In the summer of 1984, following a concert at Poland’s Hala Arena,Iron Maidenwent out for a drink. Rejecting the quietude of the hotel bar, the English party decamped for Klub Andria, a local discotheque, which that evening had been booked for a wedding party attended by 300 Poles. After partaking of grape and grain, in game spirits, the English musicians duly accepted an invitation to clamber onstage.
Documented in shaky camcorder footage in the documentary feature filmIron Maiden: Burning Ambitionis the sight of Maiden playingSmoke on the Wateron a cramped dais at a matrimonial gathering behind the Iron Curtain. It is one of only two clips I can find of the band playing a live version of a song written by anyone other than themselves.
As bassist and group leader Steve Harris puts it, towards the top of the film: “We were picking up fans from the first gigs we did because we played our own material… There’s no way I would go onstage and play something I didn’t like. I’d rather sweep the streets. In fact, I did.”
The steely philosophy of their east-London council worker has served the group well. Along with a catalogue of evidently attractive songs, Iron Maiden’s innate integrity has been a magnet for a vast army of fervid admirers. I’ve wracked my brains, and I can’t think of a group with a more dedicated audience. As Chuck D, bandleader of Public Enemy, puts it inBurning Ambition, “This group created their own universe.”
As well as interviewing band members past and present, the film (directed by Malcolm Venville) trains its lens on the fans themselves. In what is a far cry from the days when metal was the preserve of the under-represented, in 2026, all human life is here. Keeping company with a few recognisable faces – the actor Javier Bardem, Lars Ulrich fromMetallica, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello – the devotees featured include soldiers, academics, cops, psychiatrists, military historians, financiers and more.
Feuds and flights
Only occasionally does the action err on the overfamiliar. The story of singerBruce Dickinsonflying the band around the world in their own plane – Ed Force One – has been shown before, in the 2009 featureIron Maiden: Flight 666. Even as a mere admirer, meanwhile, I was aware that Dickinson and Harris almost came to blows after a gig at Newcastle City Hall, in 1982, during which the singer took issue with the bassist’s determination to stand in the spot normally reserved for a frontman. If I know this stuff, the film’s target audience certainly will.
WhereBurning Ambitionexcels is in its portrayal of a band whose sheer bloody-mindedness inspires devotion in listeners who recognise that, here at least, the compromises of life need not apply. Whatever the weather, Maiden follow their own star. While other metal greats have tweaked their act to suit changing times – Metallica going “greasy” in the wake of grunge, Slayer down-tuning their guitars in response to nu-metal – this most resolute of statesmen looks only inward for inspiration.
“I put a barbed-wire fence around the band, creatively,” Rod Smallwood, the group’s redoubtable West Yorkshire-born manager, says towards the top of the film. To this day, the frontier remains impregnable.
UnlikeAC/DCor theRamones, though, Maiden are willing to challenge their audience. Out on the road in 2006-07, for example, the band played their then-current album,A Matter Of Life And Death, in its entirety. At the end of the set, space was made for just five older songs.
I recall seeing Maiden at Wembley Arena in 1993, at a time when it was known that Bruce Dickinson would be leaving the band at the end of the tour. Recounting what sounds like a perfectly miserable experience, inBurning Ambition, drummer Nicko McBrain says that he “used to watch [the singer], every night, knowing that he didn’t want to be there. I hated him for that.” Equally forthright, Harris described several of Dickinson’s performances on the tour as being “f---ing awful”.
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Perhaps inevitably, the band struggled without their notable frontman. (To be fair, Dickinson struggled as a solo artist, too.) Determined to endure, Maiden scooped up Blaze Bayley, the frontman with the Tamworth group Wolfsbane, whose own shot at the big time had reaped a scant harvest. Not even an EP with the unbeatable titleAll Hell’s Breaking Loose Down at Little Kathy Wilson’s Place– released on Rick Rubin’s Def American label, no less – could save Wolfsbane. Acting on the advice of his band’s manager, who told him the group was going nowhere, the singer changed horses.
“I saw an interview with him, and there was a line at the end where he said, ‘I feel like Dorothy inThe Wizard Of Oz,’” Bruce Dickinson once recalled. “I thought, ‘That’s really sweet – I know exactly how you feel.’ So, I painted up two bricks [yellow] and sent them to him.” Flush for the first time in his life, the new frontman bought himself a second-hand Jaguar.
Unsold tickets and unhappy fans
From the off, though, Bayley was on a hiding to nothing. In its most startling moment,Burning Ambitionfeatures footage of audience members spitting on both the singer and Harris (a trespass doubly insulting given the bassist’s trenchant disdain for punk). As the group’s fortunes continued to dip, just five years after performing to almost 19,000 people at the Spectrum, in Philadelphia, Maiden drew a crowd of just 500 in 1996 at a less-than-half-full Electric Factory in the centre of town.
“There were some great moments [during those years]”, drummer McBrain says inBurning Ambition, “but there were many that weren’t”. Twenty-seven years after being fired, with remarkable dignity, Bayley says that “it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not. The world is a better place with Iron Maiden in it.” (In a typically classy move, Bayley was invited to the premiere ofBurning Ambitionin Leicester Square this week. Later this year, along with Maiden themselves, the singer will be inducted into theRock & Roll Hall of Fame.)
Slogging through these fallow years, with typical fortitude, Iron Maiden simply refused to concede defeat. In 1999, following a rapprochement between two estranged camps, Dickinson met with his former bandmates at a yacht club in Brighton. “I want to play big gigs again,” the singer said – at this time, guitarist Adrian Smith, who left in 1990, also rejoined the group – after which the reunited band repaired to the pub.
The plan worked; Dickinson got his wish. In 2001, Maiden headlined Rock In Rio in front of an audience of a quarter of a million people. (The bill for the group’s famous performance at the same festival, in 1985, was topped by Queen.) Remarkably, their fortunes have continued to rise. This summer, for the first time, the group will play stadiums in the United States. A forthcoming appearance at Knebworth, in July, places them in the company ofLed Zeppelin, Genesis, Deep Purple andPink Floydin the most exclusive VIP room in all of rock ’n’ roll.
A stronger-than-ever relationship with fans
Rather than being irked that their audience once deserted them, instead, the group seems justly proud that the relationship with their fans is stronger than it was during their first flush of success. Today, Bruce Dickinson addresses vast crowds that might otherwise be divided by generation, class and race, with words that should – but somehowdon’t –sound glib. It doesn’t matter who you are, he tells them, “We’re one f---ing family”.
As it goes, I reckon it’s about as close as it gets. In an age of frankly scandalous ticket prices, entry to Knebworth costs a relatively modest £127. Unlike Metallica, whose top-tier packages atthe Sphere, in Las Vegas, will set you back $5,500 (about £4,300), Maiden don’t dirty their hands with grubby VIP bundles. Instead of being fleeced for money, respected constituents pay their dues in devotion.
As the group’s members step towards their eighth decade, of course, time might also be a factor. With each passing year, the odds thatthiswill be the last time to see the group in concert only increase. But if the endisin sight, one needs binoculars to see it. Iron Maiden aren’t ready to run to the hills just yet.
“It looks like we’re taking next year off,” Harris recently said. “Personally, I didn’t want to, but that’s just me. I’m just one of six people, despite what people might think. They don’t just do as they’re told. Otherwise, we’d be doing stuff next year, too.”
Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition is in cinemas now
