the Iron Maiden method of songwriting

Dick Brucinson

Dick Brucinson

The TRUE Dick Brucinson
this is a topic I am almost completey in the dark about. does anybody of you have any info on HOW within the band the songwriting process is going on? did Steve ever explain himself a bit about? Rime Of The Ancient Mariner e.g. is fully Harris credited, and this surprises me. the song is full of complex guitar riffing. this suggests Steve is a solid guitar player, right? if Adrian or Dave brought in their parts - why no songwriting credit to them? there's dozens of examples like that in their catalogue.
 
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Legally, songwriting credits are just for lyrics and vocal melody. The bass and drum parts and the guitar riffs and solos are considered “arrangement” and don’t automatically count. That said, sometimes band members will agree on who made the biggest contributions to the song and give all of those people credit for it, even if they didn’t contribute lyrical or vocal melody ideas.

I assume you’re actually curious about how those full arrangements are put together, and that’s something that varies with the songwriters involved and has also changed over time within the band.

Bruce and Adrian have a lot of active back and forth developing riffs and vocal ideas. Sometimes Adrian will come in with some riffs and arrangement ideas and maybe a high-level idea to base the lyrics around, and Bruce will flesh out the vocal melodies and lyrics based on that template, and they’ll hash out final structure and arrangement together.

In recent years, it sounds like Steve’s songs involve people laying down separate musical parts that the band likes, then Steve goes off for a couple of days and experiments with putting them together in different ways, developing melodic lines and lyrics for them and re-presenting them to the full band to finalize things and lay down final recordings. If Bruce contributes lyrics or significant melodic ideas, then he’ll also get a credit.

Sometimes one of the guitarists will bring a half-formed song idea to Steve including some melodic parts. Steve will then flesh it out and finalize the lyrics and arrangement details. In these cases Steve and the guitarist will both get credit.

The only time Nicko got a credit for an album track was on “New Frontier” when he wrote the lyrics. Otherwise, no matter how important his drumming choices are to the impact of the track, he still won’t get songwriting credit.
 
One of the aspects of Maiden's writing is seeing how their "teamups" have changed over the years. Janick always writes with Steve. Bruce (nowadays) tends to write with Adrian. Adrian writes with Bruce and Steve. Other folks bring in riffs, melodies, song ideas, etc, and dump them into Steve's big hat. Steve goes into a closet and pulls, say, five ideas from his Big Hat, then begins working on that song. If he pulls an idea from Janick, that song will automagically be voltron'd into The Legacy of the Talismachine of Death, of Souls. Which is awesome because these songs are often highlights on their respective items.

Sometimes Dave comes in to Steve and says "Hi Steve, I'm Dave, here's my song idea pile" and Steve will take his ideas for 5 or 6 songs and give Dave 1 song out of them.

Once Steve has glued his ideas or other ideas together, he takes the remainder of his own ideas and fuses them into Epic Tunes. A dash of gallop, a spritz of dual melodies, here's a shit ton of words that Bruce'll have to deal with, etc.

More or less a bunch of that and voila! Iron Maiden Magical Album Time!
 
bearfan said:
I would love to see a "Get Back" type of documentary ... too bad those tapes don't exist like the Beatles.
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nobody knows they don't exist. anyway. I am quite sure about one thing: they have a lot of interesting stuff "on stock" even now for any time after they'll have called it a day. and who knows, maybe they'll do it the Beatly way and play some rooftop.
 
I don't think there is any established "Maiden method of songwriting" - they seem to just get together and do whatever seems like a good idea at the time (Janick has often said that "there's no set way of doing it").

But sometimes they do give you a bit more detail about specific songs and my favourite of these stories is the writing of "Rainmaker":

Dave started it: he had a riff and a chord progression. To this Steve added a melody. While they were both playing around with this Bruce commented that the riff at the start made him think of raindrops. Dave comments "you could almost see the light bulb going on in his head as he thought about it - it was very inspiring".
 
Dave: Hey Steve?
Steve: Yeah, Davey?
Dave: I have an idea for a song
Steve: Really? Let me hear it!
Dave: Ok, here it is
Dave plays a riff followed by a tasty Davish solo
Dave: Well?
Steve: Well what?
Dave: Did you like it?
Steve: It?
Dave: The riff, the solo??
Steve: That's 2 things
Dave: Yes I know, did you like them?
Steve: I´m not sure
Dave: Want me to play them again?
Steve: Sure, go ahead
Dave plays the riff followed by the tasty Davish solo again
Dave: Well?
Steve: Hmmm...
Dave: Now do you like what you heard?
Steve: Not really
Dave: You didn´t like the riff or the solo??
Steve: No
Dave: Which one of the two you didn´t like?
Steve: Both. Sorry Davey.
Dave: :oops:
 
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