SinisterMinisterX said:
I think the difference with TE is that TE was intended to be on TNOTB, and only excluded due to the technical limitations of the era (i.e. you can only fit so much on one vinyl platter).
Nope, this had nothing to do with technical limitations. They made a mistake by selecting 'Total Eclipse' as a B-side and it seems there was a lot of time-pressure -->
From the offical biography:
For Adrian, "
Number of the Beast was definitely the best Maiden album, up to that point. The songs were all there and there was a much fatter sound." Steve Harris, however, isn't so sure: "I loved
Number of the Beast, but I didn't think it was our best album at the time, and I still don't. There's a couple of tracks on it which I think are not quite so good, and one of them is one of the ones I wrote!" The two tracks Steve is referring to are Adrian's Clive-assisted stomper, 'Gangland, and 'Invaders', which Steve wrote himself. "'Gangland' was, like, Clive's first attempt at songwriting," he explains, "and I should have just put my foot down and said, 'Look, this is a B-side,' because it should have been, really." Steve says that he would have preferred to see 'Gangland' replaced by a track that he and Davey had written (also with help from Clive) called 'Total Eclipse', which was used instead as the B-side of the first single from the album, 'Run To The Hills'.
"What happened was that we needed a single quickly, because we had a new singer and we had a British tour booked and ready to go, and it didn't look like the album was gonna be ready in time for it, so we badly needed a single out to try and cover all those bases," says Steve. "We just chose the wrong track as the B-side. I think if 'Total Eclipse' had been on the album instead of 'Gangland', it would have been far better. Also, I think 'Invaders' maybe could have been replaced with something a bit better, only we didn't have anything else to replace it with at the time. We had just enough time to do what we did, and that was it."
Unfortunately, as Bruce says, "What we gained on the swings we lost on the roundabouts, and when it actually came to the recording it was all done in one mad, unholy rush." In fact, because of the time it had taken to write all the new material, the album was recorded and mixed at Battery Studios in just five weeks, including a break after the first week to record and mix 'Run To The Hills' and 'Total Eclipse', so that they could get a single out quickly, before returning to complete the rest of the recording as quickly as they could.
"We had to pick the single before we recorded anything, because of the schedule," he continues. "We were, like, 'Oh, fucking hell! We haven't recorded any of the songs yet. How do we know which one will be a good single?' I mean, they were all such killer songs on
Number of the Beast, we could easily have picked the wrong track completely. But the schedule said we had to pick a single, and so we asked Martin what he thought and he said 'Run To The Hills'. So, thanks to Martin's prize-winning ears, that's what we did, and it turned out to be exactly the right choice."
SinisterMinisterX said:
I've never heard any comment from the band to the effect that MITRM or LW was intended to appear on LAD, and only held back because of technical limitations.
Well, I remember I've read that they did the most that they could with the double LP format, back then.
25 minutes per side was really the max. So:
-Yes, they definitely couldn't put more on the double LP
-No, I guess releasing a triple LP was unlikely, besides:
-Yes, they had "space" for those two tracks anyway: B-sides!
