Tuesday, 08 July 2008
Do you Remember 1988?
I do. I remember when I was 15. Awkward, lonely, covered in pimples, bad NHS glasses and national health teeth covered in metal braces, raging with hormones and testosterone and random unwanted erections in the middle of maths lessons. And there I was, a naïve, adrift in the world, lost and hopeless, crying into my pot noodle, surrounded by cheap pornography stolen from newsagents. I was not a boy, not yet a man, somewhere adrift in a raging sea of hormones and confusion.
And then I learned everything I ever needed to know about the world From Iron Maiden. Eddie, their titular, stagewalking 20ft high robot stalker, even death couldn’t kill him. He was indeed Live After Death. A heroic figure, he battled the devil and made the devil his bitch, travelled somewhere in time, from the Egyptian valley of the Kings which bore his edifice to the streets of London where he found the milk thief Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Maiden herself, and left her slain. From the frozen wastes of Tundra to the egyptian deserts, Eddie and his band of Heavy Metal Warriors, indefatiguable and unstoppable, they gave me hope.
All I had to do was grow my hair, wear spandex trousers, and put my foot up on the foldback monitors pretending to machine gun the crowd… and then too all the glory could be mine. I too could have a villa in spain, fitted out with my own bar and a massive collection of horror videos, comic books, and west ham wristbands. Conquering the world one stadium gig at a time, a wall of pyro firing off behind me as me and my bass propelled ourselves with songs about fighter planes, duellists, and ancient mariners.
No one actually told me I had to actually write songs, play live, be a success, stop bickering with my school mates about whether “Killers” or “The Clairvoyant” had the easiest bassline,and actually get out and do something. In my head I was a rock star. In my head, I still am.
Of course, what I actually did was grow my hair long and make myself utterly unemployable. Socially awkward, I escaped into the fantasy world. I remember Watching “Maiden England” until the tape was grainy and speckled with snow, I remember the new album coming out as an almost religious event. A new deliverance from the prophets of rock. I put the platter down on the table, and soaked up the words. “Ride into the sky, never wonder why, you’re a Tailgunner!” sang Bruce. To see the band live? I could only dream. fantasize. My pocket money wouldn’t cover the ticket cost, never mind the t-shirt, the eddie scarf and the iron maiden tour flag too.
Well, all until track 5, when my indie kid brother strolled in. Cue a huge, huge row. How dare he perform such sacrilige. Didn’t he know I was listening to the new Iron Maiden album? Didn’t he care? How dare he. We rowed and rowed, until the needle left a whopping great big scratch in the vinyl.
. I might have a boring office job, but inside, the flame of rock burns strong. The long hair may have fallen out, replaced with baldness inherited from the grandfather who was a desert rat, but his stories never held the fervour for me that the ones ‘Arry “Bomber” Harris did. One foot on the monitor, I could pretend. Hope. Dream that one day it would be me.
I still do.
Iron Maiden made me the man I am today. Throughout it all, my love of maiden remains. Forever remains. So when the wall of pyro goes up in the chorus of “The Number Of The Beast”, I can escape the job that slowly kills you, and my whole boring ass life.When the 20ft eddie strolls across the stage, I’m 15 again. My whole future is ahead of me, again. With my infinite dreams, I can’t deny them…..
That’s why I love Iron Maiden. That’s why I always will. They made me into the man I am today. Whatever the hell that is. Me and all the other dumb schmucks who thought we’d grow up to be rock stars. But we’re not. We never will be. We’re pumping gas and manning tills in shops, living in council flats and getting the bus to work at 5:27AM just so we can weld metal in a sweaty factory all day .And this headbanging shit ain’t so easy when you’ve got no hair, but you know what? Live fast, die young, and leave a good lookin’ corpse. They can always reform and sell stadiums.
Life, its not what I thought it was. Thank God for Iron Maiden. They give me an escape route. A way out of here. Everything I am now, Iron maiden made me into the man I am today. I might regular and boring in my normal life, but for two hours, watching these boys on stage, inside I am a rock god.
Real men play on ten. This went to eleven. One Louder.
SETLIST: Churchills Speech / Aces High / Two Minutes To Midnight / Revelations / The Trooper / Wasted Years / The Number Of The Beast / Can I Play With madness / Rime Of The ancient Mariner / Powerslave / Heaven Can Wait / Run to the Hills / Fear Of The Dark / Iron Maiden / Moonchild / The Clairvoyant / Hallowed be Thy Name Only registered users can write comments.
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