Somewhere In Time
“You can’t play metal on synthesizers!”
A lot can change in two years. To be fair, in the 80s there wasn’t much you could do with synths other than as a support role to fill out the sound. Regardless, I’m glad they didn’t prevent themselves from experimenting with sounds.
Somewhere In Time is a real mixed bag. I think there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad. It has a lot in common with the reunion album material, so I laugh when SIT fanatics complain about repetitive Harris choruses on the new albums. This album is probably the biggest offender other than Virtual XI.
I’ll start with the negative stuff. You can tell the band is exhausted after the Powerslave tour. Their energy is much more restrained and a lot of the effects and synths seem to be there to overcompensate for stuff. Bruce sounds strained, tired, and honestly kind of bored. No air raids here, and his voice is drowned out by the reverbs and effects. Steve Harris has a much more involved writing role, akin to the earlier albums, but we really miss having Dickinson as a writing foil. This album is full of the Harrisisms that people complain about with the recent material: repetitive choruses, wordy lyrics with awkward phrasing, bloated songs, etc. Heaven Can Wait in particular is one of the most annoying Maiden songs (the middle section is cool though). I like Harris a lot as a songwriter, but I think he works best in collaboration with other members of the band or when writing big epics. I think his shorter to mid length songs tend to be a bit unfocused. Somewhere In Time is kinda the beginning of that trend.
With this album we continue to see a split between the quality of vocal portions and instrumental portions which was shown on Powerslave. Here it’s much more apparent. Pretty much every song has fantastic instrumental work. Alexander the Great is the prime example. Awesome instrumental, one of the best things Maiden ever put to tape, but the verses and choruses are just kinda dull.
But that brings me to the positives of the album. The instrumental work is truly awesome. Murray and Smith continue to be a guitar playing force. Virtually every song has some sort of cool guitar solo or harmony part. The instrumental parts in between and even during vocal sections are also really intricate and cool. This is the Maiden album to check out if you want to be challenged on the guitar. Harris and McBrain feel more locked in than they ever had been. Some of the bass and drum breaks are incredible tight, especially on Alex. Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner also has some incredible instrumental work.
The quality of this album is also brought up big time by Adrian Smith’s writing. His three songs are easily the best three songs on the album, Wasted Years, Sea of Madness, and Stranger in a Strange Land. Not sure which is the best or how they rank, but they are all 9/10 or 10/10 songs, the only ones on the album. Adrian has some songwriting chops that Steve just hasn’t ever really shown. His songs have hooks, dynamics, flow, the lyrics are well matched to the vocal melodies and the rest of the instrumentation. It’s an intricacy and attention to detail that is honestly kind of abnormal for Maiden. It’s refreshing to hear. Each song also has a great guitar solo that really allows Adrian to stretch a bit. If there are any missed opportunities on this album, it’s that Harris and Smith didn’t directly collaborate. If there’s anything that makes Maiden’s recent output much better than the stuff on Somewhere in Time, it’s that Harris and Smith work together a lot more. They complement each other extremely extremely well. Get Bruce in there and you are very likely about to hear the best song on the album.
Finally, while I strongly believe they used a lot of the effects to cover up weaker songs and a weaker Bruce, I also genuinely enjoy the sounds they came up with. The album has a great vibe, the guitar tones are really cool, and it’s really cool to hear Maiden experiment with being a studio based band. Of course it resulted in these songs being more or less impossible to pull off live properly, but I think it’s cool that Maiden has one album that is mostly a product of the studio.
Somewhere In Time is a weird album, but it makes a lot of sense when you put it in context. The band were clearly ready to transition to something else by Powerslave, and it usually takes some experimentation to get it right. With this album we start to see a foundation laid for what would become modern Maiden. They haven’t quite figured out how to marry their sound with extra instruments and effects, as well as more complex song forms. But you can hear the potential for a lot of really exciting musical developments.
At the same time, we’re also hearing a band that has been touring and performing non stop for 12 years. The exhaustion shows in a lot of different areas on this album, it’s even referenced directly in a lot of the lyrics. Wasted Years is an obvious example, but I think there’s a lot of nuance and metaphor in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Alexander the Great that isn’t often talked about (mostly because it probably could’ve been better executed).
While I miss Bruce’s presence on this album, honestly the ideas he had that were rejected sound terrible based on the way they’ve been described, and it sounds like Maiden successfully avoided a real Stonehenge moment. It gave him a chance to recharge and come back with some of the best material he’s contributed to the band later on, but we’ll get to that.
I do really enjoy Somewhere In Time, it’s an interesting album and definitely something that stands along in Maiden’s catalog, which definitely contributes to its cult following. But there’s also not a lot on here beyond Smith’s three songs that I am usually excited to listen to. Admittedly, I am also just a little exhausted by people complaining about no SIT songs every tour, or pining for a SIT sequel.
Live in Oxford
Ah the Somewhere In Time tour. Somehow, just as mythical, if not more than, the Somewhere in Time album. No official footage exists, not even an audio recording. Bootlegs are plentiful, but no great video footage of what was a really big production. The official story is that Rod didn’t want to film two tours in a row, which honestly I believe. It seems that many artists (across a lot of media) weren’t thinking about archiving this stuff. There’s some pro recorded video out there, but no full shows. The best we have is honestly probably the music video for Stranger in a Strange Land (which incidentally came from one of the few shows that has a bootleg video so you can see the camera crew go on stage for that one song verifying that is in fact all they filmed). The lack of footage is a double whammy for Somewhere in Time fans. Not only are the songs rarely played live, but there is no official record of the tour where they were played.
Luckily, like I said, the bootlegs are plentiful and there are some really good ones. I went with Oxford 1986 mostly because it is high quality for an audience recording, and it’s a really good performance. Bruce sounds great (better than on the album in some places) and the band is on fire. It’s also early in the tour before the album was released and you can tell the band is still warming up (but in a good way). They had some really iffy performances on this tour, but they started off very strong.
Honestly, the Somewhere On Time setlist is one of the coolest ones in the band’s history. You’ve got all the Somewhere In Time songs, which are mostly rarities, but you’ve also got Rime Of the Ancient Mariner, Where Eagles Dare, Children of the Damned, and Phantom of the Opera. It would be a really long time before a lot of these songs got played again, if ever. And of course, the Adrian Smith/Dave Murray guitar duet is one of the most unique concert pieces the band has done. Really cool stuff.
It really is a shame the band never released official stuff from this tour. The lack of any Somewhere In Time material on the Maiden England DVD is probably enough to verify that there isn’t anything hidden in the vault, but one can still dream.
Also some food for thought: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner was only played a couple times on tour, specifically during the band’s warm up tour behind the iron curtain. The only reason we know this is because of a bootleg. It always makes me wonder what other songs have been played before that we don’t realize because there aren’t any bootleg recordings. I know there’s been rumors of Back in the Village being played early in the Powerslave tour, for example. Fun to think about!
