Songs not meant to be played live

Ranko

Ranko

I'll shoot the gunner first!
I've been thinking about this for a while now, and comparing Maiden with another band that I really like on the same level, Dream Theater. While Maiden have about 40% of their discography that has never been played (or something near that number if I'm not terribly wrong), DT have played live nearly all of their songs (including, incredibly, Space-Dye Vest on their previous tour for the first time, a song published in 1994).

So it got me thinking, how does Maiden approach such songs, during and after the writing process? I think there's basically two categories - filler songs and songs not suitable for live performances. For example, I'd say that most of unperformed FOTD is filler, while the songs off of TFF such as Starblind and Man Who Would Be King were deemed unsuitable for a live performance.

What are your opinions about this? How does the band approach songs they probably won't play live? Is it thought of during the recording process, "Wow, this is a blinding song, too bad we'll never play it"?
 
Some songs find their magic in the studio. Maiden have quite a few songs where a major part of the track is the production, atmosphere and the layering. From the earlier days Alexander the Great, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and To Tame a Land (although it has been played before) and from the recent days Starblind and Isle of Avalon are great examples.
 
Unsuitable is a good one. Or fear. E.g. doing Alexander the Great of Starblind is a risk because the songs encompass a fragile beauty which can be fucked up within one second (at least in H's mind) when e.g. one note in a sensitive solo goes wrong. Difficult songs are a risk to do live. Other form of unsuitability:
I think that certain members who have "a problem" with a song have a voice in veto-ing a song from the live set. E.g. Nicko has uttered his dissatisfaction with The Duellists. Perhaps he found it difficult (or boring) to play so long in the same tempo and rhythm.

This risk of this thread is that it could turn into a discussiom about what is filler and what isn't. I could say that The Fugitive and Childhood's End are not filler. E.g., I could argue that they weren't in the set because there were already three other Harris-alone songs in the set, and the other songs were Bruce (with Janick) collaborations. Then again: why was Judas Be My Guide not in the set? Not filler (in my eyes at least) but not chosen either.
Then there's the "older songs" aspect. Perhaps the band really did not want to do more than 5 songs in order to make extra room for Running Free and Can I Play With Madness. Perhaps on The Final Frontier tour, Maiden wanted to make extra room to play at least 8 (predictable) classics and 3 other songs from this line-up.

AND: the setlists have become shorter in the last years. The Final Frontier tour: 16 songs. So Maiden has became more stricter with playing new material.
This is a trend that started with the current line-up. Fear of the Dark (earlier strictness) and AMOLAD (whole album) are the exceptions.
Fear of the Dark and The Final Frontier are record holders when it comes to playing the least amount (in absolute terms) of songs from an album: 5 songs.
Fear of the Dark is also the "relative" record holder with the smallest percentage: 5 out of 12 songs were played live. 41,7%.

From The Book of Souls I'm afraid we won't have more than 5 or 6 new songs, if Maiden continues their strictness policy.
 
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I haven't investigated this, but could there be some democratic aspect to the selections, i.e. Janick gets one of his songs, Adrian one of his, and so on?
 
Well, that democratic aspect hardly turned into Dave's favour.

Still I guess there's indeed some form of democracy and that's probably why The Talisman was chosen. Janick had only one other but Nicko had trouble during the recordings (says the Shirley diary).
The only reason why Isle of Avalon wasn't chosen -that I can imagine- is that it is a difficult song to do. Surely more difficult than songs that made it to the setlist.
 
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If all songs nowadays average to 8 minutes two shorter -old - 4 minute songs are left out.
 
To this day I'm still wondering why they've never played both 'The Nomad' and 'The Thin Line Between Love And Hate' or ('Alexander The Great' and 'Face In The Sand') live. If I was allowed to ask only one question to any band member, it would be this one. And I'm still hell bent on knowing the answers of each.

Oh, by the by, this is the best thread I've come across here for ages.
 
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Considering how massive this new album is, I think the band might boost up the number of songs in their setlist for the new tour to try and balance out the new songs alongside the classics and previous post-reunion songs. I could very well be wrong about that, but it's just a feeling I'm getting.
 
In parts, The Nomad sounds very similar to Beckett's "Life's Shadow" which is probably why they haven't played it live.
 
I think that many tracks that require a lot of equipment switch are out - which is why Face in the Sand was probably never played, because Nick generally doesn't use a double bass, doesn't want a double bass.

If Iron Maiden wants to play any long songs from this tour at their recent running length, we're only going to get like...12 songs on the tour.
 
LooseCannon said:
If Iron Maiden wants to play any long songs from this tour at their recent running length, we're only going to get like...12 songs on the tour.
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I'm ok with this. Quality over quantity and I always want them to play as many songs from the new album as possible. TFF tour (second leg) was honestly a bit of a disappointment in that respect, because a lot of really good songs were left unplayed. Not that I was particularly expecting them to play Avalon or Starblind, but they could've played Mother of Mercy or The Alchemist.

I think it'd be a good idea to try rotating set lists a little this time. Not the way Dream Theater did it but more the way Rush did on their last album tour. Just rotating new songs. They could keep the epics as staples, then maybe play one or two short songs per show but switch it out every time. That way the set list is mostly static but every song from the album gets to be played.
 
Face in the sand.Nicko's feet would fall apart if he did that live,hehe.
 
Shadow said:
I haven't investigated this, but could there be some democratic aspect to the selections, i.e. Janick gets one of his songs, Adrian one of his, and so on?
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I doubt this. It screams for an ego battle.
 
In all fairness, a lot of the AMOLAD album wasn't well suited to be played live, and they decided to play it all, go figure...
 
Cosmiceddie said:
To this day I'm still wondering why they've never played both 'The Nomad' and 'The Thin Line Between Love And Hate' or ('Alexander The Great' and 'Face In The Sand') live. If I was allowed to ask only one question to any band member, it would be this one. And I'm still hell bent on knowing the answers of each.

Oh, by the by, this is the best thread I've come across here for ages.
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If I remember correctly they always said that Alexander The Great is too difficult to be played live and they are afraid to be not good in a live as expected.
 
Cosmiceddie said:
I bet 'Sign Of The Cross' is harder to play.
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I think is not only a technical difficulty, but a certain difficult to reproduce his sound and atmposhere correctly. But I think that it could be said the same for Sing of The Cross or a Rime of the Ancient Mariner or a Paschendale. IMO, they do not like SiT and this is a big excuse. :D
 
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I remember looking at the SiT album tabs years ago, and one part in Alexander (between the weird time signature and the next part) being denoted as "conducted" (it sounds like free time too). I guess that would be hard to replicate live. Free time in Sign is only Steve and Dave. On the other hand, how do they time the beginning of Phantom of the opera live is beyond me...
 
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