RUN FOR YOUR LIVES 2026

matic22 said:
It's different. Between 2010 and 2011, "predictable" classics replaced 5 rarely played songs. And there was no surprises.

For instance, when they did that from 2006 to 2007, they at least brought Children Of The damned back. Also, replacing both AMLOAD songs performed in 2010, which weren't featured on any live albums before was not great.
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These tours aren't equivalents in length and therefore profitability, which means some setlist changes are lower stakes than others...
  • the 2006 AMOLAD full album run was the bigger one at three months
  • the 2007 follow-up was short, a ten-day run followed by barely 22 more days
whereas
  • the 2010 pre-TFF run was three months
  • the 2011 TFF album run was huge, best part of seven months!

What you are saying is that even after SBIT 2008-09 in between, which did feature 80s deep cuts, followed by TFF 2010 with mainly reunion songs, Maiden could embark on another reunion+deep cuts setlist for seven months across 2011? I don't think so.

The 'play classics crowd' also pay Maiden's wages, you cannot just ignore them for years and years on end while playing lots of newer songs and deep cuts. I actually think Maiden struck an excellent new/old/rare balance across all these tours, including the 2011 TFF setlist.
 
Also, the new album tracks from TFF took up 40+ minutes, which is above the average of what an equivalent 80s album would have made up of the set
 
srfc said:
Also, the new album tracks from TFF took up 40+ minutes, which is above the average of what an equivalent 80s album would have made up of the set
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That's actually an interesting metric. Some quick and rough maths:

Brave New World had the first 6 songs played for the most part of its tour, so 39 (on the dot lol) minutes out of 66:57. That's about 58.3% of the album. A few shows had The Fallen Angel and/or OOTSP played, so that bumps up the total to 49:25, that brings us up to about 73.8% of the album played live, in terms of minutes.
So if we compare number of songs vs number of minutes we have 60% vs 58.3% (# of songs) and 80% vs 73.8% (# of minutes).

The Final Frontier had 5 songs played. I'll make a special case for Satellite 15, since it is 4:35 long yet was played entirely from tape.
So, first the "it's on a live album, so it's played live" version. We have 41:24 out of 76:35 played live. That's 54.1% in terms of minutes.
If we separate Satellite 15 from The Final Frontier and treat only the latter as being played live it's 36:49 instead. That's about 48.1%.
So, # of songs would be 50%, # of minutes is either 48.1% (if we exclude S15) or 54.1% (if we include it).

The debut and Killers are a bit of outliers (as was AMOLAD), so I'm just gonna take a look at Piece Of Mind and Powerslave, this way I don't have to deal with TNOTB's Gangland/Total Eclipse situation. Forgive the laziness :D

Piece Of Mind is easy. 7 out of its 9 songs have been played live. In terms of minutes we're talking about 38:23 out of 45:28, so about 84.4% of the album. That's quite the improvement over pure # of songs, which would be 77.8%.

Powerslave is a bit of a weird one. The core songs that were played on the entire tour were the first and final two of the album, clocking in at 31:32 out of 51:12, so 61.6% (minutes) vs 50% (songs). Losfer Words was played on most of 84, so with that we get to 35:47. That's 69.9% (minutes) vs 62.5% (songs).
For fun, there's the debate about if Back In The Village was actually played for a couple of shows or not. If yes, that'd be 40:49 minutes. So, 79.7% (minutes) vs 75% (songs).

Originally I wanted to stop here, but this is actually quite fun, so I'll also look at SSOASS, FOTD, TXF and TBOS for the heck of it.

SSOASS had 6/8 songs played live -> 75% (songs). That's 34:07/44:14 -> 77.1% (minutes).

Fear Of The Dark had only 5/12 songs played -> 41.7% (songs). That's 26:50/57:58 -> 46.3% (minutes).

The X Factor had 7/11 played live -> 63.6% (songs). That's 46:52/70:54 -> 66.1% (minutes).

The Book Of Souls had 6/11 songs for each leg, but exchanged one of them for a total of 7/11. So each leg would be 54.5% (songs) while the album overall saw 63.6% (songs) played live.
The '16 leg had Tears Of A Clown, so we got 47:41/92:11 -> 51.7% (minutes).
The '17 leg replaced TOAC with The Great Unknown, so we got 49:19/92:11 -> 53.5% (minutes).
Overall for the album that's 54:18/92:11 -> 58.9%

Interestingly enough, TBOS feels like it got very good live representation, but EOTC being so massive skews the statistics. That means the individual legs of that tour have "worse" coverage than TFF did (if we count S15).

Obviously, we can't just take these numbers as gospel. We need to take a look at the entire setlist and calculate the percentage of new songs out of the whole show. But that's a calculation for another time. I might also sit down and do the calculations for the other tours at some point too, but this will have to do for now.

(All calculations done to the best of my ability. Hopefully no typoes snuck in)
 
Helmuth Von Moltke said:
These tours aren't equivalents in length and therefore profitability, which means some setlist changes are lower stakes than others...
  • the 2006 AMOLAD full album run was the bigger one at three months
  • the 2007 follow-up was short, a ten-day run followed by barely 22 more days
whereas
  • the 2010 pre-TFF run was three months
  • the 2011 TFF album run was huge, best part of seven months!

What you are saying is that even after SBIT 2008-09 in between, which did feature 80s deep cuts, followed by TFF 2010 with mainly reunion songs, Maiden could embark on another reunion+deep cuts setlist for seven months across 2011? I don't think so.

The 'play classics crowd' also pay Maiden's wages, you cannot just ignore them for years and years on end while playing lots of newer songs and deep cuts. I actually think Maiden struck an excellent new/old/rare balance across all these tours, including the 2011 TFF setlist.
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Point A, they could. There were still songs that were ignored on the SBIT tour at that point. The Prisoner, for example or Icarus or Stranger In A Strange Land. 2MTM could have had a break. They were incredibly unimaginative with especially TETMD and 2MTM. The latter was so overplayed at that point that Adrian openly admitted it and said that he wants to rest it for a bit a few years later.

2nd point was true until 2023. That year Maiden rolled out TFP, which consisted of 9 or maybe 10 deep cuts/new songs across 15 songs (all Senjutsu songs, all SIT songs minus Wasted Years and I'd argue even The Prisoner). I think since Bruce's growing involvement with the setlists (since cancer), they have become much more imaginative.

Anyways, in short, I agree to disagree.
 
matic22 said:
I think since Bruce's growing involvement with the setlists (since cancer), they have become much more imaginative.
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No doubt about it.

Also with more tours being "nostalgia" it gives more scope to dig deeper into the back catalogue. If it was Steve picking sets on a new album tour, there's a good chance you're getting 6 off the new album, Iron Maiden, Wrathchild, TNOTB, Hallowed, Run to the Hills, Trooper, 2 Minutes to Midnight, one from Clairvoyant and Evil That Men Do,and Fear of the Dark and possibly The Clansman on every tour. Maybe a curve ball BALZE!!11 era track

EDIT: and Heaven Can Wait
 
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matic22 said:
Point A, they could. There were still songs that were ignored on the SBIT tour at that point. The Prisoner, for example or Icarus or Stranger In A Strange Land. 2MTM could have had a break. They were incredibly unimaginative with especially TETMD and 2MTM. The latter was so overplayed at that point that Adrian openly admitted it and said that he wants to rest it for a bit a few years later.

2nd point was true until 2023. That year Maiden rolled out TFP, which consisted of 9 or maybe 10 deep cuts/new songs across 15 songs (all Senjutsu songs, all SIT songs minus Wasted Years and I'd argue even The Prisoner). I think since Bruce's growing involvement with the setlists (since cancer), they have become much more imaginative.

Anyways, in short, I agree to disagree.
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Yes, agree to disagree. I really cannot see what the problem is with the 2011 TFF setlist, esp following the insanely adventurous 2010 set.

Running Free is relatively rare for the reunion lineup, and of the other seven classics (11:58, Trooper, Evil, Fear, NOTB, Hallowed, IM), five of them were played to close out the AMOLAD set. And yet somehow, that doesn't also ruin the AMOLAD set?

Regarding Bruce's cancer, I agree that it spurred him on to pick some awesome set lists. I would suggest though that the 2003 Give Me Ed set, the 2005 Early Days set and arguably the 2008 SBIT set all showed good to excellent imagination levels as well!

By the way this discussion spurred me to watch this:
Texas 2010, one of the rare Paschendale performances and just such a never-to-be-repeated setlist.
 
Helmuth Von Moltke said:
Running Free is relatively rare for the reunion lineup, and of the other seven classics (11:58, Trooper, Evil, Fear, NOTB, Hallowed, IM), five of them were played to close out the AMOLAD set. And yet somehow, that doesn't also ruin the AMOLAD set?

Regarding Bruce's cancer, I agree that it spurred him on to pick some awesome set lists. I would suggest though that the 2003 Give Me Ed set, the 2005 Early Days set and arguably the 2008 SBIT set all showed good to excellent imagination levels as well.
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Well, that's the problem. They were doing the same classics over and over again during first 4 reunion album tours, with the sole exception being Dance Of Death tour. And I agree, Early Days was incredibly inspired setlist, despite it having some strange song aversions (Icarus and Killers come to mind).

2008 set could've been even better if they knew, they would be doing Maiden England in 4 years. The SIT/SSOASS songs could've been filled by, again, Icarus, 22 Acacia Avenue or similar. It was good, but IMO the 2018/2019 Legacy setlist was better. Eagles, Clansman, Revelations, FTGGOG, SOTC and Icarus along with classics offered more than the 2008 one IMO. Even some songs that were played in the past (e.g. 2MTM and Evil) sounded more fresh, because they were rested on TBOS tour. And Aces High won't sound as good as it did on that tour again.
 
Helmuth Von Moltke said:
Yes, agree to disagree. I really cannot see what the problem is with the 2011 TFF setlist, esp following the insanely adventurous 2010 set.

Running Free is relatively rare for the reunion lineup, and of the other seven classics (11:58, Trooper, Evil, Fear, NOTB, Hallowed, IM), five of them were played to close out the AMOLAD set. And yet somehow, that doesn't also ruin the AMOLAD set?

Regarding Bruce's cancer, I agree that it spurred him on to pick some awesome set lists. I would suggest though that the 2003 Give Me Ed set, the 2005 Early Days set and arguably the 2008 SBIT set all showed good to excellent imagination levels as well!

By the way this discussion spurred me to watch this:
Texas 2010, one of the rare Paschendale performances and just such a never-to-be-repeated setlist.
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All stopped sooner than bruce didnt they? Lol. Im sure they will play a tour with many songs since reunion. Its the only material that they havent well revisited ,just some classic songs but im sure they will play more in the next tours. From the 80s and early 90s they have revisited every song important.

Whatching the setlist they could improve that setlist a lot and playing some deepcuts but i think the next thing is a new album snd tour.
 
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Both Aces High and TNOTB must be dropped from the setlist. Bruce should not force himself to sing those insane high notes and screams anymore. I really don't like to see him struggling. There are too many (and much better) songs they can play instead of these two.
 
So, you're all telling me that there will come a time when Bruce will only sing songs like Strange World, Remember Tomorrow, Prodigal Son, Wasting Love, Sign of the Cross, Lord of the Flies, Blood on the World's Hands, The Edge of Darkness, The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg, The Writing on the Wall, and Senjutsu?

Hmm... when I started typing this, I hoped my post would be immensely sarcastic, or tongue in cheek, but now I'm looking at those song titles and realizing there will be an attack of the nerds saying, “Give me a show full of those songs and I'll come back time and time again!”

Fuck!
(Not that those songs are bad - my intention with this post failed big time.)
 
matic22 said:
Well, that's the problem. They were doing the same classics over and over again during first 4 reunion album tours, with the sole exception being Dance Of Death tour. And I agree, Early Days was incredibly inspired setlist, despite it having some strange song aversions (Icarus and Killers come to mind).
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The Early Days set was shorter than their standard timewise, they could have easily put in Icarus and Killers, and still doesn't exceed their usual concert length.
 
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