One of the biggest lessons I ever learned was from one of my favourite bands, Genesis - I had a denim jacket with the Genesis logo from Foxtrot on the back, the logo that curves over, and I had the fox’s head. So I was mortified when they did Selling England By The Pound and changed the logo completely. And it was just a nothing logo. Really, as great as Selling England By The Pound was, the logo was awful. I thought: “What are they doing?” And I said to myself: “I’m never gonna let that happen. I’m gonna get a fantastic logo.” Which we still have to this day. Of course, over the years, we’ve been slagged off because the album artwork always has the same logo. But you know what? There’s a thread running right the way through it that is really powerful. And that’s a key lesson I learned.
I don’t think we sound like anybody else. And I think that’s one of the reasons we got a following really quickly.
People say that in hindsight, but at the time you’re just sort of experimenting with different stuff. So it’s just a natural thing that happened. What I knew I wanted was loads of melody, but heavy as well, and just good-quality songs.
I think when I did Phantom it was obvious that the style of writing that I had was very different to what people were used to, certainly what guitarists were used to. I didn’t learn all the scales like they learned. I didn’t want to. For guitarists, getting their heads around some of the things I wrote wasn’t natural for them, and it’s still like that these days. And yes, Phantom was one of the first examples.
Also the drum stuff that I wanted to have in those songs was quite unusual, even on something that most people might think is a basic song. When Clive first joined, he thought he was just going to come in and jam along and play and that was it. But he was like: “Bloody hell! These songs are really unusual, really different!” My songs had quirky bits in them, even the ones that they thought were straightforward. But it felt natural to me.
Paul had a powerful voice, a strong stage presence and a real swagger about him. He was such a character.
I did feel a little disappointed that the guitars weren’t as big-sounding as they should have been. But yeah, the album has got a certain quality to it. We did the whole album in thirteen days, including the mixing. We were playing those songs live beforehand, so when we went in and did it we just played them live and got them down in one or two takes. There’s an essence to that first album. It’s not really an angriness, it’s going in there and just going for it. We were really just excited to be in the studio doing an album for the first time. We’d never done an album before. We did a demo tape but, I mean, it’s not the same. So going in a proper studio, doing an album, that’s a massive thing for any band when they’re starting out. I think that’s why that first album is so… adrenaline-fuelled, I guess you’d call it. And compared to everything else that was around at that time it’s quite different, there’s no question about that.
Eddie wasn’t a preconceived thing. We knew we needed good artwork, and it just developed. It’s turned out to be amazing. Eddie represents Iron Maiden, but we don’t have to be on the front covers. So we were on the back cover of the first album, second album, third album too, but not on the front. So many people have told me, especially in America, that they bought one of our albums flipping through the vinyl section – old-school – and seeing the cover and going: “Wow, look at that!” and bought the album without even hearing it. So it’s done its job.
It was great. Kiss were very good to us, and it was amazing to play for European fans. In one respect we got lucky being in the right place at the right time to do that tour with Kiss. But also it was down to Rod. Rod did a great job with that sort of thing. So it was just a case of doing the right stuff, and it worked. And obviously we had to work our arses off, which we did.
I think Killers was more representative of where we were at. With Martin Birch on board the sound was a lot more powerful.
I never worried about that. I’ve always been very lucky with writing, because I’ve always been really prolific. So I’ve never had a problem.
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