Way before the first Eddie appeared on a Maiden sleeve, Steve and his fellows
were already experimenting with their stage act, after Dennis Wilcock (a
former vocalist) left Maiden, Dave Beasly took over arranging the stage act.
He soon earned the nickname Dave Lights because of his improvising skills
in making a stage act using simple stuff like gun powder, flower pots,
vacuum cleaner parts and lights. He soon came up with a mask which he obtained
at an art academy, he used an aquarium air-pump to pump blood through the
mouth of this head during the song Iron Maiden. At that time a stupid joke
was circulating which goes something like this: A woman had given birth
to just a head, the doctor told her she needn't worry since he would come
up with a suitable body for good 'ole Eddie within a year or five. So five
years later Eddie's father entered the room on Eddie's birthday and said:
"well today's your birthday, and boy do we have a surprise for you!" after
which Eddie replied: "Oh no!, not another bloody hat!".
So that's how the head on the stage got its name, the first real Eddie had
been born!
But all Eddie still was, was a head on the stage, until the group met Derek
Riggs (through Rod Smallwood, their manager), he designed the long
awaited body for Eddie. The group decided to keep Eddie's appearance as a secret
until the first album, therefore the Eddie which appears on the Running
Free sleeve, is standing in the shadows. The first album indeed featured
the face of Eddie, it was still a 'weird' Eddie and Derek soon changed his
face.
It wouldn't take long before Eddie appeared in the British newspapers and
caused his first controversy, this was due to the Sanctuary sleeve
on which Eddie stabbed Margaret Thatcher to death because she had torn an
Iron Maiden poster off the wall. The later releases of the Sanctuary
sleeve had to be censored, therefore a black bar was drawn over her eyes, this
bar only appeared on the British releases though, the continental European
releases didn't have this black bar. Maggie's revenge was swift though, judging
from the Women In Uniform sleeve, on which she's waiting in an ambush
to shoot Eddie with a machine gun. This sleeve caused a second minor controversy
because a handful of outraged feminists accused Maiden of sexism since Eddie was
walking arm in arm with a nurse and a schoolgirl, no one really took this
protest very serious though. The final major controversy Eddie caused was when
he had bitten off Ozzy Osbourne's head as a joke after Ozzy bit off the head
of a bat on stage once, the Ozzy Osbourne camp couldn't appreciate the joke
very much so Maiden had to withdraw that drawing.
Over the years to come Eddie changed a lot, the stage-Eddies became a few meters
tall(!) and Eddie himself changed as well. Especially around the
Somewhere In Time era Eddie started to change heavily, in said era
he looked more or less like a 'terminator'. These transformations were topped
two years later during the Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son era, where only
the upper part of Eddie's body remained.
For some reason the drawings began to deteriorate ever since that era, the
No Prayer For The Dying sleeve featured a complete Eddie again (i.e.
not just a head), but Eddie wasn't drawn as beautifully as Derek used to
draw him. The only really good (Riggs) Eddie drawing since 1990 was the
Bring Your Daughter... ...To The Slaughter drawing.
It seems as if Maiden was getting dissapointed with the Eddies the way Derek
started to draw them, for the sleeve of Fear Of The Dark was drawn by a
different artist (Melvyn Grant) and the ones which were drawn by Derek were
rather ugly.
Things didn't exactly improve when The X Factor was released, for the
releases of this era all feature a computer-drawn Eddie (by Hugh Syme),
IMO this just isn't Eddie anymore. The release of Virus and The Best Of
The Beast, however, gave new hope since they marked the return of Derek Riggs!
The The Best Of The Beast sleeve looks a bit like a hasty job in which Derek
combined some of his better drawings of old times, but yet it was a big
improvement over the The X Factor drawings. Naturally, expectations were now
sky-high for the sleeve of the new album, Virtual XI, but surprise, surprise,
no Riggs drawing this time! However, the sleeve has been drawn by an old familiar artist,
Melvyn Grant who also drew the Fear Of The Dark sleeve. With the help of
the people at Synthetic
Dimensions who are currently developing the excellent computer game
Ed Hunter, a
special lenticular 3D version of this sleeve now accompanies the new CD. Though not a
Riggs special, I have to say that the new sleeve design looks quite nice. Besides, two of
the three designs for the new single The Angel And The Gambler do feature Riggs'
drawings, which look o.k.
So this is the current state of the art, it still remains to be seen what will happen
in the future, Derek seems to be on his way back, but he's not there yet. So let's all
hope we'll soon see some new masterpieces of him just like the ones he used to make
during the eighties...
Some of my personal favourite Eddies are: Somewhere In Time, Powerslave,
Aces High, The Clairvoyant and Purgatory.
Unfortunately the disk space I have available for my web page is limited and
therefore I can only have a few Eddie scans on my page, I chose to scan some
of the rarer drawings, i.e. tour-shirt drawings and postcards, etc.
