Iron Maiden Song By Song Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Zoot Marimba, Nov 8, 2017.

  1. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    Prowler '88:

    Yeah, this is not a good version. As skilled as Bruce is, this song needs a voice with grit to it, and that isn't Bruce, as great as he is.
     
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  2. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    Here is the Soundhouse Tapes version:

    This may very well be my favorite version of the song, I really like the slower tempo, works well for this tune.
     
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  3. ArpMoog

    ArpMoog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    Great opening track and one of my favorite Maiden tunes.
    Ive never bought the NO punk influence from Steve its all over this record in energy and attitude.
     
  4. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    In fairness to Steve, I think he's being truthful when he says he hates punk. He's a technical proghead, he wants everything perfect. That said, certainly Paul was a punk guy, and I think that was part of why he was hired, because as Andy Summers said once, at that time in England, you had to be at least a little bit punk if you wanted to go anywhere.
     
  5. MusicMatt

    MusicMatt Quality over Quantity

    Location:
    California, U.S.A.
    Prowler was always one of my favorites from the debut and although I prefer Bruce singing it, you can’t deny the raw intensity of the original with Paul on vocals.
     
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  6. ArpMoog

    ArpMoog Forum Resident

    Location:
    Detroit
    For me its what makes those first two records so fantastic. The marriage of Metal,Prog and Punk aggression.
     
  7. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    Totally, and I love how such seemingly different styles meld together, totally work, and actually boost each other. A lot of my favorite bands and music is made up of people with different sensibilities. That may cause tension, but often, the results are just sublime. No matter how much Dianno and Arry butted heads, to me at least, they really brought the best out in each other.
     
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  8. MusicMatt

    MusicMatt Quality over Quantity

    Location:
    California, U.S.A.
    This is one of the best concerts the band has done. They were on fire!
     
  9. Man at C&A

    Man at C&A Senior Member

    Location:
    England
    Great thread! Thanks for starting it.

    How I Got Into Iron Maiden:

    I remember my Dad playing a few songs like Run To The Hills and Number Of The Beast when they were out. For me it started in 1985 when they showed a clip of the song Iron Maiden from the Live After Death video on The Tube - a great music show in the UK. I loved it! I went to Woolworths thinking of buying it, but it was an expensive double album. I saw the tape of the debut cheap on the budget Fame label and it had Iron Maiden on it, so I bought it. I had no idea that it was a different singer. I was 11 at the time.

    I got it home and Prowler started up. I absolutely loved it! This tape was one of my most played in my youth. What a start! I became a Heavy Metal fan throughout my early teens and it was this tape that started it.

    I've read the band criticise the sound of the debut a lot over the years, but I really like it and this is still one of my favourite Maiden albums. Prowler is still an exciting opener. I never liked the Bruce sang Prowler '88. It loses the youthful energy and aggression and Brucie oversings it.

    I got more Maiden albums by the end of 1985 and Live After Death on double vinyl for Christmas that year.
     
  10. Holy Diver

    Holy Diver Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    I love Prowler. Heard it yesterday. Such a great tune to open the S/T with. I just wish the album was produced by Martin Birch. Steve said they didn't think they could get him. Martin said they could've. Such a shame. For the record, Paul is not a big punk fan. He said, "punk is metal played badly." Take that as you will. :)
     
  11. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    I'm not saying Paul didn't say that but I've read him saying he came from punk, and he referred to himself as punk in that Dickinson rant from a couple years ago (the one @ArpMoog posted). Here is an interview I found where he says he came from punk:
    Metal-Rules.com: Interview with Paul Di'Anno in Stockholm, Sweden
     
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  12. hiddman

    hiddman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Manchester, KY
    I absolutely love this song. You can't help but move, strutting even while sitting down. I had never heard the '88 version until now. It just doesn't work. Like Pavarotti singing AC/DC or something.
     
  13. Holy Diver

    Holy Diver Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    I think he said it on That Metal Show. He's probably went back and forth several times. :shrug:
     
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  14. Zoot Marimba

    Zoot Marimba And I’m The Critic Of The Group Thread Starter

    Location:
    Savannah, Georgia
    Same with him bashing Bruce in that rant, but also praising Bruce in the Early Years doc. He just seems like an angry guy, but regardless of his personal weaknesses, that doesn't take away from what he did with Maiden.:edthumbs:
     
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  15. GodShifter

    GodShifter Forum Member

    Location:
    Dallas, TX, USA
    I just listened to the s/t yesterday as I mentioned earlier.

    "Prowler" is not a great song, but it's a good, energetic opener. It's kind of an ugly tune (and I don't mean that by the subject matter it covers), but it packs a wallop as openers on albums are supposed to do.

    I gets me thinking about Harris's visibly bristling at the notion that his band was influenced by punk. There's no doubt in my mind it is due to the energy and reckless abandon of the music, but the difference being, and Harris would probably point this out, that Iron Maiden's music was extremely well played and thought out. Never the less, it's there whether Harris wants to admit it or not.

    Thinking about the punk thing a bit further, I think it's interesting to look at where Iron Maiden's sound came from. I mean let's be real: no music is completely originally and created in a vacuum. So what were Maiden's influences? I think there's definitely some Judas Priest in their sound, Harris's bass playing seems to be very Jack Bruce inspired (but taken to the next level and beyond), but the guitar playing is still very blues based in its approach. That's just indicative of the time the players in the band (namely Murray to use as an example for practical reasons) came from in terms of their early influences. Never the less, Iron Maiden is definitely a heavy metal band (a huge influence on "power metal"), but like all rock music, the origins are still blues based.

    But yeah, Burr's on fire on this and we're first introduced to Steve Harris' kind of blueprint of songwriting: writing off some variant of a C to E to D approach in terms of the structure of the song. Of course, he'd add different notes off the scale, but, for a lot of Maiden's material, this was how he wrote (writes) his songs. He writes on the bass and had probably only has a minimal (if any) knowledge of true theory, so he wrote/writes in patterns he understands and then takes those and varies them up. There's of course a lot of speed, dexterity, and intricacy added, but it's still a fairly normal pattern of chording.
     
    Last edited: Nov 9, 2017
  16. StuJM84

    StuJM84 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    Love Prowler, it just kicks off the S/T debut in such a way that if you didn't know what you were getting into from the cover, then its pretty clear from those opening chords. It has that rough around the edges sound that makes it stand out and make you take notice, but feels well thought out at the same time, this is a band that knows how it wants to sound and nothing is accidental.
     
  17. Holy Diver

    Holy Diver Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    No doubt. I would never replace Paul with Bruce on the first two. He rules on those.
     
  18. Frosst

    Frosst Vinyl-obsessive kiddo

    Location:
    Sweden
    Finally! Iron Maiden is my favourite band so this will be fun. I always knew about Iron Maiden but had never listened to them. Run To The Hills was the only song I knew, and I loved it (still love it to this day, its my favourite song by IM). When I got Spotify a couple years ago the first song I added was Run To The Hills and the Number Of The Beast and so my obsession began. Although I think I have to tell you exactly how I heard about them in the first time;

    I remember as a young kid visiting a store with my dad to buy a poster for my room. The poster I saw that got me interested was not your average poster but instead an Iron Maiden poster; Number Of The Beast Poster to be exact. I immediately got interested in its cool artwork which was the NOTB cover art and asked my dad if we could buy it. He knew about IM but I didn't. We bought it and even to this day it hangs proudly on my wall over the bed. We bought a Iron Maiden cd too and listened to it in the car o nbthe way home. This was the first time I heard about Iron maiden and actually listened to them. Don't remember which song it was but I believe it was Run To The Hills hence the reason that was the only song I knew by the band. Really liked what I heard on that cd but then I forgot about it. I wasn't interested in music at the time so for me the poster was just art on my wall. Until a couple of years ago that is when my music interest started. Iron Maiden immediately became the band (along with Pet Shop Boys) that I listened to the most. The Number Of The Beast has been my favourite album by them since discovering them followed by Powerslave and the rest of their 80's albums. Later on I discovered the reunion era-albums which I like a lot (although I still prefer the 80's albums). The Book Of Souls had already been released when this happened.

    There you have it. Iron Maiden has been with me through the last year or so and I could never be more grateful. Used to visit a IM fan forum quite heavily but that kind of stopped. It was also because of IM that I discovered the metal genre which I'm a big fan of. Up the Irons!
     
  19. Man at C&A

    Man at C&A Senior Member

    Location:
    England
    It's great that such a big Maiden fan can have a Pet Shop Boys - Behaviour avatar. I like both a lot too.
     
  20. Frosst

    Frosst Vinyl-obsessive kiddo

    Location:
    Sweden
    Bruce is a far better vocalist and the Bruce-80's era is my favourite era of Iron Maiden. I do like Di'Anno too, he's great, and the first two IM albums are amazing. Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son is a masterpiece of an album and while I do consider Somewhere In Time to be the worst album of the Bruce 80's-era it is a masterpiece too.
     
  21. SizzleVonSizzleton

    SizzleVonSizzleton The Last Yeti

    Prowler is a song I didn't get to for quite awhile. As I said I got onboard after Paul was gone and since this song wasn't on Live After Death it remained unheard for a few years.

    One of the things I like about it is the choppy way the intro is played. It seems like a song where modern sensibility would be to just hammer those chords identical each time (with a ridiculous amount of distortion) and that would be way less interesting.

    The song (and album) manages to sound like it was done on the cheap and yet it retains a high quality of playing and execution.

    Even though I said I often prefer Bruce's interpretations of the first two albums I do remember (having not heard it for a long time) that the studio remake of Prowler is devoid of anything that made the original great. I know it was linked above and I'll give it a listen sometime today but it's really not necessary as the original is so good.
     
  22. Frosst

    Frosst Vinyl-obsessive kiddo

    Location:
    Sweden
    That's because I originally had a Iron Maiden related avatar but decided to change it up a little. Love both bands just as much. I do however have a quote from Dickinson as my signature so that has to amount to something, right? :laugh::D

    Maybe I will change my avatar soon in order to keep up the variation :)
     
  23. Frosst

    Frosst Vinyl-obsessive kiddo

    Location:
    Sweden
    Well if you claim to be a metal-head but doesn't like Iron Maiden then you aren't a metal-head in my book :D
     
  24. The Slipperman

    The Slipperman Forum Resident

    How I got into Maiden: In 1984 I had never heard any of Maiden's music but a friend of mine got Powerslave on LP for Christmas that year but had no record player to play it on. He asked me to record it on cassette for him so I did and I listened as I recorded it. It blew my teenage mind and I immediately made another recording for me. Powerslave is probably still my favorite album of theirs to this day and is the only album I have really gotten version obsessed about. Every version I ever bought didn't sound as good as that original LP so I finally paid the money on Ebay a couple of years ago for an original issue LP and was very happy. So glad my friend's mom made a mistake in format buying!
     
  25. PJayBe

    PJayBe Forum Resident

    A guy in my regular record shop in Blackpool in my college days, told me I'd enjoy a new album he had in. He was right, and I became a Maiden fan that day.

    Strangely they are a band who I can convince myself I shouldn't like but do. The drums and bass are way too busy with at times no straight rhythm. The vocals are too wordy. The guitars are left trying to hold down the rhythm for the band but don't always manage it. And yet, I still love them!!!!
     

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