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In 1980, IRON MAIDEN became the first album released by Iron Maiden.
The entire tracklist includes:
1.Prowler
2.Sanctuary
3.Remember Tomorrow
4.Running Free
5.Phantom of the Opera
6.Transylvania
7.Strange World
8.Charlotte the Harlotte
9.Iron Maiden
This was Iron Maiden's first full-length studio album, although it contains a couple of re-recorded versions of tracks from The SoundhouseTapes. Most of the songs on this album had been played by the band during the previous several years during their endless series of small gigs at various clubs and pubs around London. For this reason, the album contains a wide range of material that is not really unified into any specific theme or style. The sound is also a bit different from the later albums to which most Maiden fans are accustomed, but after several listens their unique power and depth begin to sink in. This is particularly astonishing because although Will Malone was officially the producer for the album, he never contributed much and the album production was mostly done by the band and the recording engineer. So although the production is a bit primitive, the album virtually explodes with raw energy and power. Several of these tracks have become Maiden classics and still almost mandatory at every Maiden concert.
For those of us who had only read about them in Sounds, the arrival of the first eponymously titled Iron Maiden album came as an almighty shock. Yes, we had heard of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), and yes we were aware that Maiden was rightly regarded as being at the forefront of the new metal scene. But no-one – not even the band – could quite believe it when their first album rocketed straight into the UK charts at No.4 in its first week of release!
"We knew it was gonna go in the charts, because we'd really built up a following by then with all the touring," smiles bassist and founding member, Steve Harris. "But to go in at No.4 – I mean, at first, I thought they were joking, or someone had made a mistake, I made them go and check twice and even then I still couldn't quite believe it."
Clearly, this was no ordinary rock band. But then, this was no ordinary time for rock music, either. The NWOBHM encapsulated an era in British music when, seemingly from out of nowhere, a new generation of heavy rock artists began to emerge. Leaner, meaner, more streetwise than their hoary Seventies antecedents, the NWOBHM was a post-punk phenomenon unlike any that could have been predicted.
Using the mechanics of punk – independently released records, fanzines, pub tours – while at the same time railing against its conformities – short hair, anti-intellectual, fashion-led – the NWOBHM bands were the true black sheep of rock. Some, like London's Iron Maiden and Sheffield's Def Leppard would go on to become the biggest stars of the Eighties rock firmament, while others, like Diamond Head, Praying Mantis, Samson, Angel Witch, and the Tygers Of Pan Tang were destined to become mere footnotes in the NWOBHM story.
Who would eventually come out on top had still to be decided, though, when Maiden's first album hit the streets, in April 1980. But the signs were already there. Maiden's very first release, the three-track EP, The SoundhouseTapes, in November 1979, had been a limited edition 7-inch vinyl pressing of 5,000 on their own Rock Hard Records label. You couldn't buy it in the stores; you had to mail off for it. Nevertheless, all 5,000 copies had been sold in less than three weeks! When major record-chains Virgin and HMV both then tried to persuade the band to press up a further 20,000 copies, Maiden showed their true NWOBHM colours and flatly refused.
As Steve recalls: "We knew we could have made a bit of dough – and it's not like we didn't need it, none of us had money in those days – but we said, bollocks to that! The SoundhouseTapes was done for the real hardcore Maiden fans – the ones who followed us when no-one else had even heard of us. We weren't gonna sell them down the river just so we could line our pockets. No way! Maiden's never been like that..."
The SoundhouseTapes featured three of the four tracks the band had originally recorded as a demo at Spaceward Studios, in Cambridge, on New Year's Eve 1978. The title of the EP came from the name of the venue where Maiden first became famous. Situated at the side of a pub in Kingsbury Circle, London, the Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse, as it was known, and its resident DJ-spokesman, Neal Kay, had brought Maiden to national attention for the first time via the club's own Heavy Metal Soundhouse Charts, which ran every week in Sounds.
Based on requests made to Kay on Bandwagon nights, the band had given the DJ a copy of their Spaceward demo and it had become an instant hit with the regulars. Enthralled by the brutal, rifling power of 'Prowler', the epic storytelling of 'Invasion', and the frantic, scatter-gun explosion of the band's street anthem, 'Iron Maiden', soon all three were in the Heavy Metal Soundhouse Top 5. When 'Prowler' then went to No.1 and stayed there for most of the summer of '79, it was the turning point for a band that had struggled for recognition since the days Steve Harris put the very first line-up of Maiden together in his nan's front room.
That had been in 1975, when Steve still wanted to call the band Influence. Since then, one name change and several line-up alterations had resulted in the fiery five-piece that eventually came to record the Iron Maiden album together.
All five members – Steve Harris (bass), Dave Murray (guitar), Paul Di'Anno (vocals), Dennis Stratton (guitar) and Clive Burr (drums) – had come from the same deprived areas of East London that they would later eulogise in early Maiden anthems like 'Running Free', 'Charlotte The Harlot' and 'Wrathchild'. There was no doubting the musical prowess of gifted players like Murray and Burr, and there was an epic quality to Harris's songwriting which forced you to sit up and listen, while Di'Anno, with his short punk hair and tattoos, emanated barrow-boy charm and street-hoodlum menace in equal portions. Together, as you can hear from tracks like the still brilliant first single, Running Free, or the quasi-operatic 'Phantom Of The Opera', Maiden had an edge to them which made most of their NWOBHM comtemporaries sound positively slack.
Never more evident than on the groundbreaking Metal For Muthas tour of the UK, at the start of 1980, as future Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, then plying his trade in London rivals Samson, recall: "Compared to all the other NWOBHM bands, Maiden were on a completely different plane. There was Maiden – and then there was the rest of us..."
Metal For Muthas had been an EMI compilation album which featured two Maiden tracks, 'Wrathchild' and 'Sanctuary', plus one track each from several other NWOBHM-related acts like Samson, Sledgehammer, Angel Witch and (gulp!) Ethel The Frog. But real proof of the band's heightened powers arrived with the release of Iron Maiden.
Recorded at Kingsway Studios, West London, in February 1980, its eight tracks drawn almost entirely from the band's existing live set, Iron Maiden is regarded by many long-standing Maiden fans one of the finest albums any line-up of the band would ever make.
Nearly 20 years on, however, Maiden themselves are divided on the subject. Steve still bemoans the lack of interest journeyman producer Will Malone showed for the project, which resulted, "in us basically producing the first album ourselves," he says, pointing to the second Maiden album, Killers, as the definitive Di'Anno-era recording. While Paul himself says that for him, "The first Maiden album was easily the best thing we ever did. People go on about the production, I don't know what they're talking about. I think it sounds brilliant! That's what we were then – rough and raw."
Indeed, from the revved-up and revamped from the Spaceward demo 'Prowler' and the gloriously catchy 'Running Free', to the freakishly frenetic 'Transylvania', the archly lewd 'Charlotte The Harlot' and the maniacally bone-cracking title track itself, 'Iron Maiden', the image that springs to mind is that of a band running riot, treating the studio like a stage and putting on the performance of their lives to an imaginary crowd of millions.
There were more reflective moments too, like the unusually questioning Di'Anno lyrics to 'Remember Tomorrow', or the dreamily romantic 'Strange World'. But perhaps the first sign of the Maiden-to-come was in the album's most grandiose moment, 'Phantom Of The Opera'. The first of many Steve Harris epics now regarded as the cornerstone of the Maiden oeuvre, 'Phantom Of The Opera' contained all the elements that later characterised the quintessential Maiden sound: lengthy, momentous riffing thrown into unexpectedly angular shape by courageous time-changes and mock-operatic choruses; coupled to lyrics that journeyed far beyond the rock'n'roll norm. Unrepentantly uncommercial and utterly compelling, it is only natural justice, perhaps, that it was this very quality of uncompromising individuality that would later help Maiden shift albums by the millions.
Released as the band's first single, on February 15, 1980, Running Free also became their first Top 40 hit, selling over 10,000 copies in its first week of release. As a result, the band were offered an appearance on Top Of The Pops, the biggest pop show on British TV. Most bands would have given anything for such an opportunity, but again Maiden showed that they weren't like most bands and insisted they would only appear on the show if they could do 'Running Free' live – unheard of in those days!
"I just had it in my head that I didn't want us to mime," says Steve. "I wanted to make the point that we weren't like the usual groups you got on Top Of The Pops – that Maiden was a real rock band that knew how to play live." At first, the BBC refused but later relented when it became clear the band would not back down, and the following week, Iron Maiden became the first band to play live on Top Of The Pops since The Who tore into '5.15' in 1972.
The other most talked-about feature of Maiden's first single and album was the appearance of a character who would also have a huge impact on the band's future. His name was Eddie and one look at him and you knew he meant business.
The fantastical graphic creation of an art-school drop-out named Derek Riggs, it would be Eddie's ghastly visage that would grace the cover of damn near every Maiden single and album for the next 15 years. Taking his name from the smoke-billowing face-mask with the flashing eyes that used to adorn the backdrop at all Maiden's earliest pub gigs (Eddie as in Eddie the 'Ead), Eddie would soon go on the become an important part of the live Iron Maiden experience. First in the form of a leather jacketed individual in a fright-night head-mask that would run on stage and start head banging furiously during 'Iron Maiden' (usually Rod Smallwood, the band's ebulliant manager, or one of their tour managers). But as the band exploded and the shows got bigger and more theatrical, so, too, did Eddie, until at one point, during their most recent Virtual XI tour, the legendary fiend actually cradled the band in his giant claw-like hands!
But such adventures were still the stuff of daydream back in 1980. In March, they had toured the UK as 'special guests' on a Judas Priest tour, playing to thousands at the sort of prestige venues they had not long before been queuing for tickets at as fans themselves – not least, London's Hammersmith Odeon, where they opened for Priest on March 15. "For us, it was unbelieveable," says Dave Murray. "We'd all been to the Hammersmith Odeon loads of times – but only ever as fans. I always used to wonder what it would be like, actually being on stage there. I never actually thought I'd get a chance to find out..."
But there were still greater heights for Maiden to explore and no sooner had the band's tour with Judas Priest ended that they found themselves returning to the very same venues – only this time as headliners! The tour started at the Drill Hole, in Lincoln, on May 15, and culminated in the band's first appearance as 'special guests' at the Reading Festival, on August 23. EMI released a new single, on May 16, to coincide with dates: a re-recording of the stage-favourite, 'Sanctuary', which had originally appeared on Metal For Muthas. Constructed around Dave's police-siren guitar riff and Paul Di'Anno's cackling vocals, as Steve, who wrote the bulk of it, says: "It was miles better than the version of Metal For Muthas and we didn't want to release another track from Iron Maiden as a single, so we thought 'Sanctuary' would be perfect."
It was, crashing into the UK charts at No. 33, then on the following week to No. 29. It might have gone even higher had Maiden made another appearance on Top Of The Pops but strike action had resulted in the show being off the air at the time.
Interestingly, Eddie is depicted on the Sanctuary sleeve apparently in the act of 'seeing off' the then Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Even with her eyes blacked out, it still caused a furore in the national press. The Daily Mirror ran the uncensored version under the headline: 'IT'S MURDER! Maggie Gets Rock Mugging!'.
The idea for the sleeve was actually a joke based on the fact that Thatcher was then starting to become known as the Iron Maiden. The band merely wanted to make it clear they weren't named after her. Hilariously, the Mirror took it all very seriously, though, and quoted a Tory spokesman as saying: "This is not the way we'd like her portrayed!" But by then, Iron Maiden was on its way to winning the band its first silver disc (for over 60,000 sales in the UK) and their future seemed assured. Fittingly, they were relaxing over a pub lunch when they first heard the news that the album had gone into the charts at No.4. "We all went completely bonkers and started running into the street!" Dave recalls. Racing back to their record company, they were greeted by exultant EMI staff shouting at them from the windows: "You've gone to No.4! You've gone to No.4!"
Like the song said, Iron Maiden was gonna get you. And how...
