The story of Iron Maiden

East End beginnings

Iron Maiden was born in east London in 1975, the creation of a young bass player named Steve Harris. Harris grew up in Leytonstone dreaming of football, and as a teenager he was even asked to train with West Ham United, but rock music won. He had really wanted to play drums, but there was no room for a kit at home, so he taught himself bass on a forty pound copy of a Fender. He took the band's name from a film version of The Man in the Iron Mask, which reminded him of the medieval torture device. For a while the group had also used the name Ash Mountain. Iron Maiden played its first gig at St Nicks Hall in Poplar on the first of May 1976, then settled into a regular spot at the Cart and Horses pub in Stratford.[1] [2]

The early years were a revolving door. The first singer, Paul Mario Day, was let go because Harris felt he lacked energy and charisma. His replacement, Dennis Wilcock, was a Kiss fan who wore makeup and fake blood on stage. Wilcock brought in a friend, the guitarist Dave Murray, and the two existing guitarists were so offended that Harris briefly broke the band up and started again with Murray alone. One later guitarist was sacked for pretending to play with his teeth. Murray himself was fired after a row with Wilcock, then came back in 1978 when Wilcock left. By then the drummer was Doug Sampson, an old bandmate of Harris. Through all of it Harris kept a day job as an architectural draughtsman, and later swept the streets.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The missing piece was a singer. In November 1978 a chance meeting at the Red Lion pub in Leytonstone led to an audition for Paul Di'Anno, born Paul Andrews in Chingford. He had worked as a butcher and a chef, and he had a rough, raspy voice that Harris said gave the songs a great edge. On New Year's Eve 1978 the band paid two hundred pounds to record four songs at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge, mostly in first takes. When they came back to remix, the studio wanted another fifty pounds for the master tape. The band did not have it, and by the time they returned the tape had been wiped. The rough recordings were all they had, and they turned out to be enough.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Harris and Murray gave a copy of the tape to Neal Kay, a DJ who ran the Bandwagon Heavy Metal Soundhouse, a club in Kingsbury in north west London. Kay played it constantly, and the song Prowler went to number one on the club's chart, which was printed every week in Sounds magazine. The tape also reached Rod Smallwood, a Cambridge dropout who had once managed Steve Harley. In November 1979 the band pressed the demo on their own label as The Soundhouse Tapes. They made five thousand copies, sold by mail order, and three thousand went in the first week. Big record chains asked for twenty thousand each, but the band refused, saying the record belonged to the fans who had sent away for it. In December 1979 Maiden signed with EMI.[1] [2] [3]

Signing brought changes. Adrian Smith, Murray's childhood friend, turned down an offer to join because he was busy leading his own band, Urchin, so Dennis Stratton came in on guitar. Doug Sampson, worn out by freezing overnight drives in vans between gigs, left just before Christmas 1979, and on Stratton's advice Clive Burr took over the drums. Smallwood also wanted one figure to stamp the band's image onto every sleeve. He found it in the portfolio of a young artist, Derek Riggs, who had painted a ghoulish face for a possible punk cover. Riggs added long hair, and the band gave the creature the name of the mask on their stage backdrop, which squirted fake blood at the end of the song Iron Maiden. They called him Eddie.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Running free

The debut album, simply called Iron Maiden, came out on the eleventh of April 1980 and entered the British chart at number four. It was recorded in about thirteen days. Two earlier producers had already been dismissed, one of them for insisting that Harris play bass with a pick instead of his fingers. The band always disliked the sound, but many fans loved its raw energy. When the single Running Free earned a spot on Top of the Pops, Maiden refused to mime, and became the first band to play live on the show since The Who in 1972. Critics heard punk in their speed and aggression. Harris rejected that completely, and said he would rather have swept the roads than play punk.[1] [2] [3]

That summer Maiden toured Europe supporting Kiss, and were amazed to find fans in towns like Leiden in Holland waiting with banners. The tour was the end for Dennis Stratton. Harris and Smallwood felt he was pulling the band towards a softer sound, and had already stripped out harmony guitars and Queen style backing vocals he had added to Phantom of the Opera. He left in the autumn of 1980, officially over musical differences. This time Adrian Smith said yes. His band Urchin had just split when Harris and Murray bumped into him on a street near home, and he made his debut with Maiden on West German television on the eighth of November 1980. Smith and Murray would become one of the great twin guitar teams in metal.[1] [2] [3] [4]

For the second album Maiden finally got the producer they had wanted all along. Martin Birch had worked with Deep Purple and on Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell. The band had not dared to ask him the first time, and he told them he was disappointed they hadn't. Killers came out in February 1981. Most of its songs were old live favourites, and Harris had written Wrathchild back in 1973. It gave Maiden their first entry on the American album chart, and a world tour that began with their first show in the United States, supporting Judas Priest in Nevada. That year MTV went on the air, and live clips of Iron Maiden and Wrathchild became the first heavy metal videos the channel ever showed.[1] [2] [3]

Out on the road, Paul Di'Anno was falling apart. He later admitted he was taking cocaine around the clock and could not see how he would survive the months of touring ahead. The Guardian later reported that he was downing as much as five grams of cocaine and a bottle of tequila a day. He also chafed under the band's leadership, and joked that Smallwood and Harris ran the group like dictators. After a show in Copenhagen on the tenth of September 1981, he was gone. Di'Anno insisted for the rest of his life that there was no hatred between him and the band. The two albums he sang on are still counted among the building blocks of heavy metal.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Beast arrives

Maiden already knew who they wanted. Bruce Dickinson, a history graduate born in Worksop, was singing with the band Samson under the stage name Bruce Bruce, a joke borrowed from Monty Python. He had watched Maiden support Samson in 1980 and decided on the spot that he would one day sing for them. At the Reading Festival in 1981, Rod Smallwood took him aside for what Dickinson later called a comically obvious secret chat, under a huge floodlight in the middle of the hospitality area. In September he auditioned at a rehearsal room in Hackney, singing Prowler, Sanctuary, Running Free and Remember Tomorrow, and got the job straight away. He sang his first Maiden show in Bologna, Italy, on the twenty sixth of October 1981.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Number of the Beast was made in a hurry, with only about five weeks to record and mix it. Dickinson was still tangled in a legal dispute with Samson's management, so he could not be credited as a writer. He called his input on Run to the Hills, Children of the Damned and The Prisoner a moral contribution. Adrian Smith brought in 22 Acacia Avenue, first written with Urchin, and Clive Burr got the only writing credit of his Maiden career. The title track grew from a nightmare Harris had after watching the horror film Damien Omen Two late at night. The spoken introduction from the Book of Revelation was read by the actor Barry Clayton, because the first choice, Vincent Price, wanted twenty five thousand pounds.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Run to the Hills, a song about European settlers and Native Americans told from both sides, reached number seven in February 1982, the band's first British top ten single. The album followed at the end of March and went to number one in the UK. Its closing song, Hallowed Be Thy Name, about a prisoner facing the gallows, became a fixture of their concerts. Dickinson's long scream at the start of the title track became famous too. He said it came out of pure frustration, after Martin Birch made him sing the introduction over and over for hours. The album has since sold around twenty million copies, and in 2012 the British public voted it the best British album of the previous sixty years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In America the album caused an uproar. Religious campaigners branded Maiden Satanists because of the title track and Riggs's cover, which showed Eddie working the Devil like a puppet while the Devil worked a smaller Eddie. Records were burned in protest. One group smashed them with hammers instead, reportedly worried about breathing in fumes from melting vinyl. Protesters handed out leaflets outside shows, and in one town carried a twenty five foot cross. Harris said the critics had obviously never read the lyrics. Dickinson treated it all as silliness, and admitted the fuss gave the band loads of publicity. The Beast on the Road tour ran to one hundred and eighty eight shows in ten months.[1] [2] [3]

At the end of that tour, in December 1982, Clive Burr was fired. The reasons are still argued over. Harris said Burr's playing had suffered because of what he was doing offstage, while Burr said he had taken a break to grieve for his father, who had just died, and was pushed out unfairly. His replacement was Nicko McBrain, a Londoner who had drummed for Pat Travers and for the French band Trust, who had toured with Maiden in 1981. Burr then joined Trust, so the two drummers effectively swapped jobs. Because the change had not yet been announced, McBrain's first appearance with Maiden was on German television, disguised as Eddie.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Conquering the world

With McBrain on board, the line up many fans call the classic one was complete. In early 1983 the band took over an out of season hotel on Jersey called Le Chalet, rehearsing in its restaurant, then flew to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to record. Piece of Mind came out in May 1983 and reached number three in Britain. It was full of books and films. The Trooper drew on Tennyson's poem about the Charge of the Light Brigade, and Where Eagles Dare on the war film. A song inspired by Frank Herbert's Dune had to be renamed To Tame a Land, after Herbert's agents replied that he did not like rock bands, especially bands like Iron Maiden. On the tour they sold out Madison Square Garden.[1] [2] [3]

Piece of Mind also carried a sly reply to the Satanism accusations. Played backwards, the start of the song Still Life reveals McBrain doing a drunken impression of the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, borrowed from a satirical comedy record. It ends with a warning not to meddle with things you don't understand, followed by a burp. McBrain said that if people were going to be stupid about this sort of thing, the band might as well give them something to be really stupid about. The back cover promised no synthesisers or ulterior motives. The liner notes quoted the Book of Revelation with the word pain swapped for brain, a pun on the lobotomised Eddie on the front.[1] [2]

Powerslave followed in September 1984, again written in Jersey and recorded in the Bahamas. Dickinson's title song, sung by a dying pharaoh, gave the album its Egyptian look, and he later said it was partly about the band themselves, slaves to their own success. He and Adrian Smith wrote 2 Minutes to Midnight, about the threat of nuclear war, in roughly twenty minutes. Harris opened the album with Aces High, about the Battle of Britain, and closed it with Rime of the Ancient Mariner, more than thirteen minutes long and quoting Coleridge's poem directly. Harris was proud that fans went off and read Coleridge because of it. On stage, a thirty foot mummified Eddie shot sparks from his eyes.[1] [2] [3]

The World Slavery Tour opened in Poland in August 1984, and Maiden became the first Western band to take a full stage production behind the Iron Curtain, playing Poland and Hungary. Their film Behind the Iron Curtain captured it. In January 1985 they made their South American debut at the very first Rock in Rio, sharing the bill with Queen in front of an estimated three hundred and fifty thousand people. In Long Beach, California, they played four nights in a row, recorded for the live album and video Live After Death. In all, the tour ran to nearly two hundred shows in twenty eight countries, for an estimated three and a half million people.[1] [2]

It nearly broke them. Management kept adding dates, until Dickinson threatened to leave unless it stopped. He later said the life had become a golden cage, and that he seriously thought about quitting to become a fencing teacher. The band demanded six months off at the end, trimmed to four, and a planned tour for the live album was cancelled. It was the first real break of their career. Adrian Smith later explained that Maiden never had one massive hit single to live off, so they had to take the music to the people night after night. Live After Death came out in October 1985 and reached number two in Britain.[1] [2] [3]

Synths, concepts and cracks

When they returned, Maiden surprised fans with Somewhere in Time in September 1986, their first album with guitar and bass synthesisers. Dickinson had written a batch of acoustic based songs, hoping for a bold change of direction, and the band turned them all down. Harris felt Dickinson was simply more burnt out than anyone. So Adrian Smith stepped up and wrote both singles, Wasted Years and Stranger in a Strange Land. Wasted Years, about homesickness on that endless tour, was the only track without synths. The album went platinum in America and reached number eleven there, their best showing yet. One song, Alexander the Great, was not played live until May 2023, almost thirty seven years later.[1] [2]

The next album began with a phone call. Harris had read Orson Scott Card's novel Seventh Son, and it struck him as the perfect idea for a seventh album. He rang Dickinson to ask whether he had any songs that might fit, and the singer's enthusiasm came flooding back. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, released in April 1988, was Maiden's first album with keyboards. It went to number one in Britain, and the single Can I Play with Madness reached number three. That May they played a secret club show in Brooklyn under the name Charlotte and the Harlots. Harris's bass technician, Michael Kenney, took over the keyboards on stage, and has played them on tour ever since.[1] [2]

On the twentieth of August 1988, Maiden headlined the Monsters of Rock festival at Donington Park before a record crowd of about one hundred and seven thousand. The day was marked by tragedy, because two fans died in the crowd during the set by Guns N' Roses, earlier on the bill. Late that year, shows at the NEC in Birmingham were filmed for the video Maiden England, and then the band took a year off. Dickinson was asked to record a song for the film A Nightmare on Elm Street Five, and called an old friend, the guitarist Janick Gers, formerly of Gillan. He said he wrote Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter in about three minutes, and it grew into his first solo album, Tattooed Millionaire.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Harris wanted the next album to be stripped down and street level. Adrian Smith thought that was a step backwards, and in January 1990 he left, later saying he had been in turmoil and could not come up with anything. Janick Gers, who was working with Dickinson at the time, was asked to replace him. No Prayer for the Dying was recorded in a barn on Harris's Essex estate using the Rolling Stones' mobile studio, and Dickinson later dismissed the sound in very rude terms. But Harris had heard Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter and wanted it for Maiden. The BBC kept it off Radio One, yet it went straight to number one on the thirtieth of December 1990, the band's only British number one single to date.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Fear of the Dark, released in May 1992, was another British number one, and its title song became a permanent part of their concerts. It was Martin Birch's last album before he retired, and the first Maiden cover not painted by Derek Riggs, after a falling out over ideas. But Dickinson was restless. He admired Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and wondered whether Maiden was starting to look faded. In 1993 he announced he was leaving, while agreeing to a farewell tour. It turned bitter. Harris claimed Dickinson only sang properly when the press was watching, and Dickinson said nobody could fake a happy face when the mood was that bad. His last show, on the twenty eighth of August 1993, was filmed at Pinewood Studios and released as Raising Hell.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Blaze years

Maiden listened to thousands of tapes from hopeful singers. Harris's preferred choice from the start, though, was Blaze Bayley, the Birmingham born frontman of Wolfsbane, a band that had supported Maiden in 1990. Bayley had a lower, darker voice than Dickinson, and fans were split. Before he could record, a serious motorcycle accident put him out of action for around a year. Meanwhile Harris was reeling from his divorce, which he called the toughest time he had ever faced. In 1994 the song Fear of the Dark earned the band their first Grammy nomination, but the mood in the camp was dark. The next records were made at Barnyard, the studio Harris had built in a barn on his property.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The X Factor finally arrived in October 1995, after a three year gap that was then the longest in the band's history. Harris's divorce set its dark tone, and the cover, a graphic image of Eddie strapped to a machine and being cut open, had to be sold in a reversible sleeve with a milder picture. The eleven minute Sign of the Cross drew on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and Man on the Edge on the film Falling Down. The album entered the British chart at number eight, their lowest since 1981, yet it won album of the year awards in France, Spain and Germany. On the tour Maiden played Israel and South Africa for the first time.[1] [2]

Meanwhile Bruce Dickinson was finding his feet as a solo artist, and in 1994 he did something few musicians dared. He played a concert in Sarajevo while the city was under siege in the Bosnian War, travelling in down a perilous mountain road in a painted bus. Years later the city made him an honorary citizen, and its mayor said his visit had helped people believe they would survive. A documentary, Scream for Me Sarajevo, told the story. By 1997 Adrian Smith had joined Dickinson's solo band, and together they made two heavy, well reviewed albums, Accident of Birth and The Chemical Wedding. Without anyone planning it, the two departed members were building a bridge back.[1] [2] [3]

Maiden released Virtual XI in March 1998, tied in with the football World Cup and the band's own computer game, Ed Hunter. They even played promotional football matches around Europe. It reached only number sixteen in Britain, the lowest ever for a new Maiden studio album. On tour Bayley struggled with his voice, and several American shows were cancelled, officially because of a severe allergy to pollen. In early 1999 he was asked to leave. Janick Gers later said the band were partly to blame, for making him sing songs pitched outside his natural range. Bayley went on to a long solo career, and in 2008 he suffered a terrible loss when his wife and manager, Debbie Hartland, died after a stroke.[1] [2] [3]

The reunion

Rod Smallwood approached Dickinson about coming home, and Harris came round to the idea on the principle of better the devil you know. In January 1999 the two men met in Brighton for their first conversation since 1993. Dickinson later laughed that the secrecy was like a spy novel, with Smallwood clearing everyone out of a yacht club at the marina so they would not be seen together. Once they saw each other, the tension disappeared. Adrian Smith was phoned a few hours later and said yes. Janick Gers stayed, so Maiden now had three guitarists, nicknamed the Three Amigos. The reunion tour was named after the Ed Hunter game, and fans chose the set list in a vote on the band's website.[1] [2] [3]

Dickinson insisted on a new producer and a proper studio. So Brave New World was made in Paris with the South African producer Kevin Shirley, and it was the first Maiden album recorded live in the studio. Released in May 2000, it took its title from Aldous Huxley's novel, and The Wicker Man from the cult film. On the nineteenth of January 2001 the tour ended at Rock in Rio in front of some two hundred and fifty thousand people. Harris was unhappy with the hired crew's edit of the concert film, so he taught himself editing software and cut it himself. The following year the band played three nights at Brixton Academy to raise money for Clive Burr, who had multiple sclerosis.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Dance of Death in 2003 reached number two in Britain, and gave Nicko McBrain his only album writing credit, New Frontier, a song against human cloning rooted in the Christian faith he had found in 1999. In 2005 Maiden shared top billing with Black Sabbath on the American Ozzfest tour, and it ended in chaos. At the final show in San Bernardino, on the twentieth of August, Maiden were pelted with eggs, their sound was cut repeatedly and Eddie's entrance was held up. Sharon Osbourne then insulted Dickinson from the stage in front of forty thousand people. It followed his public criticism of the festival and of reality television. Smallwood called the attack vile, dangerous, criminal and cowardly.[1] [2] [3] [4]

A Matter of Life and Death, released in 2006 and deliberately left unmastered to keep a live feel, gave Maiden their first top ten album in America. War and religion ran all through it, and on the following tour they played it from start to finish. In 2007 they played the Palace Grounds in Bangalore, the first show in India by any heavy metal band, before a crowd far bigger than the twenty thousand tickets sold. Smallwood admitted the trip made no financial sense, and said they simply wanted to play for the people buying their records. In 2008 Maiden headlined a British stadium for the first time, at Twickenham, and in 2009 they won the Brit Award for best British live act.[1] [2] [3]

The Somewhere Back in Time tour of 2008 came with a remarkable ride. Maiden chartered a Boeing 757 from Astraeus Airlines, converted it to carry band, crew and stage set, painted it in Maiden colours and named it Ed Force One. The captain was Bruce Dickinson, by now a qualified airline pilot, flying under the call sign six six six. In forty five days they covered fifty thousand miles and played twenty three shows in thirteen countries, including first ever visits to Costa Rica and Colombia. The documentary Iron Maiden Flight 666 reached cinemas in April 2009, and Dickinson said two thirds of it was really about the fans. A show in Sao Paulo that March drew around one hundred thousand people.[1] [2] [3]

Final frontiers

The Final Frontier, released in August 2010, went to number one in twenty eight countries and number four in America. It was their last new album on EMI after thirty years together. Its title fuelled rumours of a farewell, since Harris had once said he imagined Maiden making fifteen albums, but the band insisted they wanted to carry on. At the 2011 Grammy Awards, El Dorado won best metal performance, their first win. Then came sad news. On the twelfth of March 2013, Clive Burr died in his sleep in London from complications of multiple sclerosis, aged fifty six. Harris called him a wonderful person and an amazing drummer, and Dickinson said he never lost his humour, even in the darkest days.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In early 2015 Dickinson was found to have a cancerous tumour at the back of his tongue. He went through seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and in May he was given the all clear. The new album waited for him. The Book of Souls, recorded in Paris and released on the fourth of September 2015, was their first studio double album on CD and their longest yet. It closed with Empire of the Clouds, an eighteen minute song Dickinson wrote at the piano and played on, finally beating Rime of the Ancient Mariner as their longest. It became their fifth British number one. For the 2016 tour they upgraded to a Boeing 747, which Dickinson retrained to fly, and played China, El Salvador and Lithuania for the first time.[1] [2] [3]

The Legacy of the Beast tour, built around the band's own mobile game, opened in Tallinn in 2018 and grew into one of their biggest ever, with one hundred and forty shows for more than three and a half million fans. The pandemic forced nearly a million tickets to be moved twice, and in 2022 the band cancelled shows in Kyiv and Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine. In August 2020 Martin Birch, the producer behind their classic records, died at seventy one. In July 2022 in Athens, Dickinson swore at a fan who lit a flare, insulting the man's nationality, and later admitted he had lost his temper. Senjutsu, a double album released in September 2021, reached number three in America, their highest ever.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

In January 2023 Nicko McBrain suffered a stroke that left his right side paralysed from the shoulder down. After ten weeks of intensive therapy he was back behind the kit for rehearsals in May, and he told fans the full story that August. The Future Past tour opened in Ljubljana that month and ran to eighty one shows. In Saint Paul, Minnesota, on the twenty second of October 2024, Dickinson paid tribute on stage to Paul Di'Anno, who had died the day before at his home in Salisbury, aged sixty six. Di'Anno's later life had been hard. In the early nineties he was jailed in Los Angeles after attacking a girlfriend with a knife while high on cocaine, and in 2011 he was jailed in England for benefit fraud.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In his final years Di'Anno performed from a wheelchair, his knee ruined, until fans crowdfunded surgery in Croatia and Iron Maiden helped pay for his treatment. Less than seven weeks after his death, on the seventh of December 2024, Nicko McBrain played his last concert with the band in Sao Paulo, a city where Maiden had felt a special bond ever since Rock in Rio in 1985. After forty two years, he retired from touring but stayed a member for studio work. The next day the band named his replacement on the road, Simon Dawson, the drummer in Steve Harris's side project British Lion and his rhythm partner there for twelve years.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Fifty years of the Beast

Iron Maiden celebrated fifty years with the Run for Your Lives tour, which opened in Budapest on the twenty seventh of May 2025. Dickinson had promised a set list for the ages, drawn entirely from the first nine albums, with deep cuts like The Ides of March and Murders in the Rue Morgue. The first thirty two European shows sold more than a million tickets. Reviewing a show in Birmingham, the Guardian noted that the newest song of the night, Fear of the Dark, dated from 1992, and that Dickinson's famous cry of scream for me came within the first four songs. It was the first Maiden tour in more than four decades without Nicko McBrain behind the drums.[1] [2] [3]

In April 2026 Iron Maiden were named as inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after two earlier nominations. The honour also covered former members Paul Di'Anno, Clive Burr, Blaze Bayley and Dennis Stratton. The band had long been dismissive, and in 2018 Dickinson had called the Hall a load of rubbish run by sanctimonious Americans, in much ruder words. This time Smallwood thanked the Hall, but said the band would miss the Los Angeles ceremony in November, because they would be on tour in Australia and the fans always come first. In May 2026 the official documentary Iron Maiden Burning Ambition reached cinemas, with superfans including Javier Bardem, Lars Ulrich and Gene Simmons.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

In July 2026 the band staged their own two day festival, EddFest, at Knebworth, their biggest British headline shows, with former members including Blaze Bayley also on the bill. That same month the Swedish company Pophouse Entertainment, set up by Bjorn Ulvaeus of ABBA, bought a half share in the band members' music rights and in their name and image, Eddie included. Plans include a film of the current tour, a museum experience and a digital world built around Eddie. Smallwood said interest in the band had never been bigger. After the final dates in Australia and Japan in late 2026, the band plan to take 2027 off. As of 2026, Steve Harris is still the only member who has been there from the very start.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

The people around Iron Maiden

Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson. The founder and the frontman are the two poles of Iron Maiden. Harris is steady and understated, like a patient football manager, while Dickinson is swashbuckling and restless. They clashed over Somewhere in Time, and the 1993 farewell tour left real anger. Six years later they met secretly in Brighton and the tension vanished. Since then they have shared the writing and the spotlight, and both happily call themselves lifelong prog rock fans.[1] [2] [3]

Steve Harris and Dave Murray. Dave Murray joined in 1976, and when two guitarists demanded that Harris choose between them and the newcomer, Harris picked Murray without hesitating. He called him the best guitarist he had ever worked with. Despite a brief sacking in 1977, the two are the only members who have played on every Iron Maiden album, and they remain the band's longest serving partnership.[1] [2]

Dave Murray and Adrian Smith. Murray and Adrian Smith grew up in the same corner of Clapton and formed their first band, Stone Free, as teenagers. Smith took up the guitar after seeing the attention Murray got from girls, and bought one of Murray's old guitars for five pounds. From Killers onwards their harmonies became a template for metal guitar, and Murray said their chemistry went beyond the music.[1] [2]

Iron Maiden and Rod Smallwood. Smallwood, a Yorkshireman who dropped out of Cambridge, first met the band at a Hammersmith pub gig where the singer had just been arrested. He has managed them since 1979, alongside his partner Andy Taylor, and named his company Sanctuary after their single. The band teased his famous tightness with money in the B side Sheriff of Huddersfield, which he only heard once it was released.[1] [2]

Iron Maiden and Martin Birch. The band assumed Birch, the producer of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, was out of their league, until he told them he was disappointed not to be asked for the debut. He produced every album from Killers to Fear of the Dark, often under joke credits, and was known as the Headmaster. He called Maiden his favourite band to work with. He retired in 1992 and died in 2020.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Iron Maiden and Derek Riggs. Riggs, a self taught painter from Portsmouth, created Eddie and painted every Maiden cover until 1992. He slipped jokes into his work, giving the Devil on The Number of the Beast the face of Salvador Dali. The partnership broke down over Fear of the Dark, when more than twenty of his sketches were rejected and he told Smallwood to find someone else. He later returned to paint the top half of the Brave New World cover.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Iron Maiden and Clive Burr. Burr's sacking in 1982 left hurt on both sides. But when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and fell into debt, his old band rallied round. They helped set up the Clive Burr MS Trust Fund, played benefit concerts, and reissued Run to the Hills in 2002 to raise money. When he died in 2013, Dickinson said Burr never lost his sense of humour, even in the darkest days.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Bruce Dickinson and Janick Gers. In 1989 Dickinson called his old friend Janick Gers, formerly of Gillan, to help record a song for a Nightmare on Elm Street film. That session grew into Dickinson's first solo album, and while they were making it, Gers was asked to replace Adrian Smith in Maiden. He stayed even after Smith returned, turning Maiden into a three guitar band, and wrote Be Quick or Be Dead together with Dickinson.[1] [2] [3]

Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Dickinson and Smith became one of Maiden's key writing teams, knocking out 2 Minutes to Midnight in about twenty minutes. After both had left the band, Smith joined Dickinson's solo group in 1997 for Accident of Birth and The Chemical Wedding. Dickinson later said he would not have rejoined Maiden without Smith, because the band would not have felt complete.[1] [2]

Nicko McBrain and Steve Harris. McBrain and Harris formed one of metal's great rhythm sections, working for hours on bass and drum patterns together. Harris marvelled that McBrain hardly looked at what he was hitting. Even their backstage rows became part of the story, as one was taped and released as the B side Mission From Arry. When McBrain stopped touring in 2024, Harris said Nicko would always be part of the Maiden family.[1] [2] [3]

Iron Maiden and Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne. Relations with the Osbourne camp were never easy. An Eddie drawing showing him biting off Ozzy Osbourne's head, a nod to Ozzy's infamous bat incident, was withdrawn after it went down badly with Osbourne's people. In 2005 the tension exploded at Ozzfest in California, with eggs thrown, the sound sabotaged and Sharon Osbourne insulting Dickinson from the stage in front of forty thousand fans.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about Iron Maiden

• Maiden's first demo master tape was wiped because the band could not afford an extra fifty pounds to buy it. They paid two hundred pounds to record at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge on New Year's Eve 1978. When they came back two weeks later, the tape had been recorded over. The engineer said the studio was as broke as the band.[1]
• Record chains HMV and Virgin each tried to order twenty thousand copies of The Soundhouse Tapes. The band said no. Only five thousand copies were pressed, for mail order. Smallwood said selling more would have betrayed the fans who had sent away for the originals, even though it could have cleared the band's debts.[1]
• In 1980 Maiden refused to mime on Top of the Pops, the first band to play live on the show since The Who in 1972. They performed Running Free, which reached number thirty four. Paul Di'Anno said the lyric came from his teenage skinhead days, though he stressed he had never actually spent a night in a Los Angeles jail.[1]
• A 1977 guitarist, Bob Sawyer, was sacked for pretending to play his guitar with his teeth on stage. The stunt embarrassed the band. According to liner notes by the writer Dave Ling, Sawyer had written an early version of Sanctuary, and was paid three hundred pounds for the rights.[1] [2]
• The first time Rod Smallwood saw Maiden play, their singer had just been arrested, so Steve Harris sang instead. Paul Di'Anno had been picked up for carrying a knife shortly before a pub show in Hammersmith. Smallwood asked Harris if he could sing. Harris said not really, but that he knew the words because he had written them all.[1] [2]
• The first heavy metal videos ever shown on MTV were live clips of Iron Maiden and Wrathchild. They came from the video Live at the Rainbow, filmed in London in December 1980, and were in heavy rotation during MTV's first hours on air in 1981.[1]
• Vincent Price was the first choice to read the spoken introduction to The Number of the Beast, but wanted twenty five thousand pounds. The band hired the actor Barry Clayton instead. The liner notes credit the passage to Revelation chapter thirteen, but its opening line actually comes from chapter twelve.[1] [2]
• The original Number of the Beast cover had a blue sky, a printer's mistake that was only corrected to black in 1998. Derek Riggs also gave the Devil the face of Salvador Dali as a joke, and took the puppet idea from a Doctor Strange comic he read as a child.[1]
• When MTV first aired The Number of the Beast video, Eddie's appearance at the end was cut after complaints from frightened viewers. The video, filmed at Newcastle City Hall in 1982, mixed live footage with clips from old horror films and marked the first time a giant Eddie appeared on stage.[1]
• Actor Patrick McGoohan gave Maiden permission to sample The Prisoner with two words, do it. Rod Smallwood nervously phoned the star to ask about using dialogue from the television series. McGoohan asked who they were, heard it was a rock band, and agreed on the spot.[1]
• Frank Herbert refused to let Maiden call a song Dune, reportedly because he especially disliked bands like Iron Maiden. The song, inspired by his novel, was renamed To Tame a Land and appeared on Piece of Mind in 1983. Harris said huge numbers of fans went and read Dune anyway.[1] [2]
• The Piece of Mind liner notes misquote the Bible on purpose, promising there shall be no more brain. The original verse from Revelation says pain. The swap was a joke about the lobotomised Eddie on the cover, and the album's working title had been Food for Thought.[1]
• Nicko McBrain's first appearance with Iron Maiden was on German television, disguised as Eddie. Clive Burr's departure had not yet been announced, so the new drummer had to stay hidden behind the mascot's mask.[1]
• Nicko McBrain plays barefoot and has always refused to use a double bass drum pedal. Dickinson said McBrain considered double pedals undrummerish. McBrain claims he used one only once, on Face in the Sand, and has played barefoot since switching pedals in 2000.[1]
• Nicko McBrain's drum kit carries a Sooty puppet, a souvenir of his 1988 appearance on The Sooty Show. He played drums alongside Sooty and Sweep on the children's programme, and the puppet has been dressed up to match each tour ever since.[1]
• Nicko got his nickname from a childhood teddy bear called Nicholas. His parents called him Nicky after the bear. A tipsy bandmate once introduced him to a CBS boss as Neeko, and McBrain adapted it to Nicko.[1]
• Steve Harris's main bass carries the crest of West Ham United, the club that once asked him to train with them. The same Fender Precision has been on every Maiden album. It has been white, black and blue sparkle, before its current white finish with claret and blue pinstripes.[1]
• Dave Murray's main guitar for a decade once belonged to Paul Kossoff of Free. He saw the black Stratocaster advertised in Melody Maker in 1976 and sold everything he owned to buy it. He said holding it felt like holding a piece of magic.[1]
• Adrian Smith used to take worms and maggots on tour so he could go fishing, and once made the cover of Angler's Mail. The keen angler also wrote a 2020 book, Monsters of River and Rock, which he said was about seventy per cent fishing.[1]
• Janick Gers is naturally left handed, but plays guitar right handed. Fans spotted it on the Rock in Rio DVD, where he signs autographs with his left hand. He bought his first guitar in Poland, while visiting his father's family.[1]
• Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter won a Golden Raspberry for worst original song, then became Maiden's only UK number one single. Dickinson first recorded it for A Nightmare on Elm Street Five. Harris liked it so much he had Maiden record their own version for No Prayer for the Dying.[1]
• Dickinson joked that the band released Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter at Christmas to scare Cliff Richard. Despite the BBC refusing to play it on Radio One, it went to number one on the thirtieth of December 1990.[1]
• Charter flights flown by Bruce Dickinson for fans were nicknamed Bruce Air, and always used flight number six six six. He told the Guardian that approaching Belgrade, the control tower refused to let him land unless he played Wrathchild. He promised to play it if they cleared him straight in.[1]
• In 2006 Dickinson flew about two hundred British citizens out of Lebanon during the war there. As an airline captain he also flew stranded holidaymakers home from Egypt after XL Airways collapsed, and flew Rangers and Liverpool football teams to away matches.[1]
• Bruce Dickinson has been ranked seventh in Great Britain at fencing. He spent much of Maiden's long break after the 1985 tour fencing, founded a fencing equipment company called Duellist, and wrote Flash of the Blade about it.[1] [2]
• Iron Maiden were only the fifth band honoured with their own Royal Mail stamps. The 2023 set followed the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen and the Rolling Stones. Eddie appeared on four of the twelve stamps, including the samurai from Senjutsu.[1]
• The very first Eddie mask used a fish tank pump to squirt fake blood, usually all over drummer Doug Sampson. It sat in the stage backdrop and spat blood during the song Iron Maiden. A fibreglass version with flashing eyes and red smoke replaced it.[1]
• The walking Eddie on stage was inspired by giants in a pantomime of Jack and the Beanstalk. Stage designer Dave Beazley created him for the 1982 tour. Rod Smallwood had once played Eddie himself in a mask and leather jacket.[1]
• Phantom of the Opera was used in a 1985 Lucozade television advert starring the athlete Daley Thompson. The Guardian noted it gave the Di'Anno era line up its biggest public exposure, long after he had left the band.[1]
• The Killers instrumental The Ides of March is almost identical to Thunderburst by Samson, the band Dickinson sang with. The link is the drummer Thunderstick, who played briefly in Maiden in 1977 and later joined Samson. Harris alone is credited for The Ides of March.[1]
• A Matter of Life and Death was deliberately never mastered, so fans hear it exactly as it sounded in the studio. Producer Kevin Shirley said Harris decided against mastering. Harris said many of the performances were first takes.[1]
• The gravedigger grabbed by Eddie on the No Prayer for the Dying cover had Rod Smallwood's face. Smallwood disliked it and had Derek Riggs paint him out for the 1998 reissue, though the original art still appears on the disc.[1]
• In 2003 Nicko McBrain was arrested before a show in New York State after driving into a parking attendant. After a row over credentials at the venue's VIP car park in Wantagh, he drove at the attendant twice, injuring him. He was charged with assault and released in time to play.[1]
• Nicko McBrain's Florida restaurant, Rock N Roll Ribs, was named for the best ribs of 2012 by a local paper. He opened it in Coral Springs in 2009, and it was praised on a local television food show.[1]
• The Eddie from The Trooper cover appeared on loyalist paramilitary murals in Northern Ireland. The Ulster Freedom Fighters used the image during the Troubles. Some fans speculated that was why Maiden left The Trooper out of a Belfast show in 2011.[1]
• In Rock Band, a cover of Run to the Hills was the only song rated impossible on every instrument. The Number of the Beast album's songs have also turned up in Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and the 2026 film 28 Years Later The Bone Temple.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.