It’s 1981. Bruce Dickinson watches Iron Maiden take the stage.
Holding court at the front is bassist, Steve Harris.
Dickinson isn’t impressed.
“The singer should be standing there,” he thinks.
Not long after, Dickinson himself joins the band as their new frontman.
“So the first thing I did was move my little monitors into the middle at the front…
‘Thunk.’
…which got in his way ’cause he wanted to run to the catwalk in the middle of the stage, but the monitors were there so he had them moved. So I walked on stage and moved them back again.”
Tired of fighting the bassist for space every night, Dickinson hatches a plan.
He builds an extra-long microphone stand specifically to trip Harris every time he tried to barge past.
So begins the Dickinson era. Announced by their first UK #1 album…
The Number of the Beast
By 1981, almost 20 “official members” had passed through the ranks of Maiden. Dickinson replaced Paul Di’Anno, who was unable to perform reliably every night and live the life of a professional rock & roller.
Dickinson had proven himself more than capable of sustaining the lifestyle. He’d spent the last two years touring and recording with Samson. But a slew of bad management decisions had held back his former band from true success.
So he came into Iron Maiden focused. He didn’t want to just be another “number”. He wanted to be front and center.
Dickinson’s wider range as a singer and commanding stage presence brought a new dimension to performances. Almost overnight, the band lost its punky image and became more “arty”.
In the documentary The History of Iron Maiden - Part One, guitarist Dave Murray admits the band went to “a whole different level” upon Dickinson’s arrival.
The Making of the Beast
The first two Iron Maiden albums were created from songs they’d been writing and refining since the mid-seventies. According to the late, great metal journalist, Malcolm Dome, fans of the band were disappointed with second album Killers upon release because they’d already heard all the songs live.
So when they entered the studio to record third album, The Number of the Beast, the pressure was on the band to create new songs in a short period of time.
According to producer, Martin Birch, this pressure created a very special energy within the band:
“I had the same feeling on The Number of the Beast as when we did the Deep Purple album, Machine Head. It was the same kind of atmosphere, same kind of feeling that was going on. Something really good is happening here, you know, and it’s exciting to do. And I think that excitement comes through on the album.”
Despite the band’s awareness that Dickinson was a step-up from Di’Anno, they didn’t make life easy for him. They pushed him to the point where “bits of furniture would fly across the studio.”
It took him more than two hours to record the first four lines of the album’s title track. Dickinson’s frustration and relief in finally capturing Birch’s vision is captured in the bone chilling, sepulchral scream that follows.
With the benefit of hindsight, Bruce can laugh about these sessions: “I enjoy making records with Martin. They’re not always comfortable, but they’re always bloody good.”
More than 20 million album sales later, The Number of the Beast certainly proved itself “bloody good”.
The album’s recording was marred by strange, quasi-paranormal issues:
“It was nothing to do with the 666 thing; that was exaggerated. We had loads of things going wrong. We had to get a completely different tape machine because it wasn’t recording the stuff properly as it was going down. But, I mean, those sort of things can happen. It’s just that we had more of it this time than any other time…”
Exaggerated or not, it does seem that these strange occurrences were an omen for things to come…
Satanic Panic
Upon release, the Christian groups in the US recoiled at the album’s artwork and Iron Maiden were accused of “devil worship.” Protesters would picket their concerts and publicly burn copies of their LP, or smash them with hammers for fear of the toxic (demonic?) fumes.
But all news, as they say, is good news: According to Dickinson, “It gave us loads of publicity. And the kids that did want to buy our records were like, ‘oh cool [...] I’m gonna go buy half a dozen”.
“Am I a satanist?
[Pause.]
No.”
Here’s what I find funny. If these staunch Christian groups had actually looked at the song lyrics, they’d have taken a quick backstep.
Because the band that Christian America had declared “Satanic” had just ended their chart-topping album with a seven-minute meditation on mortality, faith and the terror of the great “beyond”:
“Hallowed Be Thy Name”
The heavy metal genre has been obsessed with death since Black Sabbath's eponymous debut in 1969. But "Hallowed Be Thy Name" does something most metal songs don't.
It brings you closer to the narrator’s life (and death.) You feel the prisoner’s anticipation. The first-person storytelling brings you into the story and you become the prisoner in the cell.
The intro is haunting. Bruce's voice soars over the instantly recognisable chordal, melodic two-note guitar shapes. Bells toll and we take the condemned man’s place in his cell, waiting for our imminent death:
“I'm waiting in my cold cell when the bell begins to chime
Reflecting on my past life and it doesn't have much time
'Cause at 5 o'clock, they take me to the Gallows Pole
The sands of time for me are running low”
Then the harmonic engine starts up. The electric riff that snakes in behind Dickinson’s fire-siren wail develops into a winding, harmonised duel between Smith and Murray.
Bruce's soaring voice makes the hopelessness of the situation visceral. The chill of the cell seeps into your bones and you feel the presence of the gallows pole outside.
The narrator claims to be resolute, but still you don’t truly believe him when he screams:
“Tears flow, but why am I crying?
After all, I'm not afraid of dying”
The narrator cycles through denial, terror and bargaining. His faith wavers in real time:
“Somebody cries from a cell, "God be with you
If there's a God, why has he let me go?”
This line is devastating.
It’s not – as the religious fanatics in the 80s wanted you to believe – a rejection of faith (or something more demonic.) It’s a human, alone in their cell and facing the “beyond”, wondering where his “soul” will be after the bell finally tolls 5 o clock.
In fact, the lyrics seems to be rooted somewhere between Christian superstition and transcendental philosophy:
“As I walk, my life drifts before me
Though the end is near I'm not sorry
Catch my soul, it's willing to fly away”
We’re now in the realm of “souls” and heaven.
The song is explicitly told from the point of view of a person “gone beyond to seek the truth”. Even the words “Life down here [i.e., earth] is just a strange illusion” suggests that there’s an “up here” (heaven?) from where the story is being narrated.
Once the narrator’s story concludes, the song shifts. The tempo doubles. Harris’s galloping basslines dive the song towards its conclusion, wherever that might be.
Smith and Murray’s guitar solos mimic the mental state of the prisoner. The frantic, duelling lead guitars keep us on edge. The rhythm section that follows is driven largely by Steve Harris’s bass and drummer, Clive Burr. The guitars launch back into another harmonised section which carries us through to the end. Finally, our narrator – having finally transcended – wails the Lord’s Prayer from a place “beyond”:
“Hallowed Be Thy Name”.
(The drummer holding down that final, ecstatic double-time charge was Clive Burr. He was fired mid-tour shortly after this album released, while still grieving the death of his father. He was later diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, spent his final years in a wheelchair, and died in 2013, aged 56. He never got to play “Hallowed Be Thy Name” in the arenas it eventually filled.)
It’s worth highlighting the contrast here between Lamb of God’s “Vigil” (which I wrote about two weeks ago) and Maiden’s “Hallowed Be Thy Name”.
Lamb of God also pulled from the Lord’s Prayer, albeit in a much more “demonic” way than Iron Maiden ("Our father, thy will be done" is subverted to "Our father, we forsake you.") Lamb of God are explicitly critical of religion, whereas in “Hallowed…”, Iron Maiden explores the possibility of transcendence.
This is the great irony at the heart of Iron Maiden's legacy.
The band that became the poster children for Satanic Panic were writing music from a place of genuine spiritual curiosity – not worship, but certainly not rejection either.
The Stolen Lines
Here's something many Maiden fans don't know.
A section of the lyrics – arguably some of the most iconic lyrics in metal – were stolen.
In 1973, a forgotten British pub-rock band called Beckett released a song called "Life's Shadow". A teenage Steve Harris watched them perform it live. Beckett’s manager was Rod Smallwood, the man who’d later become Iron Maiden's manager.
The legal history is messy.
Harris and Dave Murray eventually settled with one of the Beckett songwriters. But the co-writer didn't find out until 2011 (because his bandmate had claimed to be the song's sole author during the original negotiation.) A second lawsuit followed. The band finally settled out of court in 2018, their lawyers arguing Harris had used the lyrics as a placeholder and had run out of time to change them before release (very likely considering Maiden’s hectic recording and touring schedule in the early ‘80s.)
Here – for comparison – are the lyrics from the Beckett song:
“Mark my words, my soul lives on
Please don't worry cos I've gone
I've gone beyond to see the truth
While I consider my new youth
When your time is close at hand
Maybe then you'll understand
Life down there is just a strange illusion”
And here they are again as they appear in “Hallowed Be Thy Name”:
“Mark my words, believe my soul lives on
Don't worry now that I have gone
I've gone beyond to seek the truth
When you know that your time is close at hand
Maybe then you'll begin to understand
Life down here is just a strange illusion”
As you can see, these lyrics are almost unchanged in “Hallowed…”
However, they fit perfectly within the context of the song.
Maiden’s song about transcendence and life “beyond” literally gave these lyrics a new life of their own.
“gone beyond to seek the truth”
So what do you think?
Plagiarism? Maybe. Or perhaps something more.
Is “Hallowed Be Thy Name” – arguably one of the greatest metal songs of all time – tarnished by its “poaching” of Beckett’s lyrics?
Or did it “practice what it preached”, giving new life to a song that – even at the time – was considered buried and dead?
In either case, I’d love to hear your thoughts – hit reply and let me know what you think.
Horns up 🤘
Shane
Editor-in-Chief
The Chug Media