Do we know if there's a reason that he has never played certain Maiden songs from his albums?
Like Eyes of a Stranger for example. It's probably not because of writing credits, since he's played other solo Harris songs without issue. I'd love for him to eventually have played every song at least once.
I've never heard him talk about the decision-making that goes into choosing which Maiden songs he plays, but I'd assume the usual batch he plays are the ones he likes to perform or ones he knows go down well with the crowd. The nice thing is that he's expanded that a bit in recent years, with Fortunes of War, Judgment of Heaven, and Como Estais Amigos on his
Damaged Strange Different and Live album. That one kind of felt like a conscious effort to get more live versions of his Maiden material on record, so I hope he continues to broaden that net to include Don't Look to the Eyes of a Stranger, Lightning Strikes Twice, and The Educated Fool (along with other unrepresented songs from
TXF).
The bummer for me personally is the apparent dissolution of his working relationship with Thomas Zwijsen. I remember back around when
December Wind was released, I asked Thomas (in a comment thread) if one day we might have acoustic versions of all his Maiden work. At the time, he said he'd just talked to Blaze about that, and said Blaze wanted to have
The X Factor for sure fully made acoustic (through various releases, I'd assume).
Yet here we are many years later, and we've gotten no more acoustic versions of Maiden tracks. Thomas has released more albums on his own, yet nothing more with Blaze on vocals. Neither side seems to mention the other anymore, which sucks, because I thought all the acoustic covers they did were pretty great.
