First Kiss: (from left) Ace Frehley, Paul Stanley, Peter Criss and Gene Simmons

classicrockmagazine.com

“We looked like four guys in drag. Gene looked like  a transvestite, Paul  looked like some whore and Ace looked like  Shirley MacLaine…” Words: Ken Sharp

tom hill/getty

On January 30, 1973 Kiss performed their first concert at a seedy hole  in the wall in Queens, New York called Coventry. Tickets were  a few bucks and they were lucky if a few people showed up. Inside this ratty club Kiss first came alive on stage. Their mission was simple – they wanted to conquer the world. In 2008, on the 35th anniversary of that momentous night, Classic Rock looked back at 1973, the historic first year in Kisstory…
Rising from the ashes of Wicked Lester, singer Paul Stanley and bassist Gene Simmons formulated ideas for a group that would combine the musical muscle of Slade, Humble Pie and The Who with the theatrics of Alice Cooper and The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. Placing a ‘Musicians Wanted’ ad in the August 31, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone magazine (‘EXPD. ROCK & roll drummer looking for orig. grp. doing soft & hard music’), drummer Peter Criss was the first to join.
PETER CRISS: Gene called me while I was having a wild party at my house and drinking Mateus wine, and he gave me this whole spiel, “Do I dress good? Is my hair long?” I had the newest velvets and satins because I had just gotten back from my honeymoon in England and Spain. So I went down to Electric Lady Studios. I was wearing one of my coolest outfits, gold satin pants and turquoise boots – I looked like Jimi Hendrix’s brother. I pass by these two guys leaning against a car wearing their mod shirts. I didn’t even give them a second look. I went inside and asked for a Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, and the guy said they were waiting outside. I look out the window and think, “Nah, that can’t be them!” These are the guys who asked me if I was a wild dresser? They looked like bums.
PAUL STANLEY: Peter asked us to come see him play with a band he was playing with at the King’s Lounge. He really had that sense that he was playing Madison Square Garden rather than a small dive in Brooklyn. I’m not sure Peter was initially what we were looking for in terms of style. But we wound up adapting our writing and our sound to work more with his style.
LYDIA CRISS: Peter, Gene and Paul got together as a trio in the fall of ’72. They rehearsed for a few months before finding Ace.
BOBBY McADAMS: They rehearsed at a loft on 10 East 23rd Street above a bar called Live Bait.
PAUL STANLEY: We rehearsed constantly. We wanted to have a certain level of proficiency before we played for a paying audience.
BOBBY McADAMS: One day in December of ’72 I brought the Village Voice to Ace’s house and I left it there. He saw an ad in there about a band looking for a guitar player with stage presence.
PETER CRISS: We must’ve auditioned close to 60 guys.
ACE FREHLEY: My Mom drove me to the audition with my 50 watt Marshall amp in the family’s big Cadillac. I was in such a rush I put on one orange and one red sneaker by accident. Before I went upstairs, I quickly chugged two 16-ounce cans of beer to relax.
BOBBY McADAMS: He walked in, stumbled and tripped. He was a real klutz. They thought he was a freak. He was a very weird-looking guy.
GENE SIMMONS: Paul and I looked at each other when we played Deuce and Ace started soloing. We finally heard the sound.
ACE FREHLEY We jammed for a few more songs and then they said, “We like the way you play a lot. We’ll call you.”
PAUL STANLEY: Ace belonged in the band. He was the missing piece, the missing link. I remember it being a defining moment. Musically it was a very compatible yet combustible mix.
ACE FREHLEY: The one thing that pissed me off was the ad in the Village Voice said ‘guitar player wanted for band with recording contract’. It turned out there was no recording contract. But I felt the guys were as serious as I was about putting together a theatrical rock group and I liked the music.
By December ’73, the original line-up of Kiss was had solidified. But in the beginning, Kiss were more Clark Kents than comic book superheroes, not yet fully transformed into the world-beating band we know today. It would take months of trial and error before Superman was ready to walk out of that phone booth.
PETER CRISS: We copied a lot of things. A lot of our ideas, the art of what we did, came from The Beatles, Alice Cooper, The New York Dolls. We went to see an Alice Cooper concert and I’ll never forget it. Gene and I kind of looked at one another and said, “Wow, this guy is really good!” We got back to our loft that night and said, “Wait a minute, what if there was four Alice Coopers?” We thought the idea was pretty hot, and we became the characters we are today.
GENE SIMMONS: When we first toyed with the idea of make-up it happened very fast. Paul and I bought two four-foot mirrors for $15. As we leaned them up against the wall, they bent slightly. When we looked at our faces in the mirror we had this freak-house look. We hadn’t yet put on the whiteface except me. I plunged into it all the way. It was cathartic. For the rest of the guys it was like, “Let’s play dress up and be in a band.”
On January 30, 1973, Kiss performed their first show ever at Coventry in Queens, New York.
PAUL SUB: Coventry opened in the early 70s. It was located on Queens Boulevard and 47th Street in Queens. I renamed it Coventry after a town in England.
PAUL STANLEY: When we played Coventry, it was called Popcorn, and they were trying to change their image. It was a perfect relationship in that we brought in a certain New York credibility to the club so other bands started coming across the water and playing there too. Years later that I found out that the big tall guy watching us in the back with the specs on was Joey Ramone.
JOEY RAMONE: I was at their first show ever. Kiss and The Ramones both grew up in Queens. At the time I think they were the loudest band I ever heard. They were fun and had great songs. I saw them when they first started out and they just had dry ice. This was way before their image and show came together.
GENE SIMMONS: Paul did the artwork for our concert ads and placed them in the Village Voice.
PAUL STANLEY: One of our early ads had a drawing I did of a naked girl. I knew if anything was going to get someone’s attention it would be a naked girl. Sex always sells – whether it’s rock’n’roll or toothpaste. It was very funny because the Village Voice, the progressive paper in New York, made me put a bathing suit on the girl. It ran once with the naked girl and the second time it got masked.
GENE SIMMONS:  I was always the asshole who decided to pick up the phone and bother people and get us to where we wanted to go.
On my way into work I used to pass by this club in Queens. I got the manager on the phone and started selling. I said, “We’ve got a band called Wicked Lester. You should book us because we’re terrific.” So he agreed to put us on for three nights during the middle of the week when nobody went there. That first night we changed the name of the band from Wicked Lester to Kiss.
ACE FREHLEY: I wanted to call the group Fuck, but Paul thought Kiss was better suited for the press and we agreed. I came up with the idea for the Kiss logo with a felt tip. Paul cleaned up my artwork with a rapidograph pen – he always had steadier hands.
PAUL STANLEY: Ace came up with the initial design of the logo, it was a great idea but it wasn’t a fully realised design so I turned it into something more like a car emblem.
GENE SIMMONS: One of Ace’s friends took the photo [on p58] in the staircase at our loft on 10 East 23rd Street. The early photos of us didn’t have the Kiss make-up on. It looks like I have silver hair in the photo but it was grey colour spray. We didn’t know who we were at the time but we knew we had the musical goods. That photo showed us looking like a New York glitter band. Everyone was pouting their lips and doing that kind of, “Look at me, I’m neither straight or gay.” The androgynous thing. We blew up the photo into a poster about three feet high, which was put into the window of the club.
PETER CRISS: We looked like four guys in drag. Gene looks like a transvestite, Paul looks like some whore and Ace looked like Shirley MacLaine.
PAUL STANLEY: The make-up was always basically the same, but what was on my eye kept changing.
ACE FREHLEY: People don’t know that I designed Paul’s make-up. Paul’s original makeup was a circle around his eye. I said, “Why don’t you do a star instead of that, that looks retarded.”
GENE SIMMONS: That night at Coventry, I wore a sailor suit for the first show.
ACE FREHLEY: I started laughing the other day ’cause I saw an old photo from that time period and Gene was wearing a shirt with a silver skull and crossbones and I was wearing a shirt with silver wings and I realised that my Mom had sewn both of those shirts by hand.
PAUL SUB: Nobody knew Kiss at the time, they didn’t have a following.
PETER CRISS: Nobody was there. It was a nightmare. We killed ourselves for six people.
GENE SIMMONS: We played a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and were paid $30.
LYDIA CRISS: The only people who showed up at that first Coventry show were me, Jan Walsh, who was Gene’s girlfriend at the time, and her friend plus the road crew – Eddie Solan, Joey Criscuola, Peter’s brother, and Bobby McAdams -- and the people who worked at the club.
LEW LINET: Coventry was a toilet. Those gigs were awful. Nobody liked them, nobody clapped.
LYDIA CRISS: Even though there wasn’t anybody there they weren’t discouraged. The band made $30 that night but all the money went to the road crew.
In March of 1973, the band entered New York City’s Electric Lady Studios and recorded a five-song demo with producer Eddie Kramer of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin fame.
PAUL STANLEY: The studio owed Gene and I some money and we said, “Give us some time in the studio and get Eddie Kramer to produce our demo.”
EDDIE KRAMER: We recorded it in Studio B, which is a very small studio. We did it very quickly in a matter of a couple of days. To this day Gene and Paul and Ace think it’s one of the best things they’ve ever done. The demo has five songs – Deuce, Cold Gin, Strutter, Watching You and  Black Diamond.
ACE FREHLEY: The original demo is much more relaxed than the actual album.
On August 10, 1973, veteran TV director Bill Aucoin walked into the Crystal Room at the Hotel Diplomat and saw Kiss perform for the very first time.
BILL AUCOIN: Kiss was sending me notes every week saying, “Would you come to see us?” and there would be a hand-painted pass to the Diplomat Hotel. Their show wasn’t really that elaborate at that point but I loved it. They had the red beacons, a couple of amps. They wore jeans, no one could afford leather. The show was just a pretty regular rock’n’roll show except they had spontaneity.
GENE SIMMONS: When we came off the stage after our Diplomat performance, Bill cornered me. I still had my makeup on. As soon I saw him, I motioned for a girl that I had just seen the night before. She was dressed very sexy and she came and sat on my lap. While he was talking to me I was bouncing her up on my leg for effect so that he thought, “My God, something’s going on!” He was very enticed by us and he was the one who pitched to manage us.
BILL AUCOIN: The guy who came with me to see the Diplomat show thought I was out of my mind. He said, “You’ve flipped, you’re not going to do this!”
PETER CRISS: Bill Aucoin was like our Brian Epstein. He was a force. He was very bright, dressed immaculate and had a great way  around people.
With Bill Aucoin on board as manager, Kiss continued to fine-tune their stage show and costumes.
BILL AUCOIN: Kiss wanted to be different so they started playing off what they loved in their own life. Ace loved space, Gene loved horror movies, Paul always wanted to be a rock star and Peter loved cats.
GENE SIMMONS: On stage, we did a lot of ménage à trois kind of stuff.  I’d put one leg out, and Ace would kind of wrap around my leg and Paul would get in behind Ace, and we’d all move around, back and forth. When we did Firehouse, Paul had a bucketful of confetti that had ‘Water – In Case Of Fire’ on it. And at the end of the song, he took the bucket and threw it into the audience and everyone went, “Oooh!” But there was no fire-breathing or any pyrotechnics. Just a lot of gyrating, a lot of jumping up and down.
BILL AUCOIN: Gene had this ‘I’ll do anything’ attitude. I didn’t plan for Gene to do the fire-breathing. Originally I had Paul in mind to do it.
GENE SIMMONS: Bill Aucoin said, “One of you guys should be breathing fire. Who doesn’t want to do it?” And everybody raised their hand. It was a negative question and I forgot to raise my hand so I was stuck.
JOYCE BIAWITZ: We hired this magician named Presto who came into my freshly painted white office to teach them to spit fire. The first time Gene breathed fire he blew so hard that he scorched all my white walls black and I had to call the painter back in.
Manager Bill Aucoin made good on a big promise and landed Kiss that all-elusive record deal.
BILL AUCOIN:  I told Kiss I’d get them a record contract and to give me 30 days to do it. Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise [producers, Kiss’s debut] heard the tape and told Neil [Bogart, then head of Buddah Records], “Come on Neil, sign them.”
KENNY KERNER: I used to go to Neil’s office every week or two and pick up a box of tapes that came in the mail and I’d take them home. In one of the boxes was a demo reel-to-reel tape from Kiss with a black and white photo. It looked like some kind of kabuki act in make-up. I got the idea instantly of what they were trying to do. The tape was great. It had Deuce and Strutter on it. This was on a Friday. Monday morning I took the tape and picture back to Neil and said, “This is a great tape, we should do sign these guys.” And he said, “I can’t sign them to Buddah but I’m starting a brand new label called Casablanca.” He listened to the tape and the next day he said, “You’re right. We’re going to sign them as the first act to Casablanca.”
BILL AUCOIN: Neil had just enjoyed great success helming a string of hit singles for Buddah Records. Warner Brothers gave Neil the money to start his own label – Casablanca Records. They were the money and distributor behind Casablanca.
KENNY KERNER: One night, Bill, myself, Joyce [Aucoin’s business partner], Richie [Wise], Neil, Bucky Rheingold, Larry Harris, the Kama Sutra/Casablanca promotion staff, went into this little rehearsal studio called Le Tang Studios. The room was as big as a shoebox – the back of the stage to the front door couldn’t have been more than 30 feet. The group came in and they looked 12 feet tall. They had platform shoes that had to be a foot high and the stage was about a foot off the ground so they looked like skyscrapers. They all wore black outfits and their faces were painted. Gene had his tongue going. They came on in such a demonic way – Gene especially looked really demonic – that I was scared shitless. I could see kids just going nuts for this stuff.
SEAN DELANEY: They finished the first song and no applause. Gene walks down to Neil Bogart, grabs both of his hands, and makes him clap… Neil started applauding because he was scared to death. And I said to myself at that moment, “I wanna be involved in this.” Because that’s the kind of balls you have to have to do anything.
JOYCE BOGART: After the show, Bill, Neil and I met in a tiny room. We stood in a small circle, the group in full costume and make-up as Neil told Kiss he wanted them to be his first signing for Casablanca. When he finished his speech outlining their future and telling them that he thought they were stars, Peter Criss fell down. He just fell off of his high heels and landed with great force on his rear. We all roared, including Peter. You might say it sealed the deal.
Signed to Casablanca, Kiss entered Bell Studios in November ’73 to record their debut LP under the production guidance of Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise.
RICHIE WISE: The first Kiss album took six days to record and seven days to mix. We would cut three basic tracks in a day – drums, bass and two rhythm guitars. Ace would overdub his solos. We spent the last three days of the recording doing the vocals.
ACE FREHLEY: It was the first time I ever did a real album. We knew those songs backwards and forwards. It was one of our best records because it had that spontaneity and that tough kind of sound. We were all very hungry at that point in our lives.
PAUL STANLEY: Recording the first album was the culmination of everything I’d worked for. It was exciting because we were doing an album but early on I thought that the sound was lacking in terms of what I wanted it to be. I don’t think it’s a competitive sounding album in terms of our contemporaries at that point. That became a familiar story every time we went into the studio.
GENE SIMMONS: The recording process was simple, direct, but at times we felt disappointed that the producing team of Kerner and Wise didn’t get a better handle on our sound. Kramer understood it better.
PAUL STANLEY: As a collection of songs the first Kiss album totally stands up. Musically it’s timeless. Those songs sound as current as anything else.
GENE SIMMONS: We had a ball and we actually made $75 per week salary! We didn’t have to work for a living anymore and we thought we had made it.
On December 21 and 22, 1973, Kiss returned to play two final shows at Coventry, before embarking on their first tour.
GENE SIMMONS: When we played there in December, there may have been 80 to 100 people. But there was a special excitement in the band because we had just signed to Casablanca. For all we knew we were about to become big stars. In the beginning you dream big. That would be the last time we’d play a New York club. We had full outfits, we had the candelabra.
Wrapping up the year in style, on December 31, 1973, Kiss scored their biggest gig to date playing a show at New York’s Academy of Music. But first they had to deal with Warners…
BILL AUCOIN: In late ’73 Warner Brothers called Neil and said, “Can you ask Kiss to take the make-up off, we don’t believe in it.” At that point Alice Cooper’s records were starting to sell less and his make-up was nowhere near as extravagant as Kiss’s, so I guess that scared them off. Neil called me and said, “I know this is gonna be a tough one, Bill, but can you please just ask the band if they’d take their make-up off.”  I went to the dressing room and asked the question. They had real puzzled looks on their faces, and they asked me what I thought. I told them we should stick with the make-up, and they wholeheartedly agreed. I called Neil back and told him, “You tell Warners the make-up’s staying on.”
GENE SIMMONS: We said, “All or nothing. You get the make-up and the band or you get nothing.”
BILL AUCOIN: The truth was Warner Brothers hated Kiss and thought the group was a disaster. They sent a memo around Warners not to work the record. Because Neil knew so many people at Warners someone slipped him the memo. He went in with guns blazing and said, “How can you go against me? We just started a new label and this is my first act, I can’t work this way.” They admitted to him that they sent the memo and begrudgingly stayed on board.
PETER CRISS: The first time I really felt like a star was at that Academy of Music show. I was going, “I don’t know if we’re gonna make it. We ain’t going nowhere.” At the time we were riding around in milk trucks and beat-up station wagons. And all of a sudden up pulls this stretch Mercedes and I went, “Wow, this is cool! This is what the big guys must feel like.” We wanted to make a grand entrance to the gig, but nobody was there when we pulled up!
GENE SIMMONS: The first time Kiss had made it big we opened a four act bill at the Academy of Music. It was Teenage Lust, Kiss, Iggy Pop and Blue Öyster Cult. Without sounding too big headed, we punished them severely and we knew that we had arrived.
PAUL STANLEY: We’d played clubs and now we were playing a place with a 4,800 capacity.  I thought the stage was huge and the audience was enormous. I remember busting the snap off the top of my pants and being afraid that if I didn’t keep the guitar pressed against it I was gonna lose my pants. There were a few mishaps that night. This magician had come up with this idea where Gene would light flash paper, which had flash powder inside of it, throw it up in the air over the audience and there would be a burst of fire and then an explosion. But Gene’s aim wasn’t as good as one might have hoped. He basically lobbed it into some guy’s face and it blew up. But the guy came backstage and thankfully was a huge fan. Through the blisters on his face he said, “You guys are awesome!” We could have been in a lot of trouble…
Gene’s hair also caught fire that night. It was early on and nobody realised if you sprayed hairspray on your hair you’re basically bathing your hair in flammable liquid…
February of ’74 saw the release of Kiss’s self-titled debut album. Two studio albums followed quickly, Hotter Than Hell and Dressed To Kill, but it wasn’t until their double-live set, Kiss Alive! stormed record shops in September ’75 that the band became a household name. A hit record and sold-out shows across the country, Kiss had pulled off the impossible and finally hit the big time.
PAUL STANLEY: We were primed for success but it was going to take a little bit of time. I remember being driven to the airport for our first tour by Mom and Dad. I think our parents thought they were sending us off to summer camp when they were actually sending us off to a whore house…
ACE FREHLEY: Back in those days we all had lots of laughs together. I never in a million years thought things would turn out the way they have today. We were all success-driven, but to what ends I would only find out much later on down the road.
Regrets? Yeah, I have a few, too few to mention. Sinatra says it best…

Cast Of Characters
(in alphabetical order)
BILL AUCOIN  Kiss manager, 1973-1982
JOYCE BIAWITZ  Kiss co-manager, 1973-82
LYDIA CRISS  Peter’s then wife
PETER CRISS  Drummer, Kiss
SEAN DELANEY  Kiss road manager/choreographer
ACE FREHLEY  Guitarist, Kiss
KENNY KERNER  Co-producer, Kiss’s debut
EDDIE KRAMER  Kiss demo producer
LEW LINET  Kiss’s first manager
BOBBY MCADAMS  Kiss roadie
JOEY RAMONE  Vocalist, The Ramones
GENE SIMMONS  Bassist, Kiss
PAUL STANLEY  Singer, Kiss
PAUL SUB Owner, Coventry Club
RICHIE WISE  Co-producer, Kiss’s debut

➻

Park life: the band meet their public in New York.

“I wanted to call the group F**k, but Paul thought Kiss was better…”

Paul and Gene: the non-toxic twins.

getty x2

Estee louder: Paul applying the slap backstage in 1974.

Rainbow child: Gene in early 1974.

“Gene breathed fire and  scorched my office walls…”

Mötley Crüe: the new, heavily made-up, MTV-friendly face of metal.

getty

The Mainstream

Metal couldn’t stay underground for long...

Words: Philip Wilding

There was a moment in the mid- to late-80s when you couldn’t turn on MTV without being bombarded with someone in spandex or leather trousers gurning into the camera and thrusting their guitar down the lens, before a quick cut to some young lady, usually in her pants, gyrating against a pole, an amplifier stack or said gurning musician. It was the 80s and metal ruled the world, the airwaves and the coke-addled brains of video directors.
Metal had come a long way since the days of Sabbath and Steppenwolf. NWOBHM had broke big while still keeping true to its roots and now those that had survived it had been washed up on the beach of decadence and depravity that was known (briefly) as the musical mainstream.
You could blame NWOBHM, you could almost certainly blame Van Halen. VH blew up at the same time as punk and by the mid-80s had coalesced into some mythical juggernaut of spectacle and bombast typified by their grandstanding videos, singer Diamond Dave’s inability to button up his shirt or shut his mouth and that fact that they tended to play outside of the USA less often than we hold the Olympics.
This side of the water we had the equally inflexible Motörhead who turned heads and made radios rattle with the number one live album, No Sleep ’Til Hammersmith. (A number one live album, imagine.) Maiden were crossing over in the States, though not quite at the same rate as Def Leppard who managed to change the musical landscape in the US with their Pyromania album and never really stopped. By the time of Hysteria they’d broken most gig attendance and sales records in living memory.
Not to be left behind, Rob Halford dyed his hair blonde and Glenn Tipton shagged his, so that Judas Priest might run  riot across the US with their landmark Screaming For  Vengeance record.
But the US had finally worked out how to make money out of this metal lark. LA’s Sunset Strip was embracing the excesses and glamour of bands like Kiss and Van Halen. A crazy mix of make-up, hairspray, 70s glam, sleazy punk, lightweight pop production techniques and MTV were about to take a generation of bands into the charts.
Quiet Riot knocked The Police from the top of the US charts with their Metal Health album, while their appearance at the US Festival in 1983, alongside Mötley Crüe, Ozzy, the ubiquitous Van Halen, Scorpions, Judas Priest and a fledgling, and very lippy, Mötley Crüe helped it become the hot ticket of the three day event.
By 1984, Metal was taking a 20% share of all recordings sold in the US, though that would wither in comparison to the mid-80s when bands like Warrant, Ratt and Poison were being taken seriously and Bon Jovi and Mötley Crüe went stratospheric. Europe took over the world, and proved that the poodle perm was still a force to be reckoned with, albeit briefly, with The Final Countdown, though 1987 would plateau and tip with the release of Appetite For Destruction. As brilliant and unrefined as it was, it would be the death knell for the Sunset Strip and a period when lip-gloss was an acceptable option in a photo shoot. Bands like Winger and Skid Row plodded on, but the following year Jane’s Addiction released Nothing’s Shocking and while it rocked and rolled, there wasn’t a bandana in sight, and, as if without warning, the mainstream was suddenly shifting again, an audience’s gaze planted forever elsewhere. Grunge was coming. And metal was about to explode into a million little pieces…

The songs that forged

Van Halen: stumbled on to the hair metal party.

Words: Malcolm Dome, Jonathan Selzer, Siân Llewellyn

Words: Sleazegrinder

Rock n’ Roll  All Nite
KISS (1975)
Released a decade before hair metal hit the ground running, this song is basically the entire hair metal movement summed-up in two and a half glorious minutes of street-savvy glitter rock. From Kiss’s third album, 1975’s Dressed to Kill, it’s almost impossible to imagine that this song wasn’t always a hit or even that actual flesh and blood humans wrote it; it still sounds like it had always existed. Rock n’ Roll All Nite is perhaps the closest thing hair metal has to holy scripture. We must all obey its weighty words.
Live WIRE
MÖTLEY CRÜE (1981)
There are late 70s precedents you could point to if you really wanted to get technical about it, but let’s face it, this 1981 banger is the mother of all hair metal anthems. Sure, Mötley Crüe would go on to become one of the biggest rock/metal bands on the planet, but their Too Fast For Love incarnation was so weird, so off-kilter, so raw and immediate that it almost seems like a different band completely than the tattooed millionaires who created Girls Girls Girls. On this, the opener of their outta-nowhere debut, Mick Mars presents us with one of the most self-assuredly ugly guitar sounds of all time, pure punk, just a mean-spirited grunt, really. The whole affair sounds rushed, like a one-take wonder that just happened to change rock n’roll forever. Live Wire is the greatest punk-slash-deathrock-slash-glitterrock anthem of all-time. Pure lightning in a bottle. Rock’n’roll made dangerous again.
Crazy train
ozzy osbourne (1980)
Sure, this made it into the last list – but it’s worth considering Crazy Train in terms of the impact it had on 80s metal. When Ozzy stumbled out of Black Sabbath in 1979 under a fog of alcohol, most metal fans figured that was it, he’d check into a motel room somewhere and drink his liver to death. And that’s basically what he did for the next couple years. But then he pulled off the most remarkable comeback probably in the history of rock n’ roll. Picking up whiz-kid guitarist Randy Rhoads from the splinters of Quiet Riot, Ozzy reinvented himself as the godfather of hair metal, producing two landmark albums in rapid succession to prove it. Crazy Train’s signature riff is so iconic that literally everyone you know knows it, could identify it in three seconds or less, and will tell you it’s a damn good tune. And it is. The fact that Rhoads died before he could see what a lasting impact it had on heavy metal is a shame, but holy smokes, what a fucking song.
rock of ages
def leppard (1983)
If we’d done these in order, this would be number one. While 1987’s Hysteria would ultimately become Def Lep’s biggest selling album, Pyromania is the one that broke them into worldwide superstardom, largely because of this song. An endless build-up into an orgy of sticky-sweet screamalong choruses – or maybe the whole thing is the chorus, it’s hard to tell – Rock of Ages hit every rock fan in just the right place, and at just the right time. The first 20 seconds – cowbell, a snicker, the glooben-globbin – is so heroically cavalier that you have already been won over before that gorgeously perfect riff even kicks in. The result of a madman (producer Mutt Lange) tinkering with Lep’s sound on an almost sub-atomic level until every second was absolutely and unmistakably right and true, this is the greatest thing that hair metal ever produced. If your friends don’t like this song, ditch them. If your girl/boyfriend doesn’t like this song, break up with them. I don’t care who you are, this is your anthem. God didn’t give rock n’ roll to you, man. Def Leppard did.
Metal health
quiet riot (1983)
If you weren’tt there at the time, it is impossible to adequately explain the impact this song had on pop culture in 1983. It was literally everywhere. Before Metal Health, heavy metal was the stuff of teenage dirtbags, the short-bus cousin to punk. After Metal Health, everybody you ever met was suddenly a metalhead, and the sound of blazing riffage ruled the kingdom for the rest of the decade. For most people, Quiet Riot had seemingly come up from nowhere, but the band had been in operation for a decade already and had previously boasted Ozzy’s greatest fret-handler Randy Rhoads in its ranks. Fuelled by early 70s glam and the loudmouth razzmatazz of it’s flamboyant frontman Kevin Dubrow, Quiet Riot had been honed and polished for years by the time they got their big break. Their stranglehold on the charts was brief and the backlash was brutal, but for one glorious summer, Quiet Riot taught us all to bang our heads, and we could not get enough.
Turn Up the Radio
AUTOGRAPH (1984)
The lightweight, frivolous flipside to gnarly flash metal like GN’R or Mötley Crüe, Autograph were a radio-friendly throwback to late 70s glammy hard-rock acts like Angel or Y&T. Formed in Pasadena in 1983 by guitarist/vocalist Steve Plunkett, Autograph were never, for a moment, cool. They really weren’t. They were sponsored by a pen company, for chrissakes. But their drummer was buds with David Lee Roth, and by the mid 80s everyone with long hair got a record contract, and so it went for Autograph. Debut album, Sign In Please (ugh, the pen metaphors!) initially tanked, but then this annoyingly irresistible ear-worm took hold on rock radio and shot them into platinum status. It didn’t last, but let’s give ‘em their moment in the sun. A great song and a great ode to a great medium that grows dimmer every day.
panama
van halen (1984)
Van Halen were a 70s rock band that stumbled into the hair metal party and proceeded to wipe the floor with the half-wit kids aping their moves. If anybody knew how to command an arena full of sex-crazed adolescents, it was David Lee Roth, and Eddie’s pyrotechnic guitar playing was so far ahead of the competition at this point that Panama sounds like it was created by an entirely different species. Who cares what Panama was actually about – drugs? A stripper? A car? – it feels like the still-throbbing heart of Saturday night, and as time rolls on and hairlines recede into the ether, Panama has remained as potent and life-affirming as it did in 1984.
round and round
ratt (1984)
No band exemplified the hedonistic pleasures of hair metal as effortlessly as Ratt did. They were hard and sleazy enough for hardcore rock n’ roll types, but they wore enough make-up and threw in enough pop hooks to reel in mainstream fans as well. They had a charismatic frontman, a great sense of humour, and for a good few years, a seemingly endless well of radio-baiting hit songs. Round And Round, from their ’84 debut, was their first and biggest single, scraping the top 10 in the US and propelling them from 70s leftovers to the next big thing seemingly overnight. It remains one of the most recognisable and still-welcome songs of the entire era.
rock you like a hurricane
scorpions (1984)
The Scorps were doin’ just fine already, plying their twin-guitar Euro-metal to hordes of headbangers the world over. In fact, they had already reinvented themselves a few times already, from hippie space-prog rockers in the early 70s to envelope-pushing hard rock provocateurs 10 years later. 1984’s Love At First Sting was not a radical departure from their monolithic ‘82 masterpiece Blackout, but it did take a more commercial approach to their Teutonic riff-mongering. The end result was a platinum selling monster anchored by this near-perfect ode to all-that-is-heavy. The over the top video, featuring the band playing inside a flimsy cage that threatens to be overrun by rabid female fans at any moment, certainly didn’t hurt.
We’re not gonna take it
twisted sister (1984)
The video for this song was such a cultural phenomenon, it propelled Dee Snider from obscure metal singer to America’s second-favourite cross dresser (next to Boy George). A classic tale of boyhood rebellion set to snarly boot-stomp glam, We’re Not Gonna Take It was a masterpiece of kitsch, as tacky and as ridiculous as you could hope from a bunch of gnarly New York bruisers dressed in shredded house-dresses, and so catchy it would not leave your head – or the radio – for years, maybe forever. From their seminal, multi-platinum Stay Hungry album, unleashed on a metal-mad world in 1984.
the final countdown
europe (1986)
To understand how this song became such a runaway hit the world over, you have to remember that most people in the 80s felt like there was at least a decent chance that we’d all die in a nuclear war before we ever got to the 1990s. Ronald Reagan was the leader of the free world, and he was a war-baiting maniac. So Europe, an unassuming Swedish melodic pop-metal band, wrote a song about the end of the world as we know it, full of piping organs and rippin’ guitar solos, and we all loved it. That’s how unstable we were. If you were born too late for the 80s, you should count your fucking blessings.
shake me
cinderella (1986)
Shake Me wasn’t much of a hit when Cinderella’s debut, Night Songs, hit the shelves in 1986. The mushy power-ballad Nobody’s Fool moved a lot more units. But it remains one of the best roof-rattling anthems of the era, cementing Cinderella’s place as one of the most authentically rock n’ roll bands of the glam wave. As time rolled on their blues influences came to the forefront and the frilly frocks were more of an afterthought, but at this point in their career, you got the whole package – hair piled to the ceiling and searing, blooze-powered hard rock.
livin’ on a prayer
bon jovi (1986)
Has there ever been a man more suited to the job of rock star than Jon Bon Jovi? His band of working-class Jersey dudes propelled hair metal into the stratosphere with a combination of looks and hooks that were thoroughly unbeatable, and this one – an uplifting tale of small-town lovers with lyrics worthy of Springsteen – was their magnum opus. A video featuring ol’ Jon-Bon flying around an arena on a harness to the delight of thousands, mostly lips-licking girls, put it all right over the top. Sure, it was a stretch to throw these puffballs into the metal category, but it was the 80s, man. Everything was metal.
here I go again
whitesnake (1987)
Talk about right place, right time. Whitesnake were a mid-level 70s hard rock band formed by David Coverdale after leaving Deep Purple, and he probably didn’t have any aspirations to be glam anything. But midway through their gradual transformation from Zep-alikes to more radio-friendly rock n’ roll, hair metal hit like a hammerblow and the still youthful-looking thirty-something Coverdale found himself in the midst of a brand new career as the Robert Plant of the hairspray set. And here’s the thing: he fucking nailed, it man. A lot of hair metal hits have aged terribly, full of artificial drum sounds, embarrassingly juvenile lyrics and dodgy musicianship. Not Whitesnake’s. Time has only strengthened their legacy and songs like Here I Go Again sound positively regal in comparison to plastic-fantastic hits from the same era by goons like Danger Danger or the Bulletboys. And has there every been an opening line as great as ‘I don’t know where I’m going, but I sure know where I’ve been?’ There has not.
PARCHMan FARM CACTUS (1970)
The perfect example of how metal was born from the blues (but heading for the gutter), Parchman Farm is a song first recorded by Bukka White in 1940 and made famous by Mose Allison in 1957. Cactus drive it like they stole it –their version sounds like the soundtrack to a spectacularly violent heist movie.
Melvin Laid
An Egg
Bloodrock (1970)
There is no song that better proves Black Sabbath had many now-forgotten peers back in 1970. The main riff to this track, from the debut by this Texas five-piece, is so ridiculously pummelling that this may well be the heaviest track of all time!
Ride The Sky
Lucifer’s Friend (1970)
Opening their self-titled debut, Ride The Sky charges out of the gate like the stampede of elephants you hear throughout the song courtesy of a well-placed French horn.
Death Walks Behind You
Atomic Rooster (1970)
The title track from Rooster’s second album opens with one of the doomiest, most terrifying intros ever. It’s made scarier by knowing all three members are now dead, two by suicide. ‘Lock the door, switch the light, you’ll be so afraid tonight.’ Indeed.
Fruit and icebergs
Randy Holden (1970)
Holden is probably best known as one of the guitarists on Blue Cheer’s ironically titled New! Improved! album from 1969. Cheer’s original guitarist Leigh Stephens started to go deaf (well, sure) in ‘68 and quit the band, who recruited Holden from LA psych outfit The Other Half. The result was a disappointing turn towards the commercial, steering a hard left away from the crunching death-blues of the first couple records. Holden didn’t dig it and split to sow seeds elsewhere. Soon after, he teamed up the doom-rock architects Sunn amps and drummer Chris Lockheed to create the long-lost Population II album, a festering, bruising, towering ode to the excess-is-best ethos. He went bankrupt making it and it never even got released at all until it showed up in bootleg form years later, but if things had gone Holden’s way and if the album was released on schedule, it would have beaten Sab’s first album by a few months. In essence, it really is the world’s first metal record. And it’s heavy as fuck.
Drowned My Life IN Fear
Leafhound (1971)
Formed from the ashes of British acid-blues band Black Cat Bones (the other half of BCB formed Free), Leafhound’s tantalising cocktail of drugs and distortion was so ahead of it’s time that their sole album (for 40 or so years, at least), Growers of Mushroom, still sounds like it was released yesterday. It’s also the blueprint for every “stoner rock” album of all time ever.
Guts Budgie (1971)
The bludgeoning low-end bass of Burke Shelley combined with the slow, Sabbathy groove of Guts makes this song a must-inclusion in the collection of any heavy hairy freak.
Powers Of Darkness
Ronno (1971)
Obscure B-side from this short-lived band, which featured (no surprises for guessing) none other than Mick Ronson on guitar. Black magic and Satan feature pretty highly in the lyrical department and the main riff is seriously infectious.
Woman For Sale
Tear Gas (1971)
Future Sensational Alex Harvey Band members riff hard on this track from their second and final full-length album.
Sleeping Sickness
JPT Scare Band (1971)
They never really escaped their Kansas City basement in the early 70’s and it wasn’t until the 1990’s until anybody even heard their alarming early recordings, but JPT Scare band was essentially the Cannibal Corpse of their day, the most extreme example of all-knobs-to-the-right heavy rock’n’roll that 1973 could muster. Blistering and sorta terrifying, even today. They were called the Scare Band for a reason, man.
Questions
Bang! (1972)
One of the first American rock bands to openly worship and emulate Black Sabbath, Bang are, in fact, American doom pioneers, and their first album is a stone-cold classic of ugly distortion and steely-eyed downer rock. There have been many American Black Sabbath’s since Bang, but they were the first. And still the best.
Mesmerization Eclipse
Captain Beyond (1972)
There was heavyweight talent in this band including original Deep Purple singer Rod Evans and two ex-members of Iron Butterfly. A proto-metal must-hear, dealing power and finesse.
Suicide
Dust (1972)
Their drummer Marc Bell went on to fame as Marky Ramone. With lines like ‘Electrocution, I thought would make me a star, I stood in the rain with my electric guitar,’ this gem from their second record Hard Attack details options on how one can go about buying the farm.
Go-Go Girls
Hot Chocolate (1972)
Another surprise artist to be associated with the word ‘heavy’, but this 1972 B-side is exactly that. Maybe it was the success of Deep Purple that inspired a trend among more commercial pop bands to want to make heavier tracks. Maybe (as in the case of Sweet) it was really what they wanted to do but the record companies just didn’t give them the freedom to express this side of themselves, thus merely ‘allowing them’ a few fewer commercial B-sides here and there?
Lions & Christians Bang (1972)
America’s answer to early Sabbath take no prisoners with the first track from their debut album.
Man From Mecca  Sweet (1972)
The A-side (Little Willy) to this one of many lesser-known heavy Sweet tracks couldn’t be more of a contradiction.
Forever My Queen Pentagram (1973)
One of the most underrated hard rock bands of all time have finally achieved a cult status and recognition around the world in more recent years. They should have been massive but were cursed from day one. Both Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley wanted to buy their songs during the peak of mid-70s Kiss success!
Shylock
Buffalo (1973)
Aussie heavies Buffalo go for the throat here. Lead by the gritty vocals of Dave Tice, they also featured future Rose Tattoo star Peter Wells.
Symptom Of The Universe
Black Sabbath (1975)
Perhaps the only true masters of early heavy metal. Here on this track from their their sixth album, Sabotage, they sum it all up in one immense-sounding song.
The Ripper
Judas Priest (1976)
You’re in for a shock. The future of metal was changing and this band were going to be at the forefront of it. Rob Halford’s vocals would influence a future generation of screamers.

Bon Jovi: an unbeatable comboination of looks and hooks.

Kiss: ‘the closest thing hair metal has to holy scripture’.

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With Iron Maiden celebrating their 50th anniversary this year, we talk to all the members of the band and look back over the successes, trials, tribulations, thrills, spills and genre-defining records of the longest-running and arguably greatest heavy metal band of them all.

Words: Paul Elliott  Main photo: John McMurtrie  Portraits: Florian Nicolle  Photos: Ross Halfin

“When you start out as a band, you don’t think  further than your first album. You dream about touring the world. Anything else is a bonus.” Steve Harris

He wrote songs that shaped the sound of heavy metal in the early 80s, among them Phantom Of The Opera, Wrathchild, Run To The Hills, The Number Of The Beast and The Trooper. But when Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris thinks back to the very first song he wrote – in the early 70s, when he was aged just 16 – he can only laugh at the absurdity of it all.
“My first band was called Influence,” he says. “Then we changed the name to Gypsy’s Kiss, which is Cockney rhyming slang for you know what. And I wrote this song that had an awful title: Endless Pit. Which isn’t Cockney rhyming slang, but it should be.”
The title wasn’t his. The blame, he says, falls on his school friend Dave Smith, who wrote the song’s lyrics. But forgetting the title there was something about that song – something that would prove hugely significant in the life of Steve Harris. Later, the main riff in Endless Pit was developed into a new song called Innocent Exile, which Harris performed with Smiler, the band he joined after Gypsy’s Kiss broke up. He also took that song into the band he formed in 1975. The band in which his singular vision would be fully realised, the band he has led ever since.
Innocent Exile was, in essence, the first Iron Maiden song. The first step on the road to world domination for one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time.
This year, Iron Maiden celebrate their 50th anniversary with the Run For Your Lives tour, in which they will perform classic material from 1980 to 1992.
Ahead of this, Classic Rock met up with the band in New York City in late 2024 during the last weeks of their Future Past tour. The six members of the band – Steve Harris, singer Bruce Dickinson, guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers, and drummer Nicko McBrain – were interviewed separately over four days, before and after a show in Brooklyn. All spoke at length about the highs and lows of Iron Maiden’s career and their own lives within it: the classic songs and landmark albums; the personal challenges each of them has faced. They discussed the band’s longevity; how they have made it this far, and what the future might look like – for Iron Maiden and for themselves as individuals. As Steve Harris said: “When you start out as a band, you don’t think further than your first album. You dream about touring the world. Anything else is a bonus. So to still be doing that all these years later is incredible. I feel so happy and lucky I can still do it.”
Bruce Dickinson was equally buoyant. “I always wanted this to be the most extraordinary heavy metal band in the world,” he said. “And I think we are, actually. With the repertoire, the songs, the depth…”
With Nicko McBrain there was a slightly different tone, lacking a little of his natural ebullience. He spoke candidly of how, on the Future Past tour, he had experienced difficulties with his dexterity since suffering a stroke in 2023; how he had adapted his approach to playing drums, easing back a little, cutting down the fills in certain songs or omitting them altogether in others. “It’s funny,” he shrugged, “because sometimes when I sit at my practice kit I can do the big drum fill in the intro to The Trooper. But even then it’s a bit flaky, it’s not clean. So rather than do it and not get it right, I leave it out.”
He continued: “I’ve had forty-two years with Iron Maiden. Incredible. But none of us is getting any younger. Who knows how much God is going to grace us with in terms of longevity?”
In retrospect, it seems that he was already resigned to what was to come. Just a few weeks after talking to Classic Rock, McBrain announced on X that the final date of the Future Past tour, in São Paulo, Brazil on December 7, 2024, was his last with Iron Maiden.
Now, the Run For Your Lives tour is more than purely a celebration of Maiden’s 50 years. Simon Dawson, the drummer in Steve Harris’s other band, British Lion, has been installed as McBrain’s replacement. And with this, the band’s first line-up change in 25 years, comes the beginning of yet another new chapter for Iron Maiden.
In late-afternoon sunshine, Steve Harris sits in the back of an SUV moving alongside the glittering Hudson River, en route from Manhattan to Brooklyn. The youngest of his four daughters sits up front. She’s 21. Her father is thinking back to when he was even younger.
He can’t remember the exact date, but it was in late 1975, September or October, when the 19-year-old Steve Harris put the first version of Iron Maiden together.
“It was Terry Rance and Dave Sullivan on guitars,” he says, “me on bass, Ron Matthews on drums – we called him Rebel – and Paul Day singing.” Harris decided on the name of the band during the Christmas holiday period. “Even my mum thought it was a great name,” he says, smiling. At the time, he was working as a draughtsman and living with his nan in Leytonstone, East London, after his parents had moved out of the city. “I could walk to the Cart & Horses if I wanted to,” he says of the pub where the band played their first gig, in 1976.
As leader of his own band, Harris was free to create music far removed from the meat-and-potatoes boogie of Smiler. Inspired by heavy rock giants Deep Purple and UFO and the progressive rock of Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Genesis, he quickly developed a unique style of songwriting – illustrated most powerfully in what he says is the definitive early Maiden song: Phantom Of The Opera.
“As a bass player, I don’t write or play like a guitarist would,” he says. “And with Phantom it was obvious that my style of writing was very different to what people were used to, and what guitarists were used to. My songs were unusual, a bit quirky, but it felt natural to me. And I wanted to play with aggression. People said that Maiden had this ‘punk’ thing, but everyone knows I don’t like punk at all, so it’s not that. At that age you’re full of energy, and that’s what you want to come through, but with loads of melody. That’s why I wanted twin guitars.”
There were numerous line-up changes in the first few years: brief periods with a singer, Dennis Wilcock, who fancied himself as the next Alice Cooper; a drummer, Barry Purkis, known as Thunderstick, who wore a balaclava on stage at a time when the IRA and the Yorkshire Ripper were putting the fear of god into people in Britain. But by 1978 Harris’s plan was coming together. He had a trusted second lieutenant in guitarist Dave Murray, whom he had fired a year earlier over a dispute with Wilcock. He’d also found a singer with a powerful voice and presence, Paul Andrews, who dubbed himself Paul Di’Anno.
As the band toured the UK and recorded a first demo tape, a grass-roots scene was developing, the headbangers’ answer to punk, christened The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal by weekly rock magazine Sounds. “We were in the right place at the right time,” says Harris. And in 1979 he found arguably his most important ally in Rod Smallwood, a former booking agent who became Iron Maiden’s manager, the Peter Grant to Harris’s Jimmy Page. It was Smallwood who secured Maiden a deal with major label EMI.
In December 1979 the band’s self-titled debut album was recorded in London with the line-up of Harris, Murray, Di’Anno, drummer Clive Burr (poached from rival band Samson) and second guitarist Dennis Stratton. It remains one of the greatest heavy metal albums ever made, full of electrifying songs, raw energy and streetwise attitude. Arguably the most influential album that came out of the NWOBHM, it was an inspiration for Metallica and many others that followed. And on the album’s cover, illustrated by Derek Riggs, was the monstrous figure of Eddie – an image that would become, in the words of Kiss star Gene Simmons, “the perfect trademark”.
Maiden’s second album, Killers, followed in 1981. It included Innocent Exile, the ground-zero Maiden song. It was the band’s first album with guitarist Adrian Smith, who had replaced Dennis Stratton. It was also their last with Paul Di’Anno.
After his exit from Maiden, Di’Anno had an erratic career and a chaotic lifestyle. In the months leading up to his death from heart failure on October 21, 2024, he had performed gigs while in a wheelchair, and had reconnected with Steve Harris. “I was in touch with him until a couple of weeks before he passed,” Harris says.
After a moment’s pause, he smiles as he remembers the good times they shared. “Paul was a lovable rogue. He liked to annoy me by dressing up like Adam Ant. Anything to wind me up. He liked to ruffle a few feathers, let’s put it that way. And ruffle he did! He used to call me Hitler. I’ve been called the Ayatollah and Sergeant Major, but Hitler takes the biscuit, really.”
After Di’Anno was dismissed from Maiden, he conceded that he only had himself to blame. Too many times he had blown his voice out on the road – too many late nights, too much booze and cocaine.
“Paul’s voice had a certain quality to it,” Harris says. “A rawness. But he didn’t look after himself. He had this self-destruct button. And I got the impression that he never really believed he had it in him to go to the next level. I think there was an insecurity there.”
There was no such insecurity with the singer who replaced Di’Anno. Bruce Dickinson, like Clive Burr, joined Iron Maiden from Samson, and had no doubts about what he had – a voice of phenomenal range and power. The doubts were in Harris’s mind. “I was very worried at having a singer change at that point,” he admits.
But in February 1982, Run To The Hills, Maiden’s first single with Dickinson, hit the UK top 10. An even greater affirmation followed with the album, The Number Of The Beast.
“The fans took to Bruce incredibly well,” Harris says. “It was an absolute relief, if I’m honest. And then the album went to number one, and it’s like: ‘Wow, what’s happening here?’”
Hailed by Sounds writer Garry Bushell as “epic stuff”, characterised by “raging Purplesque mayhem”, The Number Of The Beast was a giant leap forward for Iron Maiden, with Dickinson’s mighty voice at the rarefied level of legends such as Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford. Over time, The Number Of The Beast would be widely acclaimed as the definitive Maiden album, with deathless heavy metal classics in Run To The Hills, Children Of The Damned, Hallowed Be Thy Name and that hellfire title track.
The Beast On The Road tour was Clive Burr’s last with the band. His replacement was Nicko McBrain, who debuted on the 1983 album Piece Of Mind. With this and another monolithic album, Powerslave, Iron Maiden became the world’s leading metal band.
“It was full-on in those years,” Harris says. “Album, tour, album, tour. We got hardly any time off. But it was great. That’s what we wanted.”
However, not everyone in the band wanted it as badly as Harris. In the mid-80s the aptly named World Slavery tour, a 13-month marathon, was a test of physical and psychological endurance that took a heavy toll on the band, Dickinson and Smith in particular.
(Smith would leave the band during pre-production for 1990’s No Prayer For The Dying. He was replaced by Gillan guitarist Janick Gers.)
For Harris, the greatest challenge came later. In all the years he has led Iron Maiden, only once did he think long and hard about whether he had it in him to keep this band going. It was in 1993, when Dickinson left and Harris was in the process of divorcing his wife Lorraine.
“Pretty awful things were happening all at once,” he says with a sigh. “And I thought the rest of them are going to look to me for strength here, and I don’t know if I’ve got it. There’s that saying: who motivates the motivator? That’s exactly how it was. But it didn’t last long. A few days. I couldn’t carry on feeling sorry for myself. I had to get on with it.”
Dickinson’s replacement was Blaze Bayley, who had previously starred in Wolfsbane, Tamworth’s answer to Van Halen. Harris remains proud of Maiden’s two albums with Bayley: The X Factor (1995) and Virtual XI (1998). “Honestly, I thought some of the songs on those albums were among the best I’ve ever written,” he says. “But those songs were quite dark, probably because of where I was mentally at the time, without even realising it.”
Although Bayley gave it everything he had, he couldn’t match Dickinson’s vocal range or his charisma. And at a time when alternative rock held sway, Iron Maiden’s popularity waned. Harris took an almost perverse satisfaction in adversity. “We were up against it, fighting for our lives,” he says. “Being the underdog again, I enjoyed the challenge.”
But it couldn’t last. In January 1999, Steve Harris made the toughest call of his professional life, telling Bayley that his days in Iron Maiden were over.
“That’s the worst side of being in a band,” he says. “It’s not something I feel comfortable with. Never have done. Never will. But you’ve got to do what’s right for the band.”
With that, the stage was set for the return of Bruce Dickinson, and with him Adrian Smith. Both were ready to rejoin Iron Maiden after years of solo projects, at a lower level than they experienced in the band. But Harris needed convincing. “I was unsure about it for a while,” he says. “I just wanted to make sure they were coming back for the right reasons. So you just take it bit by bit.”
With Dickinson and Smith reinstated in a new six-man line-up now with three guitarists, with Gers having been retained, the band made Brave New World, released in 2000. Harris hesitates to call it a comeback album, but that was the effect it had.
“We made a really strong album, went out on tour, played Rock In Rio and all that kind of stuff ” he says. “I said: ‘This is great.’ And I knew then that we could just carry on as long as we want.”
There had been tension in the past between Harris and Dickinson, dating all the way back to the 80s, but second time around they were older and wiser.
“Bruce and me, we never had fights or anything like that,” Harris says. “There were times when he got on my nerves and I’m sure I got on his nerves. But that’s what it’s like when you’re in a band together for a long time. Certain characters will clash. But there’s a chemistry that works when everybody’s together. It just works. So why would you want to compromise that just for some bullshit stuff that goes down?”
Dave Murray and Adrian Smith are the two most laid-back characters in Iron Maiden. They also have the longest shared history, having become friends as school kids in East London. “We lived two streets away from each other,” Murray says. “We used to jam, and eventually we put a little band together [named Stone Free, after the Jimi Hendrix song], and we’d play in the church hall.”
In that brief period in the late 70s when Murray was temporarily out of Maiden, he teamed up with Smith again in the band Urchin. But after Harris had pulled him back in, his path was set. For the past 47 years he has been at Harris’s side, through all the ups and downs. But he laughs – and Murray laughs often – when he measures the difference in personality and temperament between himself and Harris. “Probably the complete opposite,” he says. “I’m just really chilled out.”
Murray’s Zen-like calm is evident both on stage and off. When he talks about the power dynamic in Iron Maiden, he is deferential, and contentedly so. “The leadership comes from Steve, Bruce and Rod,” he says. “I’m more like a team player, and I’m happy to be in that position. You couldn’t have a whole band with people as laid-back as me, or else nothing would get done.”
On stage he appears to be in his own little world. “There are a million things that can distract you during a show,” he muses. “So you have to be good at tuning it all out.” He has what he calls “a weird analogy”, but it works: “When you play golf, which I love, you’ve got to clear your head. If you can get your brain to shut up for ten seconds, you can hit a good shot. So in concerts I do go into that world of my own. It means I can focus on the music and the pure enjoyment of playing.”
Murray was not immune to the pressure the band were under during that whirlwind period in the 80s, the World Slavery tour in particular. “We needed time off after that, for our sanity,” he says.
But when he considers all of those days, weeks, months and years he has been on the road with Iron Maiden, he speaks with gratitude. “There wasn’t much time to think about it,” he says. “You just lived it. You played music, and you enjoyed seeing a world you’d never seen before. The first time I ever left the UK was with the band. And that was as exciting as the playing – seeing new countries, different cultures. So that, on top of playing the shows, was a total high.”
Only once, in all these years, did he fear that the life he enjoyed with Iron Maiden might be at an end. It was in the late 90s, when Blaze Bayley was fronting the band. “I always liked Blaze,” he says. “Good singer, lovely guy. But we were playing in smaller places, where previously we’d been playing in arenas. It seemed like it was coming towards the end… Until Bruce and Adrian came back.”
Murray’s life is, as he describes it, uncomplicated, and beautifully so. When he’s not with Iron Maiden, he’s with his family at home in the tropical paradise of Hawaii.
“I love playing,” he says. “It’s my favourite thing to do. But there’s a fine balance between touring and having a life at home. In the old days with the band it was constant. You were living it twenty-four/seven. But now, once we finish a tour, I go home, decompress and basically let it all go.”
Adrian Smith is a different kind of laid-back. Not passive-aggressive, but quietly contemplative. He was nicknamed Mr. Indecision by Steve Harris, but as he says: “Steve’s very black-and-white. He just trusts his instincts. I like to absorb and go away and think about it. To me that’s just being sensible.”
The first time Smith was invited to join Iron Maiden, he thought long and hard about it before turning them down. At that time, late ’79, he had high hopes for Urchin, in which he was the main songwriter as well as singer and guitarist. A record deal was a possibility. But Maiden had already signed with EMI and were about to record their first album. Smith recalls how his father had urged him to take the Maiden job. “My dad was a typical working-class guy, experienced in life, and he knew that you don’t get these breaks very often.”
Fortunately for Smith he got a second offer from Maiden just a year later, after Dennis Stratton was fired. This time he jumped at the chance. “Urchin by then was falling apart a bit,” he says. Maiden were flying after a top-ten album and a European tour with Kiss.
Making the Killers album was a daunting experience for Smith: recording at Battery Studios in West London, formerly known as Morgan Studios, where major artists such as Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and many more had created classic albums, and working with a famous producer, Martin Birch.
“I couldn’t sleep for a week before we went in,” Smith recalls. “Martin had worked with Ritchie Blackmore. I mean, Jesus! But he was very good with me, although he could be a bit edgy. He was a karate black belt and sometimes he’d be pulling moves, kicking and shadow-boxing, and then he’d go: ‘Can you do that overdub?’”
It was on The Number Of The Beast that Smith first asserted himself as a songwriter within the Maiden. He co-wrote three songs, including 22 Acacia Avenue, a song he’d performed with Urchin and had written when he was just 16, which goes some way to explaining the lyrical content. “It’s about a young bloke going with a prostitute, an older woman, and losing his virginity,” he says, laughing. “A teenage fantasy at the time!”
On subsequent albums, Smith, an instinctively melodic player and writer, delivered songs that were no-brainer choices for singles, some written alone, some with Dickinson, Harris or both: Flight Of Icarus, 2 Minutes To Midnight, Stranger In A Strange Land, Can I Play With Madness, The Evil That Men Do, Wasted Years, the latter based on a lick that he says “sounded like U2”.
But at the end of a decade in which Iron Maiden had conquered the world, Smith was feeling burned out. “The eighties were very intense,” he says. “For everybody. You’ve got to be mentally strong to get out there and perform every night. And I definitely had some issues. A lot of times I would retreat into myself. But sometimes I just completely freaked out.”
In an era when mental health issues were rarely discussed – especially not by young men in a rock band – Smith felt isolated, unable to express himself other than drowning in booze and coke. “We just kept hammering away,” he says. “It’s what you’ve got to do. And everyone’s got their own problems. They’re trying to keep themselves together.”
It was in 1990 that it all came to a head. “I’d started to feel like I was stifled in the band,” he says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do.”
The decision was made for him. “They sat me down and said: ‘Are you into it? You’ve got to be a hundred per cent into it. We’re going on tour for another nine months.’ So… that was it. It wasn’t like I said: ‘Right, I’m leaving the band.’ There was a lot of agonising. And like I said before, things are not always black and white.”
For a while he felt okay about leaving the band. “I was kind of relieved, because I wasn’t happy. Everybody knew that. So I bought a house, got married, had kids…”
Near the end of 1991, another major rock band approached him. Def Leppard were searching for a new guitarist following the death of Steve Clark in January of that year.
Smith had known Leppard guitarist Phil Collen since the late 70s. “Phil had auditioned for Urchin back in the day,” he says. “And when I joined Maiden I knew that Phil had also been in the frame. He was mates with Paul Di’Anno.”
As Smith remembers it, there were two key people who recommended him for the Leppard job: photographer Ross Halfin, who had known both bands since the early days of the NWOBHM, and Steve Harris, whose friendship with Leppard singer Joe Elliott began on a rowdy night in 1979 when Maiden played at sticky-floored old joint the Retford Porterhouse. Smith auditioned for Leppard in Los Angeles.
“Great guys,” he says. “We played together for a couple of days.”
With his melodic sensibilities, he could have made a good match for Def Leppard. Instead they chose former Dio and Whitesnake guitarist Vivian Campbell. “He’s more of a virtuoso guitarist than I am,” Smith says. “And I guess that personality-wise he fit in.”
However, just a few months after he tried out for Def Leppard, Smith came to the realisation that his heart was still in Iron Maiden. It was a realisation in which emotions he had suppressed finally surfaced.
On August 22, 1992, Maiden were headlining the Monsters Of Rock festival at Donington Park for the second time, and Harris invited Smith to make a guest appearance in the encore.
“It was my missus who said I should do it,” he says. “Just to show there’s no hard feelings. But when I got there I was nervous, and I started drinking whisky. So I was pretty lit up when they went on. I was at the side of the stage, watching them play all the songs I used to play, and I just burst out crying. I was overwhelmed. Up until that point I hadn’t experienced much regret. But it really hit me then. There was a lot of my life in that band, and I was so close to where I used to be.”
He pauses and smiles. “Luckily I had enough time to pull myself together. I hadn’t brought a guitar. I just grabbed one of Dave’s. Janick grabbed me in a headlock and pulled me all the way out onto the catwalk before I’d played a fucking note! And when Running Free started up, I thought: ‘Fucking hell, this is a bit fast!’ But I got through it – just about. And in the end it was a nice thing to do.”
In the years that followed, Smith remained in Iron Maiden’s orbit. His band Psycho Motel opened for Maiden on a UK tour. He then teamed up once again with Bruce Dickinson for two of the singer’s solo albums: Accident Of Birth and The Chemical Wedding. In 1998, a year after The Chemical Wedding was released, Dickinson and Smith were approached about rejoining Maiden. And this time Smith didn’t have be asked twice.
When Steve Harris attempts to describe the various personalities within his band, he laughs and rolls his eyes before carefully measuring his words. “Everyone’s got their little idiosyncrasies,” he says. “I mean, talk about a bunch of characters.”
Of the three guitarists in Iron Maiden, Janick Gers is the most extrovert. Where Dave Murray is happy to go with the flow, and Adrian Smith likes to take his time in collecting his thoughts, Gers is more vocal, highly opinionated, and especially bullish in his attitude to making music.
On stage with Maiden he’s all flash, throwing the kind of shapes that went out of fashion when all those hair-metal bands were killed by grunge in the early 90s. When he’s off stage it’s a different story.
“When I first joined Maiden,” Gers says, “one of the things I heard was: ‘You’re not like a rock star. You’re like one of the punters.’ Yes, that’s exactly what I am. This is part of my life. It isn’t my whole life. You won’t see me walking up Chiswick High Road with my bullet belt on. I can sit in a pub very quietly and have a drink, have a chat about football, religion, politics… anything but music, really.”
Gers first encountered Iron Maiden in the days of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, when he played guitar with the band White Spirit, formed in his home town of Hartlepool. In 1981, as a member of Gillan, he befriended Bruce Dickinson, who took every opportunity to get close to his hero Ian Gillan. Many years on, after Gers had temporarily dropped out of the music business and taken a degree in humanities, he and Dickinson reconnected at a charity concert in London. In 1989, while Dickinson was on a short break from Iron Maiden, he recorded his first solo single, Bring Your Daughter… To The Slaughter, with Gers on guitar. The song featured in the film A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, and was subsequently recorded by Maiden and became their only UK No.1 single.
Dickinson’s collaboration with Gers was developed on the singer’s album Tattooed Millionaire. And it was during rehearsals for Dickinson’s solo tour that Gers received an offer he could not refuse.
As he recalls it: “Bruce had said: ‘Learn some Maiden tracks.’ I said: ‘I thought we weren’t doing Maiden stuff on this tour?’ Bruce said: ‘We’re not. This is for Maiden. Adrian’s leaving the band.’
“Because I was hanging around with Bruce, people might have thought I was trying to get into Maiden, but that was never in my mind.”
Gers’s reasoning is quite simple: “It never occurred to me that anyone would ever leave that band.”
A rehearsal was quickly arranged at Maiden’s HQ. Smith’s gear was still there, but Gers refused to touch it. But as soon as he played a song with the band, any misgivings were forgotten.
“We did The Trooper first,” he recalls. “And I got this adrenaline buzz. My hands were shaking. We did a few more, and they said: ‘You’re in!’”
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing from there. When Dickinson left the band in 1993, Gers was mortified. “I felt like he’d left me by myself.” The years with Blaze Bayley were problematic. “We made it hard for Blaze,” he admits. “We made him sing Run To The Hills, The Evil That Men Do – songs that weren’t in his range.”
When Harris told Gers that Dickinson and Smith were returning to Iron Maiden, his first impulse was to offer his resignation. “My attitude was: ‘I’ll go. If you get Adrian back, it’ll be like it was before.’ But Steve said: ‘That’s not what I’m thinking. If Adrian comes back and you went, it’s like we’d go backwards. But if we have three guitarists it takes it somewhere else.’”
In this triple-guitar formation, Gers is the loose cannon. “Even when I’m in the studio I’m all nervous energy,” he says. “I like to just plug in play. It’s the same when I’m playing live. For me it’s all about intensity. Sometimes you’re at the side of the stage and you’re fucking knackered, you’ve been travelling all day, your knees are killing you. But then you run on stage and – bang! – you’re in another world.
“On stage I feel this aggression, like a volcano going off. I’m completely fucking mental up there. I don’t know why I swing my guitars around. Haven’t a fucking clue. But one thing I do know: if you come near me when I’m swinging that guitar, you’re going to get hit!”
In the restaurant on the 35th floor of a Manhattan hotel, with views across Central Park, Bruce Dickinson flicks through a cocktail menu arranged in somewhat pretentious categories: Earth, Wood, Water. With a boyish grin he holds the menu open at the page headed: ‘Metal’. He orders coffee, but doesn’t really need it. He’s always in the mood to talk.
He begins by discussing a favourite meal that he cooks for himself on tour – egg-white omelette with steamed vegetables. The result of eating it, he delights in saying, is powerful flatulence.
Turning his mind back to Iron Maiden, he remembers the first time he saw the band play live, at London venue the Music Machine in 1980, when Samson, the band Dickinson was then fronting, found Maiden a hard act to follow. It was a chastening experience.
“All these Maiden fans turned up,” he says, “and then immediately Maiden finished they all fucked off, leaving us to play to a hundred punters! I thought: ‘There’s something going on with this band. I think they’re going to be big.”
Samson’s shortcomings were very much apparent to Dickinson during the recording of their album Shock Tactics in January 1981. They had some good stuff in the can, including a ballsy version of Russ Ballards’s Riding With The Angels. But in an adjacent room at Battery Studios, Iron Maiden were making Killers.
“We were all in the bar together every night,” the singer remembers. “And one time when Martin Birch and I were both drunk as lords, he played the whole of Killers to me at full bore, and it melted my fucking ears!”
In the summer of ’81, the stars aligned. “Samson were slowly going down the plughole,” Dickinson says. “And there were lots of rumours about Paul Di’Anno going around.”
After Samson had played at the Reading Festival, Dickinson met with Steve Harris and Maiden manager Rod Smallwood in the backstage enclosure. An audition was arranged behind Paul Di’Anno’s back. But when Dickinson arrived at it, he felt like he’d walked into a wake. “Everybody was just down.”
The gloom lifted when they jammed on some rock classics: “A bit of AC/DC, a bit of Purple; Woman From Tokyo, Black Night.” Then they tried some Maiden songs.
“They’d asked me to learn four,” Dickinson says, “but they’d only got two albums, so I just learned all of them. As soon we’d bashed through a couple, Steve phoned Rod and said: ‘Can we get into a studio tonight?’ And Rod’s going: ‘Fucking calm down! We’ve got some gigs to do with Paul first!’ After that they all went out looking miserable again. I really felt for them – and I felt for Paul, too.”
Once the last dates with Di’Anno were completed, Dickinson returned to Battery Studios, where Martin Birch had set up the backing tracks from the live EP Maiden Japan, minus Di’Anno’s vocals. With the rest of the band watching on, Dickinson recorded vocals for four songs including, somewhat fittingly for a new beginning, Innocent Exile. “When I was done, they all went off into this little huddle for ten minutes,” he says. “Finally they all came out and Steve said: ‘Well, let’s go for a pint – you’re in!’ That night we all went out to see UFO at the Hammy Odeon. We got royally pissed in the bar. And that was it.”
Paul Di’Anno’s failure was the making of Bruce Dickinson. But on October 22, 2024, the day after Di’Anno’s death, it was Dickinson who paid tribute during a Maiden show in St. Paul, Minnesota. In an impromptu speech, he mentioned a song from the band’s debut album. Remember Tomorrow, co-written by Harris and Di’Anno, is arguably the most emotive song Iron Maiden have ever recorded, and Dickinson now believes they should never play it again, out of respect for Di’Anno.
“If ever Paul owned a song, it’s that one,” he says. “I can sing it, and have done. But I think we should leave it with Paul now.”
Di’Anno had succumbed to the pressure of the band’s heavy touring within two years. Dickinson never cracked, but by the mid-80s he was struggling. While he didn’t lose his voice, he feared he was losing his mind. And when he thinks back on that period, he launches into a long, and at times brutal, self-analysis.
“All through the eighties we were working so hard, like eight shows in ten days over the course of eight months,” he says with a shake of the head. “That’s not great if you’ve got a kind of high-performance voice. It can’t perform at that level with that amount of attrition. And then at the end of one year of that, you get to do it all over again. And this goes on for five years… You’re under constant stress every night. You’re suffering from a lack of sleep and self-induced shit, whether it’s chasing after women, whether it’s drugs, whether it’s alcohol. And every day you just get up and do it all again. You’re a bunch of lads together against the world. And nobody’s going to help you if you fall down, so you’re just going to crack on, crack on, crack on…
“You’re not part of normal society. PTSD, dislocation – that’s effectively what you’ve got. And depending on your personality type, you deal with it in different ways. Steve became a recluse. Adrian was drinking himself into an early grave. I was busy shagging everything that moved. And none of it was healthy.
“I remember something that Pete Townshend once said about groupies. ‘The moment you realise that you can click your fingers and manipulate people into having sex with you, that’s the moment you’re going down the slippery slope.’ Up until that moment, it’s innocent. You can’t believe women are throwing themselves at you. You think: ‘Well, this is nice!’ And it is. It’s fucking great!
“But there’s a dark side to this. Where do you stop? When does it become a prop, like alcohol or cocaine? When does this become your reality – when it’s not actually real?
“So that’s when I started doing extracurricular activities like fencing. I was thinking: I’ve got to do something to keep my brain clean. Because I was looking around at our contemporaries in the eighties…”
He carries on: “We toured with Mötley Crüe. Complete fucking casualties, much of it self-induced. And I was like: ‘Please tell me I’m not going to end up like that!’
“I can’t imagine being in a band with somebody who was on heroin, God forbid. When I was in Samson you’d have a joint every now and again. Or you’d do some speed and go: ‘Fuck me! That was horrible!’ And you don’t do it again. But as soon as I went into Maiden, it was just: straighten up, fly right, and don’t blow this. So apart from the odd recreational dalliance here and there in the early days, this has never been a big druggie band. Instead it was our personal lives that went down the shitter.
“And I don’t know whether Steve felt that way, because he doesn’t do touchy-feely, he’s not a great one for expressing feelings – except maybe allegorically in songs. With Steve you have to read between the lines quite deeply.”
Dickinson says that at the end of the World Slavery tour, he reached a crossroads in his life.
“I genuinely thought I should just pack it all in completely,” he says. “Not go solo. Not do anything. Just stop being part of music, because it’s just not worth it. It’s tanked any relationships I might have had, or wanted to keep.
“Adrian’s still got the original wife. I’m on my third, and I don’t want to have any more, thank you very much. I’m very happy with the one I’ve got right now. I’m super-happy, because she’s brilliant for my mental health. I think I’m shocking for hers! But all of us in this band have been through that mill. And you wonder…”
He takes a long pause.
“Sitting here, now… You know what? I think people might find it surprising that I say, on balance, it’s been worth it. Some people might go: ‘How can you even consider it might not be worth it?’ Well I do, actually, right? I do.
“Weighing the scales of your life, there’s a lot of things I missed. My kids growing up. Yes, I saw them, but I didn’t see them to grow up in the way that normal people see their kids grow up. And all the failed relationships, because your mind is skewed. You don’t have a normal set of priorities.”
After the World Slavery tour, when the band began to make the 1986 album Somewhere In Time, Dickinson was, as Steve Harris once said, “off with the fairies”. What Dickinson bought to the table – acoustic folk-rock songs reminiscent of Jethro Tull – were dismissed out of hand by Harris. “There was none of me on that record,” Dickinson says. “I was just AWOL mentally.”
In hindsight, he thinks it “amazing” that he hung in there as the singer with Iron Maiden for another seven years. He describes his time outside of the band, working as a solo artist, as “liberating”. Equally, when he rejoined the band, he felt revitalised and ready for  a new challenge.
“When we got back together, Steve, being Steve, was suspicious. Eyeing me up. I just said: ‘Come on, let’s get on with it and do a great album!’ And it was.”
That album, Brave New World, was the band’s best since Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. It also marked the beginning of a second golden age for Iron Maiden, which has been remarkable not only in the scale of the band’s success but also its longevity. Twenty-five years now. Half the band’s lifetime. But they might not have made it this far after what Dickinson experienced a decade ago.
The band had just finished making the 2015 album The Book Of Souls when Dickinson was diagnosed with throat cancer. It was a long road to recovery, 10 months of treatment. “I had a heavy fucking dose of radiation,” he says. “Thirty-three sessions.”
He says now that he always believed he would pull through. “I felt strong in myself. I was optimistic.”
From the moment of diagnosis, he went through the hypotheticals one by one.
“The first thing on my mind was: ‘I’ve got three children, I want to see them grow up, and so for that I need to be alive. And then, once we get that bit out of the way, let’s see…
“It may sound sort of fatalistic, but my attitude was: if I can’t sing properly, that would be it for me in Maiden. And I was thinking it wasn’t right that Maiden should finish because of that. So I’d help them find a new singer.
“Early on, I made a series of ‘what if?’ decisions. What if I can’t sing again? Okay, then I can’t. What if I could do half of it? Well, then that would be discussion with the other guys: ‘Do you still want to carry on with half a singer?’ I absolutely went through all that.”
After a pause, he smiles. “I got lucky,” he says. “I got through it all, and although my cancer was in that general area, my vocal cords were not affected. So we didn’t have to make that decision, because it all worked out.”
Aday after this conversation with Bruce Dickinson, and at the same restaurant table, Nicko McBrain gives his last interview to Classic Rock as the drummer with Iron Maiden.
Superficially, at least, it’s the same old Nicko. The booming voice and unvarnished gor-blimey accent. The warm greeting and easy bonhomie. Except now, at 72, the self-described “grandad of the band” appears to have softened a little with age, and with the Christian faith he has embraced for the past 25 years.
Nothing he says on this day gives any clear indication that he has already made the decision on his future. But what is evident, when he talks about his performance levels behind the kit since he suffered a stroke in 2023, is a trace of wounded pride in a man whose powerhouse drumming has been at the heart of Iron Maiden for more than four decades.
When McBrain joined Iron Maiden in 1982, he was already well acquainted with the band. “I first met them in 1979,” he says, “when I was working with a band called McKitty and we played at the same festival.”
Two years later, on the Killers tour, McBrain was in the opening act, Trust, the politically charged French punk-metal band. “That was when I really bonded with the Maiden boys,” he says. “But the thought of playing for Maiden one day? Back then it never crossed my mind.”
During the Killers tour, he had struck up a friendship with Maiden drummer Clive Burr. “We were very close, me and him. Drummers are like that. I don’t know  whether we have that mentality of: ‘I’m better than him.’ At least we didn’t.”
But in late 1982, Burr was out of Maiden, and McBrain was in. On his first album with the band, Piece Of Mind, the opening track Where Eagles Dare began with a thunderous drum fusillade. “That,” he says proudly, “was a great way to introduce myself.” From there he would go on to make another 13 studio albums with the band.
Near the end of this interview there is a brief pause when McBrain’s son strolls into the hotel restaurant to say hello to his dad and give him a hug. A four-day stopover in New York is an opportunity for every member of the band to have time with their families, and McBrain will later allude to this in his farewell notice, stating: “I announce my decision to take a step back from the grind of the extensive touring lifestyle.”
In his parting words to Classic Rock, he uses the present tense when he says: “It’s an honour and a privilege to still be a part of it. The magic of this band’s longevity is we still get on well, and we still have that passion for the music. I think that’s the true essence of Maiden. And after all these years, I still love these guys. I’d take a bullet for them.”
With his emotions rising, he turns to his faith. “I love Jesus and I believe in the Lord, and personally I think: ‘How long is he going to give me?’”
But in the end he can’t resist a joke. “I always thought it would be great to do a Tommy Cooper,” he says, referring to the legendary fez-wearing comedian who died on stage – literally – during a live TV show in 1984.
“What a way to go!” he says, laughing. “But I’m not sure the boys would have wanted that.”
Recently, Steve Harris laughed out loud at something that was written about him. He had been on tour with his other band British Lion, playing in small venues, the audiences numbering in the hundreds, not the tens of thousands that Iron Maiden perform to. On the day of a gig in what is statistically the coldest city in the UK, he read in a local paper: “Steve Harris could be on a beach in the Bahamas in his Speedos, but instead he’s freezing his nuts off in Aberdeen!”
“I thought it was hilarious,” Harris says. “But it did make me think: ‘Yeah, what the fuck am I doing?’”
Harris has lived in the Bahamas for many years, having first visited there in the 80s when Iron Maiden recorded Piece Of Mind at Compass Point Studios in the capital, Nassau. “It’s so beautiful there, I have to pinch myself sometimes,” he says. “But even though I live right on a beach, I can’t laze around in the sun for more than half an hour at a time. I just can’t. I’m not that sort of person. I need to be doing stuff. And playing music is what I love doing most.”
Which is why, at the age of 68, he has two bands instead of one. It’s why he has steered Iron Maiden through 50 years, and why he will continue to do so even without that old warhorse Nicko McBrain behind him.
“Obviously we can’t carry on for ever,” Harris says. “The show that we do is a very physical thing. How long can we keep going? I really don’t know. We were asked that question twenty years ago, and ever since.”
Dave Murray says that Maiden should, eventually, “bow out with dignity and grace”. Nicko McBrain has done so, and Steve Harris reckons he will know when it’s time. Smiling, he says: “You’d like to think your best mate would tell you, wouldn’t you? But I think you’d know in yourself if you can’t cut it any more. And I like to think that we’re still out there giving it large.”
Bruce Dickinson agrees. “Only recently this guy, a big fan, said to me: ‘It’s so great to see Maiden still doing it.’ I said: ‘Yeah, and we’re doing it for real!’ There’s no detuning. This guy said: ‘Lots of bands use backing tracks now…’ I said: ‘No! No, no, no, no, no!’ That’s the day I quit. Or the day we stop. If it’s not real, it’s not Maiden. The idea that you can turn it into the Disneyland Maiden, by using backing tracks, a few tricks… No! Maiden has to be one hundred per cent real – and fucking fierce!”
The Run For Your Lives tour is a nostalgia trip. “A history lesson,” as Dickinson laughingly calls it. But both he and Steve Harris believe that the drive to create new music has been key to Iron Maiden’s longevity.
“It’s a fantastic back catalogue that we’ve got, but you don’t just rely on that,” Harris says. “We’ve done tours before where we’ve only played the old stuff, but we’ve always continued to make new albums. And even now, I’m still writing all the time. I’ve got so many ideas, it’s ridiculous, insane. I couldn’t finish off all the ideas I’ve had in three lifetimes.”
“God forbid we should make another record!” Dickinson says, laughing. “But we’re booked up through 2025, 2026… so let’s wait and see how we all feel about it.”
What Dickinson feels now is gratitude – and pride in what this band represents.
“I think Maiden is a power for good in the world,” he says. “It really is. You see that every night in the audience. And ironically, we’re now getting to enjoy it as well, whereas in the early days we were so caught up in it that it never occurred to us to go: ‘It’s great.’ Now, I appreciate how fantastic it is. So I’m constantly grateful at sixty-six to be able to still do it.
“And,” he says with a smile, “hopefully do it well.”
Iron Maiden’s Run For Your Lives tour reaches the UK on June 21. See p96 for dates, latest info at ironmaiden.com

Young guns going for glory: (clockwise from left) Steve Harris, Clive Burr, Paul Di’Anno.

Ross Halfin x4

Paul Di’Anno fronting an early Iron Maiden. But his unreliabilty led to him being dismissed.

centre: Fraser Gray / Alamy

Iron Maiden in 1980 (l-r) Clive Burr, Dave Murray, Paul Di’Anno, Dennis Stratton, Steve Harris.

➤

For band leader Steve Harris, the pressures and responsibility sometimes weighed heavily  on him.

“The show that we do is a very physical thing. How long can  we keep going? I really  don’t know.” Steve Harris

Ross Halfin x2; top left: John McMurtrie

Kiss’s Gene Simmons says that with Eddie Iron Maiden had “the perfect trademark”.

“We’re gonna need more monitors…”

A fresh-faced Maiden in 1981/82.

‘Slasher’ Dickinson with fencing foils at home in London in 1985.

Bruce with fencing foils: George Chin/IconicPix; Ross Halfin x2; Trooper: John McMurtrie

“I always wanted this to be  the most extraordinary heavy metal band in the world.” Bruce Dickinson

When it comes to extra-curricular activities, few people in rock have more strings to their bow than Bruce Dickinson.

“You just lived it,” Dave Murray says of his years on the road with Maiden. “You played music,  and you enjoyed seeing a world you’d never  seen before.”

“[In the late 90s] It seemed like it was coming towards the end… Until Bruce and  Adrian came back.” Dave Murray

Ross Halfin x2; top: John McMurtrie

Beach boys: (l-r) Adrian Smith, Nicko McBrain, Bruce Dickinson, Dave Murray, Steve Harris.

Above left: should be a band called Smiler. Dave Murray, Steve Harris and  Adrian Smith.
Right: Steve Harris with Maiden manager Rod Smallwood.
Below: not a band called Smiler. Janick Gers, Dave Murray, Blaze Bayley, Steve Harris and Nicko McBrain in 1995.

Ross Halfin x3; bottom: George Chin/IconicPix

“The eighties were very intense. For everybody… Sometimes I just completely freaked out.” Adrian Smith

Adrian Smith in particular felt the pressures of album-tour-album roundabout.

Shape-throwing Janick Gers is the most extrovert of Maiden’s three guitarists.

“This is part of my life. It isn’t my whole life. You won’t see me walking up Chiswick High Road with my bullet belt on.” Janick Gers

main: dean karr/press; Janick Gers: Jim Steele/Getty

Janick Gers with Maiden at Wembley Arena, December 1990.

Nicko: sttickin’ it to ’em with some heavy metal thunder.

Do look back: Nicko (below) at the end  of his final show with the thrill ride called Iron Maiden.

sooty: Mick Hutson/Getty; Ross Halfin x2; bottom: John McMurtrie

“The magic of this band’s longevity is we still get on  well, and we still have that  passion for the music.” Nicko McBrain

Nicko McBrain: by the time you read this, Maiden’s powerhouse drummer will have stepped down after a long and distinguished time with the band.

On July 5, 2025, the original four members of Black Sabbath reunite to play the very last Sabbath show, in their home city. After that there will be no more comebacks, no more tours, no more ‘final’ shows. Ozzy, Tony, Geezer and Bill look back at their incredible time together.

Words: Dave Everley

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MM-Media Archive/IconicPix

This is how it all begins.
It’s May 1969 and four young men are crammed into a room in the Newtown Community Centre in Aston, Birmingham, inventing the future. Between them they sport an array of haystack hairstyles and unkempt moustaches, although they’re all barely out of their teens. The eldest is a dark-haired figure who plays his guitar left-handed and emits an air of menace. At 21 he’s their unofficial leader. The rest of them are barely 20.
They’ve been playing together for nearly a year by this point, briefly under the name the Polka Tulk Blues Band, then even more briefly as plain Polka Tulk, and now as Earth. For most of that time they’ve been grabbing gigs wherever they can, mostly playing blues and blues-rock covers. But recently they realised they needed some material of their own.
They’ve written one song already, a jazzy, bluesy track called Wicked World, whose fearful title plugs into the turmoil and angst in the air. They’ve also got the beginnings of a few others, jammed out during a recent residency in a grotty club in Hamburg.
But the song they’re finishing up now is something else. The inspiration came from Gustav Holst’s ominous Mars, The Bringer Of War, from his early 20th-century suite The Planets, but they’ve summoned some dark magic and transformed it into something else entirely.
The guitarist, Tony Iommi, lays down a thick, doom-laden riff before wild-eyed, wild-haired singer Ozzy Osbourne lets out the terrified cry: ‘What is this that stands before me?’ The music suddenly erupts into a terrified gallop, with bassist Geezer Butler lost in his own world as he rocks his head from side to side, and drummer Bill Ward battering his kit like he’s trying to keep a wild animal down.
“When we finished the song, I kind of sunk inside myself,” Ward says today. “I thought we’ve either just made the most enormous mistake of our lives and completely fucked up the future, or we’ve opened a door that leads to something unknown. I didn’t know what we’d done.”
Although the finished song won’t have its title in its lyrics, the one they’ll soon give it, taken from a Boris Karloff B-movie horror movie that came out a few years earlier, fits the music’s malevolent aura perfectly: Black Sabbath.
Other bands had already heavied up the blues: Cream, Led Zeppelin, America’s Iron Butterfly, but Black Sabbath was something different. This was no blues song. It was its own thing: a thunderclap that would jolt an entirely new form of music to life, launching the band who wrote it on a journey that none of them could ever have conceived of.
“That song was so different to anything else that had gone before,” says bassist Geezer Butler now. “When we wrote Black Sabbath, I knew we had found our calling.”
This is how it all ends.
On July 5, 2025, 57 years after the four members of Black Sabbath first played together, the thunderclap will ring for the last time.
That’s the day when Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward will take the stage at Villa Park stadium in Birmingham for a show named Back To The Beginning, a reference to the fact that all four men were born and raised within a stone’s throw of this venerable football ground, home of Aston Villa FC since 1897.
It will effectively be the loudest retirement party in history. In February 2023, Ozzy announced that he would no longer be touring, the culmination of years of health issues, physical injuries and debilitating surgeries. He decided in 2024 that he wanted to bow out with one final home-town show, and he wanted the original line-up of Black Sabbath to be part of it. The upcoming show will be the first time all four members have played together in almost 20 years, and it will be the last time ever. For Black Sabbath, and for Ozzy Osbourne, Back To The Beginning is a closing of the circle.
“‘Important’ isn’t the word I would use,” Ozzy tells Classic Rock of the Villa Park show. “This is my farewell show. I am very blessed to say my goodbyes with the help of so many amazing musicians and friends.”
That list of friends is impressive to say the least. Pretty much every significant rock and metal band in operation today is represented on the all-star bill: Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Slayer, Tool, Faith No More, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Ghost, Korn, Anthrax… the list goes on. These aren’t just people whose music has been shaped by Sabbath. They’re people whose whole identities have been shaped by them.
The line-up means Back To The Beginning is easily the biggest single gig of the year, probably the decade. But the night itself will belong to the four men who helped start all this all those years ago.
“We’ve always had a bond with each other,” says Iommi. “All the things that have gone down over the years, all the complaining about one thing or another, we’re a family at the end of the day.”
He can say that now, but Iommi initially wasn’t sure if he wanted to play a Black Sabbath show in 2025. “I’d already closed the door on it,” he says of the idea of Sabbath playing live again. “I thought that was it.”
He’s talking about The End, the 11-month long tour that concluded with a farewell show at Birmingham’s Genting Arena on February 4, 2017. It wasn’t quite the perfect goodbye – Bill Ward wasn’t part of it after pulling out of the most recent Sabbath reunion just over five years earlier – but it was as good a curtain closer on such an illustrious career as it gets. For Iommi, whose decision it was not to tour any more after being diagnosed with lymphoma in early 2012, it was unequivocally the end of the road for Black Sabbath. The End really meant the end this time.
“That was really emotional,” he says now of that final show. “I thought: ‘That’s it now, we’re done, we won’t be playing together again.’”
And so it seemed, until he got a text from Ozzy Osbourne in the autumn of 2024 suggesting the original Sabbath reunite for one more performance during what would be Ozzy’s last ever live show. The guitarist’s reaction: “I didn’t want to do it.”
Geezer Butler has a different view of The End tour today. “For me it was definitely the end of touring,” he says. “But I didn’t rule out a one-off gig, or maybe an album.”
He got the same message from Ozzy: did he want to do one more gig? “I said yes if the others were up for it,” he says.
Iommi’s mind was changed by the fact that profits from the show would go to three charities: Cure Parkinson’s, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorns Children’s Hospice.
But there was one other condition: Bill Ward would have to be involved.
The members of Black Sabbath haven’t always agreed on everything over the years, but they unequivocally agree on something today. This reunion wouldn’t be happening if Bill Ward wasn’t involved.
Geezer: “The whole point of this last show was to finish with the original four of us playing together, so I wouldn’t have contemplated it without Bill.”
Tony: “No. There’d be no point. We’ve already done that. And that was the thing. Because it’s the original line-up, that makes it more proper. So no, I wouldn’t have done it without the original line-up.”
“It’s very important,” says Ozzy. “The original Sabbath will never be on stage together again. From the late sixties, we’re probably one of the only bands where the original members are still alive and speaking with one another.”
If this has to end anywhere, then Villa Park is the perfect place.
Iommi isn’t about to start pretending he’s a football fan at this late stage, although he’s known plenty of players. “A lot of my friends were ex-footballers and managers for some reason,” he says. “I’d have them round to my house for dinner. People like [80s stars] Andy Gray and Trevor Francis, and it’d be: ‘Don’t talk about football!’”
Ozzy hasn’t shown much interest in the game down the years either, although as kids he and Ward would both ‘mind’ people’s cars for money on match days – basically juvenile extortion. “It was a screw,” the drummer says gleefully. “They’d pay us so we wouldn’t put a knife in the tyres.”
It’s a different matter for Ward and Butler. The latter in particular follows Aston Villa religiously. “It doesn’t get any better,” he says of the choice of venue.
But the link to Aston runs deeper than football. Each of them grew up in this working-class area of Birmingham, all within half a mile of Villa Park. Bill lived on the east side, Ozzy on the west, Geezer and Tony to the south: three points on an imaginary crucifix. They went to school in Aston, they started playing music there, they formed Black Sabbath there. Its factories and steel foundries shaped them, and shaped their music.
The Sabbath origin story has been told many times. How Tony Iommi and Bill Ward turned up on the doorstep of a guy calling himself Ozzy Zig after their band Mythology fell apart following a hash bust, only to find it was a kid Iommi used to beat up at school. How Bill had persuaded Tony to take a chance on Ozzy, and how Ozzy brought in Geezer Butler, his mate from their old band Rare Breed (there were another couple of people at the start, a slide guitarist and a saxophone player, long forgotten).
Ward can still remember the first time the four men who would form the core of Black Sabbath played together. “We heard Oz warming up in a different room,” he says. “I listened to his voice, this young man, and he sounded so strong and healthy. I thought: ‘Oh my god, we’ve got to hang on to this. This is special.’”
Iommi has a different memory of the noise they made that first time. “It was a horrendous racket,” he says, laughing. “Geezer was a guitar player, he had never played bass before. I didn’t even know Ozzy sang. But it’s amazing how quickly it came together.”
They had the whole world in front of them back then. Their camaraderie was unbreakable.
“There was this unity we had,” says Ward. “We couldn’t stay apart from each other. We used to walk each other home after we played. We’d get to the first house, and sit and talk. Then we’d decide to walk to somebody else’s house and do the same. We’d walk through the night, picking each other’s brains: ‘What do you think?’ Sometimes we wouldn’t get in until four or five in the morning. If one of us was injured or got in a fight, we had each other’s backs.”
“We lived and breathed each other,” says Iommi.
Ozzy first left Black Sabbath in late 1977, walking out of a rehearsal and not coming back.
For much of the preceding decade, Sabbath had been flying high in every sense. They hadn’t so much blazed a trail as steamrolled a new path, the heaviness of their music a benchmark for every other band to aspire to. The records they released from 1970 to 1975 – from the mammoth self-titled debut album to the wild-eyed, cocaine-dusted mania of Sabotage – is one of the greatest six-album runs in rock. Along the way these four kids from Aston got to experience everything fame had to offer, both good (tours, drugs, sex) and bad (litigation, religious protests, death threats). Like Iommi says, they lived and breathed each other.
But by the end of 1977 they were breathing fumes. Ozzy was tired from years of touring and bickering, booze-sodden from years of drinking, and wondering where all the money the band had made actually was. And then he was gone, no longer a member of Black Sabbath.
His self-imposed exile didn’t last long, however. A few months later he was back in. By the start of 1979 he was out again. But this time it wasn’t his choice.
“We didn’t have an option,” says Tony. “The record company were saying: ‘How’s the new album coming on?’ I said: ‘Oh yeah, it’s coming on okay.’ But we hadn’t done anything. We were putting riffs down, but Ozzy just wasn’t in the right frame of mind. He wasn’t into it any more.”
What happened next is a Hollywood movie waiting to happen. Ozzy holed up in an Los Angeles hotel, determined to drink and snort himself to death, before he was pulled from the wreckage of his career by Sharon Arden, daughter of Sabbath’s hardman manager Don Arden and the singer’s future wife. His solo career got off to a flying start with 1980’s Blizzard Of Ozz album and he never looked back.
Sabbath pulled off a minor miracle themselves, bringing in former Rainbow singer Ronnie James Dio and making 1980’s career-reviving album Heaven And Hell. But Ward wasn’t enjoying life in Black Sabbath now that the original fellowship was broken.
“I missed Oz,” he says sadly. “I felt a huge loss. And there were other problems at the same time. I lost my mother, which was huge for me, and my drinking was accelerating, which was becoming a problem.”
Ward quit the band before the Heaven And Hell tour started.
“I don’t know what Black Sabbath should have done, but I do know that it didn’t work for me.”
Iommi carried on with Sabbath through the 80s, initially with Geezer by his side and then as the last remaining original member. The Ozzy and Sabbath camps tossed barbs at each other in the press in the way that warring family members hurl insults around at a drunken wedding reception – they were designed to hurt rather than maim.
“We were mainly focusing on what we were doing,” says Iommi, “but of course, I was aware of what Ozzy’s career, because he was part of my life. I liked some of the things he was doing. It was great for him that he found people he could do something with. It made him get off his arse. Us too, because we didn’t want to lose the original line-up, but we’d had no choice.”
Whatever the state of the relationships between the four original members were at any given time during 1980s, there was no changing the fact that the original  line-up of Black Sabbath wasn’t coming back. That is, until they did.
Six years after they fired Ozzy, Black Sabbath’s original line-up reunited on stage for the first time. This was July 13, 1985, at the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia. The occasion was the US leg of Live Aid.
“Oof, bloody hell,” Iommi says, wincing at the memory.
‘Oof, bloody hell’ sums it up pretty well. Live Aid is famous for many things – Queen’s for-the-ages performance, Bono falling off stage mid-set, Bob Geldof saying ‘fuck’ on British TV at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. One thing it definitely isn’t famous for is the Black Sabbath reunion.
By this point the guitarist was the last man standing from the original line-up. When the offer came in to get back together with Ozzy, Geezer and Bill to play a short set as part of this huge charity extravaganza, he thought: ‘Why not?’ Phone calls were made, plans arranged.
“We hadn’t played together for a while,” Iommi says. “We had a slot booked to rehearse on one of the days before the shows, but all we did was drink and talk about the old days.”
The night before the show, they hit the bar once more.
“Of course, on the day of the show I had a dreadful hangover,” he recalls. “That’s why I had my dark glasses on. It didn’t help that we were receiving these lawsuits before the show, cos there were problems between Sharon and [her dad and also Black Sabbath’s manager] Don Arden. It was all a bit chaotic.”
They managed three songs that day: Children Of The Grave, Iron Man and Paranoid. It was a long way from being a great performance (although at least it wasn’t as bad as that of another band that had reunited for the event: Led Zeppelin).
After it was done, they shook hands and stumbled off in their respective directions. Just like that, the first Black Sabbath reunion had come and gone.
The next time it happened was a lot less ‘Oof, bloody hell’. This time it was November 15, 1992 in Costa Mesa, California, on the final night of Ozzy’s supposed retirement tour. Iommi, Butler and Ward joined their former bandmate on stage at the end of the set for a joyously received four-song encore, playing Black Sabbath, Fairies Wear Boots and the ubiquitous Iron Man and Paranoid.
There was a partial reunion in 1997, when three quarters of the classic line-up got together to play that year’s Ozzfest in the US – Ward was the absentee, his place taken by Faith No More’s Mike Bordin. But the real thing came in December that year, when the original foursome reunited for two shows at Birmingham’s NEC Arena. This was heavy metal’s founding fathers bringing it back to where it had started.
“It was great to play in our home town with our original line-up,” says Iommi. “It was good.”
“We played particularly well at those shows,” says Butler. “I was very proud of everyone.”
“I enjoyed it,” says Ward. “I enjoyed being with the band.”
You’ve got to laugh. “It was good” and “We played well” massively undersell the brilliance of those shows. Not just musically, but emotionally too. Sabbath were majestic, the years falling away as they played, the 20-something kids they had once been visible where the 50-something men they had become now stood. Saying there were grown men crying in the audience is usually a huge cliché, but in this case it was true both nights.
This Sabbath reunion came to an end in December 1999, at the end of a tour billed The Last Supper because it was supposedly the band’s final run out. Of course, it was no such thing. They were back again in 2001, attempting (unsuccessfully) to record a new album with producer Rick Rubin, then out on the road again in 2004 and 2005.
There was no grand farewell announcement this time, although a legal wrangle between the Osbourne and Iommi camps over the latter’s decision to reunite with Ronnie James Dio under the Black Sabbath name suggested some of the old aggro had risen to the surface (the Iommi/Butler/Dio iteration of the band rechristened themselves Heaven & Hell).
All of that indicated there wasn’t much chance of a reunion happening again, which inevitably meant it happened again. On November 11, 2011, the four original members of Black Sabbath gathered on stage at the Whisky A Go Go club in Los Angeles to announce that they were not only getting back together to tour once more in 2012, but they would also record their first album together since Never Say Die!.
And that’s where things got messy.
On May 19, 2012, Black Sabbath played their latest comeback gig, in – where else - Birmingham. Three thousand people packed into the O2 Academy for this warm-up club show ahead of their headlining appearance at Download a month later.
But one person was missing. In February, three months after the announcement that all four original members were getting back together, Ward pulled out of this reunion.
Both sides have their own versions of what went wrong: an “unsignable contract” (Ward); a physical inability to cope with the demands of a long tour (the rest). The net result was that it was Tommy Clufetos, the drummer from Ozzy’s solo band, sitting behind the kit that night, and at every subsequent Sabbath gig for the next five years, right up to the last show of the The End tour. When Sabbath recorded their 2013 reunion album 13 it was Rage Against The Machine’s Brad Wilk doing the honours.
No one is willing to reopen old wounds today, but it’s evident that Ward was hurt by the split and the fallout that followed. “It was a difficult period for me,” he says. “There was a lot of mud-slinging. I went inwards, which wasn’t wise. I became ill.”
He eventually lifted himself out of his despondency via ‘drum art’, images created via rhythms he’d beat out. But he’d reconnected with Ozzy even before that. Despite what was said in the press, the issue was never between the two of them. Ozzy’s wife Sharon, maybe, but not Ozzy himself. “Me and Oz never fell out,” he says. “Slowly but surely it all came around.”
Tony says he and Ozzy talk more than they ever did, and he’s in touch with Bill and Geezer from time to time. There was a moment a couple of years ago when an upset Ozzy roasted Geezer in an interview for not calling him after the singer made various health issues public, but that turned out to be a misunderstanding (Geezer doesn’t use the phone, and said he’d sent several ‘get well’ messages that never reached Ozzy). And Bill, the man who has spent long periods in self-imposed exile from Sabbath, seems genuinely happy that everyone is friends again.
“It’s an invisible bond,” says Ozzy. “It can’t be broken.”
If you’re here for the lowdown on what to expect from the Back To The Beginning gig, sorry to disappoint you. This is mainly because none of the men whose names are at the top of the bill know what they’ll be doing. They’re not being evasive. It’s just that when we speak, in mid-to-late March, it sounds like they genuinely have no idea what will happen.
Here’s what we do know:
1. Ozzy will play a short solo set, presumably at the end of the night.
2. He’ll then join the rest of Sabbath for their last hurrah together, which will also be a fairly short set.
3. That’s pretty much it.
Wheels are definitely in motion, though. Tony sent Ozzy a list of songs he’d like to do. “And he sent a list back saying he’d like to do these songs,” says the guitarist. “Then I sent a list to Bill and Geez to see what they thought.”
“It’s still early days as yet, but I think we’ll probably do a shortened set since Ozzy is doing a solo set too,” is Geezer’s take on it. “I think we’ll be sticking to the old faves like War Pigs, Iron Man, Paranoid etcetera. But we’ll see.”
Over in California, Ward has been in training for the gig. He suffers from neuropathy, which can cause pain in his feet, but that doesn’t stop him. He puts ice packs on his feet. “It knocks all the pain and the burning out,” he says.
He played for two hours yesterday. “Very loud,” he says with some pride. He’s been reacquainting himself with using heavy cymbals, ones that will cut through Tony and Geezer’s guitar and bass, and generally strengthening his wrists. He’s getting his fitness up. “Sparring, boxing, it keeps my upper body fit,” he says. “I’m serious about this.”
For Ozzy, the health issues and surgeries that have prompted his retirement from performing are no small thing to overcome. In his email to Classic Rock in late March, he sounds bullish about the preparation required for the Back To The Beginning show. “What preparation?” he says. “It’s what I do.”
A few weeks later, speaking on his Sirius X radio show, he gives more of a glimpse into the reality of having to build up his fitness, effectively from scratch.
“I’m doing two sets of three-minute walks a day and weight training,” he says. “Three minutes to you, for instance, is nothing, but I’ve been laying on my back recovering from umpteen surgeries.”
But where there’s a will, there’s a way. Iommi got a text from Ozzy a few days before we speak, outlining his plans to fly to the UK in late May. “We’re going to rehearse at some point in the middle of June,” says the guitarist. “And then we can answer the questions of what we’ll play and what we’re capable of doing.”
One thing Iommi says he won’t be doing is playing with any other bands on the bill. The job of pulling together this all-star line-up has been taken up willingly by Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who has embraced the task with the enthusiasm of a toddler who’s just discovered the keys to the Haribo factory.
“It’s incredible, what he’s done,” Iommi says of Morello. “I’d die of shock trying to put that together. But I can’t see any of us getting up and jamming with anybody else, because everybody else will already be jamming with everybody else. My aim is to focus on Sabbath, and that’s it really. We haven’t played with Bill for years and it’s the original line-up, so I’m sure it’s going to be very emotional.”
And what does Bill Ward himself think about it all?
“My job is to play my ass off,” he says. “That’s what I do. No slight on other people, but I’m the drummer with Black Sabbath. Always have been, always will be.”
Last year, Tony Iommi went back and listened to the music he’d written with his engineer and producer Mike Exeter for 13, Sabbath’s much-trumpeted 2013 reunion album. This was before producer Rick Rubin got his hands on it.
“All the band had come over to my house and we put stuff down,” he says. “I was listening to it and thinking, ‘Blimey, that sounds good.’”
13 was the original line-up’s first album since Never Say Die!, 35 years earlier. The expectation that these 60-somethings could pick up where their late-20 and early-30-something selves left off was optimistic, but 13 was no disgrace. Still, for Iommi the album is tainted by the experience of making it with Rubin.
“I went to Los Angeles with three CDs full of ideas, but he made us strip everything down that I’d put together,” he recalls. “He wanted it to sound like the first album. But you can’t recreate that. Some of the stuff sounded better when we were working at my house – it sounded more… alive. But it’s what it was. And it’s a shame Bill didn’t play on it, but it was difficult.
Butler has similarly mixed feelings.
“There are some good songs on there, such as God Is Dead?, Zeitgeist, Damaged Soul and Dear Father,” he says. “I was led to believe Ozzy would write all the lyrics, but Rick Rubin insisted I write them. So I changed around some lyrics and ideas of Ozzy’s, then wrote everything in a mad rush. I like Sabbath’s lyrics to mean something, but trying to think of thirteen subjects to write about the night before committing them to recording gave me headaches.”
He says he’d change some of those lyrics if he could redo it again. And he echoes Iommi’s words: “It would have been great if Bill was on it.”
Iommi says there could be a time when pre-Rubin songs he wrote for 13 are released – “There may well be” – but barring a major change of heart or a minor miracle, 13 looks likely to remain Black Sabbath’s recorded swansong.
“I’ve been approached about doing a Sabbath album,” says Iommi. “It could be good, but I don’t want to take the time of sitting down and writing stuff like last time and it goes willy-nilly.”
Geezer is slightly less equivocal. “Do I wish we’d done another album? No, I don’t wish we had, but if anyone really wanted to do another, I’d be up for it. But not just for the sake of doing it.”
And Bill Ward, who didn’t get the chance to play on what is likely the last Black Sabbath studio album?
“I’d love to do another album,” he says. “I’ll be direct about that.”
Even if there are no more Black Sabbath albums, that doesn’t mean there won’t be more music from the members of Black Sabbath. Butler says he’s “always fiddling about in my home studio, but mainly for my own enjoyment”. Ward and Iommi are both actively writing music with a view to releasing it. Ward is sitting on several solo albums, including his long-gestating Beyond Aston, which currently stands at 26 tracks. “We just need to find someone who will release it properly,” he says.
Iommi hasn’t stopped writing music either. “It’s really coming on now,” he says. “I go in on a Monday or Tuesday with Mike Exeter and we put ideas on the tracks.” He’s cagey about who will sing on it. “I was going to use different singers, then I was going to do instrumental stuff, I’ve got stuff with just one singer. We’ll see.”
The guitarist played on a couple of tracks on Ozzy’s 2022 solo album Patient Number 9. He’s not averse to working with the other guys again separately. “That’s altogether different to doing a Sabbath album,” he says. “I just don’t want to get into that thing of: ‘Oh, it’s a Sabbath album. Are they going to tour?’ Are they going to do this or that.”
Even Ozzy, the man who sparked the idea for this million-dollar retirement party, isn’t stepping back from the studio completely.
“As far as recording goes, I still enjoy doing my own work,” he says. “I also enjoy singing on other people’s work. For the foreseeable future I will keep on recording, if the projects interest me.”
On July 5, Black Sabbath will end their career less than a mile from where it began. This isn’t the latest false ending. There will be no more comebacks, no more tours. We’re not going to see another farewell show in five years’ time.
“No, we’re not,” says Tony. “Like I say, I didn’t originally want to do this one, because I’d already closed the door on it, and I thought that was it.”
“I’ll never say never, because I’ve said never too many times before, and look what happened,” says Geezer. “But I seriously think this is the actual end, unless someone digs us up or finds our DNA in the future and recreates us.”
Back To The Beginning will be a bittersweet night, for sure, not least because it feels real this time. But it isn’t about Sabbath’s legacy – that was cemented a long time ago. It’s about beginnings and endings, about friendships and the passage of time, about four working-class kids achieving the unachievable.
“You can never know how your life turns out.” says Iommi. “It’s just believing in what you do and following that path. That’s always what I’ve had, and not give up on it.”
Here, at the end of it all, how do Sabbath want to be remembered?
“For what we brought to the table,” says Tony Iommi. “For bringing this music out and inspiring other bands to build on it.”
Geezer Butler: “As four working-class blokes who defied all the odds, but had an unbreakable belief in ourselves, and bonded with the greatest fans ever.”
“For showing that it’s okay to push things, to be outlandish and extraordinary and rough around the edges,” says Bill Ward. “We were loud and aggressive, and that’s what I love about us.”
Back To The Beginning took place on July 5 at Villa Park, Birmingham.

Geezer and Ozzy let their hair down. Or up.

Geezer: Fin Costello/getty; ozzy: Ross Halfin

Heavy metal: Sabbath with their silver discs for 1976’s Technical Ecstasy album, August 10, 1977.

Mirrorpix via Getty

“The original Sabbath will never be on stage together again.” Ozzy Osbourne

“Alright, who shouted out for  a Jethro Tull song?” Iommi with Sabbath in London in 1976.

“We’ve always had a bond with each other… We’re a family at the end of the day.” Tony Iommi

Erica Echenberg/Redferns

The ‘tache years. (Always one to spoil a full set.) Photo session in Germany, March 1971.

Plitz/Good Time-Nikma/Dalle/IconicPix

Bill Ward with Sabbath at London’s Rainbow Theatre, March 1973.

“We were loud and aggressive, and that’s what  I love about us.” Bill Ward

main: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty; bill: Ian Dickson/Getty

main: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty; ozzy: Chris Walter/getty

Sabbath fans as far as the eye can see at the California Jam, April 6, 1974.

“Please, just one last show! With  all four original members!”

Ross Halfin

Ross Halfin x2

“I think we’ll be sticking to the old faves like War Pigs, Iron Man, Paranoid etcetera. But we’ll see.” Geezer Butler

“Is this Ozzy’s last show? one thousand per cent”
Sharon Osbourne on the  Back To The Beginning show.

When did the idea for the Back To The Beginning show come about?
We’ve been working on it for a year and a half. It came because Ozzy kept saying that his one big regret was that he didn’t get to say thank you and goodbye to his fans. He just felt terrible about it. I was thinking: “How can we do that? How can we make that happen?” And our good mates at LiveNation came forward. I couldn’t have done it without them.
How important was it that Bill Ward was involved in this?
It was important to Ozzy. It was very important to him. We’re just delighted he said yes. Ozzy’s very, very happy.
Why did you ask Tom Morello to act as musical director?
Tom’s been incredible. I’ve known him since he was a little boy. He’s a cross between a musician and a public speaker. He just commands respect, no matter from who - people listen to his suggestions. Because he’s got that respect from everybody.
Have you called Dave Grohl to see if Ozzy can borrow the throne he used when he broke his leg?
Oh my god! No, we’ve got a million Ozzy thrones.
Will there be a tribute to Randy Rhoads in any shape?
With Ozzy, yes, of course.
The proceeds from the show go to three charities. Why did you choose the three that you did?
Cure Parkinsons is a no-brainer – every penny goes to find a cure, and that’s what most important. And it’s the same with Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorns Children’s Hospice. When Ozzy was a kid he was in hospital for a long time, and it was horrible. He never wants a kid to go through what he went through. He wants to raise enough money just to bring a little happiness.
Is this really going to be Ozzy’s last ever show?
One thousand per cent. Everything that Ozzy’s ever wanted to do, he’s done. Every place he’s ever wanted to go. He’s just had an incredible life. He’s done. Literally, after this we’re going to go home and shut the door.
Is he retiring from making music altogether?
He likes going and playing on other people’s tracks. He enjoys it. So he won’t give up recording.

Tony Iommi  ignites some  heavy metal fire.

“We’re one of the only bands where the original members are still alive and speaking with one another.” Ozzy Osbourne

All smiles: (l-r)  Bill Ward, Geezer Butler, Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi.

The Offspring

Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)

Inspired by a baseball-capped server at a dive-thru, the song brought the band a UK No.1  single, lifted them out of the doldrums and set them up for the next period of huge success.

Words: Niall Doherty
Portrait: Paul Harries

Take-Off For The Pretty  Fly Guy
The video for Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) was unavoidable for a spell, making the titular White Guy character as famous as the song. He was so well played by actor Guy Cohen that the band took him on tour with them just so he could come on stage and do his ‘pretty fly’ routine during the song.
“We picked you cos you’re ghetto, you grew up in the ghettos of Seal Beach,” Holland joked with the actor a few years later. The frontman also played with Cohen about a provoking quote he’d read. “You did the dance during Pretty Fly… so you were on stage for a minute and a half every night… I read an article where you said it was awkward cos you were more famous than us?”
“Out of context!” retorted the actor, who has since gone on to do improv and theatre work in New York.

© 1998 Round Hill Records/Universal Music Enterprises, a division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

Had The Offspring’s frontman and chief songwriter Dexter Holland not swung by his local Starbucks for a caffeine hit in the mid-90s, the US punk rockers might never written their biggest song. Holland was sitting in his car, waiting in the drive-thru queue, when the server caught his attention. “There was a white kid with a sideways hat,” he recalls. “Orange County is a pretty middle-of-the-road place, and he was definitely out of his element in how he was presenting himself. He was trying to be something he definitely wasn’t. I was alone in the car and I just said it out loud to myself, like: ‘That guy’s pretty fly for a white guy.’ It was like:‘Ding ding ding! Whoa, that’s a good line!’” And so Pretty Fly (For A White Guy), a track that would become The Offspring’s sole UK No.1, was born.
It was just the boost they needed. Their 1994 third album Smash had made the Californian quartet huge, but then just a few years later they were wondering if their time  had passed.
“We went from frickin’ zero to a hundred with Smash,” Holland recounts. “We couldn’t even sell out our local bar in Huntington Beach when Smash came out, then all of a sudden, it was this worldwide thing, which was amazing.”
But rather than try to repeat the trick when it came to making a follow-up, they wanted to expand the styles in their sound. The approach didn’t pay off. The resulting record, 1997’s Ixnay On The Hombre, stalled.
“It was inevitably the sophomore slump,” Holland reasons now. “I’m really proud of Ixnay, I think it was really good, it just wasn’t Smash Part Two, and that was by design. It’s almost like early on you got to do all the crazy stuff, so it doesn’t seem weird when you delve into different territories. And Ixnay was that record for us, that vehicle for us.”
Turning their sights towards the record that would become 1998’s Americana, then, The Offspring were on the back foot. “We came off of Ixnay going: ‘Well, jeez, that one didn’t do nearly as well as Smash. Are we over?’ I didn’t feel like it was over, because we were feeling very creative.”
The other thing driving Holland was that the band had already put in a lot of miles. Success hadn’t come to The Offspring immediately, and they were in it for the long haul. “Before Smash we’d been at it for ten years,” states Holland. “It definitely very much felt like a career band and this was just where we were at.”
They set to work on making a record that continued the sonic experimentation of Ixnay but was a little more immediate in its tuneage. Holland remembers that Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) came somewhere in the middle of the album sessions. It was a song in the lineage of the band’s more left-of-centre material, such as the Smash standout Come Out And Play (Keep ’Em Separated), which melded a raucous rock anthem with a Middle Eastern-tinged riff and an offbeat vocal. “Pretty Fly was in that sort of zone,” says Holland, “that mid-tempo thing. It wasn’t really Middle Eastern, but it had kind of a Latin vibe to it in a way with the chord progressions.”
One song he had in mind when writing it was the Latin-rock classic Oye Cómo Va, made famous by Santana’s 1971 version. “It’s almost taking some of those elements and playing them in more of a punk style, taking a riff that wouldn’t normally be a punk riff and doing it with distorted guitars and seeing what you’ve got. And that was it musically, that was the vibe.”
Stewing on the idea for a couple of months, Holland knocked out a demo at home with a drum machine in a few hours “I’d thought about it for a long time and I had most of the lyrics together already, the ‘Give it to me baby’ and all that stuff.”
He was aware that some people might dismiss it as a novelty, but he felt it was tapping into something that was actually happening: “I felt like there was just something going on at that time. When we were recording the album in the studio, I felt like: ‘We have to get this out now because somebody is going to put this out before me. I can’t believe no one has done a song about a white guy trying to be gangsta. We got to get this thing done.’”
The rest of the band were on board with it. The group’s managers were 50/50, he remembers, a little worried that it might be too wacky. They weren’t the only ones.
“I remember doing some of our very first press with Australia, and the lady said: ‘We don’t know quite what to do with the song, half of us love it and half of us hate it,’” Holland says with a laugh. “I don’t know if that’s what I wanted to hear on my first interview! Maybe it was one of those kind of love it or hate it songs, and that added to its appeal – it got a reaction out of people.”
Australia, as it happens, was one of the countries where Pretty Fly was a huge success, No.1 for six weeks. Holland knew they were onto something when it was getting repeat plays on MTV, but it was something else that really told him it was connecting.
“We played this show in Italy and we went to a club after, and this guy with a really thick Italian accent said: “I know a guy exactly like that guy in my school.” To me that was the most incredible thing, because I knew guys like that in Orange County and, in my head, I could see how this could translate to California or maybe the US. But the idea that a guy in Italy had the same reaction, the same feeling, was like: ‘Wow, this is really a global thing.’”
Pretty Fly (the finished track credits Joe Elliott and Steve Clark and producer ‘Mutt’ Lange as co-writers because it includes a sample of Def Leppard’s Rock Of Ages at the start) set up The Offspring for another wave of huge success. They were out of the doldrums. Holland will be forever thankful he went for that coffee.
The Offspring’s new album Supercharged is out now via Concord.

“I couldn’t believe no one had done a song about a white guy trying to be gangsta.”

The Offspring: pretty fly guys themselves.

the facts

RELEASE DATE
November 1998
HIGHEST CHART POSITION
UK No.1
PERSONNEL
Dexter Holland
Lead vocals, guitar
Noodles
Lead guitar,  backing vocals
Greg K
Bass, backing vocals
Ron Welty
Drums
WRITTEN BY
Dexter Holland, Steve Clark, Joe Elliott, Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange
PRODUCER Dave Jerden
LABEL
Columbia

Twisted Sister

We’re Not Gonna Take It

It had a long and difficult birth, but the song that its writer, TS frontman Dee Snider, predicted would become a “monster” is reportedly now the most licensed song in heavy-metal history.

Words: Dave Ling

WE’RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT – WHOEVER  YOU ARE!
The popularity of We’re Not Gonna Take It led to Donald Trump  adopting it for his 2016 presidential campaign. To their dismay, Twisted Sister realised there was very little they could do. “It’s like a game of poker,” explains guitarist Jay Jay French. “You have no control but you don’t want them to know that you can’t sue them, so you threaten it anyway.” It took a phone call from Snider, who had previously appeared on Trump’s reality TV series The Apprentice, to bring the matter to an end.
It still rankles with Snider when his best-known song is appropriated for MAGA purposes. “Every time you sing that song, remember it was written by a cross-dressing, libtard, tree-hugging half-Jew who hates everything you stand for,” he once Tweeted. “So Fuck off!”

In the early 1980s, Dee Snider, the frontman of an unknown East Coast glam-metal band named Twisted Sister, wrote the chorus for a hard rock anthem that he knew was destined to become a “monster”. Although it took Snider three years to perfect its chug-a-boogie arrangement, We’re Not Gonna Take It did indeed become an irresistible, fist-in-the-air anthem, despite numerous obstacles standing in its way. In the hands of a less determined mob than Twisted Sister it never would have happened.
The saga of how TS hooked up with Atlantic Records, a label that had turned them down on numerous occasions, has been recounted many times. Their premier bête noire at Atlantic, Doug Morris (the MD who had slammed the group as “the worst piece of shit in the world”), hired Tom Werman to produce a make-or-break third album (which became Stay Hungry). But despair turned to rage when Werman, who had experienced success with more commercial acts including Mötley Crüe, Cheap Trick and Molly Hatchet, proposed vetoing three of its key songs – the ones that became hits: We’re Not Gonna Take It, I Wanna Rock and the ballad The Price – and replacing them with covers.
“When Werman said he wanted to record Strong Arm Of The Law and Princess Of The Night, I replied: ‘Yeah, they’re great songs – I heard them last week when we did a show with Saxon,’” Dee Snider marvels. “He thought that because nobody in America knew them we could get away with it.”
Snider knew he’d written a smash hit in We’re Not Gonna Take It. “When it was finished I knew it had all of the pieces – everything about it was catchy,” he enthuses. “My mentors were Slade. Noddy [Holder] and Jim [Lea] had taught me that every part of a song should be a hook in itself, from the verse to the chorus and the bridge, and I had followed their guidance.”
Despite the issues with Werman, the album was completed. With MTV still engaged in a love affair with so-called ‘hair-metal’, Atlantic had the highly regarded Mary Callner shoot a slapstick-charged promo for We’re Not Gonna Take It.
As the single climbed the charts, people began wondering what it was about.
“I very deliberately left it as vague as possible,” Snider explains now. “That led to a review in the Village Voice: ‘Take what from whom?’ What a smug idiot. The song’s whole point is for the listener to fill in the blanks. Voice your own personal grievance. For a teenager it was parents, a teacher or a boss. For me it was everything… including the rejection we had suffered from record companies.”
Added to the playlists of 145 radio stations even prior to its release, We’re Not Gonna Take It peaked just outside the US Top 20, with a million sales Stateside within six months of Stay Hungry (it now stands at six million). In the UK it was less successful, peaking at No.58. The band blamed Rob Dickins, then the head of Warner Music Group in Britain, for a lack of commitment to it.
“That’s Dickins – heavy on the ‘Dick’,” Snider sighs. “This was the guy that decided to save money by refusing to send out an advance mailshot to journalists and radio stations. That initial burst of exposure was what got you onto the charts, but he wouldn’t pay the postage. He just didn’t think the song would be a hit.”
“Dickins hated the song,” guitarist Jay Jay French says. “We’re Not Gonna Take It was never promoted correctly in England, and England was what created Twisted Sister. This guy shot us down.”
Despite their screen ubiquity, the cartoon-like promos from We’re Not Gonna Take It and follow-up I Wanna Rock presented a huge long-term problem.
“The videos were extremely comedic, but their sheer popularity caused people to overlook how hard we rocked,” Snider says. “Nobody got our work ethic because they were unaware of the history of how we had reached that point.”
Another storm hit when only the charismatic Snider appeared on the front cover of Stay Hungry due to a technical issue with the band line-up shots. The implication was that Dee Snider was Twisted Sister. This situation would eventually tear the band apart.
“I was accused of controlling everything and, sure, it caused massive problems,” the singer comments. “The truth is that Stay Hungry was a victory lap for Twisted Sister. We were already coming apart at the start of Stay Hungry – the recording, photo sessions and touring.”
Two albums later, Twisted Sister ground to an ugly, bitter end, their swansong, 1987’s Love Is For Suckers, intended as a Dee Snider solo record.
Fourteen years later the quintet reconvened as part of a benefit show for widows and orphans of emergency workers who died in the 9/11 attack. As a result, Twisted Sister began to perform again sporadically, culminating in a farewell tour dubbed Forty And Fuck It in 2016 which included Mike Portnoy due to the death of long-standing TS drummer AJ Pero. During the band’s absence, the legend of We’re Not Gonna Take it had grown and grown.
According to French, it is now the most licensed song in heavy-metal history. “That song has been in numerous TV shows, movies and commercials,” the guitarist reveals. “Forty major corporations have licensed We’re Not Gonna Take It or I Wanna Rock – think about that for a moment.”
“We’re Not Gonna Take It not only transcended the genre and the band, but also the era,” Snider concludes. “If I sing: ‘We’re not gonna take it’ anywhere in the world, I know that the response will be: ‘No, we ain’t gonna take it.’ There’s not a doubt in my mind that when I’m gone that song will live on forever.”
The expanded 40th-anniversary edition of Stay Hungry is out now via Rhino.

“When it was finished I knew  it had all of the pieces – everything about it was catchy.”

Tony Mottram/Avalon

RELEASE DATE
May 1984
HIGHEST CHART POSITION
UK No.58,
US No.21
PERSONNEL
Dee Snider
Lead vocals
Eddie ‘Fingers’ Ojeda
Lead guitar,  backing vocals
Jay Jay French
Rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Mark ‘The Animal’ Mendoza
Bass, backing growls
A.J. Pero
Drums
WRITTEN BY
Dee Snider
PRODUCED BY Tom Werman
LABEL
Atlantic

Twisted Sister: born in the USA, made in  the UK.

Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor: industrial metal kingpin.

From Ministry and Skinny Puppy to Nine Inch Nails and Rammstein,  these are the pipe-banging classics that built a genre.

metalhammer.com

Skinny Puppy
Too Dark Park (Nettwerk, 1990)
Along with Ministry, Skinny Puppy defined industrial music throughout the 80s. Although this is a great album, it marked the end of Skinny Puppy as a significant force for the best part of 10 years as they became embroiled in drug problems, legal disputes and a titanic struggle to make a concept album.
Too Dark Park was almost like their response to the techno scene: they plundered the dance-floor beats, but layered so many samples and raw screaming noise over the top that it became a sort of anti-house sound, the polar opposite of the ecstasy-fuelled dance music then ubiquitous.

Revolting Cocks
Beers, Steers & Queers  (Wax Trax, 1990)
Yee-haw! Ministry side project Revco featured a veritable Who’s Who from the industrial scene: Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, Richard 23 from Front 242, Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy and Chris Connelly of Fini Tribe all toured or recorded with the band at one time.
Their classic depraved disco album features the title track, a pulverising redneck stomp (sparked off by a sample from the movie Deliverance), as well as a cover of the Olivia Newton John hit Physical that almost got them sued. The result successfully burst the bubble of po-faced industrial music.

Front 242
Tyranny For You (Epic, 1991)
Sounding like a gang of paramilitaries who had salvaged Kraftwerk’s discarded gear, Belgium’s Front 242 straddled the old industrial scene and the emergent Euro techno scene. Dubbed ‘nu beat’ when they emerged in the early 80s, they peaked with their 1988 album Front By Front and this collection of paranoia-drenched cyber metal menace.
Released at the height of the first Gulf War, its barrage of samples and frazzled electro-beats was the perfect accompaniment to getting drunk and watching smart bombs zero-in on Iraqi schools and hospitals live on TV.

Ministry
Psalm 69 (Sire, 1992)
Before this was released, there was some talk that Ministry had already peaked with their 1989 release The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste. How wrong they were.
Psalm 69 was actually a title of convenience, as it’s actually called something unpronounceable and occultish in Greek or just plain Ministry. The fact that it spawned a Top 40 hit and an MTV favourite in the demented Jesus Built My Hotrod (with Butthole Surfers man Gibby Haynes on vocals) may have been an albatross around their neck in later times, but in 1992, in the wake of …Teen Spirit and all, it seemed like they were taking over the world.

Pigface
Fook (Invisible, 1993)
The second album from ex-Killing Joke drummer Martin Atkins’ collective Pigface features a cast of thousands including Revolting Cocks’ Chris Connelly, Killing Joke’s Paul Raven, Skinny Puppy’s Nivek Ogre and Lesley Rankine of UK indie-punks Silverfish who bellows out the abrasive feminist anthem Hips, Tits, Lips, Power!
It’s a rare and neglected album, crammed with gems like the explosive I Can Do No Wrong and the hellish – in a good way – Insemination. The remix album washingmachinemouth was even more bizarre and distorted, and one of the few such releases worth a shit.

lead: Ebet Roberts/getty

KMFDM
Nihil (Wax Trax, 1995)
If you had to pick one album that represented a ‘typical’ industrial album, it would probably be this.
KMFDM (which stands for Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid, or ‘no pity for the majority’) were cult mainstays who suddenly found themselves singled out in the wake of the Columbine shootings when they were found to have been one of the Trenchcoat Mafia’s favourite bands.
Like an Depeche Mode they had a strong pop sensibility under their Teutonic militaristism. This includes their best song, Juke Joint Jezebel, their collaboration with Pig frontman and kindred spirit Raymond Watts.

Neurosis
Through Silver In Blood  (Music For Nations, 1996)
Continuing in the ‘arty’ tradition of early industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle, San Francisco’s Neurosis reached something of a creative apogee with this terrifying and cathartic masterpiece of an album.
Neurosis have made some very approachable and listenable albums, but this isn’t one of them. Through Silver In Blood is less about creating songs, and more about surrounding the listener with an atmosphere of malevolence and impending apocalypse. Listening to this record is like being at the calm centre of a raging emotional typhoon of destruction.

Nine Inch Nails
The Downward Spiral  (Interscope, 1994)
A decade-defining album – unarguably one of the best of the 90s. And although it’s undeniably ‘industrial’ in  spirit, it was clear that mainman Trent Reznor had no interest in being hemmed in by any narrow genre definitions.
The title track and Heresy were recognisably the work of the man who had made Pretty Hate Machine – pure, raging cyberpunk – but much of it was unfamiliar territory. Pop, quasi-classical pieces, ambient noise and screaming, decaying heavy metal were rammed together, with the end result an unstoppable chain reaction and a potent explosion of music.

Rammstein
Sehnsucht (Slash, 1998)
When they first emerged, there was a certain amount of scepticism about Rammstein; some saw them as closet Nazi sympathisers flogging the dead horse of industrial music. History has been more favourable, however, and this album is now seen as the first utterances of a new force in industrial music rather than yet another retread of sub-NIN electro-beat. On this album they hadn’t taken the path of symphonic grandiosity that they would take on later albums like Mutter; Sehnsucht keeps it stripped down and brutally bare, yet with enough of a hint of the epic in their songs to raise this above the common herd.

Static-X
Wisconsin Death Trip  (Warner Bros, 1999)
It’s ironic that, as Static-X were snapped up by Warners, Ministry, the band that they were unashamedly based upon, were quietly dropped.
Sneered at by older ‘buffs’, Static-X re-tooled industrial music for the MTV generation. The potential that they displayed on this album is immense, though they never really built on it the way that they should have. Fake divides between techno, disco, pop, metal and industrial never bothered them – they never claimed to be making something ‘challenging’. How could man with a haircut like Wayne Static be about anything other than pure entertainment?