Vocalists that were auditioned for Bruce Dickinson's replacement in 1993

karljant said:
why a weak track (IMO) within that same molde like Wasting Love is featured in FOTD while Arc Of Space or Tears Of A Dragon are infinitly better?
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Because they were required to put a power ballad on the album, and Wasting Love was more commercial than Bruce's material. There is an interview out there where this is stated (well, the former part at least), but I can't find it. It was posted here on the board at some point in the last 15 years though.
 
Who put this requirement up?
Smallwood or EMI telling Harris what to do? I don't think it went down like that.
 
Perun said:
Because they were required to put a power ballad on the album, and Wasting Love was more commercial than Bruce's material.
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What? Even regarding radio friendly potential (appart from everything else) Wasting Love comes millions of miles short of Tears Of A Dragon. And the same works for Arc Of Space: if the band wanted a so called power ballad they only needed to add drums, bass and electric guitars in the chorus and that same old crescendo on the entrance to blow WL to oblivion. Nevertheless i prefer AOS as it is.
 
Adding “Tears” or “Arc” to FOTD would have lost the effect of those songs being on BTP and AOB (respectively). Maiden in ‘92 clearly didn’t have the same mindset they had back in the ‘80s. While I really like their two Bruce-led ‘90s records, it’s obvious they were more by the numbers than before.
 
Diesel 11 said:
Adding “Tears” or “Arc” to FOTD would have lost the effect of those songs being on BTP and AOB (respectively). Maiden in ‘92 clearly didn’t have the same mindset they had back in the ‘80s. While I really like their two Bruce-led ‘90s records, it’s obvious they were more by the numbers than before.
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Yup... bur perhaps I would never had to put up with the abomination that is Wasting Love. That alone would have worth it.
 
Perun said:
Because they were required to put a power ballad on the album, and Wasting Love was more commercial than Bruce's material. There is an interview out there where this is stated (well, the former part at least), but I can't find it. It was posted here on the board at some point in the last 15 years though.
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I remember seeing that it was requested by someone, but never saw the interview
 
The lyrics of Tears of a Dragon are about leaving Maiden. There's no way they were written when FOTD was being recorded. If there was a song around at the time then it wasn't the same song that we know and love, so saying it would have been better than Wasting Love is nonsense, because none of us have ever heard what the song was like at the time.
 
srfc said:
The lyrics of Tears of a Dragon are about leaving Maiden. There's no way they were written when FOTD was being recorded. If there was a song around at the time then it wasn't the same song that we know and love, so saying it would have been better than Wasting Love is nonsense,
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Yes... because with other lyrics a great song would sound like trash... :facepalm:
 
Diesel 11 said:
“I shat myself in stall 3
Release the wave, I am unclean
Where the hell is my brain
I feel like a dragon and I’m going to sneeze”

I would not like this song at all.
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tenor.gif
 
So let's start with the (few) positive things going on around here:
  • Opening guitar harmony: although a bit sissy it's well penned and is quite decent.
  • Bridge and Solo: Like it... perhaps my favorite part of the song.
  • Bruce's quiet voice: it fits the mood... so thumbs up
Now the reaaaaaaally bad stuff:
  • Maiden playing Hard Rock FM power ballads? NO, THANKS : Maiden has a plethora of excelent calm songs or even "power ballads" (if you prefer... I myself think WL is the only true power ballad they have): IMO Strange World, Remember Tomorrow, Prodigal Son, Children Of The Damned and Blood Brothers are all excellent. No Prayer (Live version because the vocals on the studio version are crap), Afraid To Shoot Strangers, Como Estais Amigos?, Jouneyman, Out Of The Shadows and Coming Home are really great too. But all of these songs have MAIDEN DNA deeply in their genes. None of them sound like something a cheap AOR band would do like WL. And Maiden doing it (unlike many experiments they made throughout their career defying their confort zone) sounds utterly forced.
  • Bruce's tenor voice: I deeply disagree with you here. Simply rough and awful IMO. Live it's the same (unlike No Prayer For The Dying). And if that rasp edge works great on songs like Be quick, here it transforms a poor song into something unbearable.
  • Nicko's drumming: More than featuring uninspired drum lines (as the majority of hard rock and AOR crappy power ballads do) the way Nicko (or whoever came with the idea) decided to simply replicate the strumming of the guitars on the chorus breaks all the momento and really crawls under my skin.
  • THAT CHORUS: Combine the last two points and you'll have the recipe for an abomination of a chorus.
So to sum it up: the acoustic verse part is simply generical (though it doesn't anoy me the least), the whole song is too sappy, the chorus is awful, Bruce's rasp high notes don't fit the song, Nicko's drumming patterns are a shell of themselves here, it's utterly devoid of Maiden's DNA unlike all the other experiments they made (drop Bruce's Voice out of this one and it and you have ZERO MAIDEN) and it's one of the perfect examples of some of the type of songs I detest the most in Hard N' Heavy (sellout AOR like power ballads... and as I said before I consider WL to be the only one that fits this archetype in Maiden's catalogue).

PS: Hey... at least it isn't as bad as Fear Is The Key :p
 
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