.

Although staring through the mists of time is a hazy affair, I am quite sure Maiden were there at the beginning of my awareness of music and what I liked and didn't like.
In 1989 I was 6 years old and had a brother 7 years my senior. He had a collection which included Rush, CCR, ACDC, WASP, GnR, Metallica, Megadeth, Onslaught and Def Leppard, among others. I somehow remember the day I became more than a passive absorber of his output. I went to his room and said "put on that Iron Maiden song, I Wanna Be Somebody." He informed me that that song was by WASP, not Maiden. He asked "so do you want Maiden or WASP?" It must be my earliest memory and is still genuinely vivid, I remember the cogs working in my brain, I thought 'Iron Maiden sound cooler.' So I said "Iron Maiden."
I then devoured the whole collection including the LAD, 12 Wasted Years and Maiden England videos. 27 years, 7 gigs and countless pounds later and Maiden is still number one. By a country mile.

Other early exposure from my folks and other brother included traditional Irish music (Christy Moore, Planxty, Wolfe Tones) Buddy Holly and other assorted 50s type stuff, Talking Heads and later the Britpop explosion.

1994-97: I was trying to find my own stuff, mainly through reading Kerrang! and Raw magazines. Bands I found include
Paradise Lost
Sepultura
Terrorvision
Therapy?
The Wildhearts
I sat on this stuff generally for a while.

Approx 2001-7: University followed by falling in with a new, more musical crowd.
Warren Zevon
Zappa
DeepPurple
The Doors
Hendrix
Gogol Bordello
Yes
Tull
James Taylor Quartet
Funkadelic

I fell in love with the Funk at this point but strangely I wasn't really concerned with the artists, I just soaked in the tunes through this new crowd. Again I remember the life changing moment. I was brought to a guys house, first time I had met him, I walk in, drunk, and he is playing the DVD of Prince Rave UN2 the Year 2000. I said "fuck sake, I hate Prince." The guy said, "sit down, fuck up and watch." I did. I saw Larry Graham for the first time. I was blown away.

On the back of this period of unparalleled musical expansion (for me) I stuck 'psychedelic funk' into Limewire and got up Ali Farka Toure. This led to a love affair with African music, especially Malian folk/blues;
Ali & Vieux Farka Toure
Tinariwen
Fela & Femi Kuti
Toumani Diabate
John Butler Trio also became a favourite around this time. And Rob Zombie too.

Then came The Great Stagnation, I cant remember the last time I discovered a 'new' artist that I have listened to for more than 5 mins. Well except for Goat and The Blues Pills in the last few years. Although maybe I am coming out the other side, in the last few months I have started to dig Snarkey Puppy and Trombone Shorty. I suppose it is the blessing and the curse of my partners Spotify Discover Weekly; I hear lots of stuff I have never heard before but it never sticks, no matter how many memos I write in my phone to check out a certain artist. In fact, I'll check....so recently I have recorded the names Doug Johns (slap bass, if I recall correctly) and Wille & The Bandits (dirty, bluesy stuff maybe).

Still, when its my choice and I pick only for me I always revert to classic rock/metal. Mainly Iron Maiden (especially since TBOS was released).
 
Mosh said:
It literally started with Maiden for me. My dad got me into them at a very young age and I've been a fan ever since. Before Maiden I was aware of Kiss but hadn't actually listened to them yet. But early on it was mainly Iron Maiden and Kiss. I also listened to just about everything in my dads music collection, which was predominantly 80s. I was mostly into metal (80s Priest, Scorpions, Van Halen, Dio) but I also discovered non metal stuff too like Rush and Cheap Trick. I was also really into Elvis as a kid, can't remember how I got into his music exactly.

Once I got into middle school I became a bit more exposed to modern music, stuff that was played on the radio or what my friends listened to. Bands like Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, Rage Foo Fighters, etc. I also really got into Extreme around this time, which was a major discovery for me. Nuno was a huge inspiration for me on guitar. I also discovered classic artists I missed earlier, namely Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles. I suppose this was when I branched out a bit from metal, but was still firmly in the rock genre.

It was also around this time I started to crave more progressive music. The Final Frontier came out when I was in 8th grade and Isle of Avalon was unlike anything I had heard before, so I was intent on hearing more stuff like it. I also got into Dream Theater that year thanks to seeing them open for Maiden, so that was another huge discovery.

Going into high school I had started to really discover progressive rock. Dream Theater and Rush were the first big finds. I was aware of 80s Rush thanks to my dad, but I had no idea about their 70s proggy past. I knew of 2112 but I couldn't get into it as a kid. But once I heard Hemispheres I was hooked. Along with Rush it was the typical prog classics. Yes, Genesis, but also newer stuff like Opeth. I also started to branch out a bit in high school with Jazz, hip hop, pop, and experimental music.

These days I'm still really into everything I grew up with, though some artists have outlasted others. After an intensive period in high school of finding new current music, I've been going back to the classics a bit and discovering older stuff (mainly metal) that I missed. I still try to check out new stuff regularly though.
But after all that, Iron Maiden is still the best of them all.
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What about Porcupine Tree ?
 
Absolutely not interested in music before 1980. Then, I began to listen to radio stuff, and the first band that caught my attention was the Stray Cats.
Then, in 1982, a school trip to London and a friend of mine willing to sell his Killers cassette got me into Maiden. I had never heard anything like that before (just a few AC/DC songs on the radio, but it was really weak compared to the agression that is Killers).
1982-1985 : Began to discover other bands : Black Sabbath, Motörhead were my favorites along with Maiden, and I loved Metallica's Ride the Lightning. That could have gotten me into thrash, but, with the exception of Slayer, I didn't find anything interesting in the genre.
1985-2004 : I only listened to a few Metal bands (Maiden, Sabbath, Slayer, Motörhead), and to other stuff, mainly classical (XIXth century), progressive (Tull) and folk oriented (I'm a huge fan of Simon & Garfunkel).
2004-present : I've tried to discover "new" bands. Dream Theater, Mastodon, recently Rush. I'm more and more into heavier stuff, like Amon Amarth, Obituary. My tastes are wider than they've ever been.
For the last 35 years, Maiden has been the only constant and has remained my favorite band by far.
 
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Yeah, they were pretty big for a brief period. And the only local band doing anything we related to at the time. Troublegum is so good, highly recommend it to any people here who don't know it. Bet they were highly charged at Donnington '94!
Me and the bro saw the vid for Screamager on an Irish Sunday morning music show and were hooked. Seen them many times and through various channels my brother has become a casual acquaintance of the band, hes a local music photographer and they give him extra access when they play Belfast (as opposed to 3 songs down the front then fuck off). They let him onstage to shoot for a tune last time. A major thrill for the boy!

Not a fan of the most recent album but the couple before that are top quality, especially Crooked Timber.
Saw them at a small, local festival in August, brilliant, it lashed rain which was blown directly onto the stage for a while. Eventually people (crew, band members) were looking around to see who should make the call to stop; Andy went to the side and got a towel, wiped his guitar, came back and said 'fuck the rain, were going nowhere' and launched into Nowhere. Great moment and nobody got electrocuted!
 
Screamager!! One of the best songs out there. I vividly remember their Pinkpop gig from that time (TV broadcast). Myself, I went to one gig in 2000. The tour that belonged to the album Suicide Pact - You First.
 
When I was at school, the older kids used to play a lot of Uriah Heep, Deep Purple and Thin Lizzy. I loved it and really took a massive liking to Lizzy.

Then I heard this song that got played a lot on the radio at the time: Running Free. Then I heard the album then the concert. All happened within the space of 6 months of so, from not being aware of them to being my favourite band.

After that, I got into thrash big time (still love it) but never got into Death\Black\Core\etc. Some of its OK, but some I can't listen too.
 
Because of this topic, it jarred my memory a bit. My brother is six years older than me. His tape collection at the time stuff like Rick Springfield, Night Ranger, Dokken, and other hair metal greats. Out of nowhere he had the Live After Death tape and nothing else like it so he gave it to me because be didn't like it. It was after that I was hooked on Maiden and metal in general. Had Pantera not come around when they did, I probably would have gotten out of metal all together in the 1990's. I didn't get into death metal until a few years ago and prefer progressive/tech death, but do enjoy Obituary, Cannibal Corpse, and similar old school death metal bands. The 1990's is where I got into progressive metal after hearing Dream Theater's Images and Words and that's probably why I prefer the same style in my death metal. I loved thrash as soon as I heard Slayer and then Megadeth. I forgot to mention power metal in my first post as well. I still remember seeing the video for Helloween's song Halloween on Mtv's Headbangers Ball. I still enjoy power metal and prefer German power metal (they just know how to do it). I've rambled to long, but I just wanted to add some details I left out of my earlier post.
 
Born in 1970, so grew up in the 70s and 80s, college late 80s/early 90s. Evolution of my musical tastes:

1974: obsessed with Cat Stevens (Teaser & the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman albums); also liked Nilsson Schmilsson, which Dad had recorded on the same open reel tape as those other two albums.

1976-78: discovered & got way into the Beatles, Paul Simon solo, the Beach Boys, and my dad's old Elvis, Chuck Berry, and Danny & the Juniors (e.g. "At The Hop") 45's. One of my favorite TV shows was Sha Na Na.

1979-80: Chic, Jackson 5, Michael Jackson - Off The Wall

1980: discovered Led Zeppelin (dad had IV album, which he only bought for "Stairway to Heaven"; one day I took it into my room and played the rest of it) and Cheap Trick (5th grade buddy had "In Color" album and a K-Tel collection with live "I Want You To Want Me"). Started getting into harder rock.

1981-82: discovered Ozzy Osbourne, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath. It was all over at this point; I was a metalhead. Also very into the rock that was played on my local FM station - Donnie Iris, Aldo Nova, Loverboy, Journey, other 70s-early 80s AOR bands.

1983-84: discovered Iron Maiden, Scorpions, Motley Crue(*), Judas Priest, Motorhead
(*) I first heard of Motley Crue at age 11 when I saw an ad in the local paper for a concert they were playing in Nevada City, very near my small Northern California town. I was out of the country when the concert happened and couldn't go, but I was fascinated by the picture of the band. It wasn't until 2 years later I first heard them.

1984-88: more Maiden; lots of 70s-80s mainstream rock (VH, early Foreigner, Journey, Tom Petty, Deep Purple, etc., etc.). Saw the Powerslave and Somewhere in Time tours live. But as the 80s went on, a lot of new rock got lamer and lamer so the new stuff I liked was harder to find. Bands like Priest, Scorpions, Ozzy put out substandard albums; I hated a lot of the keyboard-heavy pop faux-metal and glam scene (e.g. Bon Jovi, Poison, Warrant, etc.). High points of late 80s hard rock: Queensryche, Tesla, Vinnie Vincent's Invasion. I liked some thrash, but it started all sounding the same to me.

1988-91: I didn't like hardly anything new that was coming out in the mainstream metal scene, with a few exceptions (notably Operation Mindcrime, And Justice for All, How Will I Laugh Tomorrow ...). Greatest new music I got into: Jane's Addiction; first Smashing Pumpkins album. Also loved the Red Hot Chili Peppers, though there are only a handful of songs by them from that period I can stand to listen to anymore (and almost none since then). Otherwise, I was mainly exploring deeper into 60s-70s rock (Grateful Dead, Hendrix, King Crimson, Traffic, Little Feat, Santana, The Band, Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Allman Bros, deep Zeppelin catalog) and discovering Zappa and Parliament-Funkadelic.

1992-2002: Got deep into funk (P-Funk, Ohio Players, Bootsy, Brick, Rufus, EWF, early Kool & the Gang, etc., etc., etc.). Got into the local SF "acid jazz" scene a little (Alphabet Soup, Broun Fellinis, Hueman Flavor), then boogaloo (Beastie Boys' instrumentals on Check Your Head; Greyboy All-Stars), and from there started exploring and getting way into jazz (starting with Miles & Monk, whom I'd discovered during college; branching out to Coltrane, Dizzy, then lots of hard bop, post-bop, soul-jazz, etc.) Wasn't very into a lot of new rock in the 90s at all, but there were some exceptions, some of which I didn't discover how much I liked them for a couple of years after they came out - e.g. Radiohead, Soundgarden, Ministry. Also some soul - bought D'Angelo's Voodoo the day it came out & still love it. My favorite new rock albums of this period were probably the Black Crowes - Southern Harmony & Musical Companion, Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral, and Faith No More - Angel Dust. Loved Radiohead - The Bends and OK Computer, but didn't discover them until about '99. Then Radiohead lost me after Amnesia.

2002-present: I'm officially old. Not much newer music speaks to me, with some exceptions (including some later releases by old favorites, like Black Crowes). Favorite "new" (to me) music is the older stuff from the 70s to the early 90s that I wasn't aware of when it was contemporary; or getting into the deep catalogs of artists who I only knew through the radio singles. Rediscovered classic metal after a long hiatus, and giving fresh listens to bands I wasn't interested in so much at the time.

Pandora's been great for this - I have a "Heavy Metal" channel that's introduced me to bands like Satan (I used to always see their "Court in the Act" LP in the used record bin as a teenager; now I kick myself for not buying it then); and a couple of different 70s hard rock channels that I seeded with bands like Humble Pie, Trapeze, and Hawkwind, which have resulted in some very cool discoveries.

I was a full-scale Maiden nut from 83-88 - had T-shirts, posters, all albums, and any guitar magazine I could find with articles on them. The Seventh Son album didn't grab me so much, and I admit to being a fair-weather fan through their dark 90s years. I didn't really rediscover them and start listening again until probably the mid-2000s - saw the Somewhere Back in Time tour in '08, the first time I'd seen them live since early 1987. And I didn't really start tackling their songs on guitar, besides just noodling, until this year.

Update: re-read the OP and saw several parallels. Probably a fairly common musical journey in general, with unique specifics. One weird thing about me for a metalhead: I never got much into KISS - I really like a handful of songs, but wasn't a major fan.
 
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Well for me proper musical taste didn't develop until I got into guns and roses.

Before appetite for destruction started it all for me music was nothing more than a bit of background fluff. Yeah I had some Michael Jackson tapes and a few others laying around the bedroom but it was mostly cassette singles of odd songs I liked.

After buying appetite for destruction (I didn't get it on release bought it some point in 1990 after hearing sweet child of mine). One of my mates lent me a tape and said go home and listen to that. He wouldn't tell me what it was and it had no stickers on it. Went home, stuck it on and it ended up on repeat all night! I was blown away. It was seventh son of a seventh son. When he told me that school the next day it was iron maiden I couldn't believe it. A few kids at school wore maiden shirts and had long hair and I'd caught a few odd bits and thought it was garbage LOL!

He lent me another tape which turned out to be piece of mind and I was just as blown away as before. There started the love affair.

Every week with my paper round money I'd start buying the catalogue. Fear of the dark was the first brand new release album I bought.

Things come and go in life but I've never fell out of love with Maiden. 26 years and there's never been a period I went off them or drifted away. My first gig was on the X-factour and luckily for me I've never missed a tour since so I've been fortunate to see them live many times. Even been to Paris twice to see them and Rotterdam once.

The amount or merchandise I've bought over the years is quite ridiculous and very sacred at the same time. Up the irons! I'll be singing along in London May next year, hopefully it won't be the last time I see them. One more album and tour lads then you can enjoy retirement while steve sits back and feeds us with all the unreleased goodies he's been storing up over the years
 
Forostar said:
It's less funny to see how many of you who started in the eighties turned their backs on Maiden in the nineties. Welcome home, disloyal crooks!
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Metallica had them on the ropes once I'd heard 'Ride the Lightning' in '85 just before LAD came out. I'm not a huge fan of live albums anyway, and the lightning theme seemed a spooky coincidence in a changing of the guard sort of way.
By '86 we got Puppets plus Slayer's Reign in Blood, DLR's Eat'Em and Smile and Kreator's Pleasure To Kill, and for me, SIT wasn't as good as their previous efforts. 7th Son was much better in '88, but Justice was massive.

Not keen on Prayer at the time (but very fond now), they were dancing with death.
I bought Fear around the same time as Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power in '92 and it was game over for 5 years until I got TXF around '97. I didn't miss much due to the plethora of live releases. Wasn't keen on TXF so no more until reunion in 2000 with BNW and I'm happy that they're still in the world.
 
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