Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast
Listen to an audio version of this review by Greg
Apart from Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen, heavy metal was the musical genre I can remember first listening to before anything else. There was something about the speed, the volume, the long hair, and the attitude. After a lot of deep thought, I surmised another reason I was drawn to it was because I can remember being frequently frustrated as a kid, and as a teenager. This is interesting. I think most teenagers go through this, but at 12 and 13, instead of going to the gym or the boxing ring to get my aggressions out, I would retreat to my room, throw on a loud heavy metal album of my choice, bang my head and within seconds, all that frustration melted away. It really was and still is therapy for me.
We all need something to make us feel cozy and comfortable. We all need something to make us feel at home. Heavy metal always did that for me. I was never much into “death” metal, as much of the music focused on Beelzebub, which was not my thing. However, there was a band from East London called Iron Maiden who had guts. They had balls. And one thing many heavy metal bands don’t get enough credit for, is they had talent, significant talent. Although many of Maiden’s songs and album covers have references to demonism, the band addresses their reasoning for this which I will touch on in a moment.
Iron Maiden originally formed in 1975, so yeah, they’re frickin’ old school if you ask me. Not as old school as Black Sabbath, but Iron Maiden is certainly part of what was known in the early 1980s as the “New Wave of British Heavy Metal”, which included bands like Judas Priest, Motorhead, Saxon, Def Leppard, Raven,and Diamond Head to name a few.
Geoff Barton, a journalist for a Music Newspaper in the UK called, “Sounds” is noted as the person who coined the term “New Wave of British Heavy Metal” in 1979. He thought this term was a perfect description of the music coming out of the UK in the late 1970s/early 80s that embodied heavy metal of the 1970s, like UFO, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath, and fusing it with the force of punk music to result in a faster, heavier, more aggressive style of metal. These bands usually wrote songs about mythology, horror, death, or fantasy.
Released on March 22nd, 1982, The Number of The Beast is Iron Maiden’s 3rd studio album. It was produced by Martin Birch, who was well known for also engineering and producing albums for Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, Whitesnake, Rainbow, Fleetwood Mac, and Black Sabbath.
I chose to review this album today for a whole host of reasons. Let me dive in on what some of those reasons are:
First, since the initial time I heard their live double album, Live After Death, Iron Maiden was on my radar. For they have BY FAR the best artwork on EVERY one of their albums, with each cover in the 1980s and early 90s being designed by painter, Derek Riggs, featuring the band’s mascot, “Eddie”. Created by Riggs, Eddie is a grisly, Halloween skeleton-looking figure with flashing red eyes and a mouth that spits smoke and blood. If you’ve been to a Maiden show, you know Eddie makes a regular appearance and is featured on every album cover. His ghastly face graces millions of Maiden T-shirts, posters, and action figures among other merchandise. Even if you don’t listen to Maiden or know much about them, I’m betting hard money you’ve seen a picture of Eddie somewhere.
But beyond the merchandise lies the real reason Maiden still packs massive arenas in an industry largely dominated by hip-hop, country and pop: incredibly kick-ass live shows. I’ve seen them 3 times and cannot express this enough.
The Number of The Beast was also the first album featuring lead singer Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson replaced original singer Paul Di’Anno after the band’s 2nd album, 1981’s Killers. In my opinion, when you listen to Di’Anno’s voice and Bruce’s voice……there is no comparison. Di’Anno is a good metal/punk singer, but Dickinson is and was a true, professionally trained, singer/songwriter with a voice that could be low and high – bringing the house down at every arena every night with his loud screams, even today at age 64.
The music on The Number of The Beast is fast, heavy, and in your face. Band founder and bass player, Steve Harris had a vision: he wanted to be faster than the UK and American Bands of the 1970s, sing less about hot girls and cars and more about spirits, ghouls, goblins and, well….let’s face it….DEATH. For you Dungeons & Dragons haters,… before you go running for the hills (no pun intended there), Maiden’s music is also about war, destruction, resilience, patriotism and fighting back. Does that bring you all back? Sometimes, their imagery gives onlookers the wrong message, for Maiden is swift, mathematical, musically gifted, well-educated, and very passionate about their writing and their fans.
All band members have been asked countless times about whether their band is a group of devil worshippers, and they always give the same answer each time. It’s all about the drama, the lore, the story and really “shock and awe”. Throughout history, especially in the UK, society was made of up of heavy Christian societal conditions. In the late 1950s into the 60s, the anti-establishment genre pushed back against a lot of what the Christianity image was about, that people generally believed in things like absolute good and absolute evil. Many heavy metal bands, including Maiden were adopting Satanic imagery to shock people. It may sound far-fetched, or more like an excuse, but if you listen to their interviews, you see men with leather and long hair who speak intelligently and work harder than every other musician in the industry who markets their craft and plugs their band.
The album kicks off with Invaders, possibly the weakest track on the album, but still worth a listen. Steve Harris has stated that the song was not good enough, noting that it "could have been replaced with something a bit better, only we didn't have anything else to replace it with at the time. We had just enough time to do what we did, and that was it”. Originally, Invaders was a re-write of an earlier song called, "Invasion", and the resulting LP, recorded and mixed in just five weeks, is one of metal’s all-time milestones.
Things pick up a lot with track two, Children of the Damned, like many Metallica songs, “Children” starts off with an acoustic guitar and includes a melodic almost ballad-like intro. The song then moves into heavier mode and picks up, bringing the house down as the family of anthems on Number of the Beast really begins. It’s important to mention that in 1982, Metallica was still in the infant stages of forming. So many of their biggest influences would include the New Wave of British Heavy Metal bands. On his last radio show for BBC Radio 6, Bruce Dickinson was on a segment in tribute to the late Ronnie James Dio, the classic metal singer for Black Sabbath (after Ozzy’s departure), Rainbow and Dio. On this show, Bruce noted that Children of the Damned was inspired by Sabbath’s song, Children of the Sea.
This was 30 years before smart phones and phone flashlights, so break out your bic lighters for this next track. The Prisoner has an anthemic chorus that every audience member sings along to during lives shows. The song was inspired by a British TV show with the same name. The track begins with dialogue from the show, spoken by British actor Patrick McGoohan:
“We want information. Information. Information.”
“Who are you?”
“The new number 2”
“Who is number 1?”
“You are number 6”
“I am not a number! I am a free man!”
The recording is of McGoohan’s character, known as “Number 6” during one episode of the show. He lands in a prison that is disguised as a holiday resort and spends the entire series trying to escape from this mysterious prison community called “The Village”. You may recognize Patrick McGoohan as King Edward I in the 1995 classic film, Braveheart. Iron Maiden had to get permission from McGoohan to use the audio clips during their song. McGoohan happily obliged.
22 Acacia Avenue, the second song in the "Charlotte the Harlot" saga, is a longer track at 6:38. Charlotte the Harlot is also a song from the band’s first album in 1980. The saga includes 4 tracks which are of course, the song Charlotte the Harlot, 22 Acacia Avenue, Hooks in You from the No Prayer for the Dying album and From Here to Eternity from the Fear of the Dark album. From the research I did, the Charlotte the Harlot saga is essentially a group of songs that refer to a rich, oblivious prostitute. The band has noted Charlotte is a fictional character but loosely based off someone they knew.
22 Acacia Avenue continues the “anthemic” narrative of the album. “22” is a concert crowd pleaser. Originally written by band member and guitar player, Adrian Smith and played by his former band Urchinyears earlier, Steve Harris took the song and modified it to fit on the album.
It feels like Christmas morning is finally here when you get to the album’s title track, The Number of the Beast. Beast was the second single off the album, following Run to the Hills, the album’s chart-topping hit and arguably the band’s most popular song in their catalog. Beast was inspired by a nightmare Steve Harrishad after watching the 1978 horror movie, Damien, Omen II. The track starts with a spoken word passage, read by English actor Barry Clayton, which quotes Revelation 12:12 and 13:18, which is the final book of The New Testament, part of what is otherwise known as The Bible. The band originally asked voice over actor and film actor, Vincent Price to read the intro, which would have also fit, but eventually had Clayton read it after Price demanded a fee of £25,000.
The song The Number of the Beast is famous for its very long, high-pitched, and guttural scream by Dickinson at the end of the intro. AllMusic, an American online music database, described this scream as "the most blood-curdling Dickinson scream on record". Bruce noted that he conjured up the vocal strength for this yell after being frustrated with producer Martin Birch, who forced him to sing the introduction close to 100 times to get the right take.
Galloping single Run to the Hills charted virtually everywhere in the world at first release, except for in the U.S., however it would eventually climb the charts and its music video would be considered an MTV staple.
Run to the Hills is a song about the colonization of North America. Essentially, it’s about the Europeans coming to what today is the United States and Canada and wiping out almost the entire Native American population. The opening verse is from the perspective of The Cree, an indigenous tribe, living primarily in Canada at the time. The song goes on to describe their horror as the European Americans, "came across the sea", bringing the Cree "pain and misery".
The song is written from both the Native population and the Europeans perspectives. The second verse is from the perspective of a U.S. cavalry soldier, describing his involvement in the American Indian Wars when Steve Harris writes, "chasing the redskins back to their holes". The third verse is not from the perspective of any particular group, and vehemently condemns the effects of American expansionism on the Natives. When I first heard the lyrics “raping the women and wasting the men", I was a little nervous to tell anyone what I was listening to. But I later learned Harris wrote this song telling a story. This wasn’t a representation of something they (the band) were set out to accomplish, of course.
It's also important to call out Steve Harris’ bass playing. For Harris could be the fastest bass player in Metal. Along with Metallica’s Cliff Burton, he may be Metal’s best. Ok, maybe Geezer Butler. No, it’s Steve.
The album closes with Hallowed be thy Name, an epic signature song. The title comes from the Catholic Prayer, “Our Father”. The song is a first-person account of a condemned man who’s about to be executed. He can’t understand why he’s scared, because he’s certain his soul is immortal and will carry on after his death.
The track would be the foundation and precursor to the song Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which is featured on 1984’s Powerslave album. The band noted that “Hallowed” and the whole “Beast” album, took them to a different level.
The band played the song live during the Beast on the Road world tour that followed the album’s release in ‘82. Since then, it’s been featured in the setlist of every tour with exception of the 2012-2014 Maiden England world tour, and then during the second stint of the Book of Souls world tour in 2016 and 2017.
I think it’s important to mention that lead singer, Bruce Dickinson is also a STUD in so many ways. Not only is he 64 years old and still running around the stage like a 24-year-old, but he’s singing as loud and with a voice range as if he never aged a day. Bruce also has a love for flying, airplanes that is. After getting his pilot’s license in 1991, Bruce started chartering planes for personal use and for friends. He then obtained his commercial pilot’s license and was hired by Astreus Airlines, achieving Captain rank, and later flying “goodwill” missions around the world picking up British citizens in troubled countries during times of war. Bruce even flew to Afghanistan in 2008 to pick up British pilots who were trying to flee.
In 2008, Iron Maiden was in the market for a large airplane to use for their “Somewhere Back in Time” world tour. The band rented a 747 from an aircraft charter company Air Atlanta Icelandic. They needed an aircraft that had enough space to transport all the group's stage gear and show materials, as well as the band itself and its crew members. Normally a Boeing 737 or 757 would do the trick, but because this was one of the biggest tours in the world, extra cargo capacity was required. The band would take this plane they named “Ed Force One”, all around the world flying to shows in India, Australia, Japan, Europe, Canada, throughout most of South America and ending the tour in the U.S. And guess who flew the plane, SURPRISE, Bruce did. The 2008 “Somewhere Back in Time” tour was the second highest grossing tour of the year by any British artist, with the band reportedly playing to well over 2 million people worldwide over the span of two years.
So, Bruce flew the plane to every gig, landed, did all the work a pilot needs to do to shut the plane down for the night, drives to his hotel in each city, completes soundcheck, does a full 2-hour show, then gets BACK on the plane and flies the entire band, crew, and their families to the next gig. HE IS SUPERMAN!!! OH MY GOD!!
You tell me – who else has done this? Who? That’s right!!
Many of the songs from that tour were off The Number of the Beast. For many would call it their best album. For me? I can’t pick one. There are so many! But I wanted to review this one as I thought it was a good representation of how amazing they are as musicians.
“Beast” would be the last album with drummer Clive Burr. Current drummer Nicko McBrain would join soon after their 1982 tour to record their next album, Piece of Mind. In an interview Clive did in 2011 he noted that he was kicked out after taking a break to mourn the recent death of his father and said it had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol abuse. But I found in Bruce Dickinson's 2017 autobiography that Clive was let go because of a personality conflict with Steve Harris, which is somewhat believable after reading that Steve is truly the leader and shot caller of this band. He’s the primary songwriter and makes 99% of their decisions.
So, if you’re a Maiden fan now like me, or even if you just remember this from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, you must dig deep into their catalog and don’t forget about The Number of the Beast.
And add a sleek portable player with storage rack to your collection below!
