Back in 1980 the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal was the movement on everybody’s lips. So Iron Maiden hit the road in Europe to see if it could survive outside the UK.
It’s an old adage, but life on the road isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Moments of alcoholic excess, white-line lunacy and stud-farm fever do exist on tour, of course (it’d be foolish to suggest otherwise), but not in anything like the rock’n’roll-all-nite/party-every-day abundance of music folklore.
Nah, your regular ‘hard-giggin’ band’ lives not in a drug-infested, groupie-packed underworld, but in a distinctly unromantic and altogether harsher reality. All of the above was well and truly rammed home to me in autumn 1980, when I spent some time in continental Europe, travelling from venue to venue with Iron Maiden.
To annotate the moments of mayhem experienced during this period would be difficult. Alright, so I did catch Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno (later to be replaced by Bruce Dickinson) relieving himself in a hotel corridor, and guitarist Dave Murray doing much the same thing in a Holiday Inn ashtray. But in truth, events on any sort of crazed chicken-shooting/plane loop-the-looping level were conspicuous by their absence. Allow me to cast my mind back, and I’ll try to explain…
Iron Maiden are supporting Kiss in Europe, and the date schedule is more demanding than a spoilt child continually asking for new toys. It involves travelling vast distances in hectic hours as opposed to leisurely days. Right now we’re thrashing our way from Hamburg in Germany to Leiden in Holland, a trek that makes London to Glasgow seem like a doddle down to the corner shop.
Unlike Kiss, who can afford to fly from date to date by jet, their tour openers from London’s humble East End are forced to burn rubber down the autobahns. And although the Maiden coach (an Americanmade custom van costing £9,000 – expensive by 1980 standards) is smooth-running, carpeted, fitted with a selection of swivel chairs and really quite luxurious, we’ve been motoring for so long that at the moment it feels about as comfortable as sitting in a covered wagon jolting down a dusty trail.
It’s 5.30 in the evening by the time we bump across the cobbles of good ol’ Leiden town. With no time to check in to the hotel, we shake and rattle our way directly to the night’s venue.
Inside Maiden’s vehicle it looks like everyone has OD’d on Mogadon. Dave Murray’s head lolls on its side, all blond hair and no face. Paul Di’Anno is slumped gracelessly in his seat, like a man rendered unconscious after an 18-pint session. Drummer Clive Burr’s head jerks up and down like a nodding Alsatian’s. And in an hour and a half from now these sorry souls are supposed to be up on stage, poundin’ out a set of gut-wrenchin’, hard-riffin’, ear-blastin’ heavy m
