Why did Steve Harris fire Clive Burr ?

I see that some of you have an urge to defend Maiden, even in one of the darkest decisions in their history, but I don't think it had to happen at all.

It's not unusual that someone's playing gets temporarily worse after the death of their father (especially on that age!)
What I think is that Nicko's character was especially a treat, and very difficult to let go (and of course his playing was refreshing as well when he entered) but I am sure that if Clive was given the chance after the tour, his drumming was also still valued; Bruce and Adrian's comments about the quality of Clive's drumming still stand.

This is an issue that I find somewhat controversial. I still can accept it, because Nicko made the band better (that must have been the main argument for the decision).

The second issue, leaving out something in a biography because it puts Maiden in a bad light... well, that may sound logical, but I think it would suit the band better to be open about it. Trying to hide something, resulting in an ex-bandmember being in the bad light, puts a band in a worse light in my opinion. I find this harder to accept. Time to update the biography.
 
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Forostar said:
It's not unusual that someone's playing gets temporarily worse after the death of their father (especially on that age!)
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It sounds like his playing had started to decline before the death though.
 
Where and how do you read that? I might have missed it but I didn't see that. Haven't heard it in the bootlegs either.
 
Keep in mind that Adrian and Clive were good friends and went out together while on TNOTB tour in America. I don't think that Adrian would just lie to cover up Steve's story, especially when Stratton and Di'Anno were also sacked in a 2 year timeframe.
 
Is it possible that the truth lies somewhere in between?
 
This is a difficult subject to get my head around. On the one hand I really liked Clive's drumming and would have liked to see him stay on longer but on the other hand I really like Nicko and his drumming is also really good. He opened his recording account in spectacular style on where eagles dare.

One thing that I do know is that Steve Harris must have had a solid reason for changing the drummer. He has been so driven over the years to make maiden the biggest and best band possible that he must have thought Nicko was the drummer to help him do this and not Clive.

Reading the snippets above concerning Clive's recollections I tend to believe that his drumming was starting to suffer due to his drinking and partying. The reason I say that is when Clive states he did no more drinking and partying than any other band member. That may well be true but the drummer has the most physically demanding job in any band and it would be more noticeable during a gig that a drummer was half cut as opposed to one of the guitarists for example. No doubt Steve could have timed things better due to Clive's dads death but after only recently sacking Paul dianno for his excessive behaviour Steve no doubt felt that Nicko could handle himself a lot better around the drinking and partying than Clive could and when Nicko proved himself after stepping in for Clive when he had to go to his dad's funeral it probably seemed the logical step to bring Nicko in full time.

It could be argued that Clive got a bum deal and could have been given an opportunity to get himself together but we will never really know what happened behind the scenes and maybe he had been spoken to a few times before the sacking.
 
I decided to go looking for when Ronald Burr died, to see approximately what dates Clive might have taken off, and I can find no obituary for him in the various obituary databases. Anyone have any idea when this happened?
 
I never heard of Nicko filling in on the number of the beast tour. Is there any boots of these gigs with Nicko playing?
 
LooseCannon said:
I decided to go looking for when Ronald Burr died, to see approximately what dates Clive might have taken off, and I can find no obituary for him in the various obituary databases. Anyone have any idea when this happened?
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I was just looking for the same. Can't find anything about a date. Only that it happened during the summer of 1982: "Much has been written about his split from Maiden, during an exhaustive US tour in the summer of 82. And most of it, he says dismissively, is hogwash."

And that Clive was gone for approximately 2 weeks:

"A US road map dotted with gigs lay in front of Maiden, but at that moment it didn’t matter, he says. “I had to get home.” Everyone seemed fine with that, he remembers. Go home, they said. Be with your family. Clive flew back to London on Concorde.
Maiden brought in former Trust drummer Nicko McBrain as a replacement so the tour could continue, the show could go on. Clive and Nicko were mates. No worries. Everything was cool.
“I knew Nicko,” Clive says. Nice bloke. Good drummer. At a number of earlier shows, Nicko had dressed up as Eddie to terrorise the crowd. “He loved the band, he loved being part of it all. And the rest of the band liked him.” Clive was about to find out just how much.
So Clive flew home, went to his father’s funeral, spent some time with his family, and two weeks later flew back to the States to join up with Maiden, who were criss-crossing America supporting Rainbow, Scorpions, .38 Special and Judas Priest."

If you look at the tour dates from the Beast On The Road tour, there is a whole slate of summers shows in the US starting in May, through June, July and August.

http://www.ironmaidencommentary.com/?url=tour03_notb/dates03_notb&lang=eng&link=tours

Getting the date of his father's death would definitely help. But as I can see on the Maiden Commentary most of those Summer 82 shows in the US have no bootleg....
 
I remember Steve 'Loopy' Newhouse having something to say about finding it difficult to get along with Clive for some reason. I'll try to hunt that article out.
 
Well I found this. An article from the magazine Sounds in 1982. Reprinted here. It doesn't actually say anything about Clive or the death of his father. But it's very interesting nevertheless because its a tour report from Texas 1982. Exactly around the time where it would have happened. Now, either it hadn't happened yet when the journalist caught up with Maiden in Texas, which would have been early August (according to the tour dates on Maiden Commentary) OR they kept it under wraps and just didn't mention it. Fun report nevertheless, cool photos too...

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/aug/26/iron-maiden-takes-texas-1982-rocks-backpages

"
What’s equally amazing, considering the energy and enthusiasm that they’re injecting into every show, is that Iron Maiden are currently six months into their world tour and three months into the US part. They’ve played 115 concerts so far, with 90 more to go, swapping supports with Rainbow and .38 Special for the huge (like US top 10) Huns a couple of months back.

They stick with em till September 11, when they find a new headliner till October before heading out to Japan. Reading is the only respite of Merrie England sanity till the planned UK tour next March."

It was probably some time after his fathers death then....this being 3 months into the US tour. At least we know that Clive was back behind the drummers early August. So that leaves June or July?
 
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4th of December 1982, one of the last gigs of the tour.
Nicko filling on the TNOTB tour I call bullshit.

Edit in regards to summer shows :


Toledo 7th of August.

Edit #2 : There's an approx two week bootleg gap between Long Island (30th June) to Seattle (16th July). Clive could've been in England then. But still, about 35-40% of the tour was after Seattle date and Clive certainly played those shows.
 
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SixesAlltheway said:
Getting the date of his father's death would definitely help. But as I can see on the Maiden Commentary most of those Summer 82 shows in the US have no bootleg....
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Without being disrespectful to the man who created the wonderful Commentary, it's a good place for bootleg information, but definitely not the best. Traders that specialize in Maiden often are. For example ead666
 
Zare said:
Without being disrespectful to the man who created the wonderful Commentary, it's a good place for bootleg information, but definitely not the best. Traders that specialize in Maiden often are. For example ead666
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Mostly because the information is not maintained.

I guess my supreme skepticism here is that nobody, anywhere, has noted that Clive's dad died during this tour, except Clive himself. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it should be noted somewhere. Some Maiden fan from 1982 should be bragging about "seeing Nicko play with Maiden before he was in Maiden".
 
LooseCannon said:
I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it should be noted somewhere. Some Maiden fan from 1982 should be bragging about "seeing Nicko play with Maiden before he was in Maiden".
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So, do you believe Clive's dad died during the tour and Nicko filled in, or not? Or are you undecided? It seems odd to me to question Clive's testimony that his dad died during the tour. I struggle to imagine anyone lieing about the death of a parent.
 
2Mins said:
So, do you believe Clive's dad died during the tour and Nicko filled in, or not? Or are you undecided? It seems odd to me to question Clive's testimony that his dad died during the tour. I struggle to imagine anyone lieing about the death of a parent.
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I don't doubt it. I just find it odd that this very important detail was missing from the narrative for 30 years.
 
There's a well known story of Nicko playing wearing an eddie mask as his first gig. Surely if he'd already filled in for two weeks previously then it couldn't have been his first gig?
 
To add a minor point to the discussion, Bruce himself said that his drumming was irregular. Sometimes he would play the song at a normal (i.e. fast) pace; sometimes he would slow down to the point of Bruce even pretending to fall asleep at that side of drumkit. And Brigantium is right, Loopy has written several times that Clive was an asshole to him. When I first read that story of his father's death, I was shocked. Given that Rod was not really enthusiastic about Nicko joining and that several band members (most of all Adrian) have said how much Steve loved to play with Nicko, the decision was entirely Steve's. I have tried to check out if Trust had played summer gigs when Maiden was touring America. Apparently, they didn't: they had planned a Reading gig in august, and it was cancelled.
 
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