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In 1984, POWERSLAVE became the fifth album released by Iron Maiden.
The entire tracklist includes:
1.Aces High
2.2 Minutes to Midnight
3.Losfer Words (Big 'Orra)
4.Flash of the Blade
5.The Duellists
6.Back in the Village
7.Powerslave
8.Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Powerslave represents the essence of Iron Maiden at the pinnacle of their "golden age", and is the first album without any lineup changes in the band. No other album so clearly captures the spirit of power, fantasy, and emotion. The album cover is in my opinion the best of all the Maiden albums, and perfectly sets the mood of power and mystery. The songs are for the most part superb, with four of them becoming timeless Maiden classics.
Aptly, if somewhat ironically, named, Powerslave, the fifth Iron Maiden album, found the band at its commercial zenith. Recorded, like its predecessor, Piece Of Mind, at Compass Point Studios, in Nassau, and released in September 1984, Powerslave was to become Maiden's second British No. 1 album, and their second million-selling album in the US, where it reached No. 12. Elsewhere, it was the same story, the album becoming a Top 10 hit in over a dozen different countries on three continents, as Maiden now became recognised as the biggest, most influencial heavy metal band in the world.
It was also around this time that I first got to know them well. I had watched awe-struck as Maiden kept a 250,000-strong crowd enthralled at the 1985 Rock In Rio festival, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. And I had been mightily impressed by their ability to fill the 7,000-seater Radio City Hall, in New York, for five nights in a row, which they also did that year.
Most of all, though, I had been struck by how down-to-earth and modest about their achievements the band themselves appeared to be. Determined not to forget their poor, East London roots, they viewed the colourful carnival now unfolding around them wherever they went with a self-deprecating humour and detachment I had not witnessed in any other million-selling rock band before.
"Did you ever really think the band would become so big?" I remember asking bassist and founding member Steve Harris. "No, no way," he shook his head and smiled. "Only in my dreams and I never used to think that dreams came true."
He did now, though. The proof was all around him. At home in Britain, where Powerslave became their fifth consecutive hit, Maiden were becoming household names, replacing Zeppelin, Purple and Sabbath, as the familiar face of 'classic' heavy metal. While in America, they were now enormous arena-headlining stars able to fill 13,000-seater venues like the Long Beach Arena, in Southern California, for four nights in a row, as they also did in 1985.
The Powerslave album itself was a confident, classic-track strewn follow-up to their breakthrough Piece Of Mind album the year before. Half the eight featured tracks – 'Aces High', 'Rime Of The Ancient Mariner', 'Powerslave' and '2 Minutes To Midnight' – would immediately become the cornerstone of the new Maiden live show. A sure sign of the album's strength and depth.
'Aces High', which opens the album, was an exhilarating, Steve Harris-penned call-to-arms, much in the manner of 'Where Eagles Dare', which opened the previous album, only this time set in the middle of a World War II mid-air dogfight, artillery-fire guitars and swooping vocals taking the listener up, up and away into the battle-smeared ether. It would also become the second single released from the album, and another Top 20 UK hit, in October 1984.
'Two Minutes To Midnight', which follows, was the best example yet of the rapidly evolving songwriting partnership between singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith. A knock-out riff underpinned by a freakishly fat groove, Bruce emoting madly over the top, leading to a rain of choruses that would make the dead get up and dance.
Released as the first single from the album, 2 Minutes To Midnight became the summer rock anthem that year, skittering into the UK charts at No. 12, in August, and winning the band yet more new fans. "I was always really good with coming up with riffs," Adrian says now. "But I didn't always know how to fit what I did into what Maiden did. But with Bruce there, he was able to bring more of that Maiden direction to the lyrics and just the general thrust of the song. 'Two Minutes To Midnight' is a perfect example of that."
The next four tracks – Steve's playful, prog-rock-influenced instrumental, 'Losfer Words (Big 'Orra)', Bruce's suitable swashbuckling and riff-laden 'Flash Of The Blade', Steve's scathing period-piece drama, 'The Duellists', and Bruce and Adrian's rampantly rabble-rousing 'Back In The Village' – were all as good as anything the band had done since the Harris-Murray-Dickinson-Smith-McBrain line-up of the band had first come together. But it was the last two tracks of the album that, like the first two, would really live on in their fans' imagination for years to come.
'Powerslave', the title track, was Bruce's most ambitious piece of work yet. Ostensibly, the story of the lust for glory and immortality displayed by the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt, a closer look at the lyrics reveals an unexpectedly autobiographical slant to the song. "I was singing about Ancient Egypt but I was also singing about the modern world, too." Bruce explains now. "The music business, for example, is a perfect place to start. First you're a slave to the power of the music, then – if you're not careful – you're a slave to the power of selling records. The song was kind of my warning, as much to myself as anything. The band was getting so big by then, I didn't want it to make us crazy. It was like we were on a huge rollercoaster ride, which was fun, but I just didn't want us to crash."
The band, however, were saving the best for last, and 'Rime Of The Ancient Mariner', which closes the album, is still regarded to day as one of the greatest numbers that Maiden have ever recorded. Inspired by the famous 18th Century poem of the same name by the English mystic, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and nearly 14 minutes long, it is the most fully realised of all Steve's most epic songs, and while there have been many superb 'cornerstone' tracks since recorded by the band, none has come close to equalling the drama of the monolithically depicted 'Rime Of The Ancient Mariner'.
"I'd read the poem and for some reason it really got into my head," Steve recalls. "Then I started writing the song and it wasn't meant to be particularly long or anything, it just came out that way. It sort of took a life of its own and wrote itself! And because of that, I think, I've always regarded it, and so have the Maiden fans, as a very magical sort of song."
Equally impressive was the Ancient Egyptian motif that the Powerslave sleeve and subsequent stage show was built around. Suitably inspired, Eddie-creator, Derek Riggs, came up with his most spellbinding artwork yet: a leering, immortal Eddie sitting, Sphinx-like, on his enormous sand throne, a monument to bestial behaviour and megalomania. On stage, it was simply a question of bringing the album sleeve into three-dimensional life, which they somehow did, the prop pyramids and sphinxes made more vivid each night by the appearance of the new, 30-foot Eddie, his body entirely mummified, his ghostly red eyes shooting immortal fires as he stalked the stage daring unbelievers to stand up to him.
There were no takers. As Steve says, "It could have been totally Spinal Tap, but in the end I think it looked completely dazzling. It was actually quite uncomplicated to put up as well, which was the beauty of it – you could put it up in the smallest club or the largest arena and it would still look the business! At the time, I thought it was our best stage show ever."
It was certainly their longest-running. Dubbed the World Slavery Tour, Maiden would be on the road for 13 consecutive months, performing over 300 shows in no less than 28 countries – a monumental journey that would take them from the grey London streets of their home to the golden beaches of California, via in such highlights as their first tour behind what was then still known as the Iron Curtain, and of course that unforgettable appearance at the 1985 Rock In Rio festival.
But 13 months is a long time to be on the road and when the tour finally came to an end, in Japan, in September 1985, all five members were in a state of physical and nervous exhaustion. "I always used to say that it was the best tour we ever did and it was the worst," says Bruce now. "It would have finished a lot of bands I know off completely! But because we were so strong as people, we came through it. But only just!"
"It's true that by the end of it, we were all knackered," says Steve. "But I still thought it was the best tour we'd ever done. The show looked amazing, but the music had never sounded so good, either. We had five albums to draw from then, and I think our general feeling was we just couldn't miss.
"So when I look back on it now, it's not the hard slog I remember, it's just how fantastic the whole trip was," he continues. "Definitely one for the history books, that was..."
