Jon Lord - Concerto for Group and Orchestra

“Attempting to talk about a piece of music you have just written is difficult.  There is no retrospect.  So, without the benefits of hindsight, I will try to put into words what I hope will be apparent in the music...The problem of putting together two widely different field of music, ‘classical’ and beat (to label but a few) has interested me for a long time.  In fact, doing away with’ labels’ altogether has interested me for a long time.  The idea is, then, simply to present, in the First Movement, the group and the orchestra as antagonists, and in the Second and Third Movements, as unexpected allies…”

-          Jon Lord, 1969

Concerto for Group and Orchestra has a long and interesting history.  In June 1969, Deep Purple fired original vocalist Rod Evans and original bassist Nick Simper.  The remaining founders [Ritchie Blackmore, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice] all decided to take their music in a harder direction.  They replaced Evans and Simper with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, respectively.  The new line-up began almost immediately to work up new material for their new direction.  However, the group’s management had seized upon a chance remark from Jon Lord that he’d like to “do something” with an orchestra.   When they asked him if he was serious about this, he told them yes, at which time they informed him they had booked the Royal Albert Hall for a September performance and that he’d better get to work.  So the keyboard player of a rock band who had no experience writing classical music had three months to come up with a score.   A new hard rock album from Deep Purple would have to wait.

One of Jon Lord’s influences was composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, who had written numerous symphonies and chamber works as well as movie scores [Bridge on the River Kwai anyone?].  Jon Lord asked Sir Malcolm to look over his work-in-progress.  Sir Malcolm not only liked what he saw, he offered to conduct the piece himself.   This support was most helpful because the band was apprehensive at best, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra was outright hostile.  After a half-hearted run-through of the piece with the LPO, Sir Malcolm gave them a good tongue lashing, telling the musicians they played “like a bunch of cunts.”  Ian Gillan waited until the last moment to write the lyrics, having done so the afternoon of the performance over a bottle or two of wine.  Sir Malcolm and Jon Lord managed to pull it off, with a stirring performance on September 24, 1969 that was recorded and released.  Deep Purple played the piece once more almost a year later [August 1970], this time with the LA Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.  Their conductor wasn’t as supportive as Sir Malcolm.  He made changes to Jon Lord’s score.  After this performance, the original score vanished.

Conductor Paul Mann contacted Jon Lord about the possibility of performing the Concerto on the 25^th anniversary of its debut.  Lord thought about trying to reconstruct his lost score, but given that Deep Purple toured heavily after Ritchie Blackmore left the band, he thought the task was too daunting and too time-consuming.  In 1998, the unthinkable happened.  While Deep Purple was on tour in the Netherlands, he was approached in Rotterdam by a Dutch composer named Marco de Goeij.  He told Lord “I think I’ve recreated your Concerto.”  On his own initiative, de Goeij spent the better part of the previous two years transcribing the original Royal Albert Hall performance.  He watched the performance as filmed by the BBC, and listened to the album over and over again.  He did it for free, for the love of the music.  It was a sheer act of musical altruism if there ever was one.  Lord and Paul Mann got together to look at de Goeji’s transcription.  The transcription wasn’t complete, but enough of it was there for Lord and Mann to fill in the blanks.  Once completed, Deep Purple and the London Symphony Orchestra [conducted by Mann] performed the Concerto on September 25^th and 26^th, 1999, just over thirty years to the day after its debut.  

In addition to performing the Concerto, the music program featured songs from each member’s solo careers.  Vocalists Miller Anderson and Sam Brown each performed one song from Jon Lord’s Pictured Within album.  Ronnie James Dio sang two songs from Roger Glover’s Butterfly Ball project. The Steve Morse Band performed the Dixie Dregs song Take It Off the Top.  Ian Gillan performed two songs from his solo catalog.  Ian Paice played the old Deep Purple instrumental Wring That Neck with a horn section.  After Wring That Neck the full band took the stage.  They played several Deep Purple songs with the orchestra.  The songs:  Pictures of Home [Machine Head], Ted the Mechanic [Purpendicular], Watching the Sky [Abandon], Sometimes I Feel Like Screaming [Purpendicular], and for the encore…Smoke on the Water, of which Dio sang the second verse.  It’s hard to imagine a version of Smoke on the Water with brass, but it’s entertaining.  Steve Morse sounded more comfortable playing this piece than did Ritchie Blackmore.  I think he was a lot more open to the idea than was Ritchie in 1969.  The entire performance was released on CD [Live at the Royal Albert Hall] and on DVD [In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra].  Unlike the London Philharmonic in 1969, the LSO were very enthusiastic about performing with Deep Purple.  What a difference thirty years makes.  After these performances, Deep Purple did the unthinkable and took this show on the road.  They and the orchestra played the Concerto in over 30 cities around the world [in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico City, throughout Europe and later in Japan].  But the story of the Concerto doesn’t die here…

Roughly a year after this tour ended, Jon Lord retired from Deep Purple.  He was 61 at the time, there were other musical things he wanted to do with his life, and a heavy touring schedule left little if any room for pursuing such interests.  His classical composition and recording career began to flourish.  His classical works include:

Boom of the Tingling Strings [2004] – a piano concerto of four movements recorded in Odense, Denmark with pianist Nelson Goerner and the Odense Symfoniorkester [conducted by Paul Mann];

Durham Concerto [2008] – a concerto commissioned by Durham University to celebrate its 175^th anniversary.  This concerto has soloists on cello, violin, Northumbrian pipes, and Hammond organ [played by Jon Lord himself].  This was recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Mischa Damev];

To Notice Such Things [2010] – a six-movement suite for solo flute, piano and string orchestra.   Jon Lord created this work in memory of his close friend Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey.  This was also recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Clark Rundell].

But what about the Concerto for Group and Orchestra?  After leaving Deep Purple, Jon Lord took the Concerto on the road again and played it another seventeen times.  With more than forty public performances of the Concerto, Lord had the opportunity to fine-tune the score so it could receive a proper studio recording.  For this recording Jon Lord wanted to use different singers and guitarists for each of the Concerto’s three movements.  As with Durham Concerto and To Notice Such Things, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra [conducted by Paul Mann] played on the studio version of Concerto for Group and Orchestra.

Track Listing:

Movement One – Moderato-Allegro:  Darin Vasilev - guitar

Movement Two – Andante:  Joe Bonamassa – guitar; Bruce Dickinson, Steve Balsamo, Kasia Laska – vocals;

Movement Three – Vivace-Presto:  Steve Morse – guitar.

Guy Pratt – bass

Brett Morgan – drums

Jon Lord – Hammond organ

The First Movement features guitarist Darin Vasilev.  Vasilev is a Bulgarian guitarist from the band TE.  I wondered how Jon Lord came to invite him to contribute to the studio version of the Concerto.  After a bit of research I found out why.   In 2009-10, TE performed the Concerto with Jon Lord in Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine, so Vasilev was more than familiar with the material.  Vasilev shreds a bit, but he doesn’t overdo it.  His solo is shorter than that of Ritchie Blackmore from the first performance in 1969, but it works fine.

The Second Movement is the vocal bit.  At first it was a bit jarring to hear someone else sing Ian Gillan’s words.  After many listens one gets used to how something sounds. I knew nothing of Steve Balsamo and Kasia Laska, but they were a pleasant surprise.  They didn’t sing much – just the first couple of verses.  I knew what to expect from Bruce Dickinson – he pulled off his parts with his usual flair.    Joe Bonamassa was very good, though is appearance here was brief.

What’s my favorite part of the Concerto?  The Third Movement.  Steve Morse reprises his role from the Live at the Royal Albert Hall set.  It is good to hear him play with Jon Lord one final time.  He doesn’t copy his solos from the Albert Hall.  Jon Lord gives him the leeway to play what he wants to play.  Ian Paice is a hard act to follow on the drums, but Brett Morgan does a more than capable job.  Jon Lord was his usual, spectacular self.

Concerto for Group and Orchestra is a fitting epitaph for Jon Lord.  He always wanted a studio version of his Concerto.  Before he passed away, he approved the final mixes of this release, so at least he knew what it sounded like.  This was his first classical composition, and 43 years after its debut, this studio version has gotten it right.  It is a joy to listen to.

Bruce Dickinson - The Chemical Wedding

In the early 1990s [around 1992], Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson was having a crisis. He had much success as Maiden’s singer, but in his heart he wasn’t sure if he really deserved the success. The only way he would know for sure was to leave Iron Maiden. This he did after one last concert with the band in August 1993. He recorded an album with producer Keith Olsen but was unsatisfied with the results. He heard a band from Los Angeles called the Tribe of Gypsies, whose lead guitarist and producer was a guy named Roy Z. Having heard these guys play, Bruce loved what he heard and wanted to work with them, especially Roy Z. So with Roy Z, Bruce started anew on more material. The result was the album Balls to Picasso. Some people like it, some didn’t [I’m one of those who did]. When it came time to do another album, the Tribe of Gypsies had moved on with their own career, so Bruce decided he would form a his own band. He called this band Skunkworks. The idea was submerge his identity within a band, much like David Bowie had with Tin Machine. According to Bruce, the Skunkworks idea worked as well as Tin Machine, which is to say it didn’t work very well. He liked the album they created together [also titled Skunkworks], but he was in a small minority.

By this time Roy Z and the Tribe of Gypsies were released from their record deal, free to make music with whomever they chose. Roy Z asked Bruce if he wanted to make a heavy metal record. Bruce wasn’t sure if anyone was interested in anything he did anymore, but once he heard one of Roy Z’s backing tracks over the phone, Bruce made up his mind. Not only did Bruce make an album with Roy Z, he asked Adrian Smith [who left Iron Maiden himself in 1990] to come along for the ride. Expecting this to be the last record he would make, Accident of Death turned out to be an astonishing return to form for Bruce Dickinson. It was Bruce Dickinson doing what he did best – sing heavy metal with a heavy metal band. This brings us to the follow-up, and the subject of this blog – The Chemical Wedding.

Bruce wanted a loose concept for The Chemical Wedding, and he came up with subject matter one wouldn’t expect from a heavy metal album – occult science, alchemy and the art and poetry of William Blake. The cover of The Chemical Wedding is Blake’s painting The Ghost of a Flea. In between some of the songs, Arthur Brown reads excerpts of Blake’s poetry. Some of the songs from this album can be traced back to Blake’s work – The Book of Thel, The Gates of Urizen, and Jerusalem. Satan figures prominently in couple of songs [King in Crimson, Killing Floor]. The alchemy bit comes in with the title song and The Alchemist. My personal choice from this album would be The Tower. Blake was an advocate of free love during his time. I suspect this song was influenced by that somewhat. One of the bonus tracks [Confeos] sounds like Deep Purple. Bruce once described the vocals of another bonus track [Real World] as sounding like someone bit down on one of his nuts because the vocals were vari-sped too high. I think it’s a cool guitar track with pretty good vocals. The sounds on this album are pretty dark and gloomy, thanks to Adrian Smith and Roy Z re-stringing their guitars with bass strings [I bet their fingers hurt a lot!]. They make a formidable guitar tandem. Until I bought Bruce’s solo albums, Roy Z had been an unknown quantity to me. But now that I’ve heard him play, he reminds me a lot of Michael Schenker. Adrian Smith was always my favorite guitarist in Iron Maiden, and his playing here reinforces that sentiment. He still plays lots of rhythm but he gets to do his fair share of shredding. The rhythm section of bassist Eddie Casillas and drummer David Ingraham are rock solid. Bruce returns to his “human air raid siren” voice that he abandoned on the last two albums he made with Iron Maiden, No Rest for the Dying and Fear of the Dark. But ultimately, this albums rock very hard. Bruce once said the following:

“I have a simple rule. I ask myself ‘does it rock?’ And if it does, who gives a shit what it’s about? All the information’s there if people choose to dig for it. And if they don’t then it doesn’t matter, as long as they enjoy it. The point is – this album rocks like a bastard.”

Indeed it does. In my feeble mind, I think the concept of The Chemical Wedding, and Accident of Birth before it, is a very simple one. The concept as I see it – “out-Maiden” Iron Maiden. When Bruce left Iron Maiden, Steve Harris was quoted as saying that Bruce would put out a country & western album if he thought it would sell. So I believe Bruce was inspired to one-up Steve Harris. I have the two albums Iron Maiden made with Bruce’s replacement Blaze Bayley, The X Factor and Virtual XI. Maiden’s performances on those albums sound subdued, lackluster. There’s nothing about either album that is memorable. Some of the songs are very repetitive and, dare I say, boring. If you compare Accident of Birth and The Chemical Wedding with The X Factor and Virtual XI, Bruce’s albums are superior in every way – musically, lyrically, songwriting, energy, singing and production. Bruce blows Maiden out of the water.

With these two albums, Bruce Dickinson earned the success he was seeking that prompted him to leave Iron Maiden. It was somewhat surprising to learn in 1999 that both he and Adrian Smith would permanently rejoin Iron Maiden. But in retrospect, in looking at what Bruce did immediately prior to his rejoining Maiden, I think Bruce proved a point that he could be successful with or without Maiden, and that he was in a pretty good position to have greater input as a songwriter into Iron Maiden’s future work. That may not have been explicitly said, but in looking at what has come from Maiden since the reformation [Brave New World, Dance of Death, A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier], Steve Harris’ stranglehold on songwriting has been somewhat relaxed. All the band members have more input to the music. I think The Chemical Wedding may have had some effect on that state of affairs, and that’s a good thing. I don’t have any proof one way or another – it’s just one pinhead’s point of view. One thing is certain - The Chemical Wedding is an outstanding album. Whether or not you’re an Iron Maiden fan, this album is well worth having. It is a great metal album.

The Tower

The Book of Thel

Gates of Urizen

Jerusalem

Real World [Bonus Track]

The Allman Brothers Band - Enlightened Rogues and "Death by Arista"

In the aftermath of the Allman Brothers’ breakup in 1976, the other band members read the transcripts of the trial where Gregg testified against Scooter Herring, a former roadie. They came to realize the Feds had Gregg between the proverbial rock and a hard place – cooperate or do hard time. Butch Trucks, Dickey Betts and Jaimoe realized they didn’t know the entire story of Gregg Allman’s predicament [albeit a self-inflicted one], so all was forgiven. The band regrouped in 1978 to record a new album with Tom Dowd. Gone were Chuck Leavell and Lamar Williams. The band included new members Dave Goldflies [bass] and Dan Toler [guitar]. Both had played with Dickey Betts in his band Great Southern. Once again they were a two-guitar band, and all was right with the world [for now]. Enough time had passed since Duane Allman’s death that the band could afford to bring in another guitar player to complement Dickey Betts. Save for the resurrection of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, all was restored to the way it should have been.

The new album was entitled Enlightened Rogues. It was Duane’s name for the band. The trend of Dickey writing the lion’s share of the songs that started on Brothers and Sisters continued. Not exactly a prolific writer, Gregg contributed one original song. There is one blues cover. The album begins with a very uptempo Dickey Betts-penned rocker Crazy Love that has Dickey playing slide guitar in spades. It’s a fine performance. Dickey sings and is backed by Bonnie Bramlett [of Delaney & Bonnie fame]. When I first bought the album and heard Crazy Love for the first time, I thought “ok, not a bad beginning – what else you got?” Well, the next three songs gave me the answer I was looking for. The second song is Can’t Take It With You. This is another song from Dickey [and Don Johnson!], but sung by Gregg. What really caught my attention was Gregg’s singing. It was very strong – it didn’t sound like the drug-addled guy from Win Lose or Draw. It was a sign of things to come. Gregg hadn’t sounded this good since Idlewild South. The band was tight and energetic. Next comes the eye-opener – the Dickey Betts instrumental Pegasus. It’s an instrumental not as well known as Elizabeth Reed or Jessica, but it is solid nonetheless. The two guitarists start things off, then the bass, then the band starts to play the main theme. The guitarists have the twin-harmony thing going, Dan Toler takes the first solo. Toler’s playing sounds a lot like Dickey’s, but that’s not a criticism. It was very melodic and very fast. That’s not easy to do – it isn’t for me anyway. After Toler’s scorching solo Gregg goes for it on the Hammond. With musicians the caliber of Duane Allman, Dickey Betts, Chuck Leavell and Berry Oakley being in the band at one time or another, it’s easy to overlook Gregg’s ability on the Hammond. Not so with Pegasus. One listen and you hear the finest playing of his career up to that point. Once Gregg finishes his bit, Dickey takes off until the drum break. At the end of the drum break that band comes back in, plays the main theme all together, then they’re done. Following Pegasus is Little Willie John’s Need Your Love So Bad. A strong mid-tempo blues, it closes Side 1.

Side 2 opens with Dickey’s Blind Love. Again Gregg takes the vocal, which matches Can’t Take It With You in its intensity. John Swenson from Rolling Stone referred to this as a latter-day Statesboro Blues. With the benefit of hindsight, I think it sounds more like What’s Done Is Done from 1994’s Where It All Begins. But there I’m getting a little ahead of the game. The bottom line is it’s a good song, and a strong performance. Following Blind Love is Try It One More Time. Is this a commentary on the Allman Brothers reunion? I don’t know – it could be. This one has a first in the Allman Brothers catalog – a call-and-response vocal from Gregg and Dickey. It works ok, but it’s fairly pedestrian. Next is the one and only song Gregg wrote for Enlightened Rogues, Just Ain’t Easy. This one is a slow, bluesy ballad that is Gregg’s take on living in Los Angeles. He once remarked that he could exist out there but he couldn’t really live, him being the born-and-bred Southern kid out of place in Tinseltown. What Gregg lacks in quantity in the songwriting department on Enlightened Rogues he makes up for with quality. This is one of his better songs. It’s a shame they rarely play it anymore. Ending Enlightened Rogues is Dickey’s Sail Away, a duet with Mimi Hart. After many fine performances on the album, this last song is a bit of a snoozer. But since Dickey carried the songwriting load on this album, he can be forgiven for a forgettable song like this one. As a whole, Enlightened Rogues is an underrated gem in the Allman Brothers catalog. In a time when disco was king, this album had no business doing well, but it sold fairly well anyway. I would put it on par with Brothers and Sisters. It was a pretty good comeback, but trouble loomed just ahead.

After the release of Enlightened Rogues, the Allman Brothers’ record label, Capricorn Records, declared bankruptcy. The band lost millions in unpaid royalties. Their manager Phil Walden also ran Capricorn Records and the Allman Brothers music publishing company. Can you say “conflict of interest”? Dickey Betts took Capricorn to court over unpaid royalties and won, but in the ensuing bankruptcy he and the rest of the band got nothing while Phil Walden got to keep his own personal fortune. Dickey once remarked that this sequence of events was a “very expensive education.” With their record label bankrupt, the Allman Brothers were free agents who could sign with any label. They signed with Arista Records. While Arista was the home of the Grateful Dead after they abandoned their own record label, Arista was [and still is if I’m not mistaken] the label that made it safe for the likes of Barry Manilow. The label wanted the Allman Brothers to record songs more like mainstream pop. The label was not interested in the blues-based music that made the Allman Brothers’ reputation. Arista wanted hit singles – the band wasn’t that kind of band. They tried to pleased their label. They recorded the albums Reach for the Sky and Brothers of the Road. These albums would be okay if anybody else had recorded them, but as Allman Brothers albums they are bad – they are very bad. I have heard both albums, but to this day they remain the only Allman Brothers albums that I do not own. The Brothers do not think much of this music they produced for Arista, so why should I, or you for that matter? Since the band was not allowed by their own record label to make the music they wanted to make, they had the intestinal fortitude to stop. In January 1982, the band that once sang “the road goes on forever” reached the end of that road and broke up, seemingly for good. Duane and Berry would have been pissed, and rightfully so.

Iron Maiden: Flight 666

In 2008 Iron Maiden put on their Somewhere Back In Time Tour. The band invited filmmakers Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn to film not only what transpired on stage, but also behind the scenes. Flight 666 documents everything - interview segments with all the band members, a look into what it takes to stage an Iron Maiden show, and we also get a look at what the band members do on their rare days off while they’re on the road. The first leg of the Somewhere Back In Time tour took them over 45,000 miles. They played 23 concerts in 45 days. They averaged about 2,000 miles between each of the tour stops. They were able to achieve that feat by flying around the world in a customized 757, dubbed “Ed Force One.” The idea of specially modifying a plane to take the band, 70 crew and over 12 tons of equipment, had never been attempted before. It took a year to get the engineers to come up with the plans to make sure the 757 could handle the stress of flying all that equipment. It was a very ambitious undertaking. During the film they kept a running tally of the distance travelled on the tour ["Day 16 - 16,6277 miles." "Day 23 - 27,366 miles." "Day 38 - 30,646 miles."].

Bruce Dickinson, the band’s singer, is a licensed airline pilot. When he is not touring with Iron Maiden or as a solo act, he has a day job flying for the UK charter airline Astraeus. So during this tour, Bruce got to indulge himself in his other job and flew the band, crew and all their gear around the world. According to Bruce:

“The aeroplane idea started off as a crazy gleam in my eye. I went “wow, if you could get all your gear into an aeroplane, you could cut down hugely on the amount of dead space we have in touring.”” So I said, “What if you join up all the countries that accountants say ‘You can’t go there it costs too much’?” And we just join them up. And we go…’Yes we can ‘cause we’ve got our own magic carpet.’”

Usually bands get their equipment from one venue to the next by eighteen-wheel truck. Not so this tour.

Usually bands tour only when they have a new album to plug. Not so for Iron Maiden in this case. The Somewhere Back In Time Tour of 2008 was a “thank you” for their fans. When asked by XM Radio DJ Eddie Trunk if Iron Maiden were just going back and revisiting the catalog, Bruce Dickinson replied:

“No. Not at all. We’re not some old fossil dragging the bones of old songs around. What you’ll see tonight is not just a celebration of our old songs. It’s the celebration of a lot of young new fans, who have never seen us play these songs.”

“Anytime you go out and you play songs that you’ve played before, there’s always an element of people going ‘I’ve heard these songs before.’ But the purpose of this tour was really very different, because our entire audience for the last eight years has been getting steadily younger. So as a big thank you, large Christmas present wrapped up in a box with a big bow on top, here, have a classic World Slavery Tour. And that’s why I get bent out of shape any time anybody tries to play ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ and the tail they’re trying to pin on us is that this is some kind of antique revival show. And it’s not that.”

The Tour Stops: Mumbai/Perth/Melbourne [2 shows]/Sydney [2 shows]/Brisbane/Yokohama/Tokyo/Los Angeles/Guadalajara/Monterrey/Mexico City/San Jose (Costa Rica)/Bogota/Sao Paolo/Curitiba/Porto Allegre/Buenos Aires/Santiago/San Juan/East Rutherford, NJ/Toronto

The setlist itself was modeled on that played during their World Slavery Tour of 1984/85. One quick glance at the setlist below and you can see there are a few songs they didn’t play on that tour because they hadn’t been written yet. But it was a real treat to see the band play songs like ‘Ancient Mariner,’ ‘Powerslave,’ ‘Aces High,’ and ‘Revelations.’ The big treat for me is ‘Moonchild’ from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. I’ve always wanted to know what that particular song sounded like live, and with this DVD I finally got the chance. ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ is another highlight. Bruce Dickinson told Eddie Trunk of all the songs he looks forward to singing, by far for him it was ‘Ancient Mariner.’ Of note, when he introduced the song, he made a point to repeat the song intro he did in 1985 in Long Beach [captured for posterity on the Live After Death album] – “This song is about what NOT to do when a bird shits on you.” That line has cracked me up for going on 25 years now…

The setlist: Churchill’s Speech/Aces High/2 Minutes to Midnight/Revelations/The Trooper/Wasted Years/The Number of the Beast/Can I Play With Madness/Rime of the Ancient Mariner/Powerslave/Heaven Can Wait/Run to the Hills/Fear of the Dark/Iron Maiden/Moonchild/The Clairvoyant/Hallowed Be Thy Name

After they left Los Angeles and headed south of the border for Latin America, there was a sense that the “holiday was over” and there was a bit of trepidation among the band that “boy, I hope we’re as good as the audiences are.” For them there is always a feeling of going somewhere where something, anything is on the edge of exploding. In Columbia they encountered riot police. In Chile, they set foot in a country that once banned them from playing because the supposed ‘Satanic’ content of their lyrics. They needn’t have worried because every time I’ve seen Iron Maiden, either on TV or on film [I’ve never seen them live], they always seem to put on a very professional, high energy show. That was the case in this documentary as well. These guys are all in their 50s, but they’re running around on stage like people half their age. One can tell they very much love doing what they do, and they don’t just go through the motions. After the first tour stop in Mumbai half the band got sick [food poisoning I think], but that didn’t stop them from putting on the same high-voltage show they always put on. Such is their dedication to giving their fans what they want and what they expect.

Iron Maiden fans are a pretty fanatical bunch, but in South America that’s taken to a higher plane. Wherever they went, be it Brazil, Argentina, or Chile, they were mobbed by fans like they were the Beatles at the height of Beatlemania. To hear guitarist Adrian Smith tell it: “The fans do get a bit much sometimes, when you’ve been traveling and people expect you to stop and sign and have photos and look all cheerful. The way I look at it, once you’re in a hotel that’s my home away from home. Outside the hotel, we’re fair game .”

Nicko McBrain: “When you’re on the road as much as we are, you don’t want to sit in your hotel room and mope or watch movies. Everyone has their activities that they do. I think it keeps you sane.” What do the guys do on their rare days off? Nicko McBrain and Dave Murray play golf. Adrian Smith plays tennis, goes fishing, and goes diving. Steve Harris is always up for a game of football. Janick Gers likes to hit any Irish pub he can find. There’s footage of some of the band visiting the Mexican pyramids at Teotichuacán. Since Bruce is doing double duty as both pilot and singer, there isn’t any footage of him doing anything else. Between the two activities there probably wasn’t enough time for him to do anything else except sleep and get fresh for the gigs.

As for the concert footage, there are sixteen songs in all, each filmed in a different city on the tour. Now if one wants to skip all the documentary stuff, there is a bonus disc that shows the whole live set uninterrupted. Even though the songs are each filmed in different cities, the set flows together as if it was one concert.

All things considered, this is a well-done documentary. If you’re an Iron Maiden fan like me, you owe it to yourself to get yourself a copy. Up the Irons!