About Me
Hello, welcome to the Iron Maiden fanclub myspace. We are Maiden's biggest fans, and to be a friend is to be part of the true myspace Maiden fanclub. Be sure to check out our Blogs which include tracklisting from Maiden's amazing albulms!Here is a little about the band;Iron Maiden is an English heavy metal band from East London. Formed in 1975 by bassist Steve Harris, previously of Gypsy's Kiss and Smiler, Maiden have sold over 70 million albums world-wide. Iron Maiden has so far released 14 studio albums, four 'best of' compilations, nine live albums, and four boxed sets. The band won the Ivor Novello Award for international achievement in 2002Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who caused a rift between Murray and Wilcock, prompting Harris to sack both Murray and Sawyer. A disastrous gig at the Bridgehouse in November 1977, with a makeshift line-up including Tony Moore ..boards, Terry Wrapram on guitar, and drummer Barry Purkis (later rechristened 'Thunderstick') resulted in Harris sacking the entire band. Dave Murray was reinstated and Doug Sampson was drafted in as drummer.Iron Maiden had been playing for three years, but had never recorded any of their music. On New Year's Eve of 1978, the band recorded one of the most famous demos in hard rock history, The Soundhouse Tapes. Featuring only three songs, and a four-piece (all subsequent recordings featured a five-piece until 1999 when the band became a six-piece) the band sold all five thousand copies within weeks.One track found upon the demo, "Prowler", went to number one on Neal Kay's Heavy Metal Soundhouse charts in Sounds magazine. Their first appearance on an album was on the compilation Metal for Muthas (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of "Sanctuary" and "Wrathchild".For most of 1977 and all of 1978, Murray was the sole six-stringer in the band. This changed with the arrival of Paul Cairns in 1979. Shortly before going into the studio, Cairns left the band and several other guitarists played alongside Murray until the band finally settled on Dennis Stratton. Initially, the band wanted to hire Dave Murray's childhood friend Adrian Smith, but Smith was busy singing and playing guitar for his own band, Urchin. Drummer Doug Sampson was also replaced by Clive Burr (who was brought into the band by Stratton), and in December 1979, the band landed a major record deal by signing an EMI contract at the label's old building in London's Manchester SquareThe next level
Like many bands, Maiden consumed a large amount of alcohol in their early days. However, most members dabbled very little in other drugs, with Steve Harris never taking them at all.The exception was vocalist Paul Di'Anno, who demonstrated increasingly self-destructive behaviour, particularly through cocaine usage. His performances began to suffer, just as the band was beginning to achieve large-scale success in America. At the end of 1981 the band replaced Di'Anno with former Samson vocalist Bruce Dickinson. Legendary DJ Tommy Vance had told Dickinson not to join the band – advice which was ignored. Dickinson's debut with Iron Maiden was 1982's The Number of the Beast, an album that claimed the band their first ever UK number 1 record and additionally became a Top Ten hit in many other countries. For the second time the band went on a world tour, visiting the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia. The tour's US leg was marred (or perhaps promoted) by controversy stemming from an American right-wing political pressure group that claimed Iron Maiden was a Satanic group because of the album's title track. Ostensibly concerning a nightmare Steve Harris suffered, Iron Maiden members' attempts to deflect the criticism failed to dampen persistent accusations. A group of Christian activists destroyed the band's records (along with those of Ozzy Osbourne) by burning them in a large fire. However, these accusations of Satanism were largely based on misinterpretation of the song, or fear of the aggressive, energetic nature of the music. Iron Maiden's current drummer, Nicko McBrain, is a born-again Christian, and is happy to play the song, which he sees as a warning against Satanism.Satanic accusations persisted - there was a lot of controversy about occult messages in many bands' music at the time, normally discovered by playing the offending track backwards. On the Piece of Mind album, a backward message was placed at the start of the track "Still Life" as a kind of internal joke. Reverse this track, and you will hear drummer McBrain clearly saying "Hmm, Hmmm, what ho sed de t'ing wid de t'ree bonce. Don't meddle wid t'ings you don't understand",followed by a belch. McBrain later admitted this to be his "famous" impression of Idi Amin Dada. It translates to the following: "'What ho,' said the monster with the three heads, 'don't meddle with things you don't understand.'"Also on the Piece of Mind album, renowned author Frank Herbert came into conflict with the band when they wanted to record a song named after the book Dune. Not only did Herbert refuse to allow the song to be called "Dune", he also refused to allow a spoken quotation from the book to appear as the track's intro. Bass player Steve Harris's request was met with a stern reply from the agent: "No. Because Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially rock bands like Iron Maiden". This statement was backed up with a legal threat, and eventually the song was renamed "To Tame a Land" and released in 1983.Experimentation
In 1986, the band tried a different approach for their sixth studio album, titled Somewhere in Time. This was not a concept album, though it was themed loosely around the idea of time travel. It featured for the first time in the band's history synthetics for the bass/strings and for the guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. Though considered different from the norm of Maiden sounds, it charted well accross the world and is still regarded a part of Iron Maiden's 'golden era' (from The Number of the Beast through Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.These members made the band what they are today;(the current line-up);
Bruce Dickinson
Dave Murray
Adrian Smith
Janick Gers
Steve Harris
Nicko McBrain(former members);
Clive Burr
Paul Di'Anno
Blaze Bayley
Dennis Stratton
Doug Sampson
Paul Cairns
Paul Todd
Dave Mac
Tony Parsons
Dennis Wilcock
Terry Wapram
Thunderstick
Tony Moore
Ron Matthews
Bob Sawyer
Terry Rance
Paul Day
Dave Sullivan
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