Iron Maiden Gives You a Piece of Their Mind!

Iron Maiden Gives You a Piece of Their Mind!

There are several philosophic arguments in music that I don’t believe will ever be conclusively settled, such as: Are there actually two types of people in the world, those who like Neil Diamond and those who don’t?  Is rap, techno, and other machine generated music actually music? Does the music of Beethoven belong in the baroque era, classical era, or both? Is the song “Feelings” by Morris Albert intentionally bad or unintentionally brilliant? And lastly the argument I would like to pose, are Iron Maiden fans or Metallica fans the most serious and passionate of all heavy metal fans?  I am a fan of both bands and have seen both bands perform live, but in my opinion the fans of Iron Maiden win the gold medal (or should I say gold metal)!

When I was growing up in my preteen years in the late 80’s in Sandy, UT, Iron Maiden got absolutely no airplay in Salt Lake City, were very rarely seen on MTV during the day (MTV’s Headbangers Ball was on after my bedtime and it was very rare that I was able to watch it), and at least at age 11 I did not know anybody who was into this band.  However, they have a band name you simply can’t forget and the imagery of Eddie on Iron Maiden’s albums and shirts was extremely hard to miss (if you’re not a fan of Iron Maiden, Eddie is the skeletal character that appears on all of Iron Maiden’s album covers and he is more or less the official mascot of heavy metal).

Back in 1984 my father was a fan of the band Twisted Sister and loved their album Stay Hungry.  He bought a ticket see Twisted Sister open for Iron Maiden in February of 1985.  Finally the night of the concert came and my Dad was way excited.  He arrived at the Salt Palace at about 6:00pm and stood in line to get into the show during a snow storm.  8:00pm came around and the doors had not opened yet and Salt Palace staff announced that Iron Maiden and Twisted Sister were caught in the snow storm in Wyoming and were on their way.  At about 9:30pm the bands finally arrived at the Salt Palace and 12,000 fans standing in the cold cheered!  However, for safety reasons the Salt Palace would not let the fans in while the stage and lights were being set up and at about 11:00pm the Salt Palace finally opened the doors and my father could finally warm up.  Twisted Sister took the stage at 11:30pm and put on a spectacular show that made up for my Dad standing in the cold for five hours.  My father still ranks Twisted Sister as one of the best opening bands he has ever seen.  Then at about 12:30am Iron Maiden came on.  My father enjoyed what he saw of their show, but he had to be at work in the morning and could only stay for about an hour of Iron Maiden.  My father’s favorite Iron Maiden song at that point was “Flight of Icarus” and he bought the Iron Maiden album Piece of Mind, but he never listened to it much and the album gathered dust in his record collection.

My father had a very massive record collection and I used to thumb through his collection all the time in search of new music to check out.  I remember thumbing past Piece of Mind by Iron Maiden several times, giving the album a long look, and moving on.  Eventually, when I was 11 years old once again Piece of Mind caught my eye.  At this time in 1988 I honestly had no idea what this band sounded like because they got no airplay in Salt Lake City.  My curiosity finally got the better of me and I put Piece of Mind on the turntable for the very first time.  Iron Maiden was a much heavier band compared to what I was listening to at that point and I was a little taken back when I sat through the song “Where Eagles Dare” for the first time.  Then the second song “Revelations” came on, which was just as heavy as “Where Eagles Dare”, but it had some slower tempo instrumental interludes between verses which really set a mood before the song immediately goes back into high gear!  I had never heard a metal song quite like it and at this point the album had already won me over just two songs into it.  Then the song “Flight of Icarus” came on.  Through my life at school and in other settings the analogy of Icarus flying to close to the sun had been referenced, but I had never actually read the story of Icarus in Greek Mythology and the first time I ever heard the actual story was in the song “Flight of Icarus”.  Besides that the song “Flight of Icarus” really rocks the song sets a great atmosphere to retell the myth.  Side 2 of the album begins with the Iron Maiden classic “The Trooper” which I thought was the most awesome heavy metal song I had ever heard up to that point and the album from start to finish just never lets up.  I was beyond taken back by Piece of Mind and I would listen to it almost every evening before I went to bed for about a month. 

From this point on I embraced Iron Maiden pretty quickly, they became one of my favorite bands and I started to buy their albums.  When I started at Union Middle School in 1989, unlike when I was in elementary school, there were a few other metal heads and there were maybe two or three other people besides myself that were into Iron Maiden.  At this point Metallica started to emerge and because of Iron Maiden I was ready for Metallica.  At this point in time most Metallica fans were also Iron Maiden fans.

In 1991, Metallica puts out their self-titled release (aka The Black Album) and with it speed metal gains mainstream success for the very first time.  Thanks to my rocker friends I was introduced to Metallica when And Justice For All was released with it I was introduced to the first four Metallica albums which were some favorites of mine at that point.  For that matter I loved “Enter Sandman” and “The Unforgiven” when they were first released as singles.  I will not criticize The Black Album.  It is one of the best heavy metal albums ever made and I think it is a great album.  However, as much it does make me happy when bands I love have commercial success, where I had a hard time with Metallica making it as huge as they did is a lot of kids I grew up with that used to go out of their way to tell me that metal was crap and were somewhat mean about it, all of the sudden they are into Metallica.  Unfortunately, as much as I was a huge Metallica fan at that point, the surge of airplay in Salt Lake City and video play on MTV, as well as a lot of Metallica fans that weren’t really metal fans ruined Metallica for me for a little while.  Forgiving the fact that Iron Maiden has an extremely loyal following, in my end of the world in 1991-1992 there were a ton of Metallica fans, but Iron Maiden fans were few and far between.  In a way, this made Iron Maiden more endearing to me.

From a more critical perspective one thing that makes Piece of Mind stick out amongst other Iron Maiden albums is that Iron Maiden starts to shift their musical direction with Piece of Mind.  Specifically, at this point Iron Maiden lyrically incorporates themes of mythology, literature, history, and even science fiction into their music from the books the band members were reading when the album was recorded.  For instance, Steve Harris of Iron Maiden was a huge fan of the Dune series by Frank Herbert and it inspired him write the song “Dune”.  However, Iron Maiden was denied permission by Frank Herbert to call the song “Dune”.  The lyrics remained unchanged and the song “Dune” became “To Tame a Land”.  Musically, the song was Iron Maiden’s first experiment with more complex story telling as well as creating a more musically complicated song by incorporating in the influences of progressive rock (Steve Harris was influenced by the bands Genesis and Yes) and would set a foundation for songs like “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner”, “Alexander the Great”, and later their conceptual album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son as well as influence the future progressive metal scene.  Iron Maiden’s first three albums firmly establish them as one of the greatest heavy metal bands ever, but Piece of Mind establishes, influences, and greatly shapes their music for the rest of their career and in many respects Iron Maiden really becomes who they are musically with Piece of Mind.

One of my favorite memories and unfortunately one of the most embarrassing moments of my life happened while I was listening to Piece of Mind by Iron Maiden.  While I was attending Utah State University I needed to lose some weight and I went to the gym almost religiously and lost a substantial amount of weight when I was in college.  One particular evening in 2004 I was at the Field House at Utah State University running on a treadmill with my cassette of Piece of Mind cranked up.  I had the speed of the treadmill fairly high and I was just way into it.  I flipped my cassette over to side 2 and when “The Trooper” started to play my adrenaline kicked in a little more and with it the speed of the treadmill.  I was in the zone and feeling freaking amazing!  However, I was so into the treadmill that night that I did not realize my body was starting to shift to the left and eventually my left leg landed an inch off the treadmill track, my right leg landed on the speeding track and I flew off the treadmill like I had been fired out of a cannon and one my roommates and a couple of cute girls from the apartment next door were on the treadmills next to me saw the whole thing and had a huge laugh as well as most of the gym, but my roommate helped me up.  Then right before I got back on the treadmill to add insult to injury a really cute girl I worked with named Karen that I kind of had a crush on saw it happen and asked me if I was OK.  I was horribly embarrassed.  Forgiving the fact that both of my ankles hurt, I did not want my friends to lose respect for me so I got right back the treadmill and finished listening to Piece of Mind and my workout.  Where this really became especially embarrassing is a few days later I called my best friend Jeremy to catch up and then he says “Carrie was telling about your treadmill accident the other day” and he started laughing.  Carrie is my best friends sister and I’ve known her most of my life, she was also roommates with Karen, and I came to find out she was also there when I flew off of the treadmill which again added more to my embarrassment.  I still have not lived down this incident from my time at Utah State University.

Iron Maiden fans are some of the most serious of all heavy metal fans.  As I have personally witnessed at their live show, the crowd sings along with every song, and Iron Maiden’s show is top notch every single time!   Iron Maiden has earned a place at the very top of the heap in the heavy metal scene and their albums The Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind are ranked as two of the best heavy metal albums ever made.  Piece of Mind gave me the perfect introduction to Iron Maiden.