The Genesis of Somewhere in Time

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I remember the fan club magazine in 1996 when the band were promoting the Best of the Beast over a truck with electric hair Eddie with a banner saying Maiden were sold over 40 million albums worldwide I think. 24 years later they have reach the 100 Million albums sold. I would like to view the numbers of each album with the remasters included…
 
GhostofCain said:
Spot on, mate.

Somewhere in Time was seen by many as a disappointing album (I think it is, by far, the weakest of the albums by the classic Dickinson/Harris/Smith/Murray/McBrain line-up) and Seventh Son as a return to form.

Regarding the material that ended up on the album, the fact that there is a promotional interview in which Bruce mentions a 9th song suggests that his material was rejected at a much later stage than what the official hagiography says.
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In France at least, the reception was great. I was in high school, there were many Metal heads, and all were delighted. The band sold Bercy arena out, something a lot of people doubted could be done by a Metal band.
 
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srfc said:
The only real old skool metal band that I remember being embraced in the mid 90's was Sabbath and that was Ozzy era nostalgia only.

I'm not sure what it was like in other territories but AC/DC struggled to get a few thousand into an 8,000 venue on the Ballbreaker tour in Dublin. 15 years later they were selling 80,000.

RE: Maiden's commercial decline and Bruce.

Definitely this would have continued and maybe they wouldn't have recovered from it, Bruce needed to exorcise his creative demons, Maiden needed to have the Blaze era to "recover" from.
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AC/DC were on the verge of becoming massive on the Ballbreaker tour. That was a huge tour and set records of attendance in some countries (for example, their success in Spain was unprecedented).
 
Probably a question beaten to death but still... do you guys really think that there are absolutely no recordings of the SiT Tour done by the band? I can't imagine that they've deleted everything just because they didn't like how it sounded. Paris 1986 is available widely, it doesn't sound that great but it could probably be polished in a studio and released. It would probably sell much better than stuff like Nights of the Dead.

I still hope that we will get some unreleased stuff after Maiden's career is done and there will be some proper live recording from 1986.
 
IntoTheValley said:
Probably a question beaten to death but still... do you guys really think that there are absolutely no recordings of the SiT Tour done by the band? I can't imagine that they've deleted everything just because they didn't like how it sounded. Paris 1986 is available widely, it doesn't sound that great but it could probably be polished in a studio and released. It would probably sell much better than stuff like Nights of the Dead.

I still hope that we will get some unreleased stuff after Maiden's career is done and there will be some proper live recording from 1986.
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IIRC, Rod confirmed that they had some shows recorded but they didn't like them.
 
I think he was speaking about video.

There is no chance in hell they don't have tapes with a full show. They didn't tape every show back then but they had to tape one, even just for archival purposes. Whether it's good enough to build a live release from - not only performance wise but also the fact that you can't just make a live release out of a taped PA downmix in the mid 80s, there's a reason why Birch was there in Long Beach to take care of live mixing.

The bounced guitar sound is horrible, it possibly was way better in real life in acoustics, but on tape it sounds like shit, guitars are drenched in chorus and then compressed which makes them rather thin.
 
I'm sure Kevin Shirley could do something with it. Like his mixes on Side 4 of ME'88. Audio technology has come a long way since 1986.
 
But ME was a recorded show.

To not complicate what I'm trying to say here, see the audio difference between RiR 1985 release and RiR 1985 bootleg. The sound is cleaned up, but it is still bootleg quality. How and why, there's a reason, but it's technical.
 
Zare said:
But ME was a recorded show.

To not complicate what I'm trying to say here, see the audio difference between RiR 1985 release and RiR 1985 bootleg. The sound is cleaned up, but it is still bootleg quality. How and why, there's a reason, but it's technical.
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What I mean is Shirley could do something with the show(s) Maiden actually recorded in 1986. If there were any.
 
What I'm saying that Maiden did not actually record any show in 1986 or 1987 or 1983 for the live release. There is no proof otherwise - only abundant proof for it. Recording a show in 80s was an expensive venture. There would need to be a truck or a small studio in-venue running additional mix desk and a shitload of tape machines. If that wasn't present no professional recording has been made.

I wrote an example of RiR, Dortmund 83 also applies, of what they could do with what they possibly have. They have a master tape of the output channels of the show. If the show was in stereo, they have a stereo tape. It's a done, mixed thing. They can clean it up as far as hiss or levels go and that's about it. With their recorded shows, they had everything, every drum mic, multiple points in guitar chain, etc. so it's possible for Shirley to retune the snare for ME'88 because he has the original data.

Now I don't know what they have or don't have, I'm just judging by the things they've released.
Somewhere down the line they had to digitize their tape archives, and they would release something if it could reach decent quality - the performance issues are largely mood, Wasted Years was performed on 120%, it would have been released if they had it. The bootlegs also have some of the best Rime of the Ancient Mariner renditions ever.

TLDR; if Shirley/producers/engineers were magicians then the erased master tapes of Soundhouse Tapes wouldn't be a problem and we would have proper remixes and remasters through the years.
 
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