31 years ago today Number of the Beast released!

SixesAlltheway said:
I was still in the oven for three more months then I was released upon the world in June, same year :D There's a possibility my mum could have heard it
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I was also "in the oven", born August 1982 :D
 
They say the unborn child hears and takes in all kinds of sounds. Some people listen to classical music when they're pregnant or listen to educational programmes to 'educate' their baby.
My mother went to an airshow and went to see Earthquake. Funnily enough, I was terrified of loud noises as a kid
 
There was this small group of us, maybe 5 or 6 that were hip to Iron Maiden. This was in early 1982 before NOTB came out. It was a big deal when this came out. I remember the discussions about Bruce over Paul and the slight change in sound like it was yesterday. I remember blasting NOTB from a huge boombox while playing handball that summer.
 
Wally Swift said:
There was this small group of us, maybe 5 or 6 that were hip to Iron Maiden. This was in early 1982 before NOTB came out. It was a big deal when this came out. I remember the discussions about Bruce over Paul and the slight change in sound like it was yesterday. I remember blasting NOTB from a huge boombox while playing handball that summer.
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Wow, that must have been cool, knowing Iron Maiden before even Dickinson came to the band! I guess before NOTB they were still a mostly unknown band to the general rock public? (Or at least outside of the UK - I can't be sure how much Neal Kay over- or under-stated their importance in the Harris book...)

I'd guess that without the Internet, word of mouth wasn't as fast with the news about Paul being replaced by Bruce? Were people shocked when they first heard NOTB or saw Bruce fronting the band live?

The only thing near your experience for me is hearing the atmosphere on Beast Over Hammersmith, when they played most of the NOTB songs for the first time, even before the album had come out, people going wild on Killers and Iron Maiden stuff, not singing along with the tracks that we today regard as ultimate classics of Iron Maiden (and of heavy metal in general).

P.S. Playing HANDBALL? I thought that the sport was mostly a continental thing (Spain, France, Germany, Croatia, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, etc), I've never heard of a British handball team (except at the London Olympics).
 
Ranko said:
Well, I never heard of an USA handball team either :D
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Yes, I am from the US. Floral Park New York [my HS] at the time NOTB was released

Oh yeah, we played handball. In fact there was a bunch of guys that played regularly at the park I was referring to for $500 per game. These guys played this strange variation of handball though. They used these pink sponge balls that were injected with helium [I think that's what it was]. The ball was not allowed to hit the wall above something like 12 inches from the floor, it was played very low to the ground.

Have any of you ever heard of a one off LP by a all female rock band called Poison Dollys? Well, the bass player Mary Ellen aka "Mad Mef D'Terror" and her boyfriend at the time, Ray were in this band called Underworld that I roadied for. They were into all this obscure rock and Metal and it was through them that I got hip to Iron Maiden. They used to open their shows with Ides of March/Wrathchild. My best friend Ritchie was dating Ray's sister and we were this small circle of Iron Maiden fanatics. We had the Run To The Hills 12" before the album came out. I seem to recall that their was some apprehension about "Bruce Bruce" by the others who were familiar with Samson [I wasn't] but I know that the whole NOTB package was pretty quickly accepted by all of us as the masterpiece it's now widely acknowledged to be. I bought the picture disc version of the album as well.
 
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