I want to make a slight correction on album songs that haven’t been played.
Back in the Village was played once. On the first date of World Slavery (Hala Torwar, Warsaw, Poland, August 9th 1984)
This has been discussed on the board before and it’s not really verified, although I find this to be one of the most interesting Maiden mysteries:
- World Slavery Tour is one of the few Iron Maiden tours where we don’t have a bootleg or some documentation of the first show. If it weren’t for the bootleg of the first Somewhere on Tour show, we would probably also have Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner on the never played list.
- Maiden always started the tour with 6 songs from the new album, it is odd that this wasn’t the case for Powerslave when it is the case for all other McBrain era 80s albums. So it makes sense that there may have been a 6th song on the first show.
- To add to the intrigue, Maiden had a camera crew with them for the Iron Curtain documentary, so it’s very possible that they have the footage of this show in the vault.
Another interesting thing worth considering is that the next time Maiden did a tour with less than six songs from the new album was for Fear of the Dark, and we are missing bootlegs from the first two shows of that tour. I often wonder if this was another instance of a song being cut after the first few shows.
Anyway, I tend to lean on the side that they probably did play a sixth song and Back in the Village seems like the most live ready of the three unplayed songs. But imo until we have audio evidence of it, it’s not a fact.