Any Good Iron Maiden Books/Biographies?

[warewolf95]

Does anybody know of any good Iron Maiden books or biographies, etc? I love reading up on my favorite artists and want a good Maiden book.

 

[Deleted member 7164]

"Run To The Hills" by Mick Wall.

However, the holy grail of information resides on this forum and Iron Maiden Commentary site (www.ironmaidencommentary.com). Dig deep.

 

[warewolf95]

That site is like the bible for Maiden. The bootleg section is awesome.

 

[Tron]

And hey if you dont care too much about a maiden themed book you can always go into brucey fiction with The adventures of lord iffy boatrace and the missionary position 

During a 1986-1987 Iron Maiden tour, and in the wake of a divorce, Dickinson started writing his first book. He spent sleepless nights trying to give birth to the main character, Lord Iffy Boatrace. Iffy was an English landlord, whose problems were always related to the lack of money and quested a wealthy life.[40]

The book, The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace (ISBN 0-283-06043-3), was released in 1990 and sold more than 30,000 copies almost immediately. Due to the high demand, the publisher, Sidgwick & Jackson, asked Dickinson to produce a sequel, which became 1992's The Missionary Position (ISBN 0-283-06092-1).[40]

 

[Night Prowler]

I would love to read his books but I think my english is not good enough for reading books... There's no way that Serbian version exists, so...

 

[Yax]

I would love to read his books but I think my english is not good enough for reading books... There's no way that Serbian version exists, so...

I've heard they are fucking terrible, so you're probably not missing out. 

 

[Tron]

Yeh as a piece of literature they are brutally bad... but if your a mindless collector of anything Bruce (or indeed the rest of the band) has touched then its great. an insight into bruces mind in the 90s ...  wow

but yeh for maiden books either derek riggs book or the one coming out in october.
theyre both picture books which helps the entertainment value 

 

[Perun]

The book an Iron Maiden fan should have read is called Run to the Hills, by Mick Wall. I believe the current edition is still the post-Dance of Death one. It is the official biography, and it is the most widely circulated book on Maiden out there. It should take no effort to find it. There are a few other, unofficial biographies, but what sets them apart from this one are mostly interviews with people who were in the band for a few weeks in the seventies, someone who once managed a gig for them, or an interview with Paul where he directly contradicts things he said elsewhere. Run to the Hills is indeed your number one resource for everything Maiden.

As for the book itself, let me repeat what I said elsewhere:

It is essential reading for any Maiden fan, because it contains all the necessary facts you need to know if you want to be taken seriously. As for the book itself, I personally wouldn't say it is very good or well-written (though not terrible), and I tend to think of it more as an hagiography than a biography. But when it comes down to it, it is a book about a heavy metal band, and going by those standards it's fine.

And a follow-up post:

In the strict sense of the word, an hagiography is a biography of a saint. It tells the idealised version of a holy person's life and usually says more about the perceptions of virtue of the time it was written than about the person it claims to portray. In the metaphoric sense, it is a mostly uncritical, idealised biography of anybody (including a metal band) that is cleansed from anything that would make the subject look bad, and also avoids going in-depth on some of the more controversial or unsafe topics.

In that sense, Run to the Hills isn't terrible, it does a good job of tracing the path the band took. But if you expect to read details about Paul or Bruce or Blaze leaving or the Miss Metal incident or why Blaze flipped out in Chile, you will be disappointed. As for myself, I would have preferred to read more about the band as artists, about what influenced them in the songwriting and what had them make certain creative decisions. It has bits of that here and there, but overall I don't feel satisfied. Instead, where there is a drought in things to tell (band records an album. Band goes on tour. Band takes a break. Band records an album... you can't write very much about that), Mick Wall chooses to write about his own opinions on the material. That's fine, I guess, it is his book after all, but I am a critical thinker, I can listen to the music and come up with my own opinions of it. I'd rather know what made them do what they did, and what they have to say about it. You can read about that in a number of interviews, but this book is supposed to gather the information taken from there and save you the tedious work of finding all those interviews and piecing the information together yourself. I don't mind doing that, I am a historian after all, but considering that, the book is an introduction to the band at best.