Iron Maiden News, Links, and Interviews

Too bad. Apparently Maiden rather does nothing.

The experience does not suck. Maiden doing Brighter than a Thousand Suns in a London studio was fantastic.

It's not the same. It was a guest appearance on BBC's live show. There were three artists in that episode.

I get the resentment for live streams. You stream for your audience but you play alone. When you do a TV show you play for the host/whoever called you in, while the few hundred people in the audience don't matter because they're not yours.

Btw Abbey Road is far from a good Maiden live document.
It's worth is in lack of other BTATS in that quality.

Nicko is overly enthusiastic this is his last days of coke, Harris is cordial, the rest of them are phoning it in.
 
It's not the same. It was a guest appearance on BBC's live show. There were three artists in that episode.

I get the resentment for live streams. You stream for your audience but you play alone. When you do a TV show you play for the host/whoever called you in, while the few hundred people in the audience don't matter because they're not yours.

Btw Abbey Road is far from a good Maiden live document.
It's worth is in lack of other BTATS in that quality.

Nicko is overly enthusiastic this is his last days of coke, Harris is cordial, the rest of them are phoning it in.

The Abbey Road recordings were not part of any BBC show, the TV station was Channel 4. :)

I personally quite liked seeing Maiden live in a different setting and being unashamedly themselves on camera.

How can you be so sure Nicko was on coke and those were his last days doing it escapes me…
 
How can you be so sure Nicko was on coke and those were his last days doing it escapes me…
He mentioned he stopped doing coke in 2008 or thereabouts in a semi-recent interview, it's no secret. Either way, the comment is a snark related to how fast the tempo is on BTATS. Not that I personally think it sounded particularly bad that way, in fact it's kind of impressive how they held it together perfectly at speed and it still sounded solid.
 
Still no word from Dave.
We'll probably gonna get the farewell interview right before Richie Faulkner is announced as his replacement :goodbye:

I have to say though, I’ve seen many many COVID era livestreams and I could probably count the ones worth watching on one hand. They do kind of suck.
These are the problems I found with these livestreams, with examples:

1) Paradise Lost
Pros: They didn't pretend they were on a stage playing to a audience and played in a circle.
Cons: Apart from the 3 new songs, the setlist was all the same stuff they always play, it was just them in a black room and the sound was bad.

2) Amorphis
Pros: All their songs are awesome.
Cons: The setlist was all the same stuff they always play, despite the "Anniversary Shows" tagline.

3) Nightwish
Pros: Floor
Cons: No Marco, focused more on CGI background and shit instead of the setlist which was all stuff they already played live with Floor and which appeared on live albums, apart from (shite) new songs.

4) Enslaved
Pros: 4 live streams, played one album in full, one with just songs from the new album which was released during the pandemic, one with a standard setlist and one with rarities that was fan chosen. It was all of them playing in a circle rather than a fake stage. And it was all recently released as a live album.
Cons: All the shows were too short - ranging from 25 minutes to 70 minutes.

5) Epica
Pros: Simone Simons
Cons: Short, fake stage, too much focus on effects and shit.

6) The Ocean
Pros: 2 live streams, one for each of the last two albums - which are the only The Ocean albums I like start to finish. Top notch sound, playing in a circle and flawless performance.
Cons: First one is on a fake stage.

7) Vreid
Pros: best venue/background out of all the live streams:
Cons: I don't know any of their songs, but they are fun to listen to anyway

I don't know why no band just went into a studio, practiced some rarities, assembled a setlist of all the stuff they have practiced enough to play, and played for like 3-4 hours. They can even record the whole thing in parts because you wouldn't really know the difference if it was recorded before the live stream or not. Obviously I never expected Maiden to do this, but none of the smaller bands that rotate setlists did it either.
 
It's not the same. It was a guest appearance on BBC's live show. There were three artists in that episode.

I get the resentment for live streams. You stream for your audience but you play alone. When you do a TV show you play for the host/whoever called you in, while the few hundred people in the audience don't matter because they're not yours.

Btw Abbey Road is far from a good Maiden live document.
It's worth is in lack of other BTATS in that quality.

Nicko is overly enthusiastic this is his last days of coke, Harris is cordial, the rest of them are phoning it in.
Maiden does not need to live stream.
The point I wanted to make, is that Maiden being busy without an audience (or visible audience) is great to watch. What Bruce said in that regard is utter nonsense. So livestream or not, Maiden doing some recording without an audience would have been fine and of course better than nothing.

In the pandemic, people loved to see their heroes in action. Maiden could not do it, I see that now, but the fans would embrace it. So I think it is very lame to use the fans as an excuse.
 
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The Abbey Road recordings were not part of any BBC show, the TV station was Channel 4. :)

I personally quite liked seeing Maiden live in a different setting and being unashamedly themselves on camera.

How can you be so sure Nicko was on coke and those were his last days doing it escapes me…

I thought it was BBC Channel 4.
By his own admission McB stopped in 2008. And I can see these things.

I doubt if anything in that post was sure. The interpretation of the item, the people, and well... the coke probably too.

Can't you see that Bruce is completely disintrested, walking on off stage area in his sweatpants, the guitar players are barely moving, they look half asleep anyway. It were probably morning sessions.

Like I said performance is phoned in, it's not like a real live thing.

Btw this started because you said that Maiden should've done livestreams and then put up Abbey Road as an example, which is not a good example nor of an energetic performance or of a live stream.

So yeah the vocalist is vocal about not wanting to do these sort of things but lets do it anyway because a fan says its fine.
 
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He mentioned he stopped doing coke in 2008 or thereabouts in a semi-recent interview, it's no secret.
Hmm, they were always anti weed from stage, kind of weird. If this is true, it pisses me off a bit.
“Cannabis baaaad, Coca Cola goood”... yeah, right.
 
Well it's not exactly our concern. This life-style is very demanding and besides he was basically damaging him self & family if he was really doing this.
 
Guys I was half jokingly adding that McB's enthusiasm for the event can't be interpreted as band's overall enthusiasm. That's all. Coke or personality or mix of both, irrelevant.

When you remove him from equation, Abbey Road doesn't look like the band is exactly thrilled like they're on stage.

Btw I see this as continuation of proper promotions they've been doing in UK, such as TOTP or radio live appearances. They've stopped doing that like a decade before corona. Probably because they never liked it and if I went on a conjecture, basing on the discussions we had about the band becoming very very large again in post 2005 world, after AMOLAD they didn't need that kind of promotions.
 
The new issue of Total Guitar also has an interview with Adrian and Janick, though it might be the same interview as in Guitar World as they now share a website.

Total Guitar Issue 350
^ ''The new album from heavy metal legends Iron Maiden is a mighty epic, but as guitarists Adrian Smith and Janick Gers admit: “It wasn’t easy to make.” In a track-by-track guide, they explain how to master complex songs and tricky time changes''.

This will be an interesting interview for sure. Hope someone will share it here.
 
Hmm, they were always anti weed from stage, kind of weird. If this is true, it pisses me off a bit.
“Cannabis baaaad, Coca Cola goood”... yeah, right.

First class hypocrites in the rock and roll world? What a surprise!

Nicko is on record (official biography) saying that by the time he joined the band everyone but Steve and Bruce were indulging in party stimulants.
 
^ ''LOTB tour is going to be the same setlist, probably with a few additions - we may play Writing on the Wall, we might do Stratego, we might even go around to do the title track, Senjutsu... but we're not going to be losing any of the big favorites, so expect Spitfires and flamethrowers, and everything like that because, certainly in Europe, that's what people paid for two years ago, to go see this 'Legacy' tour''.

''There will be, I'm certain, another tour in which we will do some songs that we haven't played for a long, long time. There are all kinds of ways, we got such a repertoire now, there are all kinds of ways you can cut and slice it''.

''This tour coming up, we've already got it running to Europe, and we've already announced Rock in Rio - they will play RIR with LOTB tour again?
It would be great to come back to the USA. And then in 2022 and 2023, let's see how the album goes because frankly, we would love to get out and play a bunch of album cuts, and I'm absolutely certain we wouldn't be playing festivals. We would be playing arenas, and it would be to people that love the album - instead of doing three nights, you just do one night, but you do one night of really compressed, tight, album stuff''.
 
Guys I was half jokingly adding that McB's enthusiasm for the event can't be interpreted as band's overall enthusiasm. That's all. Coke or personality or mix of both, irrelevant.

I remember a recent post of yours about Janick snorting coke and I thought wait what? Maiden? What he's talking about? Never! Well.. Never say never hahah ;)
 
"I mean, Steve [Harris, bass] and myself, we once discussed, 'Wow, what if we went out and we did our whole set of all the epics?', like 'Alexander the Great,' 'Seventh Son of the Seventh Son,' you know, just epics.

"And we went 'Yeah, that would be cool.' And then you could go back and do different versions of other things as well, like, 'The Number of the Beast' in its entirety.
A setlist full of epics would be a pretty bold and strange move.

It's curious that most of the bands play their classic albums in full live (like TNOTB ), but Maiden did this with AMOLAD, which is a modern classic too.
 
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^ ''LOTB tour is going to be the same setlist, probably with a few additions - we may play Writing on the Wall, we might do Stratego, we might even go around to do the title track, Senjutsu... but we're not going to be losing any of the big favorites, so expect Spitfires and flamethrowers, and everything like that because, certainly in Europe, that's what people paid for two years ago, to go see this 'Legacy' tour''.

''There will be, I'm certain, another tour in which we will do some songs that we haven't played for a long, long time. There are all kinds of ways, we got such a repertoire now, there are all kinds of ways you can cut and slice it''.

''This tour coming up, we've already got it running to Europe, and we've already announced Rock in Rio - they will play RIR with LOTB tour again?
It would be great to come back to the USA. And then in 2022 and 2023, let's see how the album goes because frankly, we would love to get out and play a bunch of album cuts, and I'm absolutely certain we wouldn't be playing festivals. We would be playing arenas, and it would be to people that love the album - instead of doing three nights, you just do one night, but you do one night of really compressed, tight, album stuff''.
And a tour playing epics...... i dont know.... epics and songs first played live or played live long time ago would be cool
 
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