Iron Maiden @ BEC, Brisbane, 10.09.2024
And to think, it all started with an advert. Given everything that’s been said and written about music in advertising, whether it’s a good thing, whether it’s selling out, a 30 second advert was all it took. For my generation, a 30 second advert was our introduction to Iron Maiden.
It’s been forever perplexing just how much the mainstream music media has ignored Iron Maiden. Like most metal, they’ve been long regarded by the music press somewhere between disdain and scorn. Critics like Elvis Costello because critics look like Elvis Costello, right? Waiting outside before the show, my curiosity finds me Wikipedia’s list of biggest selling British music artists and there Iron Maiden are, listed alphabetically between George Michael and Paul McCartney, with an estimated 100 million album sales. The same number as claimed by Coldplay and Fleetwood Mac. And yet they don’t come anywhere near getting the same amount of column inches as any of those. The Venn diagram of Iron Maiden and mainstream music media is just two circles. They’ve long been one of the UK’s biggest bands, massive all over Europe, massive all over South America, festival headliners at the biggest and best festivals all over, and playing sold out arena shows in Australia, before heading off to do the same in New Zealand, and then Japan but you won’t hear much about them in the papers or outside of he heavier side of the music press.
In some ways, The Future Past World Tour that Iron Maiden has brought to Australia is an oddity for what the band plays and what it doesn’t play. The setlist, which hasn’t changed since the 2023 leg, focuses on the band’s 2022 album, Senjutsu, and 1986’s Somewhere In Time.
Senjutsu is a good album, a good Iron Maiden, as 2016’s Book of Souls was before it but whatever Iron Maiden release in their late-period career, and as unfair as it might seem, it’s more than likely to get ranked in the bottom half of the their albums. I’m old enough to remember the slight side eye that Somewhere In Time was given. This was the mid-1980s, of course, and the thought of any rock band introducing synthesized sounds, especially a band like Iron Maiden introducing guitar synths, was considered tantamount to an act of heresy. But, to be fair, anything that came after Powerslave was always going to be accompanied with a sense of disappointment. And by 1988’s excellent Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, everyone had more or less reached the opinion that Iron Maiden with keyboards was acceptable.
What’s fascinating about the setlist is that it’s as close to a ‘Deep Cuts’ tour I can remember the band playing for a long while. You could write any number of setlists that includes the songs you’d expect the band to play and if you’ve come for “The Hits”, you’re going to be disappointed. In a way, this is a massive statement. At this point in their career, and especially so given that the band have a limited number of tours left in them, they could just play it safe and play a crowd pleasing set night-after-night. Instead they want to highlight their most recent set of songs and show how well they work within the context of their older songs and some better known songs. There’s no sign that the band are slowly winding down by making life easy for themselves.
Some people will argue that a trio is the purest and perfect size for a band, but there’s something so imperious about five across the front, and a front five where everyone brings something to the performance. When people describe a musical performance as “theatrical”, it normally just means big show production values, and sure there’s backdrops that change for every single song and dry ice and explosions and an elaborate stage design and a couple of appearances by the 8ft Eddie but that’s just window dressing. I’ve never seen Iron Maiden from this angle before, I’ve always either been on the floor or right at the very back in the cheap seats but what I’m watching and what I’m totally mesmerized by and virtually the only thing I can focus on is the interaction between the band and each other and the band and the stage.
Each of the band has their allocated personal space on the stage. Guitarist Dave Murray on the left hand side, guitarist Adrian Smith back towards the drum kit, singer Bruce in the middle, bassist Steve Harris mid-right and guitarist Janick Gers in his own little world on the right hand side of the stage. Everyone has their own performance. Murray, forever looking like the most content man in the room, his unmistakable guitar tone, makes it all look effortless. Smith, forever the no nonsense rock star with the cool moves. Dickinson, covering each inch of the stage, the consummate front man, the endless energy levels, all while belting out the vocals. Harris, foot on monitor, bass guitar handled like weapon, the leader, the look on his face shows you what this band means to him. Gers, in his mandatory Iron Maiden t-shirt (after all, this is one of the very few bands where you’re expected to wear a t-shirt of the band playing) pulling out all the rock star moves, managing to play guitar wherever his guitar is in relation to his body at any given time, his antics leaving him bloody after only a couple of songs, treating those sat over on his side of the stage their very own performance. Drummer Nicko McBrain is of course there at the back, playing behind his immense drum kit that obliterates any view of him. The only glimpses you get of him are on the giant video screens at both side of the stage.
When the band interact with each other, it’s pure Gestalt in practice. The way it looks so effortlessly coordinated, as if it’s been properly choreographed and practiced endlessly. It’s theatrical because it’s theatre. The onstage flow is hypnotic. How everyone knows where they need to be on the stage at any given time. Blink and you miss the transition. It just happens as if out of nowhere. I’d love to see this show with everyone GPS-tracked, it would be a work of art.
The song order has definitely been well considered. It’s a strong start with “Caught Somewhere in Time” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” before new songs are introduced and rather than intersperse them amongst the older songs throughout the set, they’re introduced in a three song block. The way the crowd greets Senjutsu‘s lead single, “Writing On The Wall”, you’d think it was a lost classic that has been brought back into the set and the momentum is kept through “Days of Future Past” and “The Time Machine”. “Death of the Celts” has the unenvious positioning of being sandwiched between “The Prisoner” and “Can I Play With Madness” but never feels like a lesser song when compared to two stone cold classics from the band’s back catalogue. Indeed, “Can I Play With Madness” is one of the night’s highlights and hopefully there’s a future where the Seventh Son songs get to be showcased again. More than an hour in, there’s no sign of any drop in the bands energy levels, with “Heaven Can Wait” finding Harris galloping around the stage while Dickinson prowls the walkway that wraps itself around the back of McBrain’s drums, the song culminating in a first entrance proper for Eddie for a ridiculously over the top gunfight with Dickinson.
There’s a welcome return for Somewhere In Time‘s epic “Alexander the Great”. No one quite does a big historical number quite like Iron Maiden, with the weave of intricate guitar harmonies, galloping bassline, sing-a-long sections, all culminating with Dickinson hovering behind McBrain pounding away at the drum kit’s gong, as they pull out all the stops for a final big number. The crowd laps up “Fear of the Dark”, as they always do, and which means it always gets played, even if it’s far from the band’s best. While you could spend considerable time musing over the songs they could have included, ultimately there’s only one song that has to be played, one song that’s never going to be skipped, the first song on the setlist: “Iron Maiden”. That introduction still sounds incredible. For everything that the band became during 1980s, there’s not an ounce of fat on the songs from that first album, they’re lean but muscular, and, although the band have always disputed any assertions, it’s as punk as fuck and has a real spirit of ’76 running through it.
The three song encore finds newbie “Hell On Earth” being worthy of it’s positioning and worthy of the big production pyrotechnics. Other than “Iron Maiden”, “The Trooper” is possibly the only other song that Iron Maiden aren’t allowed to not play and it remains a perfect encapsulation of everything that’s so great about this band. The evening ends with “Wasted Years”, which in recent times has been the band’s go-to song to finish with. The band stay on the stage to make their farewells as everything heads off into the night to face the horror that is Rail Bus Replacement and a wish that Brisbane would get its act together and locate the city’s arena-sized venue at least somewhere vaguely near the city.
It does feel slightly sacrilegious that there’s nothing from Powerslave. I’m sure I read somewhere that “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” had been rehearsed for adding to the songs for this tour but it sadly wasn’t to be. You want to say “Next time!” for all the songs that didn’t make into the setlist for this tour but we’re fast approaching a time when there aren’t going to be many more “next times”.
If we’re lucky, we might get one more chance to experience a live Iron Maiden show. By the time that comes around, you’d expect most of the band to be in their early to mid 70s. Two more tours might be pushing it a bit; by then it would probably take drummer Nicko McBrain into his eighties and I’d be surprised if they’ll still be on the road in the 2030s. Almost 50 years in, and more than 35 years since I first saw them, they’re still one of the great live bands. And to think, people paid stupid money this month for tickets to see Oasis.
