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In 1982, THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST became the third album released by Iron Maiden.
The entire tracklist includes:
1.Invaders
2.Children of the Damned
3.The Prisoner
4.22 Acacia Avenue
5.The Number of the Beast
6.Run to the Hills
7.Gangland
8.Total Eclipse
9.Hallowed Be Thy Name
With Bruce Dickinson replacing Paul Di'Anno as vocalist, The Number Of The Beast was a huge step upward for Iron Maiden, launching the band into fame and controversy. It began the second phase of Maiden, what could be called the "golden years", spanning five studio albums through the rest of the 1980s. Dark, introspective, and violent themes dominate the album, which incited controversy and unfounded charges of devil worship. There were rumours of strange occurrences during the recording of the album, such as lights turning on and off by themselves, strange noises, and such. Here's what Bruce Dickinson had to say about it during the heavily bootlegged 1982 concert at the Palladium in New York:
"While we're on the subject of strange goings on, a few of you might know we had a few weird things happen on the album right, that one or two people have attributed to be the work of Satan or the devil or this kind of nonsense, right? Just want to say to all the people who play records backwards and burn albums out in the streets, they can go and get... stick their heads up their arse or something like that 'cause... we ain't interested."-Bruce Dickinson, New York, 29th June 1982
It is possible that these rumours might have been merely a publicity ploy... "satanic" was popular in the 80s, just as "gangsta" was popular in the 90s. Many such rumours are embellished and even fabricated by religious bigots, for the purposes of their own propaganda campaigns. However, regardless of whether or not they actually happened, the one thing that isn't a possibility is the actual existence of Satan, who is merely a symbol of evil. Nevertheless, The Number of the Beast is among the very best of Maiden's albums, along with Piece Of Mind and Powerslave, and today remains a heavy metal classic – one of the best and most influential metal albums of all time.
Number Of The Beast, the third Iron Maiden album, was make or break time for the band. Singer Di'Anno's 'shock dismissal' had been announced when Maiden returned to Britain from their first world tour, in October 1981. The decision had been made 'on a totally amicable basis' stated the official press hand-out. But, inevitably, there was much speculation about the band's future. Having hit the charts witheir first two albums – Iron Maiden (1980) and Killers (1981) – it seemed like a huge risk the band were taking, replacing their frontman.
As history would record, however, the loss of Di'Anno proved to be Maiden's gain. His replacement, 23-year-old former Samson singer, Bruce Dickinson, was everything that Paul was not: ambitious, conscientious, reliable. He was also one of the finest rock vocalists to emerge from Britain since the heyday of Seventies superstars like Deep Purple's Ian Gillan, Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant, and Free's Paul Rodgers (later of Bad Company). "It was a tough decision to have to make," says bassist Steve Harris. "But the band was starting to break big all over the world by then and Paul was becoming so unreliable, we were having to cancel gigs. In the end, the risk of keeping him in the band and blowing everything outweighed the risk of losing him and starting again with someone new."
But as Di'Anno himself now magnanimously concedes: "I was just going for it non-stop, in those days. I knew I'd never last the whole tour, and there was no hard feelings afterwards. Personally, I think Bruce is a brilliant singer. And you've only got to look at what Maiden did after I left to see that they did the right thing."
Samson had been singled out, along with Maiden, Saxon, Def Leppard and the rest, as one of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal bands to watch. Remembered more these days for the fact that their drummer, Thunderstick (real name: Barry Purkis), always wore a leather S&M mask on stage. Bruce-Bruce, as he was then known (as in the old Monty Python sketch), recorded two highly acclaimed albums with Samson: Head On (1980) and Shock Tactics (1981).
But neither was a hit and Samson was without a record deal and on the point of disintegration when the band appeared at the Reading Festival, in 1981. Watching him in the crowd that day, tough, were Steve Harris and Maiden manager Rod Smallwood. "I wasn't a great fan of Samson's," says Steve now, "but I'd always thought that Bruce was really good. I'd seen him with them a couple of times and thought, yeah, the bloke's got a really good voice. Then when the shit really hit the fan with Paul, Bruce was one of the first people I thought of."
For his part, Bruce now confesses that he'd dreamed of fronting Maiden since the first time he'd seen them; ironically, when Maiden supported Samson at a gig at the Music Machine in London, in 1980. Bruce: "We were supposed to be the headliners but it was Maiden who stole the show. People just went mental the moment they came on! And they were good, really good. At that moment, I remember thinking, I wanna sing for that band. In fact, I'm gonna sing for that band! I know I'm gonna sing for that band!"
Bruce's first British performance with Maiden was at the Rainbow, in London, on November 15. From the word go, it was clear that Bruce was no mere replacement for Paul, he was something new, different. It was a swashbuckling performance, right on Maiden's home turf, and it banished any last lingering doubts about the band's future.
Now all they had to do was come up with a brilliant album. But first, they would need to write some new songs. Both their previous albums had been built around material from Maiden's existing live show. Now with that rich backlog dried up, they would be starting for the first time completely from scratch.
Looking back, Steve, who admits he was worried at the time, now says: "It was probably a good thing it happened like that. What with Bruce coming in, it meant everything was all fresh to that line-up. We hadn't been playing the numbers live for years and we didn't know them backwards yet. We really had to stop and think about it."
Eight brilliant (now 9) tracks, from the thundering opening track, 'Invaders', to the melancholic magnificence of album closer, 'Hallowed Be Thy Name' (the dying note of a condemned man), the most apparent difference between Number Of The Beast and both its predecessors was Bruce's much greater vocal range.
As producer Martin Birch says: "Having Bruce in the band opened up all sorts of possibilities for Steve as a songwriter and for me as producer. No offense to Paul, he was great for his time. But it was obvious that with Bruce now in the band, they were ready to take on the world." Martin remembers telling the band that Number Of The Beast would transform their career. "It just had all the magical ingredients," he says now, "feel, ideas, energy, execution."
Apart from the aforementioned 'Invaders' and 'Hallowed Be Thy Name', Steve had also come up with some of his most powerful songs yet in the sinister 'Children Of The Damned', the Omen II-inspired '666 – The Number Of The Beast' (from which the album took its title), and the rousing, anthemic 'Run To The Hills' – all of which, like 'Hallowed', were destined to become firm favourites in the live Maiden shows of years to come. Guitarist Adrian Smith also became more involved in the songwriting process for the first time, collaborating with Steve on the wonderfully paranoiac 'The Prisoner' (replete with actor Patrick McGoohan – who played the central character, No. 6, from the cult, Sixties TV series from which the song takes its title – uttering his famous catchphrase: 'I am not a number, I am a free man!'). And it was Adrian, with some help from drummer Clive Burr, who had come up with rabble-rousing 'Gangland'. While '22 Acacia Avenue' was a song Adrian had been "trying to get right" since he was in his previous band, Urchin. "I first wrote it when I was 18," Adrian explains. "Urchin had done a gig in the local park not long after and that was the first time we played '22 Acacia Avenue'. The weird thing was, Steve was actually at the gig, though I didn't know him then. Then out of the blue, while we were writing for Number Of The Beast, Steve turned to me and said, 'What was that song you used to do in Urchin?' and he started humming it and it was '22 Acacia Avenue'. It ended up slightly different on the album, but that's how it came about."
The ninth track, 'Total Eclipse', which Steve and guitarist Dave Murray had written together, again with help from Clive, and which appears here as a bonus track, was not originally included on Number Of The Beast, but was used instead as the flipside to the first single from the album – Run To The Hills. "'Total Eclipse' was a great song and I always regretted that we didn't keep it for the album, " explains Steve. "So I'm really glad that we've been able to rectify that here." It was the experienced ears of producer Martin Birch which first latched onto the commercial potential of 'Run To The Hills' as a single – and that was before the band had even started recording!
Sure enough, when Run To The Hills was released as a single in Britain, in February 1982, it leapt into the charts at a startlingly high No. 7! Maiden's first ever Top 10 single in their homeland, a new video, directed by David Mallet (then of Queen and David Bowie fame), was released. Comprised of live footage of the band hilariously intercut with excerpts from some old Buster Keaton movies. Britain's most influential music TV show, Top Of The Pops, showed the new video in full, as did the newly-emergent MTV in America – bringing Maiden to the attention of new fans all over the world.
As a result, when Number Of The Beast was released in Britain on March 22, 1982 – just two days after their latest UK tour had ended at London's Hammersmith Odeon – it shot straight into the charts at No. 1! Indeed, the album became a major Top 10 hit almost everywhere the band went that year, eventually selling more than a million copies worldwide. Half of those sales were in America alone, where the title of the album – featuring a particularly abominable Eddie on the sleeve, locked in mortal combat with what appears to be Beelzebub himself – had caused a storm of protest from the then emerging so-called 'moral majority': a right-wing pressure group, who had ludicrously accused Maiden of being Devil-worshippers and called for censorship stickers to be attached to their albums, or better still, not stocked by record stores at all! As Steve says, "They obviously hadn't read the lyrics."
Nevertheless, the resulting publicity did put the name Iron Maiden on the front pages in America for the first time and their shows begang to sell-out. But then – what a show! By now, Eddie was over 8-feet tall, and with the new Dickinson-Harris-Murray-Smith-Burr line-up firing on all cylinders for the first time, Maiden was no longer regarded as some NWOBHM curiosity and more like the internationally-reknowned rock band of legend they were about to become. Appropriately, the Beast On The Road world tour was Maiden's biggest and most successful yet: 180 shows in 18 countries stretched over 10 months of non-stop ramalama – the band picking up Gold Records in both Britain and America for the first time, as well as Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden and Belgium. But the best was yet to come.
