Legacy of the Beast Tour 2018 - CONTAINS SPOILERS

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Be nice.

The American microbrew market is flourishing, and many of those beers are very very good. But mass American beer is just boring piss. Micro brews don't get exported to Europe very often.

As for Janick, you don't suppose based on the degradation this tour that maybe he's getting sick? I hardly want to say it....could it be....

Yorkshireitis?
 
Not sure how criticizing Janick equals whining. I’m not losing any sleep over his poor playing, but I’m also not going to blindly defend it. It has nothing to do with replicating the recorded solo and everything to do with what seems like a lack of effort. Janick has played some great solos, both on songs he originally recorded and songs from before his time. I know that he’s capable of more than what he’s been delivering this summer.

As for why Janick plays old solos, I always figured there were two reasons for it. The first is so that the three guitarists all had a fair amount of time in the spotlight. If you look at Rock In Rio, I think Adrian and Janick have about the same number of solos, maybe Adrian has slightly more. It seems fair, especially since Janick had been in the band just as long as Adrian by the time the reunion occurred and Janick was the current guitarist who had been playing some of these solos during the past decade. In some ways, those solos are rightfully his. But I also don’t see any ego between the two guitar players so I’m sure if Adrian wanted to play those solos, Janick would be gracious about it.

Which leads me to the second reason why I think Janick plays the solos. Adrian probably doesn’t want to play them. We all know he’s a perfectionist and probably either couldn’t remember the old solos or couldn’t get them up to a level of quality he could be happy with.

With that being said, the Revelations thing is odd to me. Maiden obviously don’t owe anyone an explanation but I am curious about who came up with the idea to rotate the solo and what the reasoning behind that was. Janick has been playing the solo longer than Adrian ever did at this point, and when Adrian plays it on the current tour he changes it up quite a bit. So it’s not like Adrian suddenly decided to go back and learn the solo. I almost wonder if it was something Bruce suggested, considering it is his song.
 
I like Janick as a guitarist a lot - in the Flight 666 video it had been said that he likes to improvise and not to repeat the same solo twice ! He is a top-notch songwriter.
He can play the solos the same way Adrian did them, like this video of Trooper in Wacken proves it, but he likes to play wild and free.... :)

 
With that being said, the Revelations thing is odd to me. Maiden obviously don’t owe anyone an explanation but I am curious about who came up with the idea to rotate the solo and what the reasoning behind that was. Janick has been playing the solo longer than Adrian ever did at this point, and when Adrian plays it on the current tour he changes it up quite a bit. So it’s not like Adrian suddenly decided to go back and learn the solo. I almost wonder if it was something Bruce suggested, considering it is his song.
You might be onto something. I know there's been rumblings of Bruce not being very keen on Janick's solos before so it could make sense he suggested Adrian do it this time, and as a compromise he and Janick decided to start rotating it.

Re: the previous topic, I get complaining about Janick doing kind of meh solos overall on this tour. That's definitely a valid complaint. They're sloppy and mostly directionless, and worst of all, they're pretty boring. In a live setting it's obviously not such a big deal, but it still represents a disappointing low for him after the successes of 2010-17.

That said Davey has kind of been doing the same, but it's been going on for a bit longer now and I don't really hear that much complaining about that. It gets brought up of course, but never at the same level as Janick's poor live takes are. To me, that's rather unfair to both guitarists. It's fine to call out sloppiness, but consistency should be applied. You can't really excuse bad solos from one guy and then complain about the other guy's sloppiness. Of course Davey's highs are definitely well and above Janick's, but his lows are still very much on the same level to me; none of his improvisations on this tour sound good to my ears, at least.

But complaining about minor mistakes in a doubled solo, or worse, suggesting that a tradition that is as old as the current lineup should be broken because of a few off nights feels incredibly excessive to me. I'm sure Janick's well aware when he's not performing at a 100%, especially since he's doubling a solo with Mr. Perfectionist himself, and I'm sure Adrian isn't harboring thoughts of revenge because of minor errors, nor is he interested in "taking back" his solos (whatever that means) like some here have suggested.
 
You might be onto something. I know there's been rumblings of Bruce not being very keen on Janick's solos before so it could make sense he suggested Adrian do it this time, and as a compromise he and Janick decided to start rotating it.

I'm curious now, where are these rumours coming from?
 
Davey has kind of been doing the same, but it's been going on for a bit longer now and I don't really hear that much complaining about that. It gets brought up of course, but never at the same level as Janick's poor live takes are. To me, that's rather unfair to both guitarists. It's fine to call out sloppiness, but consistency should be applied.
It's probably because Janick's always been sloppy, and has always been compared to Adrian because that's who he replaced in the band. Near as I can tell, Dave only started getting sloppy after Janick showed up.
 
Which leads me to the second reason why I think Janick plays the solos. Adrian probably doesn’t want to play them. We all know he’s a perfectionist and probably either couldn’t remember the old solos or couldn’t get them up to a level of quality he could be happy with.

Well, here's what the man himself had to say:

Guitar World: Adrian, when you left Iron Maiden at the beginning of the Nineties, Janick came in and replaced you. During those years, he would play your guitar parts on the classic material when it was performed live. When you rejoined the band at the end of the decade, did you take those parts back?

H: No, actually. I completely changed what I played. I would experiment with different tunings, or come up with a new part, or take what I used to play and move it an octave lower, or something like that. I just found other parts.


Guitar World: So even today, Janick still plays some of your original parts?

H: I suppose. For instance, on the last tour we were doing “Moonchild.” And I said to Jan, “I don’t really enjoy doing that solo. You take it.” So, yeah.

Taken from: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/iron-maiden-guitarists-discuss-final-frontier


I'd guess that he took Moonchild back for Maiden England because he either realized he actually quite liked it or that Janick had a bit more solo time with ATSS and Phantom being brought back.

 
Well, here's what the man himself had to say:

Guitar World: Adrian, when you left Iron Maiden at the beginning of the Nineties, Janick came in and replaced you. During those years, he would play your guitar parts on the classic material when it was performed live. When you rejoined the band at the end of the decade, did you take those parts back?

H: No, actually. I completely changed what I played. I would experiment with different tunings, or come up with a new part, or take what I used to play and move it an octave lower, or something like that. I just found other parts.


Guitar World: So even today, Janick still plays some of your original parts?

H: I suppose. For instance, on the last tour we were doing “Moonchild.” And I said to Jan, “I don’t really enjoy doing that solo. You take it.” So, yeah.

Taken from: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/iron-maiden-guitarists-discuss-final-frontier


I'd guess that he took Moonchild back for Maiden England because he either realized he actually quite liked it or that Janick had a bit more solo time with ATSS and Phantom being brought back.

I have a theory about that. Janick doesn't like doing solos in the first song of the set. He uses the first song to warm up, because he doesn't before. If you think about it, when did Jan do a solo during the 1st song of the concert since reunion? Yeah. Never.
 
That's interesting, could very well be the case.

Also, comparing Maiden England and Flight 666 versions of Moonchild, all three play the lead melody in the chorus on Flight 666, whereas it's just Jan and Dave on Maiden England, Adrian's playing some sweet power chords underneath. Sort of balances out the amount of lead they're all playing.

Unrelated, but I'd forgotten just how damn awesome H playing that synth riff in the intro really is.
 
My two cents about the whole solos thing: I don’t know about the whole tour as I haven’t watched live videos for other venues for some reason, but when I saw them I thought Dave’s solos were a bit sloppy and definitely worse than Janick’s. I don’t really blame him as she comes for everyone eventually and solos don’t make such a huge difference on most songs live, but I think that’s how it is. The possibility of this being their last tour is not too far-fetched, if that were the case I’d like to see a Bruce solo tour, maybe with his supposed new album.
 
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