INTERVIEWS
IRON MAIDEN
from Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles
IRON MAIDEN - Adrian Smiths Gets PSYCHO! With IRON MAIDEN's triumphant North American tour behind them, pulling in over 300,000 people, each member now takes flight in pursuit of other interests and activities. Axeman Adrian Smith flew back over to North America recently to begin promoting his newly released PSYCHO MOTEL catalogue, finally domestic to North American audiences. State Of Mind (1996) and the glorious follow-up, Welcome To The World (1997), are more focused efforts than Smith's first post-Maiden affair, the rather mediocre ASAP album, Silver And Gold (1989) "I'm very proud of the albums and very pleased that they are out," Smith appears relieved that his hard work has another outlet. "I'm just trying to spread the word. Psycho Motel is a band I had between '95 and '98. If I did any future projects they might come under that name. Back then I was trying to break a band, now it's more of an interesting side project. Having said that, I'd like to get the guys together if it was viable, and play some shows." "I find being on the road very inspiring," Smith explains about his current writing output. "The excitement of playing and hearing the crowd screaming. I also have a lot of ideas left over from the Maiden writing sessions. Being five song writers in the band, you can't use every idea you get, so there's material left over, which I hope to channel into some cohesive project before the end of this year. Perhaps some instrumental stuff or something like that. We have a year off from Maiden, and I do need a creative outlet besides Iron Maiden. I'm very happy in the band, but it would be nice to have another outlet for material that isn't used." Are you happy with the Smith material Maiden used on Brave New World (namely 'The Wicker Man' and 'The Fallen Angel') "I was very happy with the 'The Wicker Man'. It was the first thing we actually played, so that was kind of a defining moment - 'this is going to work'. I must admit that we had been building up to it, with the Ed Hunter tour, getting back together and all the hype. I think we were all really focused on it. Like I said we've got a lot of depth in writing. Bring Kevin Shirley in was a very smart move. Get a top producer and he gave us the platform to make the album. He did the justice sonically in the studio, probably the best ever. He allowed us to concentrate on our performance and songwriting. By the end of the first day, when we listened to the stuff he recorded, we thought 'wow, this is sounding so good, it's starting to sound like a record already.' We had total confidence and we could concentrate on the playing and the writing. With the enormous response to Brave New World, is the band up to delivering such an overpowering record again? "Yeah, absolutely. There's no shortage of ideas. Everybody had their tape recorders with them on this tour. It won't be for another while yet, because we've done two tours back to back, it's time to take a little break. "But I feel really good about it," Smith adds. "We haven't finished the tour yet. We still have to go to Japan in a couple of weeks, then next year we are going down to South America for the Rock In Rio Festival. We're possibly shooting a DVD at the Rio show. Hopefully we'll have that out next year. I'll be back in North America after that promoting these Psycho Motel albums, perhaps doing some acoustic performances. It is tiring, but we've got a couple of breaks coming up where we can recharge the batteries. I think I'd rather be busy than sitting on my hands at home." The second single from Brave New World is 'Out Of The Silent Planet', scheduled for release on October 6th. All formats will be limited and individually numbered. 7" - 'Out Of The Silent Planet' (Single Edit) and 'Aces High' (Live). 12" - 'Out Of The Silent Planet' (Single Edit), 'Wasted Years' (Live) and 'Aces High' (Live). CDS - 'Out Of The Silent Planet' (Single Edit), 'Wasted Years' (Live), 'Aces High' (Live) and an Enhanced Video track.
From Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles
Hallowed Be Thy Name!
by Tim Henderson
Madison Ave. is
where it all sank in. East Coast headquarters of Columbia and
Portrait Records, and a good indication of what's going on in the
world of corporate music in the U.S. And guitar-driven rock is
barely visible on the walls and in the eyes of those that are
scurrying around yearning for their next chart topper, no care in
the world if the band/flavour of the moment will be here next
year. It is also press and marketing central for the present
incarnation of Iron Maiden. Sounds like an odd place for a
listening session and an even odder place for a band that has
continuously "been here next year" since 1980.
Iron Maiden's reunion record with vocalist Bruce Dickinson and
guitarist Adrian Smith rejoining bassist Steve Harris, guitarists
Janick Gers, Dave Murray and drummer Nicko McBrain, is far from
flavour of the moment. It's a yearning for Heavy Metal... their
way. No compromise, just pure heavy delivery.
"Maiden is much more like a soccer team than a rock 'n' roll
band," begins Bruce, putting his current situation into
perspective. Dressed in beige khaki's and sporting a back-pack,
he appears ready to jump from a plane into the jungle. The man is
cool and casual, especially after a day of being grilled like a
magnifying glass on hot pavement. Now it's time for the mealtime
break with BW&BK, just down the street at one of the
Manhattan's many Japanese eateries.
In between bites of sushi and gulps of many sopporo, Bruce adds:
"It's like a big revolving door - walk in, walk out. But on
this new record I was in for the long haul, and strangely we
suddenly appear to be the hippest thing on the planet all of a
sudden."
And if we look back, one reason for Bruce leaving in the first
place was his yearning to tackle a solo career. And with the door
said to be wide open, he's free to roam, he will continue to
roam, and Steve's cool with it. But more on that later.
Bruce crashes in: "You can tell I was obviously having a
good time during rehearsals cause me and Jan were paralyzed every
night after rehearsal. We'd come back in and go out and do that
Belgian beer thing, it's like 8.5%, you know! And there ain't
nothin' else to do, so we'd just go out to a blues club till
four. It's dangerous you know, it's tough out there I'll tell
ya."
"And in this world of ever-increasing shallowness,"
Bruce philosophizes, "in the land of the blind the one-eyed
man is king. It's true isn't it? So, suddenly for people to look
at Maiden again - 'Oh my god - what a revelation - a nine minute
song, oh good god - Arabian and Eastern rhythms - oh boy, that's
never been done before.'
And with seven tracks scaling over six mountainous minutes, Brave
New World is, not surprisingly, a Steve Harris record.
"Oh yeah," he agrees wholeheartedly. "Steve is
having a major, kind of progressive moment on this album. The
thrust of almost everything he's done has been that, and I
confess, I was pretty apprehensive about some of it."
And there wasn't an urge to grab the mike and beat Steve over the
head with it?
"No, because I went with it out of respect. And I'd go,
'Well you know what? He went with 'Wicker Man' and he went with
my stuff, you know, and he threw himself into it, so I'm just
gonna go for it on his songs'. As we started doing 'Nomad' I
thought, 'I don't know if this could work'. I was worried about
'Nomad' (a Murray/Harris track clocking in at over nine minutes)
and it worked fucking brilliantly, so I happily ate my
words."
"We never dared be that loose on a record before," he
adds. "So I think it's a marvelous record. I have to say
that I was wondering through it, 'I think this is the right thing
to do.' But there's always a bit of, 'I hope it works, I hope
people get it.' But at the end of the whole record, I got
it."
And everyone else?
"We put the album tracks down and twelve days later Nick
goes off on a plane to Florida playing golf. The next time we see
him, he's heard the record for the first time and he just grabs a
hold of me and starts kissing me. I'm like, 'Well I gather you
like it?' He was just freaking out at how good it was, and
because we had been so close to it, it was great to see that from
somebody that had also been involved with the record and then
heard it all finished. So I think it's a really outstanding
record, and I think most of the people who have listened to it
get that too, even though they've only listened to it very
briefly and they haven't had a chance to pull it apart in any
great depth. But the important thing is actually the initial
reaction to it."
Brave New World is arguably Maiden's finest production hour. It's
yards away from Harris' Barnyard boastings. It is a record that
would make Martin Birch stand at attention. The album was
recorded in Paris, France at Studio Guillaume Tell in a district
called Suresnes (pronounced - Surain). Recording stretched from
November '99 through February '00. Most parts were recorded live
in November. Kevin Shirley produced and engineered the album and
Steve Harris co produced.
Both Steve and Kevin mixed Brave New World. Most of the writing
had been done earlier in 1999 and during the Ed Hunter Tour. The
band then rehearsed the tracks live in Belgium before they got to
the studio. The initial reaction when word spread that Kevin was
to take on the duties was perhaps a little worrying. Alas, we
didn't want the lads to be too polished. What did Kevin bring to
the table?
"First off, I agree with you, I think it is the best
sounding Maiden record. And it has nothing to do with technology
at all. It has to do totally with the fact that Kevin insisted on
recording the band live on the basis of what he heard at the
Hammerstein Ballroom. It sounded fantastic. He's like, 'Why do
you want to do anything else, why do you want to talk about
recording any other way?', and we were like 'Well we didn't think
it was technically possible to do live stuff and make it as
controlled as we want it in the studio'. He said 'Of course it
is'. So, that's what he did and we looked for a studio that was
going to be able to deliver all of what we needed. A place where
we could get a huge drum sound and also have the guitarists all
playing together live, have me putting my vocals down live, and
we could all look each other in the eye as we were doing
it."
"We found this place in Paris that just worked brilliantly
and we rehearsed the tracks as if we were doing a gig and then
went in there and recorded the whole thing live, and it took
about twelve days to record all the stuff, about a track a day.
We did four, five, six passes on each song and then spent the
next six weeks basically sitting on our ass waiting for Kevin to
work his way through all the six passes on the drums, and then on
the bass, and then on the guitars, and then on the vocals."
"I came back in after six weeks or so and went, 'Ok great,
it's time for pain and suffering, time to do the lead vocals'.
Kevin said, 'No you're done, you've done it all.' I said, 'What
do you mean I've done it all? I can't have done it all, I'm all
psyched up and ready to go, I want pain and suffering'. And he
said 'Ok, well listen to this' and he played me 'Wicker Man'.
They'd done a compilation of the vocal off the live stuff and I
listened and I was like 'that sounds great', and I had thought, I
haven't sung for like six weeks, am I going to go in there and
make a fool of myself and try and beat this when I was absolutely
at my peak having done this tour? I'm gonna go in and try and
beat this? Nah quit while your ahead."
And Bruce says that "Steve was really chuffed" with
Shirley, surprising as the fearless founder/leader has never left
the reigns too far from reach.
"Oh, I remember Kevin was mixing 'Wicker Man' and Steve just
sat there not saying a word and I looked at him and said, 'It
sounds fucking great', and Steve went 'Yeah, yeah, shhhh', he
goes 'I'm still listening, he hasn't done anything wrong yet'.
'What do you mean he hasn't done anything bloody wrong? Tell me
it sounds great', and he said 'I'll tell you when it's
finished'."
Bruce immediately states that "This is a really good way to
screw up this record, is to bring up all that crap."
Without stirring up too much shit, Bruce enforces that all egos
have been placed aside and that Iron Maiden's "primary
concern is to make sure that we do a great tour and that it's a
great record. Steve and I are amused and bemused by the constant
rumors that we hate each other or we're trying to kill each other
and can't exist in the same room together etc., etc., etc. Get
this, the French said that Janick and Adrian obviously hate each
other because they don't look at each other on stage and then
they said that me and Steve didn't touch each other enough. I
don't want to fuck him!"
It's been over ten years since Maiden did the Monsters Of Rock
thing in Europe, and looking at their itinerary, the band look to
be headlining most of the European festivals this summer.
"In the '80s, the Monsters Of Rock thing was a series of
celebratory metal festivals, kind of like Ozzfest but, you know,
nobody gave a shit if it was like Lollapallooza at all. Metal
festivals for fans. We're calling it Metal 2000 because everybody
was getting bent out of shape. They're like 'Monsters Of Rock?
There aren't too many Monsters Of Rock left.' So we said, well
lets just call it Metal 2000. That's pretty clear isn't it,
nobody can bitch about that. It's a pretty blue collar kind of a
name, it's not subtle, it doesn't have overtones of super models
or any bullshit like that. It's just straight down the line and
pretty primitive. Metal 2000 leaves you in no doubt what it's all
about. I don't know where Korn fit into all that but never
mind."
Bruce is alluding to Korn's MTV appearance where they refused to
appear on screen with the legend. So how does Bruce deal with
such youthful drivel.
"Oh, they're not worth bothering with. If they were a fish
I'd throw them back."
In August, Bruce sez that their North American tour starts in
Quebec, Montreal, and Toronto, then it moves down into the
States.
"The attitude when we go out on stage and everything else is
like a sports team," he interjects. "We go out and kick
the hell out of the opposition, except the opposition isn't
there. We're not trying beat up our audience, but there is some
invisible barrier that we want to bust through live."
"The first run through America is going to be fairly rapid,
like two and a half to three weeks and it's going to do the three
shows in Canada quick, Boston, Philly, New York, Chicago,
Detroit, then Cleveland or something at the end and then quick
down the West Coast and then off to Australia. Then we come back
after South America and do another five weeks, which I hope would
include some more Canadian shows assuming things go well in
Canada. We want to get out to Vancouver. It would be nice to do
something out in Western Canada, but you never know out there
what's going to happen. We have no idea whether you're going to
pull three men and a cowboy or just the cows."
"We were going to finish up in Long Beach Arena," he
says gleefully. "'Scream for me Long Beach,' it's gotta be
done, hasn't it? (laughs). I do it every night anyway as it is. I
never had a catch phrase before."
And Maiden has failed to shy away from the questionable
Blaze-era, this fan absolutely stunned at how close they fit
Bruce's style on last years' Ed Hunter tour. With Bruce's vocal
stamp of approval, The X-Factor and Virtual XI could actually
find their way back into my collection if they were rerecorded
with Dickinson singing.
"No, we're not going to do that. It was basically easy to
slide into those shoes. They are Maiden songs, just like any
other Maiden songs really and that's why it works."
And Bruce confirms that Maiden are "seriously thinking about
Rob Halford" as one of the openers, the former Metal God
recently shaking hands with Sanctuary Management. And Halford's
much-hyped metal comeback is another eagerly anticipated force
ready to be unveiled later this year. Have you heard it?
"Not all of it. I've heard some of the back tracks.
Obviously I did a track with Rob on it, and I've heard some of
the demos and I've heard one of the songs called 'Silent Scream'
which is just fucking awesome. The whole album is like classic
Screaming For Vengeance-era Priest. Brilliant. His singing is
amazing, so I think it'd be a really positive move for him. It
will be pretty good for the audience too. I think they'd love it,
in the absence of Priest from the marketplace