Reykjavík Grapevine - 24.06.2005, Blaðsíða 20

20
Iron Maiden was formed in 1976,
the brainchild of bass player and
chief songwriter Steve Harris. After
three years of grinding metal in
English pubs, a promotional single,
Running Free, was published and
reached number 34 on the UK
charts. This bought them a spot on
the BBC’s Top of the Pops, where
they were ordered to do as every
other self-loathing bullshit artist in
the trade: namely to shut up and
mime the goddamn song.
Putting their foot down and
refusing to bow down to the
bollocks, they became the first band
since the Who in 1973 to play live
on the show. Since then, they’ve
only once mimed on a television
show, a German live TV special. In
the middle of the set they started
to exchange instruments in a mood
of insolent tomfoolery to the utter
dismay of the German technicians,
who reportedly didn’t find the gag
half as funny as the band did.
In the year following the release
of Running Free, their self-titled
debut album was released, reaching
number 4 in the UK. Iron Maiden
was on the map, and producing
one album a year in the following
six years, including the double live
album, Live after Death, in 1985,
solidified their godlike status in
metal history.
The band is more of a phenomenon
than a mere band, a modern-day
mythological entity incorporating an
army of diehard fans with receding
hairlines, protruding bellies and
sweaty armpits – the godfearing
followers of Maiden, a cult whose
Jim Jones is a nine foot murderous
monster named Eddie.
A common misunderstanding
is that the name Iron Maiden is
derived from Margaret Thatcher’s
nickname, which is derived from a
medieval torture device, a chamber
of spikes. But Thatcher had not
been given her famous moniker
when Steve Harris named the
band, getting it from the movie
Man with the Iron Mask. With
Thatcher having gotten the same
name, before their first single was
released, Iron Maiden played on
this theme on the covers of two of
their singles: The Sanctuary cover
showing Thatcher ripping an Iron
Maiden poster of a wall, and Eddie
subsequently opening her up with a
knife, and the Women in Uniform
cover showing Margaret Thatcher,
back to life, standing up against a
wall with a tommy-gun, waiting to
pass her judgment upon Eddie who
approaches from around the corner
with a pretty young girl under each
arm.
Iron Maiden has a kind of
working class approach to heavy
metal, touring for 11 months on
the Live after Death tour and still
having time to go to the pub every
night. It’s no-bullshit rock’n’roll at
its best, that seems to proclaim that
just because you’re an artist doesn’t
mean you have to be a stuck-up
loser, or a complete fucking sellout.
And there’s no working class like the
British working class, and these were
boys bred by coal miners, the British
answer to Icelandic fishermen. The
New Wave of British Heavy Metal
(NWOBHM) corresponding to our
Guano Rock. They’re not just down-
to-earth, the boys next door – they
literally seem no different from just
about every English pub-guest who
ever lived. That is to say, until they
put on the spandex, and turn into
Maiden.
The first time I ever heard the music
of Iron Maiden was during recess
in my grade school in Ísafjörður.
I was ten years old, and for two
days my best friend had spent every
recess with his headphones glued
to his ears. At first I was hell-bent
on ignoring this blatant disregard
for the more classical use of recess,
like playing soccer, pinching girls
on the ass or rolling on skateboards.
But eventually I gave in and asked
what the hell was up. He asked me
to wait a minute, rewinded his tape
while I waited, and then handed
me the headphones. I put them on
and heard a raspy deep theatrical
voice recite: “Woe to you, oh
Earth and Sea, for the Devil sends
the beast with wrath, because he
knows the time is short... Let him
who hath understanding reckon
the number of the beast for it is a
human number, its number is Six
hundred and sixty six.” The opening
words of the legendary song,
Number of the Beast, otherwise
known as Revelations, chapter VIII,
verse 18, read by the best Vincent
Price impersonator Maiden could
find (Price himself turned out to
be a bit… uhh… pricy?). In the
next couple of years this initial
fascination progressed into a full-
fledged teenage crush, complete
with albums, posters, a denim-jacket
covered in Eddie-pictures, spikes
and the like.
Thirteen years ago I was thirteen
years old and Iron Maiden, my
favourite band, played in Reykjavík
on their Fear of the Dark tour.
It was the first official gig of the
tour, June 5 in Laugardalshöllin,
though there had been a secret
gig in London two days earlier.
It was one of the saddest days of
my childhood. I’d been lobbying,
screaming, fighting and just plain
performing every possible teenage
antic I could think of on my parents,
trying to convince them to let me to
go. A year earlier I had managed to
whine my way into a concert called
Breaking the Ice, a glam rock multi-
headliner concert in Hafnarfjörður,
most notably remembered for being
the concert that the glam-masters
of Poison didn’t show up for – the
bass player had evidently “broken
his finger”, which is glam lingo for
“we’re just too fucked up right now
to give a crap.” Bear in mind that
this is the band that claimed their
sole musical ambition was to bed
every woman in the United States.
And to add insult to injury (or the
other way around) this was before
Icelandair marketed Iceland as the
home of the most beautiful sluts in
the world. They simply couldn’t be
bothered to play a gig in a country
that merely had 130,000 women.
And so we were happily stuck with
The Bulletboys, The Quireboys,
Thunder, Slaughter, Artch and
GCD. During their version of Tom
Waits’ Hang on St. Christopher, I
could swear that the guitar player
from the Bulletboys pointed at me
and smiled. I felt giddy for months
afterwards, like a teenage girl
clenching a finger-kiss from Paul
McCartney in the sixties.
But alas, there was to be no
satanic Iron Maiden metal concerts
the following summer for me.
No matter how I whined and
screamed, my parents wouldn’t
budge. In all fairness, they had a
valid reason for not wanting me to
be marked with the number of the
beast at that particular time in my
life. The concert was to be held on
Friday, and I was to be confirmed
on the following Sunday – which
incidentally was Pentecostal Sunday.
It was to be the father, the son and
the holy ghost for me; absolutely no
beasts, no Eddies and no longhaired
pub-metal rockers. I gritted my
teeth, donned a white frock, and
bible in hand I took an oath to
follow Jesus from that point on, no
matter what.
Iron Maiden was the secret
background music to my life in the
following years. The first song I
ever played in a band (consisting of
me on guitar and a bass player – no
singer and no drums) was Run to
the Hills; the first poetry I ever read
intentionally was H.P. Lovecraft,
inspired by a quote from a Maiden
poster: “That is not dead which
can eternally lie. Yet with strange
aeons even death may die.”; my first
poetry reading was a performance
of my own translations of some
Maiden lyrics, under the pseudonym
Játvarður Höfuð (Icelandic for
Edward the head, Eddie the ‘ead,
Maiden’s apocalyptic mascot); I
became interested in socialism
after listening to the anti-capitalist
anthem Be Quick or Be Dead. I
also kept a keen eye on what was
happening in Iron Maiden, although
I didn’t buy any of the albums
after Fear of the Dark. I remember
getting very upset when Bruce
left the band for a lame nobody
named Blaze Bailey (what the fuck
kinda name is Blaze??? – had they
completely gone bonkers?)
I first heard the news that Maiden
were finally returning to Iceland
last February, and immediately felt
this was my opportunity to make up
for the aforementioned disaster of
my youth. But in the last couple of
years I’ve missed quite a lot of gigs
in Iceland I would have loved to
see, mostly due to lack of funds and
living either abroad or in Ísafjörður.
And for a while I thought that
this would also become the case
with this concert. Until a series of
strange coincidences started to dawn
on me, the main one being that
the date of the concert, June 7th
2005, fell on the 13th anniversary
of the very confirmation that had
kept me from seeing them in my
youth – to the day – another one
being that by coincidence I had a
stopover in Reykjavík on my way to
Ísafjörður from a literature festival
in Edinburgh, on the very day of the
concert.
Realizing all of this did, on the
other hand, not change my incessant
lack of money for such ventures.
Sitting on my ass in Edinburgh,
moaning as I recounted all this to a
friend, a possible solution dawned
on me. I immediately went out in
search of an internet connection,
and sent an email to the lords of the
Reykjavík Grapevine, pleading my
case, getting down on my virtual
fours, seeing as this was late in
the game and I realized that such
an organized and professional
editorship was bound to have chosen
someone to cover the concert as soon
as it was announced. And indeed
they had, but hearing of my case he
graciously stepped aside.
A week later I picked up my
ticket at the Grapevine offices.
The town seemed to be filled with
English Maiden fans who had flown
to Iceland with Bruce Air, flight
AU666, the captain of the aircraft
being none other than Maiden’s
lead singer, Bruce Dickinson.
Every other person in Hressó was
English and overweight, with long
hair and wearing a Maiden t-shirt.
The artist Derek Riggs has made
separate artwork for almost every
Maiden song ever written, and most
of those could be seen in downtown
Reykjavík on the day of the gig.
That night I found myself
standing in Egilshöll listening to the
warm-up act, Nevolution, a decent
enough band, which nevertheless
had neither the fire, the force, or the
power to make their evil take its course.
With no explosions they could
be nought but a disappointment
compared to the metal-circus that
was to ensue. I was there alone,
sober, and feeling rather silly
actually, a 26-year-old man trying
to relive the parts of his childhood
he missed in the midst of middle-
aged sweaty people, wearing Maiden
t-shirts, holding their 3-5 year old
children up so that they could see.
The ratio of men to women being
about 99 to 1. Everything seemed to
reek of testicles.
Iron Maiden
-The Spandex-Clad Knights of British Metal!
...continued on page 23
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