Which band is more influential on Iron Maiden: Sabbath or Purple?

Which band is more influential on Iron Maiden: Sabbath or Purple?

  • Total voters
    62
Yeah and H has often said Purple is his favorite band.

I say Purple. ‘Arry probaly would say Tull. ;)

Maybe UFO.
 
Honestly, that was a difficult question because Black Sabbath is the first real metal band, and Rob Halford from Judas Priest also said so several times including an interview I heard on the radio with him around the time Halford Resurection came out in August of 2000. However, Deep Purple is a hard rock band but they hugely influenced metal. Its all rock and roll and I still regard them as metal though Roger Glover described them as a hard rock band in an interview I heard with him in the summer of 2004. They were definitely influenced by UFO and progressive rock bands early Genesis. Steve Harris also described early Genesis as an influence and you can hear some of it in the guitar solos in "Dancing With the Moonlight Knight," "Supper's Ready," "The Musical Box," and "Return of the Giant Hogweed." There is also a lot of Led Zeppelin and Yes influences. Getting back to the Black Sabbath and Deep Purple influence, it's almost a tossup but in the end, the call goes to Black Sabbath in my humble opinion.
 
Cosmiceddie said:
I fail to hear any Sabbath influence on Maiden.
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If you listen to songs like "A National Acrobat," "Fairies Wear Boots" (especially the closing section), and "Hole In The Sky" you will hear the Sabbath influence on Maiden. I also hear a lot of Dio-era Rainbow in Maiden. The guitar solo in "Sixteenth Century Greensleves" sounds like something Dave or Adrian might do and also "Tarot Woman," "Starstruck, "Stargazer," "Gates of Babylon," and "Kill The King" sounds like something that strongly influenced Maiden.
 
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Metal Warrior 330 said:
Honestly, that was a difficult question because Black Sabbath is the first real metal band, and Rob Halford from Judas Priest also said so several times including an interview I heard on the radio with him around the time Halford Resurection came out in August of 2000. However, Deep Purple is a hard rock band but they hugely influenced metal. Its all rock and roll and I still regard them as metal though Roger Glover described them as a hard rock band in an interview I heard with him in the summer of 2004.
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What you're outlining is that Black Sabbath is more influential to metal, which I agree with. However, we're talking Maiden, not metal as a whole.
 
Diesel 11 said:
What you're outlining is that Black Sabbath is more influential to metal, which I agree with. However, we're talking Maiden, not metal as a whole.
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I also outlined some of the examples I heard in some Maiden songs and I did state that it was a difficult question. Perhaps I should rephrase it aas a question of who and what was the heaviest influence on Iron Maiden. was it the heavy riffs and the metal influence of Black Sabbath or the classical guitar and heavy hard rock influence of Deep Purple? I just remembered that in addition to Steve and Bruce who cited influence, Adrian and Dave also citied influence. I remember reading about how their guitar teacher would try to make them play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and they would play "Smoke on the Water" instead. Maybe I can agree that Deep Purple had more influence but Black Sabbath probably influenced them in some ways more than others too.
 
Magnus said:
With a Gillan wannabe who went on to become a considerably better singer than Ian and a Gillan ex-member in the band who nevertheless claims to be more influenced by Jeff Beck than Ritchie Blackmore, the answer should be obvious.
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Fixed it for you. :D

Joking aside, I see many more influences from Purple than from Sabbath in Maiden.
 
GhostofCain said:
Fixed it for you. :D

Joking aside, I see many more influences from Purple than from Sabbath in Maiden.
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Also the later influence from Ritchie in Dio-era Rainbow. That aside though I voted for Black Sabbath I agree that Deep Purple definitely influenced Iron Maiden more, even though there is still plenty of Black Sabbath influence.
 
Gladfully, I do not hear much Purple in Maiden, apart from Ian Gillan influencing Bruce vocally, who joined around a time when Maiden was busy for 6 years already. Influencing Bruce happened waaaay before Bruce joined Maiden. So... now we have even less Purple influence on Maiden. In fact: what was Purple's influence on Maiden? Tell me all about it.
 
I always imagined Maiden as a mashup of elements from Purple, Genesis (Gabriel era) and UFO, if you take keyboards out. Sabbath (Ozzy-fronted), not so much, although elements are still there. The guitar sound and playing is much closer to Schenker then Iommi.
 
Actually, listening to Strangers In The Night album from UFO, Adrian's Piece Of Mind lead guitar tone is a carbon copy of the Schenker lead tone from that album, which doesn't surprise me since both Steve and H are big Schenker fans.

 
Forostar said:
Gladfully, I do not hear much Purple in Maiden, apart from Ian Gillan influencing Bruce vocally, who joined around a time when Maiden was busy for 6 years already. Influencing Bruce happened waaaay before Bruce joined Maiden. So... now we have even less Purple influence on Maiden. In fact: what was Purple's influence on Maiden? Tell me all about it.
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The middle bit after the scream from Wrathchild sounds a bit like Deep Purple's Stormbringer (in particular in the version released before the one in Killers). The Alchemist from The Final Frontier is a recent example of a track heavily influenced by Purple, not to mention Janick's Brighter than a Thousand Suns, which is pure Blackmore.

Anyway, Maiden's music is a mix of very different influences (including, among many others Van der Graaf Generator, UFO, early Genesis, Wishbone Ash, Nektar, The Who, Becket...) that were distilled to create something unique. :)
 
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matic22 said:
Actually, listening to Strangers In The Night album from UFO, Adrian's Piece Of Mind lead guitar tone is a carbon copy of the Schenker lead tone from that album, which doesn't surprise me since both Steve and H are big Schenker fans.

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Don't forget the Love to Love/Lord of the Flies connection.
 
Forostar said:
Gladfully, I do not hear much Purple in Maiden, apart from Ian Gillan influencing Bruce vocally, who joined around a time when Maiden was busy for 6 years already. Influencing Bruce happened waaaay before Bruce joined Maiden. So... now we have even less Purple influence on Maiden. In fact: what was Purple's influence on Maiden? Tell me all about it.
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The instrumental interplays, I think. Especially the tradeoffs. It's a "later day" song but Judgement Day's instrumental is Purpulesque in my ears. From early days, Revelations.

But the most DP-alike song should be Stranger in a Strange Land, for the riff and the hammond textures.

You're right, though, that the influence is not straight forward, however the Sabbath influence is even less obvious. For me.

Maiden in that sense doesn't sound like anyone, they're their own thing. They have a lot of influences, mostly from progressive rock genre, but from the big "1st wave" metal trio, I get that Deep Purple feel a lot, just an attitude towards instrumentals and jamming expressed through the end product. I know Dickinson said that Maiden not being 100% certain about jams and extended instrumentals in the 1980s was one of his exit factors. He also notes that 21st century Maiden does this and that's why it's "better". That reads that tendencies were always there.

I can hear some Sabbath here and there and some Zeppelin here and there, but it's inside discrete songs. Like COTD and Innocent Exile. Overall, Maiden's dependence on pure riff and slow groove is small, love songs are almost nonexistent and there's no sex factor involved. From that viewpoint, they have largest similarity with DP inside those big 3.

In the end, as GhostOfCain says, prog rock is the bulk of the influence, UFO, P.Gabriel Genesis, PF, The Who, Beckett, harmonies were inspired by Wishbone Ash and Thin Lizzy, etc. These details are quite known.
 
GhostofCain said:
The middle bit after the scream from Wrathchild sounds a bit like Deep Purple's Stormbringer (in particular in the version released before the one in Killers). The Alchemist from The Final Frontier is a recent example of a track heavily influenced by Purple, not to mention Janick's Brighter than a Thousand Suns, which is pure Blackmore.

Anyway, Maiden's music is a mix of very different influences (including, among many others Van der Graaf Generator, UFO, early Genesis, Wishbone Ash, Nektar, The Who, Becket...) that were distilled to create something unique. :)
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I have the feeling that that fast part in BTATS was intentionally placed there by Bruce and Adrian, just to unleash Janick's inner Blackmore. Hell, I need more H/Janick solo combinations; construction and destruction.

And yes, of course, the Love To Love/LOTF connection (Steve even said that Love To Love is one of his favourite songs).
 
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