When the Wild Wind Blows

How good is When the Wild Wind Blows on a scale of 1-10?

  • Total voters
    13
The Man Who Would Be King

I feel that any solo or harmonies on the right speaker are Janick. Which means whilst he solos less on this album he plays lead along with Bruces singing on WTWWB, S15..TFF and ED. This may or may not be correct...

"they're in the shelter feeling snug"

I never imagined ever hearing the word "snug" in a metal song. Love it!! Ha!
 
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The Mid-Distance Runner said:
I never imagined ever hearing the word "snug" in a metal song. Love it!! Ha!
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Yeah, I know what you mean. When I heard the song for the first time I thought Bruce said "melons" instead of "meadows." I was all kinds of bewildered.  :lol:
 
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The Mid-Distance Runner said:
I feel that any solo or harmonies on the right speaker are Janick. Which means whilst he solos less on this album he plays lead along with Bruces singing on WTWWB, S15..TFF and ED. This may or may not be correct...

Its Adrian on ED and TFF. Sometimes it sounds like adrian is coming more from the right than than the left.
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The Man Who Would Be King

Nicko about this song, from this interview.
-------

What did you think when you got some of the demos, particularly the one for the song When The Wild Wind Blows? It's quite an epic.

"It sure is. That was one of the songs we did in the studio. When Steve [Harris] brought the song in, he showed it to us, gave the guitarists the chord progressions and everything. I could tell right off it was something special. Because of the kind of song it is, though, I looked at Harry [editor's note: the nickname for Steve Harris] and said, 'What do you want from the drums, busy or straight?' And he said, 'Let's have it straight. We need some real groove on this track.'

"That's all he needed to say. I told him, 'Let me have what you're playing on the bass,' and we worked that part out. Then we went for the second part, then we had the segue breakdown and it went from there. When we finished recording the song, I turned to Steven and said, 'Next to Hallowed Be Thy Name, I think this is the best song you've ever written.' And he went, 'Nahhh!' And I said, 'To me it is.' That's how I feel - I think it's just immense.

"The funny thing is, there wasn't a lot of preparation for that song or any of the other ones, really. It was just learn it, feel it and play it. That's what we did on this record. It was true to its form, without a lot of contrived pieces. And there's even a couple of mistakes on it, to boot, which I think is great."
 
The Man Who Would Be King

This was the last song I heard from the album, and the one I immediately fell in love with. From the soft intro to the eerie outro, everything about it is what I love best about Maiden epics.
That first melody from 0:47-1:02, that Bruce then enters on, is perhaps the sweetest melody Maiden have ever come up with. Something melancholy about it yet something reassuring. I couldn't help but be moved by it. Perhaps the most genius thing about it is the way the apocalyptic lyrics are juxtaposed with this tune, which help to give it a singularly tragic feel.
And then, at 3:42 leading up to 4:07, the storm starts. I don't know how Maiden do it but here again like in Paschendale they manage through the music to convey such an atmosphere that you feel like your THERE, in the midst, in the story, with the wild wind howling all around. This middle part then starting from around 3:42 is perhaps my favorite bit because there are many melodies that weave from one into the other, feeling totally natural, and somehow extremely Maiden in their chord progressions.
Bruce then comes back in at around 6:52 and the emotion is almost too much because by now you're the old man sitting there having tea in his shelter.
The riff from 9:04-9:27 has such an overwhelming finale feel that you know that whatever was supposed to happen to them, happened, and Bruce is going to tell us about it in something like 10 seconds.
And then there comes the soft outro with the almost eerily cheerful English country tune from the beginning and Bruce ends the tragic tale. And I almost cry.
 
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So it's a happy lifting story about a couple killing themselves over nothing?
The part from 3:40 on is great, but the overall major theme doesn't feel right to me, and the story, with mentions to the news and the T.V don't feel Maiden at all.
And not in the good way, like other songs on the album.
I don't get it right now. I guess it needs time to grow on me.
 
The Man Who Would Be King

That's because it represents the general mood of the countryside. Everything is good...but then fuck! We're gonna get nuked! And everything shakes, fuck! And then...hey, just a false alarm! Oh...poor people. It's intentional juxtaposition.
 
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LooseCannon said:
That's because it represents the general mood of the countryside. Everything is good...but then fuck! We're gonna get nuked! And everything shakes, fuck! And then...hey, just a false alarm! Oh...poor people. It's intentional juxtaposition.
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Agree entirely.  It's like those horror films with the creepy little kids singing nursery rhymes.  It's oddly discordant.
 
The Man Who Would Be King

I remember first listening to the album and really enjoying certain songs but wishing they'd hurry up so I could get to listen to When the Wild Wind Blows. I had some pretty big expectations, having heard so much about it and seen the movie too. Amazing how they managed to capture the mood of the film, with the aforementioned juxtaposition. And then the ending, the "twist", if you will. Absolutely heartbreaking. I can't remember ever being wowed in such a way by a song. The wind slowly blowing into silence is needed for you to start getting your breath back. I've listened to it now way more times than any other song on the album, and it never feels like 11 minutes. Maiden really have done something special with this track. It's not my favourite of theirs, but it's something very very different and I just can't get it out of my head.

Oh, and the way it tricks us into thinking it's another storytelling type song before jumping into the deeper, more political stuff of AMOLAD and its ilk... Spectacular.
 
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LooseCannon said:
That's because it represents the general mood of the countryside. Everything is good...but then fuck! We're gonna get nuked! And everything shakes, fuck! And then...hey, just a false alarm! Oh...poor people. It's intentional juxtaposition.
Click to expand...

Exactly, a more straightforwards version of what I was trying to get at. :)
 
The Man Who Would Be King

After some thought, I have to say that to me this song is among the least favourite ones. I don't like the fact that the same melody is repeated for basically the first third of the song and the lyrics are just a rehash of the story, with nothing extra deep. Furthermore, the song IMO doesn't have a great climax like ROTAM had, it just goes forward with the same melody, the guys do their solos and then back to the story and the slow outro.

I'm sorry, Steve, but a song which is 11 minutes long isn't automatically interesting. There's a reason why the demo has been laying around for half a decade - in the past he had better ideas.

This is by far the weakest Harris-penned epic ever, just compare it to For The Greater Good Of God, Sign of the Cross or Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to name a few.
 
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I like this better than FTGGOG, because there is no never-ending chorus repetition here. But I must say I like SOTC better, and it does not even get close to ROTAM.

But i think it's a fine song.
 
The Man Who Would Be King

I think this destroys FTGGOG, ATG and TTAL. It's on par with sign of the cross but nowhere near as good a hallowed, SSOASS or ROTAM.
 
The Man Who Would Be King

The music is a perfect soundtrack to the story.
This song is right there with Hallowed, Paschendale and SOTC, and as one of their greatest epics ever.
One of the main reasons is that it doesn't sound like any of them.
 
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