Adrian Smith - Monsters of River & Rock: My Life As Iron Maidens Compulsive Angler

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First published by Vingin Books in 2020

Copyright Adrian Smith 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Photography by: Nathalie Dufresne-Smith
Cover design and illustration by Two Associates

ISBN: 978-0-753-55409-8

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This book is dedicated to my dad.

Its 7pm and darkness is descending on the streets of Mexico City. Im sitting directly behind the driver in a van which has seen better days. Up ahead is a police car, siren blaring, blue and red lights flashing. It is trying to carve a route through the late rush-hour traffic so the other members of Iron Maiden and I can make it to the show in time. We alternate between mad, 80mph dashes on the wrong side of the road to lurching, abrupt halts. I begin to feel slightly queasy as the driver slams on the brakes once again as a civilian car, with a driver who hasnt read the script, pulls out in front of us. Our driver is wearing sunglasses. In the dark. Hes either forgotten to take them off or, more likely, hes living out some long-held car-chase fantasy. Now weve come to a halt and the driver of the aforementioned civi car has got out and tried to punch out one of the cops chaos. This is a police escort: it sounds glamorous, it is anything but

I close my eyes, lean back in my seat and try to block out all the madness. Now in my mind I am by the side of a lake. It is early morning and mist hangs over the water like a ghostly veil. I am fishing. Out on the lake, the dorsal fin of a large tench cuts through the mirror-calm surface, sending out oily ripples in a perfect circle. I bait my hook with two grains of corn, pack the feeder with groundbait and lob the whole lot out 20 yards or so into the lake. With the rod on the rests, I clip on the bobbin, light my stove and put the kettle on for the first tea of the day.

Why do we go fishing? Someone once said (OK, it was Billy Connolly), Fishing is like meditation, only with a punchline. Excitement is not a word most non-fisherfolk would associate with the sport, yet for me its a key part. Delicious anticipation is a phrase I like. Planning a trip and the build-up puts me in a good mood for weeks beforehand.

The primal need to hunt. I think most men have an instinct to put food on the table, whether its a guy earning a living in a high-powered job or simply someone dangling a worm, trying to catch his supper. You can try to rationalise it all you want, but I suppose I go fishing because I just love it. Clapton, where I grew up in east London, was not exactly a place of babbling brooks and pristine lakes. We did have the Lee Navigation, a canal river, running down the bottom of our road. Perfect, you might say. Unfortunately not. On a summers day you could smell the river a sickly perfumed aroma a mile away, such were the levels of industrial pollution in the waterway.

This didnt stop curious kids though. The Lea was bordered on one side by factories and on the other by Hackney Marshes. The marshes might as well have been called The Forbidden Lands as far as I was concerned. My mother was always telling me, with pointed finger, Youre not to go over the Marshes! Of course, being a fairly normal eight-year-old boy, Id be over there all the time. My brave mates and I would be on full alert the whole time, as those badlands were roamed by all sorts of thieves and vagabonds.

Hackney Marshes were, though, an oasis in an urban jungle. It covered about five square miles of green marshland before you got to the famous football pitches (there are dozens of them, laid out in a grid). There were a couple of ponds or bomb craters, as the area had been heavily bombed during the Second World War. We plundered these for newts and sticklebacks. I remember one day marvelling at the sight of a kestrel hovering above the marsh. For a lad who was only used to sparrows and bedraggled starlings in our little back garden, this was truly an incredible sight. The bird above might as well have been a pterodactyl.

The marsh was bordered by the Coppermill Stream and Walthamstow reservoirs. The Coppermill ran for around two miles from one of the reservoirs, before joining the River Lea opposite Springfield Park in Clapton. Of course, this was another no-go area, cut off from curious boys by an eight-foot-high fence, but by taking a running jump and clambering up, you could hang on and get a glimpse of the river on the other side. The stream was usually clear and, if you were lucky, you would see a shoal of big or bream holding in the current between the swaying fronds of weed. I would hang on to the top of the fence until my sinews strained and my mates drifted off to more exciting pursuits, like walking on the railway line. They say forbidden fruit tastes sweeter. Perhaps the fact that these no-go areas were attractive to me is why I still have a deep appreciation and respect for the countryside.

My dad Fred, like a lot of working-class men, worked hard all week and looked forward to his fishing on Sunday. He started to take me as soon as I could hold a fishing rod. He, my older brother Patrick and myself would go to the Grand Union Canal on the gasworks stretch (yes, it was as grim as it sounds), usually on a Sunday afternoon. I fished happily for the eager, small perch, while Dad patiently fed his with him letting me poach his swim and being rewarded with a beautiful, silver roach, red fins sparkling, a stark contrast to the glowering spectre of the gasworks opposite. Who knew such beauty could exist in such harsh surroundings? Certainly not the people going about their business on the street that backed onto the canal. We would enter and exit it via a gap in the railings (why were all my favourite places fenced off?), even though my dad had all the London Anglers Association permits. We would trudge, laden with tackle, back to the car conveniently parked near the pub. My dad would pop in for a quick one and I would wait for him on the boozers step, happily munching crisps and guzzling lemonade, or ginger wine in winter.

Sometimes, music would start up in the pub and, on sticking my head through the door, Id see my dad up on the small stage. In those days, most public houses had a resident pianist and Dad liked nothing better than getting up with him and singing a few songs. Sinatra, Perry Como and Dean Martin would form the bulk of his set. He had a pretty good voice and, whenever he walked into his local, the regulars would always call out, Gorn, Freddy, give us a song, son! After a few pints of beer he would usually oblige. It used to surprise me at first, because he was quite a shy man, but perhaps that was the point. Music was important to him, enough to overcome any inhibitions and get up on the stage. I can relate to that. He also played the ukulele and accordion before he badly damaged a hand in an accident at work.