Iron Maiden

Ask any heavy metal fan if they're familiar with Iron Maiden, and chances are the answer will be an emphatic "yes." For more than 25 years, this band has been making their mark on the world of heavy metal. The success of Iron Maiden comes not only as the result of hard work and dedication, but through the perseverance of the band through many lineup changes over the years.

Iron Maiden made it big with their first album, titled after the band, in 1980, but this success came only after nearly five years of hard work and experimentation with the band line-up. In fact, the band played for three of those years without even having an album; their first demo was recorded in 1978.

Though founding members Steve Harris and Dave Murray are still the longest-surviving members of Iron Maiden, the band's members were fired frequently, with even Murray doing a stint out of the band. Between the band's founding in 1975 and its first album, the band had three vocalists, from Paul Day, who was fired for providing poor vocals, to Paul Di'Anno, who provided the vocals on the band's first album.

Their first album was released with great success on the UK charts, reaching number 4 in one week of release. This earned the band plenty of exposure, including opening for Kiss on their tour, and other dates opening for Judas Priest. The band continued it's practice of turmoil within their lineup, with guitarist Dennis Stratton getting fired from the band after the Kiss tour, and Di'Anno getting removed from the band after the band's second album, Killers, as a result of performance problems stemming from the usage of cocaine.

With new vocalist Paul Dickinson at the microphone, Iron Maiden released their next album, The Number of the Beast, a success in the UK charts, hitting number one, a first for the band. To promote the album, the band went on a world tour, the second for Iron Maiden.

Despite the popularity of the band, the United States leg of this tour brought controversy, as the conservative political parties claimed that the band was Satanic due to the album's title track. The result of this was the destruction of Iron Maiden albums in protest across the nation. Despite this, the band looked upon accusations of cult messages in heavy metal songs, evidenced in their next album, Piece of Mind, in which the band's drummer was recorded in a backwards-playing message that was not in fact, Satanic as was often accused, but an impersonation of Ugandan president Idi Amin Dada.

Years Of Constant Change

The mid-1980s proved to be a time when the band grew into their own musically, experimenting with synthesized sounds in their 1986 album, Somewhere in Time, and then keyboards on their 1988 follow-up album, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Around this time, the band also experimented with providing thematic elements, with Seventh Son of a Seventh Son existing as a concept album. These albums proved to be a big success, doing well on the UK charts.

As with other times in the history of Iron Maiden, the band's lineup went through further changes, with Dickinson leaving the band in 1994 to pursue a solo career. After an extensive audition process, the band eventually chose Blaze Bayley to provide vocals for the band, though albums during this period didn't do as well as earlier albums. Dickinson reunited with the band in 1999, and the band continued to release albums. The band's latest release, A Matter of Life and Death, has proven to be a hit, and will lead to an album based on live recordings of the associated tour.

What comes from the legacy of Iron Maiden's time as rockers? VH1 has declared the band to be #24 in their 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, as well as the third best heavy metal band ever. MTV has also honored them by calling them the fourth best heavy metal band ever. Their long-lasting nature in an industry where bands often break up after a few years is a testament to Iron Maiden's dedication to music even when the line-up changes.

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