Who was auditioned to replace Blaze?

I'm not even going to say that it's impossible that some of the people involved thought there would be a reunion one day. If so however, it would have been more of a vague idea for some point in the future, but definitely not a grand master plan as is suggested here.
On the other hand, I am one of those people who believe that not everyone in the Maiden camp was 100% committed to carrying on with Blaze by the time VXI was recorded. I do think that in 1998, more was going on behind the scenes than we (and Blaze!) have been led to believe.
 
I disagree with the premise that the explicit agreement was to let Bruce go solo for a few years and then bring him back, but I do think that at least within the management the expectation was in fact that Bruce would eventually come back. Not that Steve Harris was expecting this, but I think Rod and company took care to make sure that a reunion could easily be facilitated when the time came. The fact is that he wasn’t out of the band that long (about the length of the LOTB cycle) and they maintained a pretty amicable relationship during that time. Keeping Bruce on the same management and involving him in some of the business dealings such as the back catalog sale seem like conscious decisions to maintain the professional relationship.

At a certain point it seems like the only piece that needed to be taken care of was getting Steve to accept that Blaze wasn’t working and the band was better off with Bruce. To Perun’s point, I think most people in the organization were ready for a reunion after the X Factor cycle ended.
 
AncientMariner_Essex said:
There is absolutely no way I would ever be convinced that Bruce leaving Maiden was all part of a big plan to big up a reunion a few years later. Anyone who believes this doesn’t get Maiden at all.

Unless one of the band members actually said this happened then it’s just pure fantasy.

Think about it for a second, Maiden actually planned a whole campaign about Bruce leaving, made up all the angst and jabs both sides had at each other in the press at the time. Then got Blaze in to fail ON PURPOSE as they knew he couldn’t sing the old songs and fans wouldn’t take to him and then sacked him and went TA DA here we are getting back with our classic vocalist. It’s sounds bizarre to even think this could be true.

Do you really think Steve Harris would hire Blaze on purpose with a plan to make his band fail so it looks better when they reunite with Bruce. Come on, it’s pure fantasy.
Click to expand...
This is not exactly what I am saying. There are several factors involved here.
1) Bruce wanted to make a solo album and try a new concept which didn't involve Maiden, obviously he had created material and had his personal goals/visions at the time.
2) Maiden was not a new band, counting back then almost 14 years of discography.
3) The record sales were already on a big decline at that time. Actually after "No Prayer for the Dying" Maiden was also receiving poor reviews for their albums. Bruce and Steve Harris were convinced that the band needs refreshment.
4) Bruce though still felt as an integral part of who Iron Maiden were and his bandmates and Steve Harris shared the same thought. He wanted to take a brake to experiment and pursue his own visions, but not a permanent one! I never believed for A SECOND that Bruce wanted to leave this band forever...

I speculate that they decided after they discussed and evaluated all these things to part ways for some years, hire a new singer to bring some air of refreshment into the band and let Bruce do his solo stuff but all the band members and the management secretly knew that Bruce will eventually come back again. This was the deal.

What they communicated to the fans and to the press and to Blaze Bailey was something else of course, that Maiden is entering a new era, that Bruce belongs to the past etc. and this was the right decision because if they communicated the "truth" (my speculation), nobody would have taken the band seriously....
I cannot exclude this scenario.

What I simply also don't get, is how easy it was for Bruce to come back to the band as if he owns it, after he "permanently" left it...
How easy it was for them to sack such a dedicated bandmate and a great guy and singer who contributed to some of their biggest hits, only because the old singer wants to come back because his sales don't go as expected. Something is missing here....
 
Last edited:
I could believe that, when Steve hired Blaze, members of the band's sphere (specifically Rod) figured it would fail and that the next vocalist might be more suiting to the band's previous work. You'll never convince me that Steve Harris thought that.
 
Andante said:
I cannot exclude this scenario.
Click to expand...
And this is the point. This applies to conspiracy theories in general; The burden of evidence lies with proving the scenario. Not explicitly disproving it (because there is no data available) does not give it credibility. That's not how things work.
 
Last edited:
Andante said:
speculate that they decided after they discussed and evaluated all these things to part ways for some years, hire a new singer to bring some air of refreshment into the band and let Bruce do his solo stuff but all the band members and the management secretly knew that Bruce will eventually come back again. This was the deal.
Click to expand...
If that’s true then Bruce and the rest of the band have been flat out lying to fans for years then.

What you suggests contradicts everything Bruce wrote in his book about why he left Maiden and also contradicts everything written in the official run to the hills book about that time. Plus all the interviews printed in all the music magazines at the time.

I was a fan of Maiden before Bruce left and when he did leave there was a lot of mud slinging in the press between both camps. Nicko was particularly vocal and said how he and the band were really let down by Bruce, especially with his under par performances on the last tour after he’d announced he was leaving.

That’s why I can’t believe the whole thing of Bruce leaving and coming back was a big master plan from the beginning.

I do think that Steve had to convince the rest of the Band to take Blaze and by the time they were recording VXI I would bet Rod was already thinking it’s not working and eyeing up getting Bruce back. No way was this all designed from the beginning.
 
Last edited:
Andante said:
The record sales were already on a big decline at that time. Actually after "No Prayer for the Dying" Maiden was also receiving poor reviews for their albums. Bruce and Steve Harris were convinced that the band needs refreshment.
Click to expand...
Bollocks! On a decline in the USA maybe but not around Europe and other parts of the world. No prayer had Maidens only ever UK no: 1 single and got to no:2 in the album sales charts.

Fear of the dark was a number 1 album in the uk with be quick or be dead a number 2 single. They were still massive in the uk which is why they headlined monsters of rock again.
 
Can I just say that this sounds like a really dumb strategy? For one, Maiden's sales weren't declining as steeply as is being claimed here in the NPFTD/FOTD era, and the idea of committing commercial suicide to boost sales later on is ridiculous. Not to mention that the reunion wasn't nearly as big as some people here seem to think. It was a big deal in the metal scene, but Maiden came nowhere near the mainstream success they had in the late eighties and early nineties. Yes, BNW doubled the sales of VXI, but it was still way short of FOTD and even NPFTD - and by way short, I mean a million units. It was only with SBIT that Maiden started regularly selling out venues comparable to their 80's and early 90's heyday. That would have been a massive failure of such a grand master plan.
 
Perun said:
Can I just say that this sounds like a really dumb strategy? For one, Maiden's sales weren't declining as steeply as is being claimed here in the NPFTD/FOTD era, and the idea of committing commercial suicide to boost sales later on is ridiculous. Not to mention that the reunion wasn't nearly as big as some people here seem to think. It was a big deal in the metal scene, but Maiden came nowhere near the mainstream success they had in the late eighties and early nineties. Yes, BNW doubled the sales of VXI, but it was still way short of FOTD and even NPFTD - and by way short, I mean a million units. It was only with SBIT that Maiden started regularly selling out venues comparable to their 80's and early 90's heyday. That would have been a massive failure of such a grand master plan.
Click to expand...
I think it's unfair to compare BNW sales with the ones of NPFTD and FOTD since the early 00's were the start of the Napster era so lots of downloads going on and since this was big news I'm sure there are a lot of fans that did it and didn't care buying the album afterwards. Not saying here that without that they would have sold 2-3 millions more copies but for sure it had a true impact. Also the reunion may not have been as big as we think of it now but since I was there I can say that at least in some european countries it totally changed from what happened during the early 90's and the Blaze era (a simple example: in France, last time they played at the biggest arena in Paris, which is Paris Bercy before the reunion, it was in...1988. During the 90's, they always played smaller venues. And its not the only country where it happened)...so maybe we shouldn't idealise either how things were in the early 90's...and the fact that FOTD was n.1 in the charts doesn't mean a thing...Powerslave was "only" number 2 and it sold a lot more!

Anyway, well this thread was fun and my inital post was just made to have some fun, not to start some kind of "war" in here, can't say I'm really interested in it....

To be honest all I would always be kind of curious to know is (but I know I never will): Did all the band (not talking about Steve since he seemed to be 100% convinced) believe that Blaze was really up to the task? Didn't they notice during auditions and/or rehearsals that maybe although he had a good voice, maybe it wouldn't fit with their songs? But if they believed he was THE guy they were looking for, why didn't they help him by choosing the best songs he would be able to sing properly (ok at least, they didn't play Run to the Hills but maybe add some more songs from the Di'Anno era?) and when necessary just change the key of the song so he wouldn't have to struggle so much...and getting a lot of heat for that?
This is probably the only thing that I'd really like to know...in the meantime, gonna enjoy listening to the X Factor!

Take care!
 
Andante said:
What I simply also don't get, is how easy it was for Bruce to come back to the band as if he owns it, after he "permanently" left it...
How easy it was for them to sack such a dedicated bandmate and a great guy and singer who contributed to some of their biggest hits, only because the old singer wants to come back because his sales don't go as expected. Something is missing here....
Click to expand...

Are you really saying that Blaze contributed to some of Maiden’s biggest hits???
 
Andante said:
This is a very interesting topic but most scenarios mentioned here contradict each other.
I will try to make a more mature approach based on experience...
I firmly believe, that the truth is that when Bruce left the band it was predetermined from the management that he would take his time off, do his solo stuff and after some years they would do the reunion. Of course no one told Blaze or the fans about this, because this would hurt his motivation and determination. Its simple as that. They wanted Blaze to give his full potential to the band and this wouldn't have worked out if he knew that this is his final tour or his last studio album with Maiden. And the management/record company knew that the announcement of a reunion "out of nowhere" would maximize sales and fans would be ecstatic about it...And yes we (and Blaze Bailey) have been played but that's how music industry works...
Click to expand...

Were you a fan in the 90s?
 
From what I remember from interviews back in the day and from things I’ve read since, the primary reason the band chose blaze as the new singer was because his voice sounded nothing like Bruce.

It also helped he was English and the band already knew him and liked him from previous tours when wolfsbane supported Maiden.

I’m sure Steve had to persuade a few of the other band members but mostly they wanted a complete fresh start after Bruce left and the music Steve especially was writing at the time (that eventually became x-factor tracks) suited a deeper baritone voice.

When the x-factor didn’t take off as much as Steve or the band and Rod had hoped they then tried to write an album more like the older stuff. VXI in my opinion was an attempt to appease fans. 8 tracks, a fast album opener a lot of sing a long choruses and a couple of epics. It was around this time they realised that it probably wasn’t working with Blaze. His own issues were causing problems as he wasn’t used to such big tours so was getting ill and his voice wasn’t holding up throughout the tours. Plus I think Steve under estimated how much the fans just wanted to hear the classics at gigs around this time and that’s where blaze struggled.

I think Steve was hoping that if they could muddle along with blaze until they had 3/4 albums under their belt then the amount of classic tracks on tours could be whittled down to just a handful that blaze could cope with and the rest of the set they would have more blaze stuff to choose from.

Sadly for blaze there just wasn’t enough time to get more albums done as a lot of fans from their biggest markets just didn’t take to the sound and style of his voice or the music on the x-factor as much as was hoped.

Also, Bruce had come full circle in his solo career to be back to playing and loving all things metal after accident of birth and chemical wedding. So Rod was probably thinking if we don’t get Bruce back now we can’t just dump blaze and get another vocalist in as it would damage the brand further so the band was close to folding.
 
AncientMariner_Essex said:
If that’s true then Bruce and the rest of the band have been flat out lying to fans for years then.

What you suggests contradicts everything Bruce wrote in his book about why he left Maiden and also contradicts everything written in the official run to the hills book about that time. Plus all the interviews printed in all the music magazines at the time.

I was a fan of Maiden before Bruce left and when he did leave there was a lot of mud slinging in the press between both camps. Nicko was particularly vocal and said how he and the band were really let down by Bruce, especially with his under par performances on the last tour after he’d announced he was leaving.

That’s why I can’t believe the whole thing of Bruce leaving and coming back was a big master plan from the beginning.

I do think that Steve had to convince the rest of the Band to take Blaze and by the time they were recording VXI I would bet Rod was already thinking it’s not working and eyeing up getting Bruce back. No way was this all designed from the beginning.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly.

Had Blaze succeeded as a Maiden singer, there would have been no hope in hell for Bruce to be accepted back by Steve!
 
AncientMariner_Essex said:
I’m sure Steve had to persuade a few of the other band members but mostly they wanted a complete fresh start after Bruce left and the music Steve especially was writing at the time (that eventually became x-factor tracks) suited a deeper baritone voice.

When the x-factor didn’t take off as much as Steve or the band and Rod had hoped they then tried to write an album more like the older stuff. VXI in my opinion was an attempt to appease fans. 8 tracks, a fast album opener a lot of sing a long choruses and a couple of epics. It was around this time they realised that it probably wasn’t working with Blaze. His own issues were causing problems as he wasn’t used to such big tours so was getting ill and his voice wasn’t holding up throughout the tours. Plus I think Steve under estimated how much the fans just wanted to hear the classics at gigs around this time and that’s where blaze struggled.

I think Steve was hoping that if they could muddle along with blaze until they had 3/4 albums under their belt then the amount of classic tracks on tours could be whittled down to just a handful that blaze could cope with and the rest of the set they would have more blaze stuff to choose from.
Click to expand...
It's understandable that probably Steve was so sick and tired of Bruce (we should not forget as well that they never were the best friends in the world, far from it) and maybe he wanted to prove that Maiden could survive without Bruce that he decided to go the opposite way and have a singer that was totally different...and then he got his judgement clouded with this "obsession". It was like "what matters the most is that the new singer can't be seen as a copy of Bruce otherwise people will think that he is/was essential to the band, the rest is not as important"...and yeah I agree that probably Steve was really hoping (way more than the others I think) that after a few years Blaze would be totally accepted by the fans that he "forgot" about some details that mattered a lot
 
GhostofCain said:
Are you really saying that Blaze contributed to some of Maiden’s biggest hits???
Click to expand...
Yes, he contributed during his short stay with Maiden to some of their greatest songs, Sign of the Cross, Futureal, Man on the Edge, Virus, The Clansman etc. are only some examples. Perhaps these were not their absolute hits but If you consider the little time he was in the band, his overall contribution was remarkable. Many of these songs have been played countless of times at live Maiden shows over the years.

It is not my purpose to convince anybody that the things I claim here are true, it is impossible. This is only a hypothesis I made just to have some fun because I like to explore every possibility.

Many of you claim here that the band and Steve Harris absolutely believed in Blaze when he entered the band but during their X Factor tour they slowly started realizing that he is not the right person and that his voice cant perform their old songs effectively. I believe this is a statement very far from the truth. How can this even be possible? The band are no idiots, they rehearsed the old songs countless of times before taking him as their lead singer and they knew very well the limitations of his voice but also his potential.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top