Mick Wall - Run to the Hills: The Official Biography of Iron Maiden

Run To The Hills

Contents

Foreword

1. Foreword

This book was written by Mick Wall, someone respected enough by the band for us to want him to take on the task. A fan and friend of Maiden for many years, Mick decided to approach not just the current members but also past members of the band, plus management, agents and past and present members of the crew for the material for this book. It makes interesting reading, even for me, because everybody has a different view of how things have happened over the years!

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. It hasn't been edited in any way, which is how it should be.

Cheers.

Steve Harris, Essex

Run To The Hills

2. Introduction

The book you now hold in your hands is the result of an imperfect attempt by one man to tell the full, unexpurgated story of Iron Maiden. I say "imperfect" because it would take several volumes to go into absolutely every single little detail, occurrence or memory that I eventually managed to unearth from my extensive travels into the past and present lives of the extraordinary group of individuals that have made the Maiden story what it is. And anyone expecting a blow-by-blow, who-played-what-instrument-on-which-track account of their music is going to be sorely disappointed.

The same goes, really, for the endless parade of "party stories" I compiled along the way. It will hardly come as news to discover that Maiden and their crew spent a good deal of their "offstage"

time on their earliest tours bingeing on booze and groupies. Instead, I wanted to write a book about the really big events in the story of Iron Maiden. So, when it comes to the rock 'n' roll, yes, each album gets re-examined and discussed, but it is the historical worth of these releases that I was most concerned with establishing more than the mere technical details. All Maiden fans have their favourite songs and albums; we don't need to agree on all of them. What this book tries to do is put them into some overall picture that makes sense and perhaps explains why and how these records got to be made in the way they did in the first place.

As for the sex and the drugs, instead of racking up a list of "and then we got the fire extinguishers out"-type anecdotes - the kind that, admittedly, liberally sprinkled the features I wrote on the band for Kerrang! in the '80s - this book concentrates more on the behind-the-scenes side-effects of the so-called "good times", how they cost at least two members of the band their lobs and how - paradoxically, in the case of original singer, Paul Di'Anno - his failure to keep it together actually allowed Maiden to become even more successful when they surprisingly replaced him, two albums into their career, with the more ambitious Bruce Dickinson, an enforced move that would prove crucial in transforming them from the promising New Wave Of British Heavy Metal band they were with Paul into the enormodome-eating, mega-monster US

rock stars they became with Bruce.

But that's just one part of the story I wanted to investigate. I also wanted to go behind the scenes in the boardroom and find out how and what prompted the decisions made by their management and their record-company chiefs that would have their own irreversible impact on their story. No matter how talented you are, someone still has to push the buttons somewhere. For the first time, this book talks to the button-pushers: major-league players like Capitol's A&R chief in the early

'80s and later EMI president, Rupert Perry, and of course the band's own long-serving and charismatic Sanctuary management team, led by ex-Cambridge drop-out Rod Smallwood.

Between them, they were able to raise the necessary level of both funds and enthusiasm to keep the band going until the band's third album, Number Of The Beast, took their financial position out of the red for the first time in their careers. I wanted to know just what it took to turn a backstreet East End pub band with talent and ambition into a multi-million-dollar industry.

And of course I wanted to talk to the band themselves, both the current line-up and as many of their previous members as I could track down. This I found hugely enlightening, from ex-singer Paul Di'Anno's cheerfully philosophical confession that "I know you've probably heard a lot of naughty things about me, mate, but the thing is, they're all true!" to Dennis Stratton's lengthy, earnest reasons why, frankly, he blew it, even though he still insists to this day that it wasn't really his fault. And, of course, most powerfully of all, the recollections of both Steve Harris and 4

Introduction

Bruce Dickinson, embodying perhaps the most volatile, creative and ultimately self-destructive relationship the band has ever endured. From a distance, in the '80s, it looked like Maiden had it all sewn up. However, as you'll discover from reading this book, nothing could have been further from the truth.

And while here in the post-Bruce years the band have shed some of their cachet with the critics in Britain, it's interesting to note that, with former Wolfsbane singer Blaze Bayley now fronting them, Maiden have begun to make some of their most challenging and brutally honest material ever. So, too in this book, you'll find the band and everyone else I spoke to at their most brutally honest, and as far as possible I have allowed everyone to have their say, both pro and con, so that as many sides of the various stories are represented as possible. The picture that emerges is both hilarious in parts and deeply unsettling in others, the magnificent highs and bottom-of-the-well lows faithfully recorded for all to enjoy from a safe distance.

In looking at their past, most of all I hope to be able not just to explain the whys and the wherefores of Maiden's present but also to try and map out a vision of what the future now holds in store for both the band and their fans. For a band that has never been played on daytime radio, a band that refused to do Top Of The Pops for 15 years and whose single 'Angel And The Gambler' is over ten minutes long, I'd say that this is an achievement that speaks for itself.

The original late-'70s punks always talked about never selling out. How ironic, then, that it was a heavy-metal band from the same era that actually put that philosophy into practice to such devastating effect. Fifty million record sales later, Maiden have yet to write their first real love song, or indeed have the word "baby" inscribed in the lyrics of any of their 40-plus hit singles.

That fact alone would be enough for me to want to write about them. The fact that they have also been largely ignored by the mainstream rock media merely adds piquancy to the dish. Here's a band deserving of everybody's respect and attention whose story has never been told properly before. This book is my honest attempt to try and do something about that. Whether I've succeeded or not is something that you'll have to decide for me. But, like the band itself, a lot of blood and guts and love went into this book, and I hope it rocks your socks off.

From one fan to another, with all the respect you deserve.

Mick Wall, Oxfordshire

Run To The Hills

3. Steve

The story of Iron Maiden is not one that can be properly told by any one person, which is why, in this book, you'll find myriad voices from the band's past and present all doing their best to tell their sides of this complex and fascinating tale as honestly and as accurately as they can.