Iron Maiden at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, WA. Bruce Dickenson in front of Eddie with a crystal ball performing “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”. Photo by Jared Endicott from his Droid, July 30, 2012.
At about midday on March 14th, 2008 I was wandering by myself through the Museum of Natural History in New York City. I was killing time before I needed to make my way over to Central Station and a train ride across the Hudson River to New Jersey, for my first ever Iron Maiden concert. I had wanted to see Maiden so bad that I was traveling alone from Seattle to New Jersey for the opportunity. As I meandered into the museum’s halls of fossils and Dinosaur bones, I took off my sweatshirt to reveal the Iron Maiden t-shirt I was wearing underneath, with artwork for their single “The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg”, an incarnation of the band’s skeleton-faced mascot Eddie, dressed in tattered fatigues, dogs tags hanging around his neck, raising a pick-axe above his head, cast in a blue moonlit cemetery, digging up the remains interned below the tombstone of Benjamin Breeg. The reassembled bones of Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus Rex complemented Eddie’s skeleton face, sympathetic reincarnations posing undead, a macabre aesthetic amongst the living.
As I stopped in front of the Triceratops to take a photo I was grabbed on the shoulder by a gentleman with an eager smile. He burst out “Iron Maiden!” It turns out he was from Bogota, Colombia, visiting New York City on vacation. He told me that he had tried to see Maiden in his home city earlier in the tour, but that conflicts between the massive crowd of fans and the police had prevented him from attending. When he found out that I was on my way to their New Jersey show that very night he could not believe his fortune and vowed to find himself a ticket. We chatted casually about our respective travel experiences and wished each other a safe journey. I don’t know if my fellow traveler ever made it to the Maiden show, but I sure hope he did.
This experience felt quite extraordinary to me. Back home in Seattle I am usually the biggest Iron Maiden fan in the room, so I never would have expected such a reception out of a guy from Colombia regarding my t-shirt. I contemplated the meaning of my run-in as I journeyed to the concert. The Maiden show that night was incredible, with a classic setlist embodying their Somewhere Back in Time Tour, they played the expected standards such as “Run to the Hills”, “Wasted Years” and “Fear of the Dark” along with rare epics like “Moonchild” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. It was definitely worth a trip across the country.
Not that I didn’t recognize it before, but I was beginning to really understand that Iron Maiden is a global phenomenon. In fact, these titans of heavy metal are bigger worldwide than they have ever been, with generations of dedicated fans spanning the globe. Iron Maiden has sold more than 70 million records (“List of best-selling”), and in 2010 their fifteenth studio album The Final Frontier debuted at the #1 chart position in 28 countries. Fans in Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the U.K. demanded the shipment of 800,000 copies of the album in the first week. It should be noted that in the U.S. the album peaked only at #4 on Billboard. Their forty-first single, from their fifteenth album, a song called “El Dorado”, was the band’s first ever Grammy win, for Best Metal Performance (“The Final Frontier”), an instant Maiden classic about the banksters and the 2008 financial meltdown.
Of course, Iron Maiden is not the only music artists to reach such heights of success, many other legends certainly surpass them in album sales and Grammy awards, and their star power has been subsequently overshadowed by the likes of Madonna, U2, Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Metallica, and dozens of other popular performers. Nevertheless, Iron Maiden breeds a special kind of fan, a community of like-minded individuals who geek out on things like complex drumming on a big kit, chunky galloping bass lines, melodic three-part guitar harmonies, operatic vocals, long musical interludes, lyrical storytelling, and Maiden mascot Eddie’s appearance in his many thematic incarnations over the decades. I am one of these die-hards, and before my encounter with a Colombian fan I never appreciated the way Iron Maiden fans, and fans of heavy metal generally, from completely different continents, could so easily identify with each other, like one massive global tribe. I realized that Iron Maiden, and other globetrotting performers are more than just artists, they are also cultural ambassadors.
Iron Maiden’s Influence on Global Culture
It was not always so obvious that Maiden would be so huge. Iron Maiden’s third album was their first #1 in the U.K., their first album with legendary singer Bruce Dickenson, provocatively titled The Number of the Beast, and featuring the single of the same name. It has achieved great critical acclaim, is considered to be the turning point in their amazing success, one of the all-time greatest heavy metal albums ever, and spawned virtually the only Iron Maiden singles that rock radio in Seattle is willing to play, the title track and the iconic “Run to the Hills”. In the U.S. the album sparked a dramatic controversy involving evangelicals, who accused the band of devil worship, protested their concerts, and burned Maiden albums.
The references to the Book of Revelation in the title of the record, cover art featuring their mascot Eddie puppeteering a marionette devil, and the vocal refrain of “Six…six…six…the number of the Beast!” in the title track were of particular concern to the religious right in America. At first glance the evidence of nefariousness may there, but deeper inspection will show that the song “The Number of the Beast” is about a dreamlike nightmare scenario from the perspective of a narrator who is shocked and horrified. A closer reading and contextualization of the lyrics reveals the song to be nothing more than the band’s trademark storytelling. Other songs on the album, such as “The Prisoner” and “Children of the Damned”, pay homage to an old television show and a book respectively. Today there is virtually no controversy surrounding Iron Maiden and devil worship.
In 1985 the band released a documentary called Iron Maiden Behind the Iron Curtain which chronicled the first leg of their World Slavery Tour in support of their fifth studio album Powerslave. The tour kicked off in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and demonstrated that there were even rabid Maiden fans living under communist rule and Soviet domination. While not unheard of, musical tours behind the Iron Curtain were rare. When Iron Maiden arrived in Warsaw they are mobbed by a throng young male devotees outside their hotel, jumping up and down and shaking their tour bus, with one shirtless and bouquet wielding maniac embracing and kissing Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain. As the band traveled through the Eastern Bloc they managed to crash a large Polish wedding at which they performed a raucous version of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” for the astonished wedding party, and a soccer game was played between Iron Maiden and the Polish Rock Press and Musician All-Stars.
Roman Rogowiecki, a Polish Rock Journalist explained the jubilance of the fans, “this is very important in their life, definitely, because this is the only thing they got actually, right now in Poland.” He said that albums were hard to come by in the country and that one album in 1984 Poland cost about 1/3 of an average month’s salary. One young Polish fan summed up the excitement for the Maiden concert, “I think it will be the best show I have ever seen, and will see!” The fan did not have a ticket yet, but his enthusiasm won him and his friends a chance to see the performance of their dreams (Iron Maiden Behind). I can’t help but wonder that seeing a rebellious band like Iron Maiden live has real impact to hearts and minds. It is fitting that they traveled through Soviet communist territory in 1984 on the World Slavery Tour. It is not a stretch to suppose that this was an indicator, if not a factor, in the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. Years later, after the fall of the Soviets, the Maiden song “Mother Russia” ended with the lines, “Mother Russia, dance of the Tsars, hold up your heads, remember who are. Can you release the anger the grief, can you be happy now your people are free.”
While the fall of communism has catalyzed an era of globalization there are still regions where Western culture has been fiercely resisted. Youth in Northern Africa and the Middle East (MENA), living under repressive regimes, have begun to embrace heavy metal more and more. The amazing book Heavy Metal Islam, by Mark LeVine, depicts the struggles of metalheads in the MENA, within the context of their conservative cultures and their religious duties. The cover of the book features the photo of a young Arab woman wearing and Iron Maiden t-shirt along with her appropriate Islamic hijab, a phenomenon referred to as muhajababes.
To me the book offers a hopeful vision about how listening to metal music and playing in metal bands is an indicator of democratic sentiments and the natural urge to freedom. Iron Maiden’s website called my attention to this book after they played the 2007 Desert Rock Festival in Dubai to fans from the U.A.E. Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Oman, Palestine, Turkey, Saudi, Lebanon, Kuwait, India, Armenia, and Moldovia (Smallwood). In the documentary Heavy Metal Bagdad, the lead singer of Acrassicauda, the only Iraqi heavy metal band, held up a copy of Iron Maiden’s Death of the Road live album and said, “this is what life looks like here.” (LeVine 272). This passage from LeVine’s book highlights the impact that Iron Maiden specifically has for metal fans in the Islamic world:
Perhaps the best indication of how strongly the country’s metal community-and, by extension, a large share of the rest of Iran’s younger generation-oppose the ethos of the Revolution comes from the popularity of pioneering British metal band Iron Maiden. “For sure, Iron Maiden would have to be the most important band for us,” explained Armin Ghaouf, a twenty-eight-year-old mechanical engineer and guitar player who’s been on the metal scene since its inception…Sitting next to him, Ali Azhari agreed: “Maiden gives me a vision at a time when the chief symbol of Iranian culture is that of the martyr. Maiden is so visual-just think of the album covers with their tanks and other images of war and death-it’s like a dream combined with music. The band allows you to imagine being somewhere else you can’t physically be.” (LeVine 184)
Whether directly affecting change or just harbingers of it, the appeal of Iron Maiden to people living under autocratic rule is surely something to consider. They played behind the Iron Curtain and within a decade the Berlin Wall had fallen, they played the Middle East for the first time in 2007 and within a decade the Arab Spring was underway. Touring musicians and performers like Iron Maiden are artistic ambassadors that serve to break down the barriers of culture. For me, learning about Maiden fans in other parts of the world helps me to identify with these other places and cultures in ways I would never have thought.
Iron Maiden at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, WA. Photos by Jared Endicott, July 30, 2012.
Iron Maiden and Heideggerian Authenticity
Why do people all around the world, from different creeds, cultures, religions, and generations love Iron Maiden so much? It’s not like Maiden has widespread mass appeal generally, even in the US , and even amongst heavy metal act, where they are outshined on radio waves by the likes of Ozzy, AC/DC, Metallica, and many other hard rock acts. Some classic Maiden tunes get their fair share of radio play, such as “Run to the Hills” and “The Trooper”, but for the most part the Maiden catalog does not fit the standard format and appeal. In fact, Yahoo! Music’s list of day on June 17th, 2008 lists Iron Maiden as only #10 in “The 25 Best Heavy Metal Bands”, saying:
Iron Maiden: Just caught a live concert of theirs from 1985 on–where else?–a sports network. Great, since the music networks can’t be bothered. And boy did these guys look kind of funny with all that billowing smoke and weird prancing around–and those spandex tights. In some respects, almost as good as Spinal Tap, and in some ways better since they were serious. “Rime Of The Ancient Mariner” is ponderous, but the hoof-beating gallop of “The Trooper” and just about anything from The Number Of The Beast makes up for their inherent corniness. (O’Connor)
The thing is, about authentic Iron Maiden fans all over the globe, we don’t want a Maiden show saturated with radio hits. We want epics, long instrumental interludes, unconventional rhythms, and dramatic theatrics from Iron Maiden, not canned sound and copied style. It’s certainly not for everyone, but that’s the point then isn’t it, Maiden fans aren’t like everyone. As I have been contemplating the enigma of why I enjoy Iron Maiden so much, why I never tire of listening to their music, and why I think so many others share this affinity, I realized that authenticity was the allure.
Those more typical sorts, who are not, or who are only casual Iron Maiden fans, may agree with the assessment that on the whole Maiden is “ponderous” with “inherent corniness”, and in this view my characterization of “authentic” may not seem suitable. Authenticity, in the way I am thinking about it, comes from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and the existentialist views from his book Being and Time. According to Heidegger the normal mode of our existence is inauthentic, which is not to demean it, just to recognize a fact about our everyday way of being in the world. We spend most of our time falling into daily routines and tasks, indulging our surface curiosities without wondering too deeply about the meaning of it all, and we interact mostly within a context of idle conversations about less than profound ideas. Inauthentic modes of existence are necessary parts of life, in order to live with others, but at least sometimes we need to live authentically in our existence is to be truly human (Solomon).
Authenticity to Heidegger means recognizing the our potential is unfulfilled and there is more that we could be doing. There is a conscience, a sense of guilt, that tells us when we are not living our life to the fullest, not being true to our own hopes and aspirations. Founding member of Iron Maiden, bass player, and prominent song writer Steve Harris explained back in 1984 the choice to play the style of heavy metal that made Maiden unique, “if you write songs or whatever, or if you’re playin’ songs that you don’t believe in, how do you expect them to get into it and believe in it?…There’s no way I’d go on stage and play what I didn’t want to play, ya know. Even some other forms of rock music. I wouldn’t do it, ya know. I would rather sweep the streets, and I did in fact.” (Iron Maiden Behind) The integrity and resoluteness of Maiden’s musical form, expressed by Harris’ after they had released five studio albums, has not been betrayed ten albums later. Iron Maiden’s fifteenth studio album, The Final Frontier, is right up there with some of the best releases to date in my opinion, with instants classics like “The Talisman”, “Coming Home”, and “When the Wild Wind Blows” maintaining true Maiden form. Singer Bruce Dickenson epitomes an authentic life in the Heideggerian sense, persisting not only in the rock star dream but also in pursuits such a competitive fencing, screenwriting, and even became a commercial pilot.
Another important feature for Heidegger’s authenticity is the notion of being-unto-death. Both Heidegger and Iron Maiden have been interpreted at times as having a fetish with death, but this is mistaken, a proper reckoning of death is a needed for authentic existence, but this is not about glorification of death. We are all going to die, it is a fact about us that is guaranteed, yet the details, the how and when, are not known to us, presenting possibilities for life with death as our most necessary possibility in the long run. The authentic person must truly appreciate the fact of their death, assured yet indeterminate, and a healthy understanding allows us to see our whole life in the perspective of its finality. It is from this point that who we are, who we were, all that we will be, the entirety of our direct contribution to earthly existence will have reached its necessary completion. Being-unto-death allows us to place a deeper meaning on all that we do, and drives us forward into an authentic way of living (Solomon). Many of our colloquial saying express a sentiment like Heidegger’s, we are told that we only have one life to live and we are urged to live every day as if it’s our last.
I probably don’t need to demonstrate the many references to death in Iron Maiden’s songs and symbolism, after all their name is shared by a medieval torture device, a coffin with spikes on the inside. Their mascot Eddie the Head is a zombie faced beastie who dons thematic costumes for albums, singles, and tour legs, a prominent fixture of Maiden clothing and merchandise. Eddie has been dressed up as a mommy for the album Powerslave, a cyborg bounty hunter for the album Somewhere in Time, a charging British redcoat for “The Trooper”, and even a moose riding Mounty for the Canadian leg of their current Maiden England Tour. And Eddie always makes an appearance during Iron Maiden shows, a giant, lumbering, and appropriately dressed zombie who walks out on stage to do battle with guitarist Janick Gers, and as a massive head and torso that rises from behind the stage to tour over the band and audience.
Iron Maiden at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, WA. Photos by Jared Endicott, July 30, 2012.
Iron Maiden has a disproportionate amount of songs about fighting and dying in war or combat, including “Invaders”, “Run to the Hills”, “Die With Your Boots On”, “The Trooper”, “Where Eagles Dare”, “Aces High”, “Flash of the Blade” , “The Duelists”, “Tailgunner”, “Run Silent Run Deep”, “Afraid to Shoot Strangers”, “Fortunes of War”, “The Aftermath”, “The Mercenary”, “Paschendale”, “These Colours Don’t Run”, “The Longest Day”, and “Mother of Mercy”. These songs are not a celebration of war, but statements about the grim reality of war, and they offer stoic introspection, a way of dealing with this dark but very real side of humanity.
Maiden also has a good amount of tracks that deal with potential end-of-days scenarios, such as “The Number of the Beast”, “Revelations”, “2 Minutes to Midnight”, “Fates Warning”, “The Fallen Angel”, “Brighter Than and Thousand Suns”, and my new Maiden favorite “When the Wild Wind Blows”. There are a good many Iron Maiden songs that deal with death, dying, and the afterlife through rich storytelling, like “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “Purgatory”, “Killers”, “Still Life”, “Powerslave”, “Heaven Can Wait”, “Infinite Dreams”, “The Clairvoyant”, “Only the Good Die Young”, “No Prayer for the Dying”, “Be Quick or Be Dead”, “Dance of Death”, “The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg”, and the existentialist epic “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. This is last tune has is a standard at Maiden shows and its lyrics capture exactly the sort of comparison I find between them and Heidegger’s being-unto-death, so I will let these lyrics speak for themselves:
Hallowed Be Thy Name
I’m waiting in my cold cell when the bell begins to chime
Reflecting on my past life and it doesn’t have much time
‘Cause at 5 o’clock they take me to the Gallows Pole
The sands of time for me are running low
When the priest comes to read me the last rites
I take a look through the bars at the last sights
Of a world that has gone very wrong for me
Can it be that there’s some sort of an error
Hard to stop the surmounting terror
Is it really the end not some crazy dream?
Somebody please tell me that I’m dreaming
It’s not easy to stop from screaming
But words escape me when I try to speak
Tears they flow but why am I crying?
After all I am not afraid of dying
Don’t I believe that there never is an end?
As the guards march me out to the courtyard
Someone calls from a cell “God be with you”
If there’s a God then why has he let me die?
As I walk all my life drifts before me
And though the end is near I’m not sorry
Catch my soul ‘cause it’s willing to fly away
Mark my words believe my soul lives on
Don’t worry now that I have gone
I’ve gone beyond to seek the truth
When you know that your time is close at hand
Maybe then you’ll begin to understand
Life down there is just a strange illusion
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Hallowed be Thy Name
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Hallowed be Thy Name
Iron Maiden lyrics often present the listener with deep existential questions, the sort of philosophizing that can be frightening to some, but which Heidegger thought we needed to do for the sake of our own authenticity. Iron Maiden asks these deep questions against the backdrop of a highly dramatic performances, virtuoso instrumentation, profound subtext, and a flair for the theatrical that allows these difficult subjects to be delved into without being too serious about it. In the end Iron Maiden is about entertainment, about watching a performance that takes you out of your normal life to be immersed in visual and sonic representations of history, fantasy, and science fiction, with magnificently loud heavy metal music as its vehicle. However, when I compare the music of Maiden to most of the music that gets played on the radio these days, I can’t help but think that the other stuff is just idle chatter. This is why I think Iron Maiden and their fans are authentic in the Heideggerian sense.
Iron Maiden at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, WA. Photos by Jared Endicott, July 30, 2012.
Iron Maiden’s Global Domination
I thought it would be fun to use my day-job data crunching skills to find another way to compare Iron Maiden to some of the other hugely popular global performers that I mentioned earlier, Madonna, Rolling Stones, U2, Coldplay, and Metallica. It turns out Wikipedia is an excellent source of tabulated tour information for all of these acts, with the exception of some missing dates for Metallica, which I was able to view on Setlist.fm instead. I collected this data about the tours between 2000 to 2013, and using Excel I formatted it, filled in some blanks, and then aggregated the data in various ways with pivot tables. My hypothesis was that Iron Maiden has played more total countries than any of these other acts have in the last 13 years. My inference from this would be that Iron Maiden has physically touched the lives of their fans in at least as many locations around the globe as the most well known and publicized performers.
By my analysis, Iron Maiden was a close second to Coldplay in the total number of concerts performed since the year 2000, with Maiden at 538 to Coldplay at 545. None of the other acts broke 500 shows, and only Metallica rose above 400. To be fair, Madonna, Rolling Stones, and U2 likely sell out to larger venues in bigger markets and make more money, but Maiden still plays packed stadiums, and more total shows is sure to indicate a greater propensity to visit more places around the world. It turns out the total shows indicator is helpful, but not sufficient, Iron Maiden and Metallica are tied for the most countries played with 49 each, but Coldplay is down with U2 and the Rolling Stones with 31, 30, and 34 countries played, respectively. Even Madonna, global sensation that she is, has only visited a total of 37 countries since 2000. In terms of genres it would seem that heavy metal is the most globally diverse, a great triumph for a heterodox tribal system of fans in my view.
I wanted to find a way to break the tie between Iron Maiden and Metallica, to settle the issue as to which group of metals legends can claim the crown of global domination. The first tie-breaking metric I decided upon was the total number of unique countries visited, that is countries that have only been visited by the act in question in comparison to the other acts in my selected sample. This resulted in another, with each band having four unique countries, for Metallica it is Latvia, Lithuania, Guatemala, and Panama, and for Maiden it is Slovenia, Slovakia, Ecuador, and Indonesia. It seems the only way to settle the tie is to look at the share of time spent between different continents, and here it is still a toss-up, Metallica has played Africa and Maiden has not ventured to the continent at all, but Maiden has played a significantly greater share of their shows in Asia and South America. Still no clear global dominator, but I will give Iron Maiden a slight edge for the win (sorry, but the ref is biased), and overall a very large conquest for heavy metal. The next time someone tells you that U2 is the biggest act in the world, you should reply, “that depends on how you measure it. Iron Maiden has played more shows in more countries than U2, Coldplay, Rolling Stones, and even Madonna .”
Iron Maiden has something else that sets them apart from any other music artist out there. Their own custom Boeing 757 called Ed Force One, with Iron Maiden scrawled across the side, mascot Eddie the Head on the tail, and lead singer Bruce Dickenson piloting his band, crew, and gear in circles around the globe. Iron Maiden are truly diplomats, ambassadors of heavy metal culture, complete with their own airplane satirically named to sound like the U.S. President’s own Air Force One. At their inception Iron Maiden have foretold their own global dominance with the fan-familiar refrain from their self-titled track “Iron Maiden”, “the world, wherever, wherever you are. Iron Maiden’s gonna get you no matter how far.” Fifteen studio albums later and Iron Maiden are literally flying themselves around the world. Iron Maiden is what global domination looks and sounds like.
Up the Irons!!
Jared Roy Endicott
Iron Maiden at the White River Amphitheatre in Auburn, WA. Photos by Jared Endicott, July 30, 2012.
Works Cited
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. By John MacQuarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 1962. Print.
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Iron Maiden: Live After DeathIron Maiden: Behind the Iron Curtain. Dir. Kenny Feuerman. Perf. Iron Maiden. DVD. Emotion Pictures in Association with Sanctuary Music, Inc., and Capitol-EMI, 1985.
Iron Maiden: Flight 666. Dir. Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen. Perf. Iron Maiden. DVD. Banger Films, Inc., 2009.
LeVine, Mark. Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008. Print.
“List of Best-Selling Music Artists”. Wikipedia. Web. 31 Jul 2012.
“Category: Coldplay Concert Tours”. Wikipedia. Web. 25 Jul 2012.
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“Rolling Stones Concerts”. Wikipedia. Web. 25 Jul 2012.
“List of U2 Concert Tours”. Wikipedia. Web. 25 Jul 2012.
O’Connor, Rob. “The 25 Best Heavy Metal Bands”. Yahoo! Music. 17 Jun 2008. Print. 29 Jul 2012.
Smallwood, Rod. “Heavy Metal Islam”. IronMaiden.com. 15 Sep 2008. Print. 26 Jul 2012.
Solomon, Robert C.. “Heidegger on ‘Authenticity’”. No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life. Chantilly, Virginia: The Great Courses, The Teaching Company, 2000. DVD.
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