Blaze Bayley

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Thank you Zare! I’ll check Blood Brothers with Blaze I didn’t even know that.

Zare said:
In many ways Brave New World is a VXII. All tracks where Dickinson or Smith weren't involved are straight out of 1998 with way better production and a different vocalist.
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Interesting take. And with a way better guitarist too! ;)
 
After VXI, Steve said that there are 4 unused songs left off VXI sessions and that they will use them for the next album. Which ones are those 4 songs?

Adrian Smith: Yes, you are right. "Nomad" is one of them. The others are "Dream Of Mirrors", "Mercenary", I can't remember the 4th one.
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Steve Harris later said it was "Blood Brothers" according to Wikipedia, the original source is an article in Metal Hammer in 2010, If I remember correctly. He had the basic concept, but it wasn't a complete arrangement.

Then Blaze was asked about this in 2014. He said that he co-wrote Dream of Mirrors, which was credited to (Gers/Harris) and recorded vocals on a demo of Blood Brothers, this appears after 7:17 in this video:

The Blood Brothers demo could be just Steve's own recording, which he added some vocals on.
 
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Also the "rock mix" of Blood Brothers which appeared as a B-side on the Wildest Dreams single, makes it sound a lot more like something from Virtual XI in my opinion. This version is the song without any orchestration (which was added externally by Jeff Bova).

Steve already had the Clansman ready though and he came up with The Educated Fool as well, then Blaze and Janick had Como Estais Amigos - it's easy to see why he didn't finish the track in 1997.
 
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I guess the question that has to be asked is, if they had songs such as Blood Brothers and Dream of Mirrors as the leftover songs from VXI then why the hell did they not use those instead of crap like DLTTEOAS or TAATG?
 
I'm sure both Don't Look to the Eyes of a Stranger and The Angel and the Gambler could have been turned into strong tracks with different arrangements (including cutting and re-arranging some parts) and with a better production, which was done on Brave New World. They had both Kevin Shirley present, as well as some A&R people, who provided suggestions on arrangements and production choices.

And now on the other hand, imagine Blood Brothers for example on Virtual XI - without the melodic lead intersection by Janick, without any orchestration, and with Blaze's vocal performance on the album instead (which unfortunately was very rushed), and with the low quality drum sound and overall limited production quality. It would appear to many listeners as an alternate version of The Educated Fool more or less - definitely not a future classic. (And this comes from someone who have bought multiple copies of Virtual XI in different formats, don't get me wrong!)

The basic song idea, what Steve (or any other band member) brings in, to arrange and record with the band, isn't that different, regardless if it's 1997 or 1999 (or even 2019!) though. Many people don't get this.
 
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Spaldy said:
I guess the question that has to be asked is, if they had songs such as Blood Brothers and Dream of Mirrors as the leftover songs from VXI then why the hell did they not use those instead of crap like DLTTEOAS or TAATG?
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Because they knew the time is short?
Nobody seem to ever make the connection, but first you have Maiden going out on the bond market and shortly after the announcement that Bruce is back.
Only that these things need legal preparation before and some amount of thinking & talking before that. Thus it could be in Harris & Rod's heads from the time of VXI's recording sessions. Not necessarily for Bruce but bringing in some other singer.

Bruce was approached around end 1998 I think. By then, they should have already decided for the move and were waiting for Thelen Reid & Priest to finalize the draft. Yet the idea, the spark could be a year earlier, i.e., mid 1997.
 
____no5 said:
Because they knew the time is short?
Nobody seem to ever make the connection, but first you have Maiden going out on the bond market and shortly after the announcement that Bruce is back.
Only that these things need legal preparation before and some amount of thinking & talking before that. Thus it could be in Harris & Rod's heads from the time of VXI's recording sessions. Not necessarily for Bruce but bringing in some other singer.

Bruce was approached around end 1998 I think. By then, they should have already decided for the move and were waiting for Thelen Reid & Priest to finalize the draft. Yet the idea, the spark could be a year earlier, i.e., mid 1997.
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Iron Maiden dont have a song called Axe Attack only a compilation
 
I'd say they weren't even started with, as in proper recording. Maiden was on tight budget at VXI sessions. The X Factor took years, the band had inactive years 1994 and 1997 with the sales and audiences being less than they used to be. VXI had to be released pretty swiftly, maybe also due to the Q4 of 1998 being filled with big metal festivals in South America. They had no B-sides which points to shortened studio time. From that angle it's easy to see how 4 songs could've been left completely undeveloped.

However it's 1998 and Harris has a studio of his own where Maiden recorded 4 albums. So there might be studio demos of the stuff with Blaze. Not songs in preproduction or production just studio demos because Harris has access and knows how to use one.
 
Zare said:
That song name is what somebody that never heard anything Maiden would presume their songs are called.
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Or they saw this
Iron_Maiden_Killers.jpg
 
I don't know enough about finance or Maiden's business but it does seem like a bold move from Steve to invest in bands future. For me it seems like raising a mortgage on your house (a very expensive one but still your house) so you have enough liquidity to keep the firm up and running and capable of funding projects in the near future.

A small but maybe important detail was Dickinson was also involved. That's for sure because there's an interview from in between Ed Hunter and BNW where he says reunion is not about the money cause they already checked out the bank via the back catalogue deal. Of course he'd be involved and so was Smith because they have a hefty amount of royalties, especially Dickinson. Seems to me they were on the same page about Maiden's financial prospect even before they returned to the band. Maybe it was also factored in, cause Harris obviously is looking to the future and not stashing the golden parachutes in preparation for the fall.
 
Zare said:
I'd say they weren't even started with, as in proper recording. Maiden was on tight budget at VXI sessions. The X Factor took years, the band had inactive years 1994 and 1997 with the sales and audiences being less than they used to be. VXI had to be released pretty swiftly, maybe also due to the Q4 of 1998 being filled with big metal festivals in South America. They had no B-sides which points to shortened studio time. From that angle it's easy to see how 4 songs could've been left completely undeveloped.

However it's 1998 and Harris has a studio of his own where Maiden recorded 4 albums. So there might be studio demos of the stuff with Blaze. Not songs in preproduction or production just studio demos because Harris has access and knows how to use one.
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I think it's not unusual for Steve to have demos/ideas from previous albums sessions. He is full of ideas.

Maybe they wrote 12-14 songs during VXI sessions (like during TXF sessions), but decided that they will do an 8-songs album again and Steve saved these 4 songs for the next album (i.e. BNW). Besides, Janick wrote only one song for the album, so it's not surprising that Steve has written so many songs. And they already (sort of) had filled the spots in the album with these type of songs - Blood Brothers/CEA (slow song), The Mercenary/Futureal (fast rocker), DOM/The Clansman (song with acoustic parts), The Nomad/DLTTEOAS (song with long instrumental section).

Edit: ''We actually ended up doing 14 songs for TXF album and we used 11'', said Steve, ''which is very unusual for us''.
 
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