There is a certain symmetry about tonight. It is now just over 40 years since Iron Maiden played their sixth and final concert at Glasgow Apollo – that famous, much loved, dilapidated, beautiful old picture house in the city centre that was to sadly close its doors for good the following year – and now the heavy metal titans are just a mile and a half away on the banks of the River Clyde celebrating their 50th anniversary as a band as part of their Run For Your Lives World Tour.
Since that earlier tour in support of their sixth album, Powerslave, much has changed for Iron Maiden. They have released a dozen more studio albums, and this is now their 20th tour since 1984. But much remains the same. The nucleus of the band is still firmly intact. Steve Harris (bass and backing vocals), Dave Murray (guitars), Adrian Smith (guitars and backing vocals), and Bruce Dickinson (lead vocals) are all still very much present and correct. As, of course, is Eddie the Head. They are joined by Janick Gers (guitars) and new drummer, Simon Dawson.
And a double-handful of the songs they played at the Apollo in September ’84 are repeated here, perhaps not entirely surprising in that the most recent song tonight, ‘Fear of the Dark,’ dates from 1992 and this is probably as near as Maiden will get to what might loosely be described as a greatest hits set.
“Scream for me, Scotland.” “Scream for me, Glasgow.”
Bruce Dickinson had already made this request of the crowd about half a dozen songs earlier, but by now he is up on the top rampart of the stage, racing back and forth, furiously waving the saltire, the national flag of Scotland. He could have just won the Battle of Bannockburn as he had done in the Charge of the Light Brigade moments beforehand in front of a huge projection of Eddie, the band’s faithful mascot, in the guise of a trooper.
An Iron Maiden show is cinematic in its design. Action. Time. Vision. And sound, of course. And lots and lots of it. For two hours, the three guitars produce an incredibly fast, wonderfully elaborate wall of noise that only just stays tethered to its moorings because of the resolute, immovable beast that is Steve Harris’s bass and Simon Dawson’s drums.
And over this complex sheet of relentless metal music, Bruce Dickinson roars those fabulous tales of mythology, war, dark fantasy, horror, and significant historical events against a stunning visual backdrop that takes us from the streets of East London to ancient Egypt and from ghostly galleon ships to aerial dog fights in the Battle of Britain with a maniacal Eddie in his Spitfire in hot and successful pursuit of a Messerschmitt. It is like some supercharged stories from EC Comics have been teleported from the 1950s to the present day and then given a huge Hollywood makeover. It is typically extravagant, wildly overblown, and quite simply magnificent.
Having ended the set proper with a genuinely dramatic ‘Iron Maiden’ the six men return to ratchet up the delirium levels even further with a triple fusillade of ‘Aces High’ – prefaced by an audio clip of Churchill’s “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech, which, coincidentally, had opened that Apollo gig 40 years ago – a suitably sinister ‘Fear of the Dark’ and, finally, a brilliant victory lap with ‘Wasted Years.’
Tonight is clear evidence that Iron Maiden’s past half century has not been time misspent. It has, in fact, produced the greatest British metal band of all time. And as Bruce Dickinson rightly points out, “we plan to go on for another 50 years.”
