Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
Hey folks, with the 2024 election out of the way, I figured it would be fun to take a look back at those presidents whose terms aligned with Maiden's career and discuss how well they were able to handle the band and their success throughout the years. You guys get two votes in the poll above with which to voice your opinion on the who the best of the 9 men to hold this important role were.
Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
By all rights, Ford ought to be highly regarded among Maiden historians - after all, it was during his presidency that the band was formed. However, his inability to give the band the opportunities needed to record their music, which instead resulted in them undergoing lineup changes, has left him overshadowed by the presidents who came after him. But hey, if Nixon had stayed in office, who knows if Maiden would have even come to be?
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
Jimmy Carter’s presidency did not get off to a good start. Like the political instability that would come later, his early appointments to the Maiden cabinet were unremarkable and for the first two years it looked as though he would end up the weakest president in Maiden’s history. I mean, he even had Dave Murray leave right after entering office - come on!
Fortunes began to turn, however - he managed to regain Murray and come 1979 gave the band the opportunities needed to record The Soundhouse Tapes. They embarked on the Metal for Muthas Tour before tagging along with Judas Priest for the British Steel Tour. It was the release of their self-titled debut in 1980 and the headlining tour that came with it that will forever be regarded as Carter’s greatest achievement. His appointment of Adrian Smith as Second Secretary of Guitar also paved the way for the band’s future prosperity. Who knows - without Carter, would Reagan’s term have been nearly as successful?
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
Carter managed to turn the tides for Iron Maiden in the second half of his term, but it was clear that voters felt that his candidacy was rocky during those first two years and that must have swayed them to pick a different option. It was a real gamble, of course - after all, many lesser bands would have released that debut and then fallen apart under a new president. Still, Reagan won in a landslide and the question remained - what could he do to expand the early success that Maiden had just achieved?
Well… where to start? Reagan began by appointing Martin Birch as Secretary of Production as the band recorded their second album Killers. It was positively received, but on the Killers World Tour it became clear that they needed a change in vocalist. Reagan appointed Paul Bruce Dickinson to the role and suddenly the floodgates were opened. The Number of the Beast was a massive success and the band’s Beast on the Road Tour took the world by storm. He made one more adjustment, switching out Clive Burr for Nicko McBrain, and suddenly things began to happen very quickly.
Piece of Mind was another major success and Powerslave saw Reagan’s foreign policy really come into play. For the World Slavery Tour, the band became the first to perform behind the Iron Curtain, largely due to the pressure Reagan placed on the Soviet Union. The tour was their most successful to date and longest in their history, culminating in the release of their first ever live album, the heralded Live After Death.
It’s usually agreed that Reagan didn’t shine as bright in his second term as his first, and while Maiden only released two more studio albums during that time, they were also massive successes and featured for the first time an instrument that Reagan believed could unlock even more of their potential - the synthesizer. Whether or not you agree with that is up to you, but the band remained revolutionary in their embrace of new technology and the world tours that accompanied both Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son were some of their most acclaimed (although his blocking of a Somewhere on Tour live album is still highly controversial).
Indeed, by the time he left office in January of 1989, you could argue that Iron Maiden were stable and primed for continued success in the future to come. Unfortunately, that was not to be…
George H. W. Bush (1989-1993)
You’d think that Reagan’s vice president would have had firsthand knowledge of how well the president had run Maiden affairs across those eight tremendous years, yet as soon as the first George Bush entered office, things took a turn for the worse. After a well-received live video, Adrian Smith resigned, leading to a decent new appointee in Janick Gers. Some of the magic was gone, however. Bush’s suggestion to go back to basics, coupled with his allowing Steve Harris a central role in the production of the upcoming albums, resulted in major setbacks in the administration.
No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark failed to capture the same acclaim that the band’s prior albums had, and their tours weren’t nearly as enticing as those that had come before. His poor handling of Maiden’s situation would lead to him becoming a one-term president, as millions of frustrated Americans voted him out of office in 1992.
Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
Bill Clinton inherited a true Maiden crisis upon becoming president. He first attempted to expand their acclaim as a live band with three live albums in the first year. They were mostly panned and, with his back against the wall, Clinton fired Bruce Dickinson in a controversial move, assuming that his rough performances on the Real Live Tour were what was hurting Maiden’s reputation.
Just as controversial was his appointing Blaze Bayley the new Secretary of the Singing. The X Factor was met with more lackluster responses; the next world tour was shaky; and Clinton barely won reelection (his main opponent, Bob Dole, campaigned on the band taking into hiatus; while third party candidate Ross Perot, who was running on a ‘bring back Bruce platform’, also managed to garner votes despite his lacking the spotlight in the media).
Come 1998, however, and the disastrous performance of the band’s new album Virtual XI, things finally came to head. Just seven days after the end of the tour, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton over his complete mishandling of Maiden affairs. He was narrowly acquitted by the Senate. Shaken by the ordeal, the president made swift changes to his policies in the last two years of his term that finally got the band back on the right track.
Blaze Bayley was promptly fired. Then, in a surprising and widely lauded move, he reinstated Bruce Dickinson as frontman, and also pulled Adrian Smith back into the Cabinet, finally rectifying the mistakes of both himself and his predecessor. He also added a proper producer, Kevin Shirley, into the mix, and the result was a massive success - Brave New World was a comeback like none other in the world of metal music. Clinton left office just as the band began the next trek across the world, performing to legions of hungry fans who were excited by these new changes in the administration.
His legacy may be mixed, but none can deny that Clinton left Maiden better off by the time his eight years came to a close, with the next president set up to build upon their newly regained success. And hey - at least he didn’t make them hire a saxophonist!
George W. Bush (2001-2009)
Bush gets teased a lot about the amount of compilation albums released under his presidency. Look, the man was honest when he said he listened to the band for the big hits and not much else. Still, those four compilations were just a small part of a larger story, one that saw the group erupt back into the world of metal as the genre’s leaders, gradually climbing - or flying, rather - to a peak that only Reagan had been able to send them before.
2000 was a ridiculously tight election. Many people saw Clinton’s tenure as a mixed bag - one that utterly failed for the first six years and then came back and righted the course in the last two. So while his vice president Al Gore had plenty of support behind him based on those last two years, many more felt that a fresh face in the White House would be a better bet. And it paid off.
Aside from the compilation albums, Bush focused primarily on lighter matters during his presidency and gave Maiden the ability to do things the way they wanted, only stepping in when need be. The band came off of the Brave New World Tour fired up and with another massive live album (Rock in Rio) under their belts. Their next album, Dance of Death, saw them experiment within the confines of the newly formed lineup. Their were murmers of dissent however, and Bush only narrowly won 2004 election, as older fans who missed with NWOBHM sound of the early records largely backed John Kerry.
Bush attempted to celebrate his victory with the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, but there were numerous issues especially within the US, as their Ozzfest shows were marked by sabotage from the organizers. The band were fired up by it all, however, pushing onward with their next album A Matter of Life and Death - a darker, brooding record that has its detractors but also fervent fans. Playing the entire record front to back on the tour is still one of Bush’s most controversial foreign policy decisions, but as time would tell, this largely paid off.
When Bush’s second term ran up, Maiden had already embarked on their biggest tour since their reunification, the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. Whoever inherited the presidency would see them finish that tour and then would have the opportunity to push them to bigger and better things. And a bright young man from Hawaii, promising “hope and change”, was just the man the people wanted…
Barack Obama (2009-2017)
Bush set Obama up for a home run, truly. The Somewhere Back in Time World Tour was a massive success and the resulting live video, Flight 666, attracted even more fans to the band. Their next album The Final Frontier led to more success, another world tour, and another live video. At this point it seemed as though the band was unstoppable and, with the newly begun Maiden England World Tour promising more of the fire that was the SBiT, Obama cruised into victory in the 2012 election.
His second term began rather controversially however. The Maiden England World Tour seemed to drag on far longer than it needed to, a foreign policy decision that would haunt Obama for the rest of his presidency. However, luck, in the most ironic of ways, was on his side. In 2015, it was revealed that Bruce Dickinson had throat cancer, and Obama was the right guy at the right time, helping to keep the nation together in these dire circumstances.
It was with tremendous joy that Bruce was revealed to be in the clear, and that the band were releasing their first double album in celebration. The Book of Souls and its tour are what Obama’s presidency will forever be associated with. Even in the darkest hour, he and the band were able to triumph above the odds.
Donald Trump (2017-2021)
Perhaps it was down to the mishandling of the Maiden England Tour. Perhaps it was because of Bill Clinton’s controversial legacy. Perhaps it was simply down to the fact that the electoral college is a crock of shit. Whatever the reason, Hillary Clinton was defeated in the 2016 election by real estate multi-millionaire and entertainment mogul Donald Trump, who ran a campaign of populism with a brazen lack of filter. His biggest campaign promise, to get Maiden to finally play “Alexander the Great” live, won people over, and soon “Make Maiden Great Again” was being cried from the rooftops.
The Book of Souls World Tour remained just as successful as it was on its first leg, but this was more of a continuation of Obama’s success than his own. The band then embarked on the Legacy of the Beast World Tour. Many were excited for the tour, assuming that this would be the perfect opportunity for Trump to make good on his campaign promise; but, while fan favorites and rarities were brought back to rousing acclaim, “Alexander the Great” was noticeably absent.
The public were also disappointed by Trump’s decision to prioritize a third leg of LOTB over a new Maiden album, a decision that was rendered even worse in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, somewhat do to Trump’s mishandling of the crisis, resulted in Maiden postponing the final stages of the tour. A tide of change was rising and Trump lost his bid for reelection to Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden.
Joe Biden (2021-2025)
Lots of people seem to want to forget about just how strong Biden’s sole term was just because he dropped out of the presidential race in the summer of 2024. But let’s look at what he got done while in office. Biden helped push forward the band’s seventeenth record, Senjutsu, for release to a world that had been starved for new Maiden material. The band finally finished the third leg of LOTB in 2022 and then began the exciting Future Past Tour, which, as a hybrid tour primarily comprised of songs from both Senjutsu and Somewhere in Time, finally saw “Alexander the Great” get played again.
However, Biden’s public perception was marred by the controversy surrounding Nicko’s performances during The Future Past Tour. Many people seemed to miss the fact that the man had had a stroke, and Biden being unable to calm fears resulted in him dropping out of the race and instead endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, with the announcement of the Run for Your Lives Tour, voters decided they’d prefer to put their money back on Trump, as the TBOS and LOTB tours were still held in high acclaim by the public.
But look, don’t focus on the negatives, folks. Think about how much Biden did achieve during those short four years.
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So, have at it, folks. Vote in the poll, share your thoughts in the thread, and remember to keep things respectful even when tackling controversial subjects like Maiden's touring schedule!
Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
- Iron Maiden formed (December 1975)
- Steve Harris
- Paul Day
- Terry Rance
- Dave Sullivan
- Ron Matthews
- Paul Day leaves; Dennis Wilcock joins (October 1976)
- Terry Rance and Dave Sullivan leave; Dave Murray and Bob Sawyer join (December 1976)
By all rights, Ford ought to be highly regarded among Maiden historians - after all, it was during his presidency that the band was formed. However, his inability to give the band the opportunities needed to record their music, which instead resulted in them undergoing lineup changes, has left him overshadowed by the presidents who came after him. But hey, if Nixon had stayed in office, who knows if Maiden would have even come to be?
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
- Bob Sawyer, Dave Murray, and Ron Matthews leave; Terry Wapram, Thunderstick, and Tony Moore join (Mid-1977)
- Tony Moore leaves (November 1977)
- Terry Wapram leaves; Dave Murray rejoins (March 1978)
- Dennis Wilcock and Thunderstick leave; Doug Sampson joins (Early 1978)
- Paul Di’Anno and Paul Cairns join (November 1979)
- Paul Cairns leaves; Paul Todd joins (June 1979)
- Paul Todd leaves; Tony Parsons joins (September 1979)
- The Soundhouse Tapes (9 November 1979)
- Doug Sampson and Tony Parsons leave; Clive Burr and Dennis Stratton join (December 1979)
- Metal for Muthas Tour (1-11 February 1980)
- “Running Free” (8 February 1980)
- British Steel Tour (7-27 March 1980)
- Iron Maiden Tour (1 April-21 December 1980)
- Iron Maiden (14 April 1980)
- “Sanctuary” (23 May 1980)
- “Women in Uniform” (27 October 1980)
- Dennis Stratton leaves; Adrian Smith joins (November 1980)
- Live!! +one (25 December 1980)
Jimmy Carter’s presidency did not get off to a good start. Like the political instability that would come later, his early appointments to the Maiden cabinet were unremarkable and for the first two years it looked as though he would end up the weakest president in Maiden’s history. I mean, he even had Dave Murray leave right after entering office - come on!
Fortunes began to turn, however - he managed to regain Murray and come 1979 gave the band the opportunities needed to record The Soundhouse Tapes. They embarked on the Metal for Muthas Tour before tagging along with Judas Priest for the British Steel Tour. It was the release of their self-titled debut in 1980 and the headlining tour that came with it that will forever be regarded as Carter’s greatest achievement. His appointment of Adrian Smith as Second Secretary of Guitar also paved the way for the band’s future prosperity. Who knows - without Carter, would Reagan’s term have been nearly as successful?
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
- Killers (16 February 1981)
- Killer World Tour (17 February-23 December 1981)
- “Twilight Zone/Wrathchild” (2 March 1981)
- Live at the Rainbow (11 May 1981)
- “Purgatory” (15 June 1981)
- Paul Di’Anno leaves; Bruce Dickinson joins (September 1981)
- Maiden Japan (14 September 1981)
- “Run to the Hills” (8 February 1982)
- The Beast on the Road (25 February-10 December 1982)
- The Number of the Beast (29 March 1982)
- “The Number of the Beast” (26 April 1982)
- Clive Burr leaves; Nicko McBrain joins (December 1982)
- “Flight of Icarus” (11 April 1983)
- World Piece Tour (2 May-18 December 1983)
- Piece of Mind (16 May 1983)
- “The Trooper” (20 June 1983)
- Video Pieces (September 1983)
- “2 Minutes to Midnight” (6 August 1984)
- World Slavery Tour (9 August 1984-5 July 1985)
- Powerslave (3 September 1984)
- “Aces High” (22 October 1984)
- Behind the Iron Curtain (23 October 1984)
- “Running Free (Live)” (23 September 1985)
- Live After Death (14 October 1985)
- Live After Death (Video) (23 October 1985)
- “Run to the Hills (Live)” (2 December 1985)
- “Wasted Years” (26 August 1986)
- Somewhere on Tour (10 September 1986-21 May 1987)
- Somewhere in Time (29 September 1986)
- “Stranger in a Strange Land” (10 November 1986)
- 12 Wasted Years (October 1987)
- “Can I Play with Madness” (14 March 1988)
- Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (11 April 1988)
- Seventh Tour of a Seventh Tour (28 April-12 December 1988)
- “The Evil That Men Do” (1 August 1988)
- “The Clairvoyant (Live)” (7 November 1988)
Carter managed to turn the tides for Iron Maiden in the second half of his term, but it was clear that voters felt that his candidacy was rocky during those first two years and that must have swayed them to pick a different option. It was a real gamble, of course - after all, many lesser bands would have released that debut and then fallen apart under a new president. Still, Reagan won in a landslide and the question remained - what could he do to expand the early success that Maiden had just achieved?
Well… where to start? Reagan began by appointing Martin Birch as Secretary of Production as the band recorded their second album Killers. It was positively received, but on the Killers World Tour it became clear that they needed a change in vocalist. Reagan appointed Paul Bruce Dickinson to the role and suddenly the floodgates were opened. The Number of the Beast was a massive success and the band’s Beast on the Road Tour took the world by storm. He made one more adjustment, switching out Clive Burr for Nicko McBrain, and suddenly things began to happen very quickly.
Piece of Mind was another major success and Powerslave saw Reagan’s foreign policy really come into play. For the World Slavery Tour, the band became the first to perform behind the Iron Curtain, largely due to the pressure Reagan placed on the Soviet Union. The tour was their most successful to date and longest in their history, culminating in the release of their first ever live album, the heralded Live After Death.
It’s usually agreed that Reagan didn’t shine as bright in his second term as his first, and while Maiden only released two more studio albums during that time, they were also massive successes and featured for the first time an instrument that Reagan believed could unlock even more of their potential - the synthesizer. Whether or not you agree with that is up to you, but the band remained revolutionary in their embrace of new technology and the world tours that accompanied both Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son were some of their most acclaimed (although his blocking of a Somewhere on Tour live album is still highly controversial).
Indeed, by the time he left office in January of 1989, you could argue that Iron Maiden were stable and primed for continued success in the future to come. Unfortunately, that was not to be…
George H. W. Bush (1989-1993)
- “Infinite Dreams (Live)” (6 November 1989)
- Maiden England (8 November 1989)
- The First Ten Years (12 February 1990)
- Adrian Smith leaves; Janick Gers joins (June 1990)
- “Holy Smoke” (10 September 1990)
- No Prayer on the Road (19 September 1990-21 September 1991)
- No Prayer for the Dying (1 October 1990)
- The First Ten Years: The Videos (29 November 1990)
- “Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter” (24 December 1990)
- “Be Quick or Be Dead” (13 April 1992)
- Fear of the Dark (11 May 1992)
- Fear of the Dark Tour (3 June-4 November 1992)
- “From Here to Eternity” (29 June 1992)
- “Wasting Love” (1 September 1992)
- From There to Eternity (October 1992)
You’d think that Reagan’s vice president would have had firsthand knowledge of how well the president had run Maiden affairs across those eight tremendous years, yet as soon as the first George Bush entered office, things took a turn for the worse. After a well-received live video, Adrian Smith resigned, leading to a decent new appointee in Janick Gers. Some of the magic was gone, however. Bush’s suggestion to go back to basics, coupled with his allowing Steve Harris a central role in the production of the upcoming albums, resulted in major setbacks in the administration.
No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark failed to capture the same acclaim that the band’s prior albums had, and their tours weren’t nearly as enticing as those that had come before. His poor handling of Maiden’s situation would lead to him becoming a one-term president, as millions of frustrated Americans voted him out of office in 1992.
Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
- “Fear of the Dark (Live)” (1 March 1993)
- A Real Live One (22 March 1993)
- Real Live Tour (25 March-28 August 1993)
- Bruce Dickinson leaves (August 1993)
- “Hallowed Be Thy Name (Live)” (4 October 1993)
- A Real Dead One (18 October 1993)
- Live at Donington (8 November 1993)
- Donington Live 1992 (10 November 1993)
- Blaze Bayley joins (January 1994)
- Raising Hell (May 1994)
- “Man on the Edge” (25 September 1995)
- The X Factour (28 September 1995-7 September 1996)
- The X Factor (2 October 1995)
- “Lord of the Flies” (2 February 1996)
- “Virus” (2 September 1996)
- Best of the Beast (23 September 1996)
- “The Angel and the Gambler” (9 March 1998)
- Virtual XI (23 March 1998)
- Virtual XI World Tour (22 April-12 December 1998)
- “Futureal” (28 July 1998)
- Eddie’s Head (30 November 1998)
- Blaze Bayley leaves; Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith rejoin (January 1999)
- Ed Hunter (17 May 1999)
- The Ed Hunter Tour (11 July-1 October 1999)
- “The Wicker Man” (8 May 2000)
- Brave New World (29 May 2000)
- Brave New World Tour (2 June- )
- “Out of the Silent Planet” (23 October 2000)
Bill Clinton inherited a true Maiden crisis upon becoming president. He first attempted to expand their acclaim as a live band with three live albums in the first year. They were mostly panned and, with his back against the wall, Clinton fired Bruce Dickinson in a controversial move, assuming that his rough performances on the Real Live Tour were what was hurting Maiden’s reputation.
Just as controversial was his appointing Blaze Bayley the new Secretary of the Singing. The X Factor was met with more lackluster responses; the next world tour was shaky; and Clinton barely won reelection (his main opponent, Bob Dole, campaigned on the band taking into hiatus; while third party candidate Ross Perot, who was running on a ‘bring back Bruce platform’, also managed to garner votes despite his lacking the spotlight in the media).
Come 1998, however, and the disastrous performance of the band’s new album Virtual XI, things finally came to head. Just seven days after the end of the tour, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Clinton over his complete mishandling of Maiden affairs. He was narrowly acquitted by the Senate. Shaken by the ordeal, the president made swift changes to his policies in the last two years of his term that finally got the band back on the right track.
Blaze Bayley was promptly fired. Then, in a surprising and widely lauded move, he reinstated Bruce Dickinson as frontman, and also pulled Adrian Smith back into the Cabinet, finally rectifying the mistakes of both himself and his predecessor. He also added a proper producer, Kevin Shirley, into the mix, and the result was a massive success - Brave New World was a comeback like none other in the world of metal music. Clinton left office just as the band began the next trek across the world, performing to legions of hungry fans who were excited by these new changes in the administration.
His legacy may be mixed, but none can deny that Clinton left Maiden better off by the time his eight years came to a close, with the next president set up to build upon their newly regained success. And hey - at least he didn’t make them hire a saxophonist!
George W. Bush (2001-2009)
- Brave New World Tour ( -21 March 2002)
- Classic Albums: Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast (26 November 2001)
- “Run to the Hills (Reissue)” (11 March 2002)
- Rock in Rio (25 March 2002)
- Rock in Rio (Video) (10 June 2002)
- Eddie’s Archive (4 November 2002)
- BBC Archives (4 November 2002)
- Beast over Hammersmith (4 November 2002)
- Best of the ‘B’ Sides (4 November 2002)
- Edward the Great (4 November 2002)
- Give Me Ed… ‘Til I’m Dead Tour (23 May-30 August 2003)
- Visions of the Beast (2 June 2003)
- “Wildest Dreams” (1 September 2003)
- Dance of Death (8 September 2003)
- Dance of Death World Tour (19 October 2003-8 February 2004)
- “Rainmaker” (24 November 2003)
- No More Lies (29 March 2004)
- The History of Iron Maiden - Part 1: The Early Days (1 November 2004)
- “The Number of the Beast” (3 January 2005)
- Eddie Rips Up the World Tour (28 May-2 September 2005)
- The Essential Iron Maiden (5 July 2005)
- “The Trooper (Live)” (15 August 2005)
- Death on the Road (29 August 2005)
- Death on the Road (Video) (6 February 2006)
- “The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg” (14 August 2006)
- A Matter of Life and Death (28 August 2006)
- A Matter of Life and Death Tour (4 October 2006-24 June 2007)
- “Different World” (14 November 2006)
- Somewhere Back in Time World Tour (1 February 2008- )
- The History of Iron Maiden - Part 2: Live After Death (4 February 2008)
- Somewhere Back in Time (The Best of: 1980-1989) (12 May 2008)
Bush gets teased a lot about the amount of compilation albums released under his presidency. Look, the man was honest when he said he listened to the band for the big hits and not much else. Still, those four compilations were just a small part of a larger story, one that saw the group erupt back into the world of metal as the genre’s leaders, gradually climbing - or flying, rather - to a peak that only Reagan had been able to send them before.
2000 was a ridiculously tight election. Many people saw Clinton’s tenure as a mixed bag - one that utterly failed for the first six years and then came back and righted the course in the last two. So while his vice president Al Gore had plenty of support behind him based on those last two years, many more felt that a fresh face in the White House would be a better bet. And it paid off.
Aside from the compilation albums, Bush focused primarily on lighter matters during his presidency and gave Maiden the ability to do things the way they wanted, only stepping in when need be. The band came off of the Brave New World Tour fired up and with another massive live album (Rock in Rio) under their belts. Their next album, Dance of Death, saw them experiment within the confines of the newly formed lineup. Their were murmers of dissent however, and Bush only narrowly won 2004 election, as older fans who missed with NWOBHM sound of the early records largely backed John Kerry.
Bush attempted to celebrate his victory with the Eddie Rips Up the World Tour, but there were numerous issues especially within the US, as their Ozzfest shows were marked by sabotage from the organizers. The band were fired up by it all, however, pushing onward with their next album A Matter of Life and Death - a darker, brooding record that has its detractors but also fervent fans. Playing the entire record front to back on the tour is still one of Bush’s most controversial foreign policy decisions, but as time would tell, this largely paid off.
When Bush’s second term ran up, Maiden had already embarked on their biggest tour since their reunification, the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. Whoever inherited the presidency would see them finish that tour and then would have the opportunity to push them to bigger and better things. And a bright young man from Hawaii, promising “hope and change”, was just the man the people wanted…
Barack Obama (2009-2017)
- Somewhere Back in Time World Tour ( -2 April 2009)
- Iron Maiden: Flight 666 (21 April 2009)
- Flight 666 - The Original Soundtrack (25 May 2009)
- “El Dorado” (8 June 2010)
- The Final Frontier World Tour (9 June 2010-6 August 2011)
- “Satellite 15… The Final Frontier” (13 July 2010)
- The Final Frontier (13 August 2010)
- From Fear to Eternity (The Best of 1990-2010) (6 June 2011)
- En Vivo! (26 March 2012)
- En Vivo! (Video) (26 March 2012)
- Maiden England World Tour (21 June 2012-5 July 2014)
- Picture Disc Collection (15 October 2012)
- Maiden England ‘88 (25 March 2013)
- The History of Iron Maiden - Part 3: Maiden England ‘88 (25 March 2013)
- The Complete Albums Collection 1980-1988 (13 October 2014)
- “Speed of Light” (14 August 2015)
- The Book of Souls (4 September 2015)
- The Book of Souls World Tour (24 February 2016- )
- “Empire of the Clouds” (16 April 2016)
Bush set Obama up for a home run, truly. The Somewhere Back in Time World Tour was a massive success and the resulting live video, Flight 666, attracted even more fans to the band. Their next album The Final Frontier led to more success, another world tour, and another live video. At this point it seemed as though the band was unstoppable and, with the newly begun Maiden England World Tour promising more of the fire that was the SBiT, Obama cruised into victory in the 2012 election.
His second term began rather controversially however. The Maiden England World Tour seemed to drag on far longer than it needed to, a foreign policy decision that would haunt Obama for the rest of his presidency. However, luck, in the most ironic of ways, was on his side. In 2015, it was revealed that Bruce Dickinson had throat cancer, and Obama was the right guy at the right time, helping to keep the nation together in these dire circumstances.
It was with tremendous joy that Bruce was revealed to be in the clear, and that the band were releasing their first double album in celebration. The Book of Souls and its tour are what Obama’s presidency will forever be associated with. Even in the darkest hour, he and the band were able to triumph above the odds.
Donald Trump (2017-2021)
- The Book of Souls World Tour ( -22 July)
- The Complete Albums Collection 1990-2015 (19 May 2017)
- The Book of Souls: Live Chapter (Video) (11 November 2017)
- The Book of Souls: Live Chapter (17 November 2017)
- Legacy of the Beast World Tour (26 May 2018- )
- Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City (20 November 2020)
Perhaps it was down to the mishandling of the Maiden England Tour. Perhaps it was because of Bill Clinton’s controversial legacy. Perhaps it was simply down to the fact that the electoral college is a crock of shit. Whatever the reason, Hillary Clinton was defeated in the 2016 election by real estate multi-millionaire and entertainment mogul Donald Trump, who ran a campaign of populism with a brazen lack of filter. His biggest campaign promise, to get Maiden to finally play “Alexander the Great” live, won people over, and soon “Make Maiden Great Again” was being cried from the rooftops.
The Book of Souls World Tour remained just as successful as it was on its first leg, but this was more of a continuation of Obama’s success than his own. The band then embarked on the Legacy of the Beast World Tour. Many were excited for the tour, assuming that this would be the perfect opportunity for Trump to make good on his campaign promise; but, while fan favorites and rarities were brought back to rousing acclaim, “Alexander the Great” was noticeably absent.
The public were also disappointed by Trump’s decision to prioritize a third leg of LOTB over a new Maiden album, a decision that was rendered even worse in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, somewhat do to Trump’s mishandling of the crisis, resulted in Maiden postponing the final stages of the tour. A tide of change was rising and Trump lost his bid for reelection to Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden.
Joe Biden (2021-2025)
- “The Writing on the Wall” (15 July 2021)
- “Stratego” (19 August 2021)
- Senjutsu (3 September 2021)
- Legacy of the Beast World Tour ( -27 October 2022)
- “Total Eclipse” (18 November 2022)
- The Number of the Beast/Beast over Hammersmith (18 November 2022)
- The Future Past World Tour (28 May 2003-7 December 2024)
Lots of people seem to want to forget about just how strong Biden’s sole term was just because he dropped out of the presidential race in the summer of 2024. But let’s look at what he got done while in office. Biden helped push forward the band’s seventeenth record, Senjutsu, for release to a world that had been starved for new Maiden material. The band finally finished the third leg of LOTB in 2022 and then began the exciting Future Past Tour, which, as a hybrid tour primarily comprised of songs from both Senjutsu and Somewhere in Time, finally saw “Alexander the Great” get played again.
However, Biden’s public perception was marred by the controversy surrounding Nicko’s performances during The Future Past Tour. Many people seemed to miss the fact that the man had had a stroke, and Biden being unable to calm fears resulted in him dropping out of the race and instead endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, with the announcement of the Run for Your Lives Tour, voters decided they’d prefer to put their money back on Trump, as the TBOS and LOTB tours were still held in high acclaim by the public.
But look, don’t focus on the negatives, folks. Think about how much Biden did achieve during those short four years.
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So, have at it, folks. Vote in the poll, share your thoughts in the thread, and remember to keep things respectful even when tackling controversial subjects like Maiden's touring schedule!
