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‘Exemplary displays of the group’s instrumental prowess, their uncanny knack for writing accessible riffs without pandering to the commercial marketplace and the perfect launch pad for Dickinson’s commanding operatic vocal style … There isn’t a weak track here’ iTunes LP review

‘You are trying to create some sort of mood or image with the imagery of the songs, I suppose. They’re all short stories and come from all different influences’ Steve Harris

‘This would be the ideal candidate for your first Iron Maiden album’ BBC

For years Iron Maiden fans, peers and critics have debated the importance of The Number of the Beast in shaping both Maiden’s career as metal trailblazers and the face of heavy metal overall. Years later iTunes would conclude that ‘future metal musicians – especially in the underground scenes of thrash, death and black metal – would refer to Maiden’s intricate twin-guitar weavings and rhythmic overkill for their own unrelenting attack. [The Number of the Beast is] a heavy-metal essential from every angle.’

Before heading into the studio to record their third LP Iron Maiden faced a dilemma following the exit of their front man Paul Di’Anno. As the BBC put it, ‘Given the importance people attach to the role of the vocalist in rock groups, the upward curve that Iron Maiden had steadily enjoyed since their first album in 1980 might well have become a downward spiral with the departure of singer Paul Di’Anno. Echoing Spinal Tap’s legendary problems in keeping their drummers, he was already the third singer since their humble beginnings as a pub band.’

With the benefit of hindsight, years later Di’Anno would confess to Battle Helm e-zine that, ‘To be frank, at that age I wasn’t … handling things as well as the other guys, who were older than me. One minute I was a kid off the street and the next I was expected to handle things like it was sliced bread. Needless to say, I started drinking a lot and I must’ve done half of Peru up my nose. I screwed up … I wasn’t happy, both with the album and myself, and I really didn’t wanna be there. And if you can’t give a thousand per cent to a band like Iron Maiden, the best thing to do is get the fuck out. I just walked in and told them how I felt and walked away.’

Di’Anno has been more or less diplomatic over the years about the true reasons he left, though these range from his comment to Classic Rock that ‘I left Iron Maiden because they were going too heavy metal and Iron Maiden is a money-making machine, and I don’t give a fuck about it,’ to his claim in the same interview that he left because of creative constraints. ‘Iron Maiden is Steve Harris’s band. It doesn’t matter about anybody else – whether it’s Dave Murray, Clive [Burr], me … it’s Steve Harris’s band.’

To Ultimate Metal magazine Di’Anno was more specific, from a musical perspective, saying, ‘I think Bruce’s high operatic and theatrical-type voice is better suited to Maiden’s later material.’ Ultimately, however, he concluded that, ‘there are still a lot of people who seem to forget that my voice was and still is a huge part of Maiden’s past, and I am both happy and proud of that fact.’

To take the next step forward Maiden’s musical ambitions clearly required a vocalist as technically accomplished as the band. Enlisted to replace Di’Anno was Samson front man Bruce Dickinson. After an audition in September 1981 he recalled in an interview with Billboard that the move to front Maiden made sense because ‘we effectively grew up together, musically, because I was in Samson and all the bands were aware of everybody else. We all gigged together. It’s fair to say Maiden had this momentum about them. It was like standing in front of a truck…

‘Things with Paul hadn’t been going terribly well and they’d made the decision to get rid of him. So they came and took a peek at me. Clive [Burr, then Maiden’s drummer] had been in Samson for three years and Killers was being made at Zomba Studios [in London], which back then was Morgan Studios … We were in Morgan and Maiden were in the [studio] opposite so we used to go to the pub, and have a few beers and chat. I went over and listened to the Maiden record, and Clive would come over and listen to ours … Rod Smallwood offered me the chance of an audition – he didn’t offer me the job – at Reading Festival.’

Already well aware of Steve Harris’s locally legendary role as the band’s head songwriter, Dickinson also recalled clarifying the terms of any potential collaboration from the outset. ‘“First of all,” I said, “if I do the audition, I’m going to get the job so you need to figure out whether or not you want me onboard because I don’t want to be unless I can be a pain in the ass and have some opinions. I’m not going to be like the old guy. I’m going to have disagreements with Steve because I’ve got some ideas about how I want to change things around. So if you don’t want that, you’d better tell me now.”

‘They asked me to learn three songs and I basically learned the lot, both albums. So we turned up to the rehearsal room and let rip. Steve picked up the phone and said, “Could we get him into a studio today?” They were still doing gigs with Paul. The atmosphere was a bit down. When they came back from Sweden, we popped in the studio, recorded three songs and that was it. That was job done. We all went out and got very drunk that night.’

The band’s decision to hire Dickinson, as the BBC would conclude, ‘turned out to be fourth time lucky for them. And for Dickinson, whose sandpapered soaring yowl more than held its own against the blasting and frequently bombastic arrangements.’ Producer Martin Birch added his unequivocal opinion to Best magazine: ‘It’s certain that Bruce Dickinson has improved the band as compared with Paul Di’Anno, who was isolated at the human level and who wasn’t very productive.’

Addressing the question of how the line-up changes affected the group musically, Steve Harris explained to Artist magazine that ‘on the Killers album Adrian was very new and it really wasn’t until he’d been with the band about a year and a half that he really felt he was a full member. He always had been but he never really seemed to accept that it was happening. [Perhaps] because he went from a local band in the East End to Iron Maiden, which, even at the time, was quite a big act. It took him quite a while to settle in, and it also took both him and Dave a long time to get the right guitar sounds … Then Bruce came in and he really did fine things for the band too.’

As the band faced up to recording their new album Steve Harris confessed in an interview with VH1’s Classic Albums that ‘we had no material’. As he explained to journalist Kevin Purcell, ‘On the first two albums we had a lot of material lying around from before we got signed. On the third album [The Number of the Beast] there was absolutely nothing, and we had a specific period of time to write and a load of pressure to write.’ Instead of inviting disaster, however, Harris said, ‘It worked great.’ Setting a precedent that became the band’s norm thereafter, he reasoned that, ‘If you were to allow yourself a year to write, you would get distracted and do a lot of other stuff in between. When you’re stuck into it, you get to it.’

Identified by the BBC as ‘a key weapon’ in crafting the album, Harris detailed to Classic Albums the band’s writing process. ‘Some of the simpler songs are written in minutes, literally. It sounds a strange thing to say but they’re written quite quickly and some songs – some of our best and catchiest – do work like that.’

Of the band’s longer compositions – a strength that the BBC hailed as a ‘convincing use of multi-movement composition’ – Bruce Dickinson recalled in the same interview, ‘Steve likes to go off and do all his stuff on his own and plan it all out.’

Harris concurred, adding his agreement that those are ‘ones you have to work on, especially the longer ones … If I’m writing a song and if it’s just got my name on it, usually I’ve written everything except for the guitar solos.’

When he did introduce his compositions for the album to his bandmates, Harris pointed out another unique difference between Iron Maiden and their metal contemporaries. ‘I just take it to the rest of the guys, show them the parts and just sort of layer it out like that. We don’t do demos and stuff.’

His bandmates then worked on helping one another flesh out the songs’ live feel. As guitarist Adrian Smith explained in the same VH1 show, ‘You take a rough idea in and that’s a great thing about being in a band because, from your seed of an idea, it becomes this big-sounding track. That’s one of the thrills for me of doing it, to actually get in the studio and record it properly.’

Talking to journalist John Stix about some of the collaborative efforts on the album, Harris began with ‘Gangland’, proudly crediting the song as having been written by ‘Adrian and Clive. The intro is very much a drum thing, which Clive got together. It’s probably a bit jazz-influenced and a bit different than things we’d done before. But the basic riff is very much a rocker. It’s a very good song.’

Another group effort, ‘The Prisoner’, was praised by the BBC. ‘[Where] even some of the venerable HM institutions (think Black Sabbath) would struggle to make material that was something more than a collection of minor-key riffs, Iron Maiden pull this feat off with considerable élan. “The Prisoner” could almost pass for a heavy-metal Genesis.’

For the band, the most memorable aspect of creating this song came with its introduction, as Bruce Dickinson told VH1’s Classic Albums. ‘Obviously we wanted to be really sort of dramatic with the intro so we thought, “Well, maybe we can snip the intro off The Prisoner TV series.” Steve Harris added, ‘It was quite funny because we had to get permission from Patrick McGoohan for the intro to “Prisoner” and we didn’t actually realise at the time he owned the rights to it all. So Rod, our manager, had to actually get on to him personally about it.’

Smallwood recalled a somewhat botched call followed in which he tried to explain exactly what the band wanted to use the intro for. ‘After a pregnant pause of around five seconds he said, “Do it.” For people who know McGoohan, that’s very Patrick McGoohan!’

Turning to the album opener, ‘Invaders’, Steve Harris explained to journalist Stix that ‘this song was an extension of another song called “Invasion”, which was the B-side of the single “Women in Uniform”. It’s like an invasion of Britain … [It] felt like a great rock ‘n’ roll opener. “Children of the Damned” is next on the album. It’s based on the film of the same name. The mood was sort of like “Remember Tomorrow”.’

Of the album’s title track and fan favourite, Steve Harris said, ‘Basically that song is about a dream. It’s not about Devil worship … The idea was to get a blood-curdling scream like the one on “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. It worked quite well.’ Addressing head on the rumours that the Christian Right had begun accusing the band of being involved with Satanism, he added, ‘It was nothing to do with the 666 thing; that was exaggerated. We had loads of things going wrong. We had to get a completely different tape machine because it wasn’t recording the stuff properly as it was going down. But I mean, those sorts of things can happen. It’s just that we had more of it this time than any other time.’

‘Run to the Hills’, Harris explained to Stix, ‘is about the American Indians. It’s written from both sides of the picture. The first part is from the side of the Indians. The second part is from the side of the soldiers.’ To VH1’s Classic Albums he added that ‘it’s just basically about the Indian nations being treated badly and taken over really’. Homing in on the song’s rhythms, which producer Martin Birch explained were designed to give listeners ‘that rolling feel, that galloping feel’, Harris added in the same conversation with Stix, ‘I wanted to try and get the feeling of galloping horses. But, when you play this one, be careful not to let it run away with you.’

Following up the fan favourite ‘Charlotte the Harlot’ from the band’s debut, the sequel ‘22 Acacia Avenue’ was, Harris told Styx, quite simply ‘an extension … This is where she’s living in London’s East End.’ He also identified this song as one of his personal favourites on the record, along with ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ and the title tune.

‘Children of the Damned’ took the classic horror film as its muse, as Harris told Classic Albums. ‘[Just] as most of our things are really loosely based on anything … it was kind of based loosely on the movie, I suppose … We just take a basic idea and then develop it from there really, and try to put our own twists and turns into it.’

Finally, ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’, he revealed to Ironmaidencommentary.com years later, remains ‘one of my favourite songs and still one we play live. We’re trying to create a mood with the build-up of the song. The classical guitar-like opening was Dave building the mood, with bells in the background. It’s about someone with only a few hours left to live. In concert the end part of this one takes off. Dave takes the first solo and then Adrian.’

As pre-production wrapped, producer Martin Birch confirmed Harris’s central role in visualising what became British heavy metal’s most influential concept album of the 1980s. Harris, he told Best magazine, had to keep both hands on the creative reigns. ‘Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson needed some time to settle down. As for Dave Murray, who’s an excellent guitar player, well, he doesn’t write that much. He writes very little and he’s very demanding. For The Number of the Beast, for example, everything was down to Steve.’

The admiration was mutual. ‘By the time he did Beast,’ Harris told Classic Albums, ‘that was it really. He became our full-time producer and we didn’t think about using anyone else.’

Ensconced again in Battery Studios they worked through tracking each of the album’s tracks. Years later Clive Burr would share his opinion that ‘every song really had something about it that you could say, “Yeah, that part, this part, the whole of it, really worked well.”’

Dissecting the sound that the band captured live during those sessions, KNAC.com would conclude that ‘Iron Maiden is a metal band built around the power guitar chords. With guitarists like Murray and Smith this comes as no surprise but what sets Maiden apart is the use of their rhythm section. Where most metal bands keep their bassist in the background to keep the beat and use their drummer as a point of attack, Maiden does the opposite. Steve Harris uses the bass to lead the attack while their drummer keeps the rhythm.’

Feeling that it was the band’s signature layered guitar sound that set them apart from many metal contemporaries, Steve Harris said to Classic Albums, ‘You’ve got those twin guitars – it’s just a trademark with Maiden. That’s what we try to do, use all those elements.’

Harris also paid Dickinson a major compliment, telling Artist magazine that, during tracking, the singer was ‘so quick in the studio because his ear for pitch is so good. He just gets up there and bang! It retains a great live feel.’

For his part, Dickinson told Billboard that the band had ‘matured massively … the sound of the band … [after] Adrian joined and was writing’.

As principal recording wound down Harris recalled feeling that this was ‘certainly the best-sounding Iron Maiden album, I must admit, but then we have spent a long time on it. I would much rather work this way; maybe not spend quite so long. But at the end of the day it sounds like the best thing we’ve ever done.’

Everyone seemed to know they were on to something truly special. As manager Rod Smallwood recalled to Classic Albums, ‘There was a certain excitement on The Number of the Beast, ’cause we all felt – me especially – that there was something special about that album. Just the way it was coming together, the songs, the addition of Bruce, the extra scope we had to work with. There was a certain feeling on that album that it was something special.’

Dickinson agreed, reflecting that his first LP with the band ‘sounded completely new – people had never heard anything quite like it before’.

Producer Martin Birch also chipped in, telling Best, ‘It’s true that it’s a band whose line-up changes quite a lot … [but it’s] a good thing in this case, as each newcomer brings a certain amount of freshness to each album.’

Steve Harris, too, described a ‘feeling of excitement and aggression … when we went from Killers to The Number of the Beast’. It was a buzz that was shared by fans and critics alike. According to iTunes, Harris had ‘caught lightning in a bottle with an entire collection of tunes that became cornerstones of the Maiden catalogue’. The BBC hailed the album as ‘brilliant’, advising ‘Maiden newbies’ to ‘start their journey to metal hell and back right here’. Iron Maiden’s journey, according to Rolling Stone, would take them to the top of the charts in Britain, initiating ‘a streak of seven consecutive platinum or gold albums in the United States, despite virtually no radio or MTV exposure’.

On worldwide release on 29 March 1982, the band’s achievement was remarkable, considering guitarist Dave Murray’s memory that ‘there were very few radio stations that were playing the band’. In the same interview with Classic Albums he added, ‘Basically we had to go out there on tour and, hence, we go everywhere – East Coast, West Coast and everywhere in between.’

Echoing his client, manager Smallwood recalled in the same interview, ‘We never got airplay so Maiden built completely by touring, not by a song being a hit and being on the radio.’

Happily for the band, they were pushing a sound that metal fans the world over had been waiting for in their millions. The Number of the Beast propelled the band not only to their first No. 1 on the UK album chart, where it remained within the Top 75 for over 30 weeks, but it broke them in America, where it reached the Top 40 of Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart. Burning like wildfire up charts around the globe, the album went on to crack the Top 10 in Austria and Sweden, and the Top 20 in Canada and Norway. It also produced two Top 20 singles in the UK: ‘Run to the Hills’, which peaked at No. 7, and ‘The Number of the Beast’, which reached No. 18.

After just two albums with the band producer Martin Birch told Best, ‘I am now as comfortable with Iron Maiden as I was in the best moments of Deep Purple.’ What he added was music to Maiden fans’ ears – he and Maiden had ‘agreed to work together again for the next album!’