Killers

In 1981, Maiden released their second album, titled Killers. This new album contained many tracks that had been written prior to the release of the debut album, but were considered surplus. With songs already shaped on the road well in advance, only two new tracks were written for the album; "Prodigal Son", and "Murders in the Rue Morgue". Fan favourites included the fast and furious "Wrathchild", but the band would also write songs with literary significance; "Murders in the Rue Morgue" is based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden's eponymous 1980 release, Iron Maiden, made number 4 in the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release,and the group became one of the leading proponents of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. The band went on to open for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked tour, as well as opening select dates for Judas Priest. In addition to the title track, the album includes other early favourites such as "Running Free", "Transylvania", "Phantom of the Opera", and "Sanctuary" - which were not on the original UK release but made the US release and subsequent re-releases. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was fired from the band as a result of creative and personal differences. Stratton was replaced by Adrian Smith in October 1980.

The Early Days (1975–1981)

Iron Maiden were formed on Christmas Day 1975, by Steve Harris, shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributes the band name to a movie adaptation of The Man in the Iron Mask, which he saw around that time, and so the group was christened after the medieval torture device.
Founding member and bassist Steve Harris, and guitarist Dave Murray, remain the longest-surviving members of Iron Maiden. The band had twelve different line-ups in the 1970s and struggled to form a stable line-up of band members. Original vocalist Paul Day was fired as he lacked "energy or charisma onstage". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who utilised fire, make-up and fake blood during live performances. Wilcock's friend, Murray, was invited to join, to the frustration of guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance.This fuelled Harris to temporarily split the band in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as sole guitarist.
Iron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who caused a rift between Murray and Wilcock, prompting Harris to fire both Murray and Sawyer. A poor gig at the Bridgehouse in November 1977, with a makeshift line-up including Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar, and drummer Barry Purkis resulted in Harris firing the entire band. Dave Murray was reinstated and Doug Sampson was hired as drummer.
A chance meeting at the Red Lion pub in Leytonstone evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris has stated, "There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge."
Iron Maiden had been playing for three years, but had never recorded any of their music. On New Year's Eve 1978, the band recorded a demo, The Soundhouse Tapes. Featuring only three songs, the band sold all five thousand copies within weeks.One track found on the demo, "Prowler", went to number one on Neal Kay's Heavy Metal Soundhouse charts in Sounds magazine. Their first appearance on an album was on the compilation Metal for Muthas (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of "Sanctuary" and "Wrathchild".
From late 1977 to 1978, Murray was the sole guitarist in the band until Paul Cairns joined in 1979. Shortly before going into the studio, Cairns left the band. Several other guitarists were temporarily hired until the band finally settled on Dennis Stratton. Initially, the band wanted to hire Dave Murray's childhood friend Adrian Smith, but Smith was busy with his own band, Urchin.Drummer Doug Sampson was also replaced by Clive Burr (who was brought into the band by Stratton). In December 1979, the band landed a major record deal with EMI

NICKO MCBRAIN(ironmaiden) as known by Steve Harris

With a character like Nicko, you never forget the first time you meet him! We were playing our first ever show abroad in Belgium and he was playing in a band called McKitty when I first saw him. He was sitting outside a café, dressed in a white suit, panama hat and winklepicker shoes. I thought he was a pimp or something from the way he was dressed! Larger than life, as he always has been and always will be, he had obviously had a couple of drinks and was chatting off, and I thought, ‘Wow, who is this character?’ It was quite an amazing experience to meet him and it still is really, he’s just a whirlwind. I suppose he’s calmed down a little bit over the years, but not a lot - but you wouldn’t really want him to. He was with Trust when they supported us in ‘82 and we thought he was a fantastic drummer, so when Clive left the band, we approached Nick and asked if he’d like to try out and it worked fantastically. It’s hard to describe what he’s like if you haven’t met him. I know people see him on the videos and that, and they think he’s crazy - and he is! But there’s a lot more to him than that. He flies planes and does all sorts of other things. He’s a more complex guy than you might think. He’s just really good fun to have around. I’m a bit on the shy side, so when we go out to meet people, I usually take him with me, because he’s a laugh and he’s got so much verbal, he takes the pressure off me. I just have to stand smiling in the background! He is without a doubt the entertainer of the band. I really do think he could be a stand-up comedian if he wanted to. He half does that when he does his drum clinics. He tells these little stories and comes out with all these jokes. Often they’re in Spain or Italy or somewhere like that, and half the time, I’m sure the audience don’t really understand him, but he’s laughing at his own jokes anyway, so they laugh along with him! It really is a sight to behold, so I would recommend anyone to see his drum clinics, whether they’re into drums or not. Technically, he’s a great drummer and he can play all kinds of music. Drummers from other bands sit round the back of him to see what he’s doing, but he’s got his kit set so he doesn’t even look at what he’s hitting half the time. He just puts his head down and plays. He’s got his first songwriting credit with Maiden on ‘Dance Of Death’ with ‘New Frontier’. About time – he’s only been in the band 20 years! But the first one is probably the hardest to bring in to the other band members, especially when you’ve been in the band so long, and he’s up and running now, so I think it will give him the confidence to write stuff in future. Any variation in writing is a good thing and everyone is encouraged to write in this band; the only criteria is that it’s got to be bloody good!

JANICK GERS(IRONMAIDEN) as known by Dave Murray

I saw Janick onstage before I actually met him, and that was when he was with Gillan at Wembley Arena. I saw this flamboyant showman dancing around the stage playing great guitar, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful. Then he came down to a few of our shows and I met him backstage in the bar and we hit it off pretty much immediately - he was a really nice bloke. In 1990, when Adrian left the band, Janick had just worked on Bruce’s solo album (‘Tattooed Millionaire’) and obviously, he was going to be the first choice as a replacement. But I remember at the beginning that Janick was actually defending Adrian - he was upset that he’d left the band and I think he was trying to talk him into coming back, which shows you what a good guy he is. He came down to rehearsal and the stacks had been set up facing each other, wall-to-wall, so it was like a stand-off in a Western like ‘The Good, The Bad And The Ugly’, except I think we both wanted to be Clint Eastwood! We did ‘The Trooper’, we just went straight into it, there was no 'Let’s work it out together quietly.' It was just like one, two, three, four… bang! And straight away, sparks were flying round the room! It was apparent right away that this was going to work. He was very exciting to play with and it gave the band a well-deserved kick up the rear. He is a genuine, salt-of-the-earth bloke, a very smart man with a great sense of humour. He’s a very sociable kind of chap. He likes going out strutting, especially on tour. He’ll go out for 20 mile walks and try to hit every bar on the way back! He’s a good soul. He’s got a very good way of calming things down if they suddenly start to go overboard. He can pull everything together and make sure that people see things the right way. He’s very good at expressing himself that way, a very diplomatic man. When he’s playing, he’ll push himself to the edge and really goes for it. There are two sides to it. His playing can be very controlled or it can be very spontaneous, but then he plays a lot of the melodic stuff. He’s got great feel, great dexterity, very fluid. So he’s fully rounded as a guitar player who goes from one extreme to another. He encompasses all aspects, from the quiet acoustic clean stuff into overdrive. It’s 360 degrees he plays everything. And he’s a great showman. He wrote the track ‘Dance Of Death’ and it’s got everything on there, from the quiet moody melodic guitar to clean guitar to really heavy riffs, but done in the most complex and beautiful and sweet and heavy way, done with really good taste. If that song was the alphabet, from A to Z, it’s got every letter in it.

ADRIAN SMITH(IRONMAIDEN) as known by Bruce Dickinson

I first met Adrian when I was in Samson and he’d just joined Iron Maiden. We were over the road from each other in different studios; we were doing the second Samson album and he was doing ‘Killers’. He was very much the new boy in the band, but I was really impressed with the style of his guitar playing. And he was dead rock and roll. He was skinny, pasty and waiflike, and he looked really cool! He’s a pretty mellow person, and he’s got a very dry sense of humour. His nickname in the band used to be Willie-Orwontee - not for nothing! He likes to take his time over things, which is not a bad thing and in the old days when we used to do soundchecks together, we’d all be waiting for him, he’s such a perfectionist over sound. In a world populated by faceless guitarists who all go to school to learn how to do it and end up all sounding virtually indistinguishable, Adrian has evolved a tone and style that is all his own and is unique. Nobody sounds like Adrian, and that is priceless. His guitar playing sounds lazy, like the notes are almost falling over each other but they never do. You actually hang on every note that he plays, because you don’t quite know where it’s going to go next. He’s a very good athlete. When he plays football or tennis, he has a natural grace, and that’s what his guitar playing’s like. When he plays football, he gets the ball and you think, ‘He’s never going to get past that guy’, but suddenly, there’s a little shuffle and he’s dribbled past him. And it’s like watching him play guitar. I swear to God the timing is the same! When he left the band in 1990, I think everybody was a bit surprised at how much we missed him and certainly, I don’t think anybody had realised how much the fans would miss him - big time. I wouldn’t have rejoined Iron Maiden if he wasn’t in the band. I just don’t think it would have been complete without Adrian, and now, it’s great having three guitarists. I think possibly one of the greatest tracks he’s ever written is on the new album; it’s called ‘Paschendale’. When I was writing stuff with him for the album, I noticed he had lots of Siegfried Sassoon and other war books lying around, and he was researching this track. It’s a fantastic song and really evocative of the whole horrific period of warfare - a stunning piece of music, ten minutes long. Adrian’s philosophy, I guess, goes back to something we were talking about one drunken night. He turned around and said, 'The thing about me is, all I’m interested in is just having a bit of a sing and a play', and that is at the root of everything that is Adrian. He’s happy having a drink, having a sing and playing guitar. And for something that’s that simple, he does it alarmingly well - especially the guitar playing.

DAVE MURRAY(IRONMAIDEN) as known by Adrian Smith

Dave and I grew up in the same area of London and I think we probably met at the local youth club, through a mutual friend called Dave McLaughlin. I knew that Dave McLaughlin was already playing guitar and I told him that I was a singer. I wasn’t, but I thought I’d get in with these guys! Then I think Dave Mac introduced me to Dave Murray and we started playing together; they played guitar and I sang. When I first met him, he was a complete Hendrix nut and he loved Robin Trower and Santana, but I think he likes more blues based stuff these days. Back then, he had two guitars - he was very professional! His spare guitar from Woolworths wasn’t working, so I bought it off him for five quid and my dad fixed it, and that was my first guitar. It was a really nice guitar, as you can imagine! Dave Mac drifted out of the band into other things, and Dave Murray and I carried on playing together for a few years until he decided to broaden his horizons and eventually he joined Iron Maiden. I carried on with the band we’d had, which became Urchin; he actually came back into the band for a while after he fell out with Iron Maiden’s singer, but then he went back to them. Before they did the first album, Iron Maiden asked me to join them, but my band was doing quite well, so I turned it down. Then they asked me again in 1980. I think Dave rang up and said, 'Look, I think you really should do it' and I did. Dave is so easy-going and he’s a quiet guy. He has his moments, but generally, he goes with the flow. If you had six guys like Bruce or six guys like Steve in the band well, you need a combination of personalities. That’s what the chemistry of the band’s all about. In fact, I guess Dave and I are fairly similar. We’re both pretty laid-back and we’ve always got on very well. Another good thing about Dave is that he’s always got a smile on his face. He has good energy, which is always a good quality to have in a band. He’s a very consistent player, so it’s hard to pick his best moment on ‘Dance Of Death’, but the song ‘Rainmaker’ is one of my favourites and he wrote that with Steve, so I suppose I’d have to say that really. Dave’s a very good guitarist, but he’s not the kind of guy who tries to outdo everybody. There’s enough scope in Iron Maiden’s music for all three guitarists to express themselves. The phrase 'Let the music do the talking' springs to mind when you talk about Dave. He’s always been able to express himself very well through the guitar. He’s got his own style and sound, and that’s a rare thing. Everyone who plays guitar wants to have that and he always has, even when he’d just started playing. We could plug into the same amp and he’d still sound like him. If you hear Dave playing, you know it’s Iron Maiden straight away.