Читать книгу Iron Maiden in the Studio - Jake Brown - Страница 6
ОглавлениеIt could be argued that Iron Maiden is heavy metal’s most successful indie band. Billboard magazine has pointed out that, in the eyes of the industry at large, Iron Maiden ‘has always been an underground attraction’. Other pioneering peers like Motorhead and Metallica have been around for just as long or longer, innovating metal and advancing it commercially to a mainstream level but it was Iron Maiden who began the crossover. As heavy metal went from being just a sub-division of rock to its own signature brand, the BBC acknowledged them as ‘pioneers of a new wave of British heavy metal’.
What makes the band’s journey to over 100 million albums sold worldwide since forming in 1975 (‘with almost no radio or television support’, as the BBC added) so enduring? According to co-founding guitarist Dave Murray, the band has lasted these many decades thanks to its group philosophy. ‘When we do an album, we put a hundred and fifty per cent into it so, when you listen to an album a few years back and think, “Oh yeah, that sounds good,” you know you must’ve been doing the right thing at that time… We’re proud of everything we’ve done.’
So, too, are their legions of fans around the globe, whose continued championing of the band has earned Iron Maiden, among other honours: the Kerrang! Hall of Fame (2005); the BBC’s Greatest Metal Band Of All Time award; Metal Hammer’s 2009 Golden Gods award; a ranking in the Top 25 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock; and the No. 4 spot on MTV’s Top 10 Greatest Heavy Metal Bands Of All Time. Billboard recently declared that ‘Iron Maiden were and are one of the most influential bands of the heavy metal genre,’ and MTV.com added that the band have remained ‘consistently popular throughout their career’. The band’s impressive catalogue now stretches to 15 studio albums spread over 20 years.
MTV.com also noted that Maiden’s ‘often-imitated’ brand of metal would produce some of the ‘greatest rock recordings of all time’, while Rolling Stone observed that Iron Maiden ‘distinguished itself from its peers with unusually literate songs … full of hellish imagery (the melting faces in ‘Children of the Damned’), with themes borrowed from films (‘The Number of the Beast’, inspired by The Omen II) and ancient mythology (‘Flight of Icarus’).
In the pages of Iron Maiden: in the Studio, the writing and recording of this catalogue of classics – including such iconic hits as ‘The Number of the Beast’, ‘Flight of Icarus’, ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’, ‘Wasted Years’, ‘Can I Play with Madness’, ‘Infinite Dreams’, ‘Man on the Edge’, ‘Bring Your Daughter… to the Slaughter’, ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘The Trooper’, ‘Run to the Hills’, ‘Powerslave’ and ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ – are explored in depth for the first time ever.
