The Genesis of Somewhere in Time

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____no5 said:
  • Identical setlists during a tour.
  • Same ol' formula Album Tour -Legacy Tour since 20 years with few surprises if at all.
  • Refusal to play songs that they know will please their fans.
  • No separation between eras i.e. Somewhere Back in Time contained songs from Early Days. Many of them.
  • No dedicated tour for the reunion era.
  • Dozen+ of same ol' lives but not for AMOLAD, and so on.
That's for touring.
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I would also add

- never ever used anything but a classic theater stage
- use the same general layout since 1983
- the realization of the layout is the same 90% of the time - except SiT, and wall-of-stacks 90s tours, the rest is boxes with livery
 
Mosh said:
Maybe Metallica keeps doing extravagant releases because there is a demand for them. Every archival release Maiden did became less adventurous than the last until they just stopped doing them. Makes me think not a lot of people were buying them.
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I have always found Maiden’s approach to re-releases disappointing.

I bought the deluxe 20th anniversary edition of Everything Must Go by Manic Street Preachers the other day and it is a boxset with 2 CDs (the album plus B-sides and other tracks from the era), 2 DVDs (a live show, a documentary, all the videos from the album), 1 LP (the original album) and a lavish booklet.

And that’s just one example. Better not to go into Metallica's approach to re-releases…
 
GhostofCain said:
I have always found Maiden’s approach to re-releases disappointing.

I bought the deluxe 20th anniversary edition of Everything Must Go by Manic Street Preachers the other day and it is a boxset with 2 CDs (the album plus B-sides and other tracks from the era), 2 DVDs (a live show, a documentary, all the videos from the album), 1 LP (the original album) and a lavish booklet.

And that’s just one example. Better not to go into Metallica's approach to re-releases…
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I like the sound of that Manics boxset.
 
____no5 said:
No man it's exhausting. For their age and status it's quite a lot, kudos to them. But it's not the point. I call them lazy not because they aren't good "workers" which they are by and large. Their laziness -in my opinion- is that they don't try new things.
  • Identical setlists during a tour.
  • Same ol' formula Album Tour -Legacy Tour since 20 years with few surprises if at all.
  • Refusal to play songs that they know will please their fans.
  • No separation between eras i.e. Somewhere Back in Time contained songs from Early Days. Many of them.
  • No dedicated tour for the reunion era.
  • Dozen+ of same ol' lives but not for AMOLAD, and so on.
That's for touring. For recording they also applying made for efficiency formulas such as writing songs in the Studio, following same pattern slow intro -main -slow outro (Harris), most of their guitar solos last 40 seconds etc.
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Actually, they did tour a setlist of mostly reunion contents in the summer of 2010, in North America.
 
Christopher Baines said:
Agree with all those points but I then I think to myself WTF would I do without them lol. I havent seen Maiden for 5 years now and am due to see them in July. It just fills me depression to think of the day I can never see them live again. I just think we could have had more interesting release and content from them over the years.
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Obviously. That's why you and me are here! ;)

GhostofCain said:
I have always found Maiden’s approach to re-releases disappointing.

I bought the deluxe 20th anniversary edition of Everything Must Go by Manic Street Preachers the other day and it is a boxset with 2 CDs (the album plus B-sides and other tracks from the era), 2 DVDs (a live show, a documentary, all the videos from the album), 1 LP (the original album) and a lavish booklet.

And that’s just one example. Better not to go into Metallica's approach to re-releases…
Click to expand...

+1
Regarding Metallica, from And Justice For All onwards, they seemed to be one (and later more) step ahead of Maiden.
I particularly envied their approach to live recordings, many of those fans were able to download free on line.

All these and more is what make me think Maiden as a lazy band despite working very heavily.
Point being is Steve Harris never really envisioned to reach that high. His vision was to be big in UK and he reached over and above that.
He never really wanted to take over the world so he did not walk the extra mile to achieve that, such as changing manager, coming to terms with US dynamics, moving to US in 90s, getting a Dio -level next singer, hiring a top producer when Birch left etc.
 
People are out of their minds here, bashing Maiden for the sake of it. Arguing whatever Maiden don't do is great and you can be sure as fuck if they'd done that then you'ld be demanding what Maiden did do instead.

Metallica since Justice, i.e. more than 30 years and a younger band, have released 6 albums of new Metallica material, and that includes St, Anger. Maiden have nearly doubled that yet they are lazy because they don't milk the fans enough with releasing bootlegs of every gig or recording shit albums with self indulgent orchestras, re-releasing cover albums that fans already had all the good ones or trying to get some imaginery cred from Rolling Stone by releasing an album with some hippy relic. They throw out a barely prepared live version of Trapped Under Ice or The Struggle Within once or twice and that apparently counts for more than Maiden having played 100 and fuckin' 7 songs more than 40 times live.*


*Metallica have only played 84 songs more than 40 times live, and 18! of them are covers,solos or medleys. They aren't anywhere near Maiden's league for the experience an actual gig going fan gets, but I suppose watching that one time they played fixxxer at a gig you weren't at on youtube counts for more these days.
 
Plus Maiden will more than likely be adding another 10 songs to that played more than 40 times list very soon.
 
srfc said:
People are out of their minds here, bashing Maiden for the sake of it. Arguing whatever Maiden don't do is great and you can be sure as fuck if they'd done that then you'ld be demanding what Maiden did do instead.

Metallica since Justice, i.e. more than 30 years and a younger band, have released 6 albums of new Metallica material, and that includes St, Anger. Maiden have nearly doubled that yet they are lazy because they don't milk the fans enough with releasing bootlegs of every gig or recording shit albums with self indulgent orchestras, re-releasing cover albums that fans already had all the good ones or trying to get some imaginery cred from Rolling Stone by releasing an album with some hippy relic. They throw out a barely prepared live version of Trapped Under Ice or The Struggle Within once or twice and that apparently counts for more than Maiden having played 100 and fuckin' 7 songs more than 40 times live.*


*Metallica have only played 84 songs more than 40 times live, and 18! of them are covers,solos or medleys. They aren't anywhere near Maiden's league for the experience an actual gig going fan gets, but I suppose watching that one time they played fixxxer at a gig you weren't at on youtube counts for more these days.
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It's not for the sake of it, it's genuine.
Obviously Maiden does a lot of things we love and approve. Everything you mentioned is valid, but everything I mentioned is valid too.
I choose Maiden over Metallica any time but there are things Metallica does that I'd like to see Maiden doing. I don't feel contradicted or divided.

Regarding the quantitative metrics: Yes and No. Maiden have all the numbers you stated but Metallica did change. And this is a big thing.
80 million more albums sold kind of big.
As I said, I don't feel divided, but I give credit where credit is due. I stated above that Maiden's laziness is not related to the amount of work. They are good workers. Following the same patterns all the way, never changed. Metallica did the leap fwd, they did change and now they don't need to work as hard. They could have failed as well, let's not forget that.
Is the amount of hard work that matters in this world? If so miners would be millionaires.

Metallica need not produce that much music to stay rich, simply because at the right time and place they did a bold move outside their comfort zone. As simple as that. You can see this pattern around you, every day with the real people, in the real world.
 
If Maiden released

300 quid boxset releases of the Number of the Beast, with Beast over Hammersmith lps, Bruces auditions tapes, Reading live set etc.

or

a bootleg of every show at a tenner a pop*

or

a rerecording of the same old standards with an orchestra

or

an album as Pete Townsends backing band

They would be slaughtered on here.

If they played Alexander live one time but not at the gig most people on here went to, they would be slaughtered on here.

There will always be contrarianism for the sake of contrarianism and that's exactly what it is on here, as NONE, absolutely NONE of Maiden's peers are releasing anywhere near the standard of studio work or remain as tight and vibrant a live band as Maiden are.


*the bootleg one may get a pass, but I still see people complaining that that costs fans hundreds of quid for the entire tour.
 
GhostofCain said:
Not only in North America!

That 2010 setlist was great and I was lucky to see it three times (Sonisphere UK, Sonisphere Sweden and the final date of the tour in Valencia, Spain).
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I was also at the UK gig. I got down the front after Pendulum (who were on just before Maiden), there was a clear run up the side and a short, squeezy cut in had me bang in the middle, 4 or 5 rows back.
As I waited for Maiden I heard a "yeooo" from the crowd behind me. As I turned I saw a girl up on someones shoulders with her top off, hence the yeooo. This happened a few more times. I turned round again to see the young woman get hit in the head by a bottle of what I assume was piss and she fell from the guys shoulders. As a fan of physical comedy I found this terribly funny (assuming she didn't break her neck that is). A few minutes later a bottle of piss landed on my own head and some definitely went into my mouth. Its not quite as funny when it happens to you but I couldn't help but chortle a little.
I also saw Terrorvision that weekend, a dream come true. And got my nose burst by an errant head in the pit during Fear Factory. A truly fabulous weekend that was.
 
Zare said:
Here's the thing, I don't think the band's lying about this era, albeit the secrecy. So if Dickinson says he brought acoustic material and it got rejected, which in turn made him focus 100% on the performance, I believe it to be true - it's in the Mick Wall biography.

So how does this indication of him actually having a credit in early album stages fit?

I believe every possibility is valid - it was written as ballad and rejected, it was written after the rejection as an concise attempt to write something less experimental, the music was possibly written by Smith back in 1986, and so on.

Consider the outro on the song, it may be how it originally sounded in acoustic. Although the rest of the song is bog standard classic (and high quality) Maiden. So I see it really fitting on Somewhere in Time. And I think it wasn't that hard to develop the song from that melody and theme that's present in the outro-chorus. So it might be the 9th song, Dickinson credit, in its 1986 variant.

@Luisma I believe heard the demos and he can probably answer this with yes/no :)
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'Run Silent, Run Deep' was indeed recorded (vocals and all) for SIT, however, it didn't made the final cut for various reasons.

1. Didn't fit with the overall feeling of the album.
2. Once Martin & Steve did a first rough mix of the album, Harris wasn't happy so many songs were rearranged or cut, so that's another reason why 'Run Silent..." was cut of the final mix of the album.

@Zare is mostly right about what he says, this being, that the band aren't lyting about this era, however, one thing they have really omitted is how close to being with a singer they were.
 
____no5 said:
No man it's exhausting. For their age and status it's quite a lot, kudos to them. But it's not the point. I call them lazy not because they aren't good "workers" which they are by and large. Their laziness -in my opinion- is that they don't try new things.
  • Identical setlists during a tour.
  • Same ol' formula Album Tour -Legacy Tour since 20 years with few surprises if at all.
  • Refusal to play songs that they know will please their fans.
  • No separation between eras i.e. Somewhere Back in Time contained songs from Early Days. Many of them.
  • No dedicated tour for the reunion era.
  • Dozen+ of same ol' lives but not for AMOLAD, and so on.
That's for touring. For recording they also applying made for efficiency formulas such as writing songs in the Studio, following same pattern slow intro -main -slow outro (Harris), most of their guitar solos last 40 seconds etc.
Click to expand...
I want to share my point of view:

Identical setlists during a tour - certain classics can't be dropped. The case is similar with all bands. Yeah, they could rotate more songs between legs, but I like that a certain tour has its own core of songs and btw, the setlists after 1999 are way better than the setlists during the 90's.

Same old formula Album tour/Legacy tour - this is great. We get a lot of new songs plus a rotation of classics. Most of the bands tour only when they release a new album, while Maiden tours every year. They tour a lot.

Refusal to play songs that they know will please their fans - we all would like to hear ATG live, but let's not forget that Maiden are one of the bands which have so many amazing songs and it's difficult to please all fans. With the quality of their material, they easily could retire their greatest hits imo.

No dedicated tour for the reunion era - TFF tour 2010 leg? Plus they play most of their new albums live. I think a tour dedicated for the 90's is more needed.

Dozen + of same old lives but not for AMOLAD and so on - the AMOLAD tour was a must, but they can redeem themselves with Senjutsu. Six Renuion era albums<->Four live albums/concert vidoes (I'm sure Senjutsu will have too)... not bad for a new material. And Maiden are one of the bands with the most documented tours, so of course the same old classics will appear on every one of them.

Studio songs with slow intro/same outro/length of solos - as Nicko said, this is natural. Steve writes a lot of lyrics and those intros are important to the story of the lyrics and the atmosphere of the long songs. About the length of the solos, Maiden are with 3 guitars, so of course the songs are going to be longer with more space for three or more solos. You can't put a really long solo in a song with three solos, because you have an instrumental section to go along. For a song with two solos, you can (see TWOTW).
Zare said:
I would also add

- never ever used anything but a classic theater stage
- use the same general layout since 1983
- the realization of the layout is the same 90% of the time - except SiT, and wall-of-stacks 90s tours, the rest is boxes with livery
Click to expand...
Maiden's stage sets are always great. The same general layout is important for Bruce (we know why) and for the overall view with the backdrops. They also don't use a big screen and this is something which distinguishes them from the other bands. I'll take Maiden's stage sets over any other stage set anytime.

Sorry for the off-topic post, but I can't call Maiden lazy..., especially for not releasing some bonus stuff. Their hard work over the years is indisputable.
 
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