Best appearance

[Deleted member 7164]

Express your opinions on the best performance on record by the current Maiden members. Two records, first place and runner up. Studio records.

Bruce Dickinson : The Chemical Wedding, Brave New World
[sub]Accuse me of blasphemy, but Bruce was too incosistent in the '80s. The performance from TNOTB and POM tours was unbeliveable, but, altrough he sang great on the following three records, the live performance was nowhere as good as studio tracks. Only in second half of the '90s, he regained his voice in it's full power, but this time for good on both studio records and live. The Chemical Wedding features most powerful Bruce vocals i've ever heard, only to be followed by the reunion Brave New World. DOD and AMOLAD also feature great performance, but i can hear ageing in his voice. Slightly, but it's there.[/sub]

Steve Harris : Somewhere In Time, Seventh Son Of The Seventh Son
[sub]Well, Harris has been always consistently great. However, since VXI, he's there allright, but not lucid as he used to be. Somewhere In Time features great galloping tripplets, smaller solo lines, slapping, everything. SSOASS too.[/sub]

Adrian Smith : Somewhere In Time, Dance Of Death
[sub]Somewhere In Time is the work of his life. Anyone that doesn't agree, get a hearing aid. All the solos he played here sound, in a worst case, spectacular. Dance Of Death features another consistent set of his great solos. All superb there.[/sub]

Dave Murray : Piece Of Mind, Virtual XI
[sub]Alike Harris, it's really hard to choose Dave's best moment. I choose POM because solos from The Trooper, Where Eagles Dare, Revelations and Flight Of Icarus really stand out from his average. And it's a tough choice, because his average is great. Virtual XI grabbed the runner-up spot, because the guitar work pulled this album out. Actually, solos from Futureal, Clansman, Lighting Strikes Twice, are superb.[/sub]

Janick Gers : Brave New World, Dance Of Death
[sub]Alike Smith, Gers's masterwork was Brave New World. Dance Of Death featured great solos in title track, No More Lies, Montsegur...on this two records, he seems to concentrate more on the melody and the flow, blending better with Smith and Murray. No More Lies is the greatest example.[/sub]

Nicko McBrain : Somewhere In Time, Brave New World
[sub]A lot of people notice the virtuoso drumming of the Brave New World, and they'd probably put this one as a first choice. However, Somewhere In Time was the first record where Nicko perfected his technique. "Cradling the pedal" technique of Dream Of Mirrors / Out Of The Silent Planet is nothing compared to live renderition of Caught Somewhere In Time, where the live version is significantly faster than the studio track. SIT also features a lot of non-linear rythmic patterns, Sea Of Madness and Alexander The Great. Brave New World features his sound-like-a-battletank Premier drum kit, produced to perfection, reinforced with additional samples via MIDI triggers. Each hit is loud and clear.[/sub]

 

[Ardius]

Hmm, interesting.

Bruce Dickinson: The Number of the Beast, A Matter of Life and Death
Considering we are rating the studio albums here, Im ignoring anything to do with live performance. So, in this case, Bruce on Number of the Beast is his best for me. AMOLAD comes close as well though, I love his vocal work on there.

Steve Harris: Powerslave, Brave New World
Again, like has been said, hes been very consistent throughout. However, for me, these two albums stick out for their bass.

Adrian Smith: Welcome to the World, Brave New World
Haha, again with me pushing Psycho Motel stuff. However, I do think his work on WttW is his best. Maybe I just prefer him playing grunge to metal, lol. Brave New World, is basically Adrian playing everything he learnt from the 90's, but with Maiden. So it sounds great, from the intro riff of Wicker Man onwards. Although Somewhere In Time is great and its "his" album, I dont actually think its his best performance (shock, horror!!!!). My favourite Adrian solos aren't from SiT either.

Dave Murray: Iron Maiden, The X Factor
My two favourite albums to listen to right now. Dave dominates Maiden's first album for me and I threw X Factor in there because I can't decide which other album Dave is great on.

Janick Gers: No Prayer for the Dying, The X Factor
First of all, I love the solos on these albums. Secondly, I love Janick's solos on these albums. Thirdly, that makes these his best performance.

Nicko McBrain: Piece of Mind, A Matter of Life and Death
Love the drum intro to Where Eagles Dare, so thats instantly his best album for me  . AMOLAD also had some nice production, so I could here his snare drum pretty well, and it adds. More to do with skill of production I suppose, but Im not very good at picking out excellent drumming (unless its something really noticable, like the drums on the Wicker Man.)

 

[Powergirl81]

Nice thread, Zare! Let me have a whirl at it...

H: Somewhere In Time, AMOLAD. Too tough for me to decide! Like I said before, H doesn't have a bad solo. But SIT was his crowning achievement. Wasted Years, Sea Of Madness, SIASL, this solo, that solo...I could go on and on  AMOLAD is right next to it because his solos are real nice, compared with the other 2. Not to mention he did half of the musical work for the thing! Half of the tracks have Smith beside them  That's what Maiden lacked in the 90s. H contributing. They wouldn't have "declined" and Bruce probably would have stayed with them...that's just my opinion though.

Murray: Brave New World, Piece Of Mind. BNW was, IMHO, Dave's album. The Nomad, The Thin Line, the title track...he totally did some killer stuff on this album! Each album has some nice Murray solos, but this ome takes the cake cuz he wrote some great songs as well as did great solos. POM is the other because of Still Life  That's his #1 song in my book. It would be a nice surprise on the tour coming up

Bruce: Accident Of Birth, Number of the Beast. Just like Zare, I chose a solo album over a Maiden album. He shines on AOB, no questions asked! Every track has so much power behind it cuz Bruce just has a powerful singing voice. It's true that on the albums from this decade his age shows, but he was 42-43 when BNW was out, 45 in 2003, and 48 in 2006, so yeah, that's apparent. He can't scream like he used to-that's why they should drop Run To the Hills for that sake. But back in 1982 whe he was only 23 he just belted out every track on NOB with full force! All through the 80s Bruce was great. His voice hung in there, although on LAD he was worn out because they were on the biggest tour of their lives. After 200 shows, that takes its toll!

Steve: I think it's too hard to choose a whole album, Steve is Maiden's heart and soul. Since my husband is a bass player, he jams the 80s stuff alot. NOB, POM, Powerslave, SIT. Going from that, I think his material from the 80s was a lot more galloping/harder to play/in your face ass opposed to the 90s-stuff from this decade. Their last 3 albums were more "progressive" rather than "heavy metal" I feel, but like Zare and Ardius said, Steve has been consistent throughout.

Janick: I haven't really listened to No Prayer or Fear Of the Dark, so it's hard for me to choose Janick's best album. He does good stuff on X Factor, and since the reunion he has a few songs that Maiden can't live without: Dream Of Mirrors, Dance Of Death, and Ghost of the Navigator. For me, his work on AMOLAD was just OK at best.

Nicko: Piece Of Mind, SIT. Nicko just blows you away on Where Eagles Dare! He really showed what he could do on his first album with the band. I guess the same about him could be said about Steve that Nicko's consistent, minus VXI. VXI was Maiden's weakest album IMO. I love the middle part of Dream Of Mirrors. That has to be one of the hardest things to do, and he does it with one foot! Face In the Sand didn't need the double bass pedal, it just doesn't sound like Maiden. No wonder he said it's too complicated to play! 

 

[Dr. Eddies Wingman]

Bruce: Seventh Son comes first, and if I may, I let Piece of Mind and A Matter of Life and Death share the second spot. The energy he puts into his singing on AMOLAD is great, and I think the "operatic" side of his voice comes to its right on POM more than any other Maiden album. However, the way he uses the voice to set the mood for the different songs on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son is the greatest he has done in Maiden.

Steve: Well, I have stated earlier that my favourite bass lines are on Powerslave. Steve is a very consistent player, so it is how the bass lines are composed and used on each album that separates them. The rest of the 80's albums also features great bass lines, but for second place I just have to throw dice or something. Oh, well. Piece of Mind. 

Adrian: Somewhere in Time, Seventh Son. His lead playing, his solos and his contribution to the songwriting was never better than on these two albums. I understand that he wanted to leave when it became clear that Steve wanted a different musical direction, because he was really shining on these two.

Dave: Hard to choose, for  Dave it has to be performance only which matters because he has written so few songs. I think he's great on many albums, but the choice is an agony. He does some great stuff on Piece of Mind. And his solos on Powerslave are great, as are some of them on Iron Maiden. I choose Powerslave.

Janick: Well, I actually think he has become better after Adrian returned to the band, and that his best performances are on Brave New World and A Matter of Life and Death.

Nicko: He introduced himself with a great performance on "Where Eagles Dare", but I think overall he improved over the years. He was great on Somewhere in Time. I pick that one along with Brave New World and I'm happy I'm not the man who is required to play drums on Ghost of the Navigator.

Eddie: Well, I think his awesomeness showed best on Powerslave, although there is something with his appearance on Brave New World as well. These two take the price.

 

[Forostar]

Dave: Hard to choose, for  Dave it has to be performance only which matters because he has written so few songs.

Well, Adrian was not in the band in the nineties and before AMOLAD came out, Janick had even written more songs than Adrian.

Adrian got to the lead again, because of his songwriting on AMOLAD. However, the differents in amounts of songs between the three are still small.

(co-)written songs by
Adrian: 30
Janick: 28
Dave:  25

Of course, I admit that the average amount of Dave songs per album is way smaller than the other two guys.

 

[Deleted member 7164]

Keep in mind that Killers featured a lot of material that was written before Adrian came into the band. Also, Murray only contributed two songs from Blaze era, so the bulk of those two albums was left to Harris-Bayley-Gers.

 

[Dr. Eddies Wingman]

Well, Adrian was not in the band in the nineties and before AMOLAD came out, Janick had even written more songs than Adrian.

Adrian got to the lead again, because of his songwriting on AMOLAD. However, the differents in amounts of songs between the three are still small.

(co-)written songs by
Adrian: 30
Janick: 28
Dave:  25

Of course, I admit that the average amount of Dave songs per album is way smaller than the other two guys.

Ahum, are you counting B-sides as well? When I counted album songs only (including songs like Sanctuary and Total Eclipse, who were originally only released as B-sides but included on the remastered album versions) I find only 19 songs written by Dave.

However, my point was not the total number of songs each of them has written, but their songwriting on the individual albums. And Brave New World was the first album where Dave got credits on more than two songs ... I mean, Adrian really put his mark on Somewhere in Time. Not only are some of his best solos there, but three of the songs were written exclusively by him. That is, he really had an impact on the songwriting on SIT. Dave has contributed with a song or two on most albums, but not on a single album has he been the second most dominating songwriter. Thus there are (in my opinion) no albums where one can say "hey, this really is Dave's album". Instead, he has distributed his brilliance over the entire Maiden discography  Therefore, I cannot use songwriting as a criterion for choosing Dave's best album(s).

End note: When considering Dave's songwriting it would have to be BNW, because he contributed on three songs and those three songs are all great  However, my favourite songs (co-)written by Dave are Still Life and The Prophecy.

 

[Forostar]

Ahum, are you counting B-sides as well?

Yes. But you said "Dave it has to be performance only which matters because he has written so few songs", without specifying album songs, so it looked like you thought that he wrote way less songs in total, which isn't the case.

When I counted album songs only (including songs like Sanctuary and Total Eclipse, who were originally only released as B-sides but included on the remastered album versions) I find only 19 songs written by Dave.

That's correct, I believe. See all the tracks below, per guitarist.

However, my point was not the total number of songs each of them has written, but their songwriting on the individual albums.

I realized that you could have meant that, hence my last sentence in my previous post. Your explanation is very clear, but I thought you might be interested in the numbers of total songs as well, to get the total picture, just in case.

@Zare: Dave wrote more in the Blaze era, but indeed, only two came on the albums. That's still more than H.


edit:

Here the songs per guitarist. For comparing, the colours respond with the albums, and the black ones are non-album songs. Check Janick and TXF: a fantastic combo!! Best example of a Maiden guitar player, important for one single album.

Iron Maiden
Killers
The Number Of The Beast
Piece Of Mind
Powerslave
Somewhere In Time
Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
No Prayer For The Dying
Fear Of The Dark
The X-Factor
Virtual XI
Brave New World
Dance Of Death
A Matter Of Life And Death

Adrian Smith
1. The Prisoner (Smith, Harris)
2. 22 Acacia Avenue (Harris, Smith)
3. Gangland (Smith, Burr)
4. Flight Of Icarus (Smith, Dickinson)
5. Die With Your Boots On (Smith, Dickinson, Harris)
6. Sun And Steel (Dickinson, Smith)
7. 2 Minutes to Midnight (Smith, Dickinson)
8. Back In The Village (Smith, Dickinson)
9. Sheriff Of Huddersfield (Iron Maiden)
10. Wasted Years (Smith)
11. Sea Of Madness (Smith)
12. Stranger In A Strange Land (Smith)
13. Moonchild (Smith, Dickinson)
14. Can I Play With Madness (Smith, Dickinson, Harris)
15. The Evil That Men Do (Smith, Dickinson, Harris)
16. Hooks In You (Dickinson, Smith)
17. The Wicker Man (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)
18. The Fallen Angel (Smith, Harris)
19. Pass The Jam (Dickinson, Gers, Harris, McBrain, Murray, Smith)
20. Wildest Dreams (Smith, Harris)
21. New Frontier (McBrain, Smith, Dickinson)
22. Paschendale (Smith, Harris)
23. Face in The Sand (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)
24. Journeyman (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)
25. More Tea Vicar (Dickinson, Gers, Harris, McBrain, Murray, Smith)
26. Different World (Smith, Harris)
27. These Colours Don't Run (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)
28. Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)
29. The Longest Day (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)
30. Lord Of Light (Smith, Harris, Dickinson)

Janick Gers
1. Nodding Donkey Blues (Dickinson, Harris, Murray, McBrain, Gers)
2. Be Quick Or Be Dead (Dickinson, Gers)
3. Fear Is The Key (Dickinson, Gers)
4. Wasting Love (Dickinson, Gers)
5. The Apparition (Harris, Gers)
6. Weekend Warrior (Harris, Gers)
7. Judgement Day (Bayley, Gers)
8. I Live My Way (Harris, Bayley, Gers)
9. Lord Of The Flies (Harris, Gers)
10. Man On The Edge (Bayley, Gers)
11. Look For The Truth (Bayley, Gers, Harris)
12. The Aftermath (Harris, Bayley, Gers)
13. The Edge Of Darkness (Harris, Bayley, Gers)
14. 2 A.M. (Bayley, Gers, Harris)
15. The Unbeliever (Harris, Gers)
16. Virus (Harris, Gers, Murray, Bayley)
17. Como Estais Amigos (Gers, Bayley)
18. Ghost Of The Navigator (Gers, Dickinson, Harris)
19. The Mercenary (Gers, Harris)
20. Dream Of Mirrors (Gers, Harris)
21. Out Of The Silent Planet (Gers, Dickinson, Harris)
22. Pass The Jam (Dickinson, Gers, Harris, McBrain, Murray, Smith)
23. Montsegur (Gers, Harris, Dickinson)
24. Dance Of Death (Gers, Harris)
25. Gates Of Tomorrow (Gers, Harris, Dickinson)
26. More Tea Vicar (Dickinson, Gers, Harris, McBrain, Murray, Smith)
27. The Pilgrim (Gers, Harris)
28. The Legacy (Gers, Harris)

Dave Murray
1. Sanctuary (Harris, Di'Anno, Murray)
2. Charlotte The Harlot (Murray)
3. Twilight Zone (Murray, Harris)
4. Total Eclipse (Harris, Murray, Burr)
5. Still Life (Murray, Harris)
6. Deja-Vu (Murray, Harris)
7. Sheriff Of Huddersfield (Iron Maiden)
8. The Prophecy (Murray, Harris)
9. Public Enema Number One (Murray, Dickinson)
10. Fates Warning (Murray, Harris)
11. Nodding Donkey Blues (Dickinson, Harris, Murray, McBrain, Gers)
12. Chains Of Misery (Dickinson, Murray)
13. Judas Be My Guide (Dickinson, Murray)
14. Justice Of The Peace (Murray, Harris)
15. Virus (Harris, Gers, Murray, Bayley)
16. Lightning Strikes Twice (Murray, Harris)
17. When Two Worlds Collide (Murray, Bayley, Harris)
18. Brave New World (Murray, Harris, Dickinson)
19. The Nomad (Murray, Harris)
20. The Thin Line Between Love And Hate (Murray, Harris)
21. Pass The Jam (Dickinson, Gers, Harris, McBrain, Murray, Smith)
22. Rainmaker (Murray, Harris, Dickinson)
23. Age Of Innocence (Murray, Harris)
24. More Tea Vicar (Dickinson, Gers, Harris, McBrain, Murray, Smith)
25. The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg (Murray, Harris)

 

[Dr. Eddies Wingman]

Yes. But you said "Dave it has to be performance only which matters because he has written so few songs", without specifying album songs, so it looked like you thought that he wrote way less songs in total, which isn't the case.

.....

I realized that you could have meant that, hence my last sentence in my previous post. Your explanation is very clear, but I thought you might be interested in the numbers of total songs as well, to get the total picture, just in case.

To the first - I realize it can be understood that way. (Oh crap, I sound like a bloody echo).

To the second - yes, it's interesting to know even though it wasn't my point. Sometimes it is nice to get a wide view. (As opposed to what it is like to be a PhD student - one gets very much into a narrow topic and forgets everything else).

And by the way - it is remarkable that the axemen don't have more than 4 songs in total (Adrian 3, Dave 1) where the respective guitarist is the only one credited for the song. Either Steve, Bruce (Blaze) or one of the other guitarists is co-credited on nearly all. Shows that Maiden is about teamwork, doesn't it?

 

[Forostar]

Indeed. And I also find it remarkable that the guitar players never work together, writing songs (apart from "whole band"-products, which are rare and never appear on albums).

Always the maximum of one amigo, per song.