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In 1990, NO PRAYER FOR THE DYING became the eigth album released by Iron Maiden.
The entire tracklist includes:
1.Tailgunner
2.Holy Smoke
3.No Prayer for the Dying
4.Public Enema Number One
5.Fates Warning
6.The Assassin
7.Run Silent Run Deep
8.Hooks in You
9.Bring Your Daughter...to the Slaughter
10.Mother Russia
The first thing to say about No Prayer For The Dying is the departure of Adrian Smith and his replacement with Janick Gers. It was sad to see Smith go, for both his playing skill and song-writing talent. However, the show must go on, and it does.
Many fans dislike this album, and I can understand many of the reasons why. With a few exceptions, the song-writing is a bit weaker and the lyrics are somewhat shallower than on previous albums. The sound quality is excellent (the album was digitally recorded), but many of the songs are missing that intangible quality that creates a deep and compelling mood.
In addition, Dickinson appears to be experimenting with a different singing style which is rougher and raspier than before. This is not necessarily bad in and of itself, but I still prefer the clear and powerful style of the past.
I want to point our that this is by no means a bad album. It may be a step down from the timeless classics of the golden era, but it does contain some excellent material. However, for new Maiden fans I would recommend waiting on this album at least until you have absorbed the classic albums of the golden era.
Many people mistakenly believe that Iron Maiden abandoned the synths for this album. The synths are still present on a few tracks, but in order to hear them you must listen very carefully with a good set of headphones. Try 'No Prayer For The Dying', 'Fates Warning', and 'Mother Russia'.
The first Iron Maiden album of the Nineties, No Prayer For The Dying came as a surprise to many long-time followers of the band. Where Maiden's two previous albums – Somewhere In Time (1986) and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son (1988) – had both been lavishly produced affairs, recorded in top-notch studios around the world and built upon a collection of songs bound together by a distinctly conceptual framework, No Prayer... was the complete opposite.
Gone were the synthesiser 'dressings' and neo-mythological 'concepts' that dominated much of Maiden's music in the second half of the Eighties, to be replaced by a return to the earthiness and raw power of their earliest albums. Or what bassist and founding member Steve Harris calls "the street vibe of early Maiden."
Gone too, however, was guitarist Adrian Smith. The man who had contributed much to Maiden's success in the Eighties – co-writing some of their biggest hits in '2 Minutes To Midnight', 'Wasted Years' and 'Can I Play With Madness?' – now found himself doubting his own position in the band, to the point where he finally felt it necessary to leave.
"It was a sad day for everyone when Adrian decided to leave," says Steve, "but at the same time, if you're not 100 per cent into it – and Adrian admitted he wasn't anymore – then it's time to leave. He did the right thing."
The turning point had come in 1989, when Adrian released his first solo album, A.S.A.P. (short for Adrian Smith Album Project). It had not been a commercial success, but Adrian had enjoyed the novel experience of "writing song that weren't anything to do with Maiden." Coupled to the fact that he had recently married and was now looking to start a family, the thought of another long stint away on the road brought on a bout of prolonged soul-searching which resulted in Adrian's decision to leave, on the eve of recording, in 1990. "It just wouldn't have been fair on the others, hanging around when you're not totally 100 per cent into it," he says.
Ironically, his replacement, former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, was introduced to the band through the extracurricular activities of singer Bruce Dickinson, an old pal, who had used the guitarist as his creative foil on his own first solo album, Tatooed Millionaire, released in the summer of 1990.
With Steve tucked away in an editing-suite for six months while he pieced together live footage for the classic Maiden England video, which would be released in November, officially 1989 was deemed a year off for Maiden. So when they were approached to come up with a song for the soundtrack of the movie Nightmare On Elm Street – Part Five, with the band temporarily in hiatus, Bruce decided to take the project on, on his own.
Recruiting the Hartlepool-born guitarist, who now lived a few streets away from Bruce in London, the first tune the two came up with was the memorably-titled, 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter' – written in "less than three minutes," boasts Bruce.
"God know where the title 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter' came from," he says, "it just sort of popped into my head, and I thought, Nightmare On Elm Street – yeah, perfect!"
A brilliantly catchy, full-on, shock-rocker straight out of the Alice Cooper school of schlock, and pre-dating the arrival of now notorious next-generation rocky-horror stars, Marilyn Manson, by a good five years, 'Bring Your Daughter...' so excited the record company when they heard it, they suggested Bruce expand his solo foray into a full-length album.
Bruce, a larger-than-life personality who has always suffered from a surfeit of energy – witness not just his career in Iron Maiden but the books he has authored, the TV and radio shows he has presented, the planes he has piloted and the fencing competitions he has won – didn't need to be asked twice.
An entertaining mixture of Bruce and Janick originals spiced with covers – including Bruce's version of Mott The Hoople's 1972 hit, 'All The Young Dudes', which became the singer's first solo hit single, in June 1990 – Tatooed Millionaire proved that Bruce could be a success without Maiden and speculation began to mount that he was about to follow in Adrian's footsteps and actually leave.
But, at the time, Bruce was most emphatic. No, he would definitely not be leaving Iron Maiden. "If anything," he told me, "doing my own album and having that outlet has made me even more happy being with Maiden again. I got all my frustrations out."
Ironically, the track which had started the ball rolling, though, did not actually make the album: 'Bring Your Daughter...'
"I heard it and thought, wow, what a great song!" Steve recalls. "I knew straight away it would be perfect for Maiden, so I said to Bruce, 'Look, we can do this! Why don't you save it for the next Maiden album?' And he was happy, 'cause he'd written a song that we wanted to do for the band. That was still his first priority then."
Almost as if to prove the point, some of the best tracks on the subsequent No Prayer... album were written by Bruce in conjunction with Steve. From the spatter-gun riffs and angry, spat-out vocals of the rib-bustin' album-opener, 'Tailgunner'; to the razor-edged rhythm and devilishly haunting choruses of 'Holy Smoke', the brilliant first single from the album, which shoved its way without asking into the UK Top 10, in september 1990; and on to their final song together and one of the major highlights of the new album, the stomping, ominously atmospheric 'Run Silent, Run Deep'.
The one thing the new Maiden had in common though was a new tougher edge. There was a conspicuous lack of keyboards and though the music still had texture, the edges were left blurred and frazzled, take it or leave it, up yours.
Steve explains: "The idea was to try and strip the band's sound down and go for an album that sounded almost as if it was recorded live on stage. We felt we'd gone pretty far in one direction with the two previous albums and now we wanted to go completely the other way."
In order to achieve this, No Prayer For The Dying was recorded 'as live' on the Rolling Stones mobile studio, which producer Martin Birch set up in a converted barn over Steve's house grounds, in Essex, in early 1990.
The first Maiden album to be made at home in Britain since Number Of The Beast seven years before, of its 10 tracks, apart from the three he had written with Bruce, Steve had also come up with another three of his own: the demanding, emotionally-brutalised title track itself, 'No Prayer For The Dying'; the equally damaged-sounding 'The Assassin', a more mature musical think-piece than its pulp-title suggest; and 'Mother Russia', the bleak, windy epic which closes the album like a long suicide note.
Steve's writing had begun straying for the first time away from the 'fantasy' subject matter he had favoured in the past, and more towards the kind of deeply personal material that would come to characterise his work throughout the rest of the Nineties. Even 'Fates Warning', the track Steve wrote with guitarist Dave Murray, was a deeply melancholic number featuring some of the Maiden leader's most personally questioning lyrics ever.
Strong stuff. But there was some lighter fare on offer, too. 'Hooks In You' – a track which Adrian had written with Bruce just before he left the band – is a colourful, upbeat crowd-pleaser with Janick now exhuberantly playing Adrian's parts to perfection. Likewise, Bruce and Davey's 'Public Enema Number One'; a riff-fest which, if you read the lyrics, is also a swift lesson in social manners. And not forgetting, of course, one of the funniest, most wonderfully irreverent and determinedly controversial tracks on this or any other Maiden album, 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter'.
Released on October 1, 1990, No Prayer For The Dying was another instant hit for the band at home in Britain, smashing straight into the album charts at No. 2. No real surprises there. But eyebrows were raised when 'Bring Your Daughter...' was released as the second single from the album in the UK, in January 1991, and it shot straight into the charts at No. 1!
Given the fact that, despite being glued to the top spot for three weeks running, national daytime radio in the UK still refused to play the record, Maiden's first ever No. 1 single was a remarkable achievement indeed. Even at the moment of their greatest success, it seemed Maiden were destined to remain the ultimate underground rock band. An accolade they have born proudly throughout their career.
"I've never really been into singles," Steve says now. "But seeing Bring Your Daughter... go to No. 1, I got to admit, did make me feel proud!"
"It was amazing," Bruce concurs. "The radio still wouldn't play us, but that made it feel even more special. It was like starting over again..."
Inevitably, though, it was live on stage where the new 'street-level' material really began to take off. After the increasingly elaborate stage-shows that had characterised all their tours in the Eighties, the new No Prayer On The Road show, like the album it took its name from, would be a much more stripped-down and up-and-at-'em affair.
"Every tour we did up until then, the stage show just got bigger and bigger," says Steve. "By Seventh Son... it was a bit out of hand. So this time we thought, right, let's really do something different. And what we tried to do was to turn everything into like a massive club gig again. And having Janick in the band gave everybody a much-needed kick up the arse, too. 'Cause being new, he was so enthusiastic about everything, I think it made us all open up our eyes a bit and look at things in a new way."
It was not only the beginning of a new decade for Iron Maiden, but the start of a whole new era...
