Correct! Your turn.
It goes like this:
Clue 1: The year after the release of this Maiden song, another band released two albums within a short period of time. The name of the second of these albums leads you directly to the song you’re looking for, while the name of the first guides you to a Maiden album where the song in question appears.
Manchester's melodic hardrockers "Ten" released their debut album "X" in May 1996, and followed it up with "The Name of the Rose" in September the same year.
Clue 2: In the lyrics, there’s a nod to a song by one of the writer’s main influences. Furthermore, you’ll find the name of another Maiden song and an 80’s hit song that topped the UK as well as the US charts.
Genesis' "Supper's Ready" contains these lines: "Six saintly shrouded men move across the lawn slowly /The seventh walks in front with a cross held high in hand". The other songs in the clue are Maiden's "Judgment Day" and The Bangles' "Eternal Flame".
Clue 3: The song was played live at a significant show in Maiden's history - in a city that has a historical connection to the subject matter of the song.
Blaze Bayley's first show, in Jerusalem. Which is of course the city near which Jesus was crucified, according to the Bible.
Clue 4: Down south to Italy...
The song's "Name of the Rose"-line, and overall medieval Christianity theme, seem inspired by Umberto Eco's novel (or the 1986 film adaptation) "The Name of the Rose". Here, the narrator is a young monk, Adso from Melk, who travels from his home of Melk in Austria to a monastry in Italy, where the plot of the story unfolds.
Clue 5: Central to the song is a group of characters of uncertain quantity, but the song has a first-person narrator.
The characters are the "saintly shrouded men". They are eleven or twelve, as it is unclear whether or nor the guy with the cross is included in the eleven, or if they are actually eleven-plus-one.
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