-Iron Maiden-

Iron Maiden is perhaps the biggest metal band ever to surface in the world. The story of the band starts already in 1971 when the 15 year old Steve Harris buys a Telecaste bass, inspired by bands like Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull and early Genesis. He abandoned a possible soccer career for West Ham to learn how to play rock music which led into forming the band Influence which in turn changed its name to Gypsy's Kiss. This band played for the first time at a talent contest in Poplar but soon after that they broke up.

Steve then joined a band called Smiler where the band members were several years older than himself. The band didn´t want a bass player who wanted to write his own songs and he therefore decided to put together a band of his own at the end of 1975 and now the real Iron Maiden was born, the name inspired from the old movie "The Man In The Iron Mask". In 1976 the new band played several gigs in London's East End. The original vocalist Paul Day was replaced by the ex-Smiler member Dennis Wilcock who also recommended a talented guitarist named Dave Murray. The current guitarists Terry Rance and Paul Sullivan took this as an insult and left the band. New was Bob Sawyer under the name Bob D'Angelo.

Bob tried to compete with Dave's guitar playing instead of playing with him and therefore he was fired after only six months. He later joined the band Urchin, a band of his old friend Adrian Smith. The band decided to temporarily leave the original plan of having two guitarists. New to the band Terry Wapram (guitars) and Tony Moore (keyboards). The drummer Ron Rebel also left the band to be replaced by Barry "Thunderstick" Purkis. The band realized that keyboards were not the golden answer and Moore was forced to leave the band, followed by Wapram who claimed he couldn't play without the keyboards.

Several line-up changes followed but soon a guy named Paul Di'Anno was recommended as a new singer and he was chosen for the job. In 1977 the punk/new wave revolution was building up and it was hard for a band like Iron Maiden to get a deal. The record companies did give them offers, if they were willing to cut their hair and go punk that was. In late 1978 the situation had improved though. The band had found a stable line-up and played several gigs. On New Year's Eve they recorded their first demo songs - "Prowler", "Invasion", "Strange World" and "Iron Maiden" in Spaceward Studios near Cambridge which cost them everything they owned.

The demo tapes gained a lot of attention while being spread among people and clubs. Iron Maiden was given the chance to play all over Great Britain and soon enough John Darnley from EMI saw the band and signed them to his label. In the music paper "Sounds" Geoff Barton coined the now legendary phrase "The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal" and Iron Maiden were now on their way to world fame. In 1981 it became clear that their vocalist Paul Di'Anno could no longer be part of the band. He lived the rock'n'roll lifestyle to the fullest and despite warnings from the band and doctors he continued the same way and ended up damaging his vocal chords and general health. New to the band came no other than Bruce Dickinson who felt that his old band Samson was going the wrong way.

In 1993 the vocalist and workaholic Bruce Dickinson decided to leave Iron Maiden since he had several other projects going on and a young family to spend time with. The new vocalist came to be Blaze Bayley from Wolfsbane, a band who had supported Iron Maiden on their UK tour in 1990. In 1999 Bruce decided to return to Iron Maiden and their 2000 release "Brave New World" was a huge success with the good old Iron Maiden sound back again.