Iron Maiden is viewed by many as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s most egregious snubs, given the band’s crucial role in shaping and popularizing Heavy Metal music worldwide.
Pioneers of the New Wave of the British Heavy Metal movement, Maiden’s journey to becoming one of the most influential groups in Metal history began in East London in 1975. The group rose in the U.K. music scene and nabbed a record deal with EMI, but the band’s legacy was cemented when singer Paul Di’Anno was kicked out of the band in the early ’80s and replaced with Bruce Dickinson. His first album with Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast, was a global sensation and is considered one of the great Rock albums of all time. The band would continue to expand upon its blueprint of progressive song structures, epic lyrics and sky-high operatic vocals on subsequent albums until Dickinson left Maiden in 1993. His break from the group (which recorded a pair of albums with a different vocalist) didn’t last long and he was back before the end of the decade to guide the group into the new millennium. The band has released five studio albums since then (as well as a handful of EPs and live albums) and remained one of Metal’s biggest touring attractions.
Earlier this year during a spoken word tour in Australia, Dickinson had some choice words for the Rock Hall. Dickinson said, “Absolutely,” when he was asked if he thought his band should be in the Hall, then added that he feels the whole institution is “an utter and complete load of bollocks.”
“It’s run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn’t know Rock & Roll if it hit them in the face,” he continued. “They need to stop taking Prozac and start drinking fucking beer.”
Maiden’s forthcoming North American tour, part of a global jaunt dubbed the “Legacy of the Beast World Tour,” will feature production and a setlist inspired by the band’s Legacy of the Beast mobile video game. The game allows users to take Eddie, the group’s longtime monster mascot, to different game-level realms.
In a press release, Dickinson said the tour will feature the band’s “most spectacular and certainly the most complex show to date.”
“We’ve got all kinds of crazy things going on,” the singer said, “including a replica Spitfire plane dominating the stage during ‘Aces High,’ tons of pyro, a giant Icarus, muskets, claymores and some truly marvelous flame-throwers which I have a hell of a lot of fun with, as you will see. And of course we have Eddie, as you’ve never seen him before.”
Catch Iron Maiden this Thursday, Aug. 15 at Riverbend Music Center.
This article appears in Aug 7-14, 2019.