex and melodic, and I knew, right there and then, that this was something very special and unique. Bruce Dickinson’s voice was out of this world; Nicko McBrain’s relentless drumming and Steve Harris’ distinctive bass-playing such an amazing rhythmic section; and Dave Murray and Adrian Smith’s intertwining and spellbinding guitar work unlike anything I’d heard before. After only a few minutes there were no lingering doubts in my mind - I had finally found what I’d been looking for all those years and I couldn’t wait to take it home with me.
Never before, or since, have I spent so long looking at an album cover. The incredible amount of details (mostly related to events from the band’s own history) was simply astounding, and it is still regarded as one of Derek Riggs’ greatest accomplishments. Riggs was the British artist famous for creating the band’s mascot - Eddie - which appears in all of their album covers and has long been held as “the most recognisable Metal icon in the world”. My attention was also drawn to the lyrics, despite the fact that English was still largely incomprehensible to me. I really wanted to understand what they were singing about and it’s funny to think how strange and exotic it appeared to me at the time. That would soon change, of course, and Maiden’s incursions into history, literature, war, mythology, society and religion, truly made their lyrics stand out in the Heavy Metal world, avoiding the commonplace topics of sex, drinking, drugs and satanism.
Musically, it was clearly the soundtrack to my inner dreams. An eight-part journey that saw Maiden experimenting for the first time with guitar synthesisers, which lent their music a pleasant warmth, yet at the same time a cold, technological edge, with Martin Birch’s superb production here at its crystal-clear best. From the blazing Caught Somewhere in Time, on through the memorable Wasted Years, the haunting Sea of Madness, the monumental Heaven Can Wait, the relentless and beautiful The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the eerie Stranger in a Strange Land, the magnificent Déjà-vu, and up to the sublimely epic tale of Alexander The Great, everything was perfect down to the last note. After my first listen, I remember standing absolutely still for a while, taking in everything I'd just heard and not quite believing it could be so good.
A few weeks later at school, we were walking outside during a break, when we found the stationer’s son and some of his friends, all a bit older than we were (in our eyes they were the cool guys), and they were listening to the album - Wasted Years was playing, per my recollection - on one of those large cassette players so common at the time, and I silently brimmed with pride… hey, I have that album too! I say silently because, apart from a couple of my closest friends, I told basically no-one, at the time, that I had it or that I enjoyed this kind of music. I don’t know why, I guess I was somehow already aware of the ridiculous and unwarranted prejudice against Heavy Metal that existed amidst more mainstream circles (and still does, to this day).
Being 12, not yet at an age of vehement musical identity, and because nothing ever happens in a linear fashion to me, my passion for Iron Maiden would indeed be kept as a rather personal secret for a few years, whilst I took a kind of musical detour. Always thirsty for the discovery of new music, this was the time when I developed my unassailable devotion for some of my (other) favourite bands: Pink Floyd, Simple Minds, The Cure, Depeche Mode and New Order. It would take a change of school (and the ever so important new acquaintances that come with it) for the subject of Maiden and Metal to come up again and awaken that latent desire in me to finally dive deeply into what I felt was decidedly my world.
One by one, I purchased all their albums, which I dutifully recorded onto cassettes so as to preserve the precious vinyls - and my, were they stunning! - as well as their live concerts on VHS (dutifully copied onto new tapes for the very same reason). Of course, one of the most memorable additions to my collection was their 1981 release - Killers - adorned by the very image I found on that photocopied scrap of paper years before. Yet, by the strangest of coincidences, the vinyl I got from the store would skip on one of the tracks, so I ended up returning it and buying a second-hand one from a guy, via a common friend. That guy just happened to be the stationer’s son, the person who took the actual photocopy, and the album I (still) own is indeed the one he took it from. It all came full circle.
From that moment of (re)awakening onwards, Heavy Metal (and its countless subgenres) would become my biggest passion, music-wise, for many years (despite my vast eclecticism of today, it still accounts for more than 75% of my music collection), and define so much of what I became as a person in later years. It truly was - and is - that important. But this is another story, for another time.
Somewhere in Time itself, I must have heard it nearly a thousand times since the day I entered that record shop in 1986, and I hardly let a month go by without listening to it at least once or twice. I just held the almost 30-year-old vinyl in my hands and it sent shivers down my spine, with all the memories it brings. My son, who is 8 years old and lives in Germany, surprised me last year when I found out he’s into Heavy Metal. And when I realised he had never heard about Iron Maiden, I knew exactly what to do - a CD of Somewhere in Time was soon on the way and it is now also his favourite record. Times have changed so much, but the magic of (great) music is still the same.
PS: I couldn’t help noticing, whilst writing this essay, how Eddie bears an uncanny resemblance to Rod Stewart in his trademark haircut. So maybe my mother was right, after all.
