MAIDEN VOYAGE
As we know them today, Iron Maiden are six supremely successful rock stars who, armed with an expansive catalogue of music, travel the world on a jet often piloted by their lead singer, and challenge a rival American band called Metallica for the title of the biggest heavy music act in the world.
Forty-one years ago it was very different. In January 1980, when bassist Steve Harris and the rest of Maiden arrived at London’s Kingsway Studios to hammer down tracks in the form of a debut album, he was 23 years old. As the band entered the 80s, their discography amounted to a solitary EP, the self-financed Soundhouse Tapes, with one of its tracks, Wrathchild, about to appear on the various-artists compilation album Metal For Muthas.
Two previous attempts to formulate a Maiden album had failed to get off the runway, but Paul Di’Anno, their vocalist of the era, recalls that the mood was not one of anxiety.
“Nah, there was too much excitement to feel any pressure,” he exclaims today, looking back on the experience. “We knew that what
