Blaze Bayley

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I'm not a Blaze hater, but I don't think this will sound good. Blaze said that when the band considered playing Run To The Hills on The X Factor tour he said he wouldn't do it because it's Bruce's hallmark song, so I don't know why he wants to mess with it now. He could have chosen another song. It sounds like he chose Maiden's most famous song just as an attempt for selling more tickets.
 
Naty said:
Blaze said that when the band considered playing Run To The Hills on The X Factor tour he said he wouldn't do it because it's Bruce's hallmark song,
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Not any more hallmark than The Trooper, Number of The Beast, Hallowed etc which they did do on the X-Factor tour...
 
Yeah I think it's a PR reason too, but it doesn't make much sense because he couldn't sing Hallowed, but still they played it.
 
Yea, but RTTH seems even more difficult to sing. If you thought The Trooper and Hallowed were bad, RTTH is probably at least a few notches worse.

Nothing against Blaze as a singer. Bruce also didn't sound great on a lot of Paul Di Anno songs, but they were able to quickly move away from a lot of that material. Blaze had the burden of a large back catalog from a singer with a larger range and different style, there wasn't really much he could do about that.
 
No...and ultimately it falls back on Steve/Maiden who HAD to pick someone as far removed from Bruce as possible without thinking about what that meant in a live setting. I'm sure Blaze did his absolute best...It was just an impossible task.
 
And then ultimately Steve had to swallow his pride, fire Blaze and get Bruce back. Blaze was the poster boy for Steve's own stubbornness.
 
I'm still torn on Steve's decision. It's admirable that he wanted to go a different direction, but even the songs written for Blaze often didn't fit his voice very well. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with hiring a clone of the previous singer, just depends on if he's able to bring something new to the band I guess. Ripper sounded a lot like Halford but Jugulator had an added dimension to the Priest sound, so it worked. The same would've been true if they got someone for X Factor who was also capable of singing the old material.
 
I totally agree. I also like the idea that to move forward you need to find someone new...but I know that Steve were more or less hellbent on proving that they could manage without Bruce (I have an old Kerrang magazine somewhere where he speaks about this and that the last thing they want is someone who sounds like Bruce) so he basically found someone who sounded completely different and acted completely different on and off stage and who had a completely different persona....And if that's not protecting your own instead of looking out for the band I don't know what is
 
Mosh said:
I'm still torn on Steve's decision. It's admirable that he wanted to go a different direction, but even the songs written for Blaze often didn't fit his voice very well. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with hiring a clone of the previous singer, just depends on if he's able to bring something new to the band I guess. Ripper sounded a lot like Halford but Jugulator had an added dimension to the Priest sound, so it worked. The same would've been true if they got someone for X Factor who was also capable of singing the old material.
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Blaze was pushed to the limit on that material, and I'm not sure the results were always pretty. But the same can be said for Bruce. Steve has always written material that's been awkward to sing, doesn't matter much which singer he had in the band at the time - it's just that Bruce has come out looking better than Blaze because he just has a wider range and is a more skilled singer.
 
Regarding his exit from Iron Maiden, Blaze said:

"I left Iron Maiden, not by choice — I was fired. They said I wasn't good enough. And I said, 'Well, is Bruce coming back?' And they said, 'Yes.' And I think what was happening at the time was that worldwide, CD sales had gone down and EMI had closed all their manufacturing facilities around the world. The record business was shrinking, so, really, I think it was more of a business decision that Bruce came back at the time. And, yeah, I was just gutted by that. I think it took me about four years, really, before I kind of accepted what had happened. And I think, really, if things had been slightly different, then it would have been very difficult for Bruce to come back, because the songs that I was working on at the time, the ideas for what I thought would be [my] third Iron Maiden album, I really thought that that would be it, that third album would really show fans that we were serious and that this lineup would work. But I didn't get the chance to make that third album." From:
 
Forostar said:
Regarding his exit from Iron Maiden, Blaze said:

"I left Iron Maiden, not by choice — I was fired. They said I wasn't good enough. And I said, 'Well, is Bruce coming back?' And they said, 'Yes.' And I think what was happening at the time was that worldwide, CD sales had gone down and EMI had closed all their manufacturing facilities around the world. The record business was shrinking, so, really, I think it was more of a business decision that Bruce came back at the time. And, yeah, I was just gutted by that. I think it took me about four years, really, before I kind of accepted what had happened. And I think, really, if things had been slightly different, then it would have been very difficult for Bruce to come back, because the songs that I was working on at the time, the ideas for what I thought would be [my] third Iron Maiden album, I really thought that that would be it, that third album would really show fans that we were serious and that this lineup would work. But I didn't get the chance to make that third album." From:
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I saw this yesterday. This is the first time I have ever heard Blaze talk so frankly about his departure from Iron Maiden - "They said I wasn't good enough" and Bruce was already lined up to come back. Blaze did not say this with any venom, so this sounds entirely factual to me.
 
Forostar said:
Regarding his exit from Iron Maiden, Blaze said:

"I left Iron Maiden, not by choice — I was fired. They said I wasn't good enough. And I said, 'Well, is Bruce coming back?' And they said, 'Yes.' And I think what was happening at the time was that worldwide, CD sales had gone down and EMI had closed all their manufacturing facilities around the world. The record business was shrinking, so, really, I think it was more of a business decision that Bruce came back at the time. And, yeah, I was just gutted by that. I think it took me about four years, really, before I kind of accepted what had happened. And I think, really, if things had been slightly different, then it would have been very difficult for Bruce to come back, because the songs that I was working on at the time, the ideas for what I thought would be [my] third Iron Maiden album, I really thought that that would be it, that third album would really show fans that we were serious and that this lineup would work. But I didn't get the chance to make that third album." From:
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Oh excellent. I'm enjoying this series a lot. First episode was really daft but it then it picked up. Of course it's mostly interesting for us Maiden and Blaze fans and probably won't hit a wider audience than that. Still cool insights though!
 
A summary from the chapter covering this in the Run to the Hills Biography:
1. The band decided that they needed to get a new singer.
2. Rod wanted Bruce back but Steve was not into the idea - Rod had to convince him.
3. Blaze was fired (in january of 1999) before Bruce had officially agreed to rejoin.
4. It is possible that the band would have started to search for a completely new singer if the meeting between with Bruce would not have worked out.

According to Dave Ling, Bruce was considering the idea a month before:
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Blaze said that the rest band walked to the dressing room without him and didn't do an encore at the Rio show in december- so he felt that something was wrong, but no one told him anything.
 
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