The Genesis of Somewhere in Time

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Magnus said:
Are you saying they were both married to SIT, whoever that is? o_O
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Good question! No, Adrian and *Steve* were both married to her. Bruce wasn‘t interested in her, he wanted to marry someone else, but Steve vetoed against her at the last moment, because he thought she lacked class and didn‘t fit.
 
Mosh said:
That's what I'm getting at. Is it more a case of Bruce being unhappy with Maiden or having a taste of full creative control that really accelerated his leaving?
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My cynical opinion is that in 92 it became clear 80's style Heavy Metal was a dead duck and Bruce was like a rat off a sinking ship, hence him trying to rap in Shoot all the Clowns and getting Nirvana's producer in for Skunkworks.
 
srfc said:
My cynical opinion is that in 92 it became clear 80's style Heavy Metal was a dead duck and Bruce was like a rat off a sinking ship, hence him trying to rap in Shoot all the Clowns and getting Nirvana's producer in for Skunkworks.
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I don't know... in 1992, Maiden were bigger than ever. FOTD went number one and had a number 2 single, and at that time, chart positions were meaningful. The FOTD tour was the biggest Maiden had done to date, they were touring South America for the first time and headlining Donington for the second time. Also, Metallica had proven that a metal band could still have a major commercial breakthrough. There was really no reason to believe they would suffer the same fate that all those hair metal bands had. I think Bruce leaving Maiden had more of an impact on the decline of metal than the other way around.
I think that if Balls to Picasso and Skunkworks are an indicator of anything, it's of Bruce wanting to experiment with popular styles and see where he could go artistically. Shoot all the Clowns was a commercial single, he admitted that, but I don't know about the rest of his output at the time. I think he was genuinely interested in alternative rock at the time and felt that was more exciting that what he had been doing with Maiden.

After all, it's not like he ended up doing... this...

220px-I_Am_a_Pig.jpg
 
Perun said:
There was really no reason to believe they would suffer the same fate that all those hair metal bands had.
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I don't know, From Here to Eternity was the first non top 10 single since Stranger in a Strange land, it wasn't even top 20! Wasting Love single ended up being scrapped altogether even though an effort was made for the video. I think the album being a number one was a surprise and the material was a let down for the fans when they heard it.

Again, as I said I'm being a bit cynical, certainly there's loads of other factors involved and they all have a grain of truth to them, but my guess is if FOTD had been a critical success and Maiden flavour of the month at the time rather than looking like dinosaurs compared to GNR, Metallica and Nirvana then Bruce may have stayed with the band.

It's a good thing for all concerned that this did not happen though.
 
Perun said:
I don't know... in 1992, Maiden were bigger than ever. FOTD went number one and had a number 2 single, and at that time, chart positions were meaningful. The FOTD tour was the biggest Maiden had done to date, they were touring South America for the first time and headlining Donington for the second time.
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Iron Maiden were not bigger than ever in 1992. In fact, their star in North America had been fading since the late 80s and the Fear of the Dark tour was pretty short for Maiden's standards. That being said, it is also true that it included their first visits to different Latin American countries and these shows were quite successful.
 
Perun said:
If you listen to the bootlegs from the tour, songs like CSIT and Sea of Madness don't really spark. I'm not really sure why that is for CSIT, it's not all that different from Moonchild in terms of structure. Sea of Madness on the other hand has nothing for a crowd to work with. Loneliness was dropped almost immediately, and I can really see why, it must have been physically truly exhausting for Bruce to sing.
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True. You can hear Bruce's live struggles with TLOTLDR here:
 
GhostofCain said:
Iron Maiden were not bigger than ever in 1992. In fact, their star in North America had been fading since the late 80s and the Fear of the Dark tour was pretty short for Maiden's standards. That being said, it is also true that it included their first visits to different Latin American countries and these shows were quite successful.
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Yest the trend in U.S. started after 1986. First some sort of stagnation (SiT/SSOASS) and then straight down. 10 years ago we had contemporaries of the era among active users of the board who spoke about it from first hand IIRC.

Also visits to South America, visits to Africa, Middle East and a lot of Eastern Europe touring in mid 90s is a clear indication they were "shifting" markets.
 
I reckon Maiden’s commercial decline would’ve continued with Bruce, although maybe not to the same degree.

Are there any examples of huge 80s Metal bands in the mid to late 90s that maintained their success but didn’t have a major lineup change, break up, or change drastically? Maiden and Priest lost their singers, Metallica went alt rock...
 
Mosh said:
Are there any examples of huge 80s Metal bands in the mid to late 90s that maintained their success but didn’t have a major lineup change, break up, or change drastically? Maiden and Priest lost their singers, Metallica went alt rock...
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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.
 
Mosh said:
I reckon Maiden’s commercial decline would’ve continued with Bruce, although maybe not to the same degree.

Are there any examples of huge 80s Metal bands in the mid to late 90s that maintained their success but didn’t have a major lineup change, break up, or change drastically? Maiden and Priest lost their singers, Metallica went alt rock...
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AC/DC had a good decade in the 90s. Their major slump came in the mid-80, around the Fly on the Wall album.
 
Perun said:
I'm not really sure why that is for CSIT,
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For me, the big problem, is when the main riff kicks in there's a rhythm guitar part on the album that they didn't replicate live opting for both lads to play the harmony part, which means it doesn't have the same kick as on the album. They wouldn't have that problem now.:innocent:
 
chaosapiant said:
I don’t disagree. I liked seeing Moonchild in the set but at the time that tour occurred, we didn’t know we’d be getting a full Maiden England show just a couple of years later.
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This. Hearing Moonchild in 2008 felt special. I still had some hope then that Maiden would go with their original plan for the history tours.
 
Quite happy they played it on the two tours, because it was very special in 2008 with them playing the intro live.
 
Zare said:
Yest the trend in U.S. started after 1986. First some sort of stagnation (SiT/SSOASS) and then straight down. 10 years ago we had contemporaries of the era among active users of the board who spoke about it from first hand IIRC.

Also visits to South America, visits to Africa, Middle East and a lot of Eastern Europe touring in mid 90s is a clear indication they were "shifting" markets.
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Everyone in my school who was wearing Iron Maiden shirts between 1984-1987 was wearing Metallica shirts from 1988 onward
 
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