Why did Steve Harris fire Clive Burr ?

Forostar said:
Perhaps not if you had MS.
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To be fair, the memory can do funny things, even to the best of us.

For example, when I was 16 there was a train accident in my town. I can swear I was working at the local store when it happened, but it happened at 2 PM on a school day. There's no way I was at work.
 
GhostofCain said:
Perhaps, but the journalist could have done some research job rather than publishing that crap.
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Remind me who was the journalist? Infamous Stipe Juras of Croatian IMFC organized a trip to visit Clive around 2009 or so, I wonder if he is source of any of these information.
 
Clive and Paul we're just young kids age 22 at the most, doing what most at that age would do if available to them. Knee jerk decisions and the rest is history.
 
Ziggyplayedguitar said:
Clive and Paul we're just young kids age 22 at the most, doing what most at that age would do if available to them. Knee jerk decisions and the rest is history.
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Actually they were well-considered decisions by an ambitious band leader and manager who had no patience for those who were neither elite, nor all in.

Damn lucky for us, considering what their ruthless pursuit of excellence wrought
 
Zare said:
Remind me who was the journalist? Infamous Stipe Juras of Croatian IMFC organized a trip to visit Clive around 2009 or so, I wonder if he is source of any of these information.
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No, it was a journalist from Classic Rock. I think the interview was posted earlier in this thread.

Edit: I have found a copy of the interview at home: the journalist was Lee Marlow.
 
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Thx.

And @mckindog amen to that!

P.S. Even Smith got asked to leave, solely because he wasn't all in. No drugs, no performance problems.
 
LooseCannon said:
To be fair, the memory can do funny things, even to the best of us.

For example, when I was 16 there was a train accident in my town. I can swear I was working at the local store when it happened, but it happened at 2 PM on a school day. There's no way I was at work.
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People tend to be one sided when they revisit a long passed emotional situation, if they haven't let it go and moved on. Only then they could be objective in a hindsight, some day. Di'Anno certainly never moved on in the right sense of the word, I don't know about Clive but none of ex Maiden members achieved anything significant afterwards, with one big exception. It would be kinda interesting to hear what Dickinson would say about Maiden today, if his solo career failed and he never got back into the band (or metal).
 
Forostar said:
Perhaps not if you had MS.
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Plus his job involved loads of travel, planes, buses etc. To most people, flying to and from your home country is pretty rare, but not for Maiden. Add to the mix all the years passed. Lots of things to get confused 25 years later.
 
Let's remind everyone that Clive's dad died on Christmas day, not any other day. The chances of someone getting dates mixed up in the UK in that case is nigh on impossible. Clive was also the informant!

The article claimed Clive had to fly back mid tour to attend the funeral and that is a blatant lie.
 
Bruce's take on Clive's departure from the band, taken verbatim from his book:

'It wasn't about luggage, and it wasn't about partying, or girls, because anybody and everybody was guilty of that at some time or another. 'Artistic Differences' would be to over-state his creative input.
The closest phrase I could get would be 'self-fulfilling irretrievable disagreements'. The breakdown of the relationship between a drummer and bass player is pretty fundamental, especially if the bass player happens to be the principal songwriter and band leader.

Clive always regarded the Maiden set-up with a jaundiced eye, even as he was held in high regard by fans. I loved his drumming feel, essentially because his sweet spot was of the big-band swing-time variety that guys like Ian Paice of Deep Purple had going for them.

Where we didn't see eye to eye was in the intricate and often eccentric fills and time signatures dreamt up by Steve. Their personalities were increasingly on a collision course. Steve was shy off-stage, but aggressive and precise on stage. Clive was Mr Outgoing off stage, but often Mr Approximate when it came to precision on stage. Throw the whole melange into a pot and it got messier and messier throughout America. By the end, Steve took me to one side and said, 'He's got to go, I can't fucking take it any longer.''

Note also that in an earlier chapter Bruce states that Clive was indulging in drugs more than other band members and that this may have been contributing to him frequently playing too slowly, leading to on-stage arguments between Clive and Steve.
 
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UpTheIrons said:
Bruce's take on Clive's departure from the band, taken verbatim from his book:

'It wasn't about luggage, and it wasn't about partying, or girls, because anybody and everybody was guilty of that at some time or another. 'Artistic Differences' would be to over-state his creative input.
The closest phrase I could get would be 'self-fulfilling irretrievable disagreements'. The breakdown of the relationship between a drummer and bass player is pretty fundamental, especially if the bass
player happens to be the principal songwriter and band leader.

Clive always regarded the Maiden set-up with a jaundiced eye, even as he was held in high regard by fans. I loved his drumming feel, essentially because his sweet spot was of the big-band swing-time
variety that guys like Ian Paice of Deep Purple had going for them.

Where we didn't see eye to eye was in the intricate and often eccentric fills and time signatures dreamt up by Steve. Their personalities were increasingly on a collision course. Steve was shy off-stage,
but aggressive and precise on stage. Clive was Mr Outgoing off stage, but often Mr Approximate when it came to precision on stage. Throw the whole melange into a pot and it got messier and messier
throughout America. By the end, Steve took me to one side and said, 'He's got to go, I can't fucking take it any longer.''

Note also that in an earlier chapter Bruce states that Clive was indulging in drugs more than other band members and that this may have been contributing to him frequently playing too slowly, leading to
on-stage arguments between Clive and Steve.
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Thanks for is. I have not had the time to get to that bit of the autobiography yet!
 
No need for correction :) All honour to Clive but I never understood this obsession of describing him as a better drummer than Nicko because someone prefers his style and his way to play some songs. This also shows that if there's a "correct" way to play Hallowed it's probably Nicko's because that's what Steve wanted.
 
Damn, I can't believe that Bruce just out and said it. I was expecting this to be one of those things the Maiden camp would never come back to, since everyone's said their piece and the official line was what it was. Can't help but wonder if there'll be more interesting tidbits like this in there.
 
UpTheIrons said:
Bruce's take on Clive's departure from the band, taken verbatim from his book:

'It wasn't about luggage, and it wasn't about partying, or girls, because anybody and everybody was guilty of that at some time or another. 'Artistic Differences' would be to over-state his creative input.
The closest phrase I could get would be 'self-fulfilling irretrievable disagreements'. The breakdown of the relationship between a drummer and bass player is pretty fundamental, especially if the bass player happens to be the principal songwriter and band leader.

Clive always regarded the Maiden set-up with a jaundiced eye, even as he was held in high regard by fans. I loved his drumming feel, essentially because his sweet spot was of the big-band swing-time variety that guys like Ian Paice of Deep Purple had going for them.

Where we didn't see eye to eye was in the intricate and often eccentric fills and time signatures dreamt up by Steve. Their personalities were increasingly on a collision course. Steve was shy off-stage, but aggressive and precise on stage. Clive was Mr Outgoing off stage, but often Mr Approximate when it came to precision on stage. Throw the whole melange into a pot and it got messier and messier throughout America. By the end, Steve took me to one side and said, 'He's got to go, I can't fucking take it any longer.''

Note also that in an earlier chapter Bruce states that Clive was indulging in drugs more than other band members and that this may have been contributing to him frequently playing too slowly, leading to on-stage arguments between Clive and Steve.
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This account is not actually that different from the one given in "Run to the Hills", although the later (looking at it again now) could be interpreted as Clive having a tendency to turn up unfit to really play at all. What Bruce has added is emphasis on the real issue being recurring performance inconsistencies of the kind that Steve really can't tolerate. The personality clash is news, though.
 
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