Iron Maiden: The greatest band in the world - a personal tribute

The last song of the evening, “Wasted Years,” completely tears me apart. I'm 16 again, my eyes moisten. “So understand / Don't waste your time always searching for those wasted years,” sings Bruce Dickinson . Where have the years gone? It doesn't matter. What counts is this moment. A moment that stands in space like a monument and bends the course of time. “Face up, make your stand / And realize you're living in the golden years.” We are infinite, for the blink of an eye.

Iron Maiden, the band of my life, are playing the soundtrack of my life and that of 15,000 others here in the Papp László Sportaréna in Budapest. "This is the best night of our fuckin' lives!" Dickinson screams, sweating, into eternity, extending it with one final repeat of the chorus. Shortly afterwards, the lights dim, and the Monty Python classic "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" plays from the tape. For Iron Maiden fans, this traditionally means: the show is over, get home safely. I wipe a tear of joy from my cheek and I'm 37 again.

It's the end of May, and Iron Maiden, considered by many to be the biggest and most important heavy metal band of all, are kicking off their world tour in Budapest with two shows on consecutive nights. The European leg of the "Run For Your Lives" tour, which kicks off the celebrations of their 50th anniversary, will take them to major venues and stadiums across the continent, including London's Olympic Stadium and Madrid's Metropolitano. In July, they'll play six shows in Germany, beginning on July 11 in Gelsenkirchen. By the time the first leg of the tour ends at the National Stadium in Warsaw in early August, more than a million people will have seen Iron Maiden.

I'm one of them, a fan since the beginning of the millennium. I'm seeing my 13th and 14th Iron Maiden concerts in Budapest, and a week and a half later, in Copenhagen, my 15th will follow. There's nothing better in the world. Nothing. Maybe the birth of your own child, okay, but other than that? It's the best two hours of your life, every time.

"It's," says Rod Smallwood, "like watching your favorite football team play every day." Smallwood attends every concert, and for good reason: He's been the band's manager since 1979. Smallwood, 75, a legend in his own right, is the seventh band member. He's Maiden's Brian Epstein. I meet him before the second Budapest show in the arena's catacombs, in a room with nasty lighting and shower cubicles with plastic curtains. It smells, fittingly, like a football locker room.

Maiden and football go hand in hand, which is why I love this band even more. Maiden founder Steve Harris could have had a career as a footballer with West Ham United, but instead decided to focus on music. In the run-up to the 1998 World Cup, the band promoted the album "Virtual XI" - the Roman eleven in the title is apt - with a series of football matches in Europe against local teams packed with veteran players. Avowed fan Terry Butcher once played for Maiden. He was one of the UK's toughest scorers and his picture went viral in the decisive qualifier for the 1990 World Cup, with a blood-stained face, soaked turban and all-red shirt. It was as if Maiden had written the title song of their debut album "Iron Maiden" just for him ten years earlier: "See the blood flow / watching it shed up above my head / Iron Maiden wants you for dead" . To this day, Maiden organize football matches on the sidelines of their concerts. The boss, Harris, is still involved himself, even at the age of 69.

To see such a kick, honest Sunday League football from Maiden FC, is a fan dream for me that has yet to come true. But okay, am I complaining? After all, I'll be watching Maiden several more times this summer, playing at Champions League level, in their core business: The Brits, and after initial impressions from the current tour, I can confidently say that they are still among the best live bands under the sun. Other groups of this age, if not the beneficiaries of a Keith Richards cell donation, are often either their own cover band at this stage of their career, a parody of themselves, or simply no longer around. Iron Maiden are Iron Maiden. Against all logic of growth and decay.

A few days ago, after attending a show in Sweden, a fellow Maiden musician posted a sentence online that sums it up perfectly: "Some bands fade, others become eternal." Some bands fade, others become eternal. Iron Maiden have entered timelessness.

In a sea of ​​flames: Iron Maiden in Budapest performing the band's 43-year-old classic "Run to the Hills".

Source: JOHN McMURTRIE

What they offer on the "Run For Your Lives" tour, dedicated to albums from their debut "Iron Maiden" (1980) to "Fear of the Dark" (1992), is thrilling. Dave Murray and Adrian Smith, both 68, engage in guitar duels on "Aces High" as if it were 1984. Janik Gers, also 68, guitarist number three, smoothly hula-hoops with his guitar.

Harris fires his bass salvos into the crowd on "Killers" and "Powerslave," jumping around the stage like the 19-year-old he was when he founded the band in 1975. Dickinson, who was dubbed "Air Raid Siren" in the early 1980s when he replaced Paul Di'Anno in Maiden, previously with Samson, sings so intoxicatingly well, as if no one had ever told him that he would turn 67 in August. "I mean, the guy had cancer (tongue cancer, diagnosed in 2014, ed.) and has been singing better than before ever since," says manager Smallwood.

Hallowed Be Thy Name: Bruce Dickinson performing "Hallowed Be Thy Name" in one of his countless costumes, which he wears during the new Maiden show.

Source: JOHN McMURTRIE

Only Nicko McBrain is missing. In December, he announced his retirement from touring. McBrain, 73, an incredible drummer and an even more incredible guy, suffered a stroke in early 2023, fought his way back to the drum kit within a few months, and had to practically relearn how to play before the "The Future Past" tour, which married old classics with the new material from the 2021 album "Senjutsu." Out of consideration for his health, McBrain called it quits—after 42 years in the band. Officially only as an actively touring musician, he remains a member, in whatever capacity. "He's still part of the family," says Smallwood, "and always will be."

The new guy: Simon Dawson, 67. Harris knows him from his side project, British Lion. Dawson, initially a bit nervous but now reminding many of McBrain's predecessor, Clive Burr, makes his debut in Budapest. It's the first lineup change in 26 years, when Dickinson and Smith returned to Maiden after the stale nineties, ushering in a triumphant run that continues to this day with Blaze Bayley, a nice guy and a good singer who just didn't really fit in with Maiden.

The most loyal of the loyal: Iron Maiden fans from Costa Rica, Bulgaria, and Cyprus at the tour kickoff in Budapest.

Source: JOHN McMURTRIE

That was the time when I became a fan. A time when people were already saying: This is just the encore now. The Maiden members were in their mid-forties and therefore, of course, incredibly old for me as a teenager. After every album, every tour, there was talk of the band ending. It never came. Back in 2003, when I first saw them on the "Dance of Death" world tour, I thought: Well, at least I've experienced Iron Maiden once. That will probably be the last time. The curse of being born late.

When Iron Maiden conquered the world, completing spectacular tours like the 190-date World Slavery Tour from August 1984 to July 1985, including the headline show at Rock in Rio in front of 350,000 spectators, when they recorded the albums that cemented their reputation as the most exciting band in the genre: The Number of the Beast (1982), Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984), Somewhere in Time (1986) and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988), they did it without me, who was still in diapers at the end of the glorious eighties. Damn it.

To be able to experience this band at this level in 2025 is an unexpected and great blessing. That's another reason why I'm so touched as I stand in the crowd in Budapest. I'm touched by the music that has accompanied me for a quarter of a century. And by those on stage, who are strangely important to me. Almost like family members.

Where does that come from? Why are fans like that? Why am I like that? And why Iron Maiden in particular and not, I don't know, Slayer, for example? I think, in the end, it's like football: You don't choose your team. The club chooses you. And so, this one band, which takes over your ear canals a little more than any other, chooses you.

The obligatory stage Eddie, this time in the "Killers" look with small details of all album covers from the classic era, with his favorite opponent, guitarist Janick Gers.

Source: JOHN McMURTRIE

It's that incomparable sound, the double-barreled guitars, those beguiling bass lines, the lyrics. Music can articulate emotions. If it's good, it can concentrate and amplify dreams, hopes, and longings. Music is a primal force. And Maiden are a primal force, a fantastic one at that, literally. A kaleidoscope of stories of raids and rites, daring feats and heroic journeys, dynasties and dystopias, conquerors and conquered, cinematic and literary material, Huxley, Heinlein, Wells, Crowley, plus that incomparable aesthetic, that visual power, the record covers and stage sets with Eddie, the band's mascot. Who has something like that, their own monster? As a teenager, I found that exciting. And adults can't let go of the youth within them. I think that's a good thing.

I was, am, and will remain Team Maiden. The musicians are my Pelés, Maradonas, and Beckenbauers. Shining lights that you simply love to watch play. And I hope they never stop. Even though you know everything is finite. That makes it all the more precious.

It's a form of identification I encounter again and again on my concert tours. In Budapest, I meet people who've been in the city for days, celebrating frenetically as if the World Cup final were about to begin: South Americans, the most ardent Maiden fans of all, and a remarkable number of Germans too. And in Copenhagen, I meet Rasmus Stavnsborg. Stavnsborg, 52, is what you'd call a superfan; he's a collector of Maiden memorabilia, perhaps the greatest of all. He's been in the Guinness Book of Records since 2012. Stavnsborg owns over 10,000 items: guitars, pinball machines, stage props, framed gold and platinum records—his private museum covers 250 square meters.

"At first, I was actually just an Eddie fan," he says of his first encounter with Maiden as a child. "I didn't even know he was part of a band. Later, I heard the first record and was instantly hooked." He has traveled the world for the band, seeing hundreds of concerts in 45 countries, including India, Japan, and Peru. "Now I hope everything goes smoothly on the tour so that Warsaw can be my 300th concert. That would be a great way to end this year's tour."

A small section of Rasmus Stavnsborg's Maiden private museum on 250 square meters.

Source: Marco Nehmer

Fans are strangely lovable creatures. I can't keep up with someone like Stavnsborg, of course. But that's not what it's about if you feel something, I think. And I'm not completely empty-handed either, with my modest collection, which now includes about 50 Maiden items of clothing, a Maiden-dedicated jacket worth the price of a small used car, and several Maiden tattoos. It's a lifelong fan passion, not a fleeting fad.

The band itself has never given any reason to be one. They've never, says Smallwood, done "all that pop star stuff" or allowed the big home stories about themselves in the press. "Everything has been achieved by being a great live band and consistently writing great songs for a growing audience over a long period of time." The values ​​the band represents will never be fashionable. "And, to be perfectly honest, at Maiden, we don't give a shit about fashion."

Otherwise, Iron Maiden, named after a medieval torture device, would likely have become a punk band. Maiden began their career amidst the rising punk wave, and the band was encouraged to join the wave. But Steve Harris, who worked as a street sweeper for a time, remained steadfast and persistent, and after numerous lineup changes and setbacks, his persistence was rewarded. Initially, the band had difficulty even getting gigs. However, through gigs in pubs like the Cart & Horses and the Ruskin Arms, Maiden gained a growing fan base.

And sometime in the late 1970s, he presented a demo tape to metal guru Neal Kay, who was DJing heavy metal nights at London's trendy Bandwagon. "I almost fell over," Kay, who would later prove to be a key figure in Maiden's development, once said. "I was running around the living room screaming like a madman. I couldn't stop playing it."

Iron Maiden took the proto-metal and prog rock of the 1970s, gave it a spin, and, influenced by bands like Wishbone Ash, Jethro Tull, Free, and of course, Black Sabbath, created an ever-expanding universe of hits with galloping rhythms, fast solos, tempo, time signature, and key changes, and great compositional density. Maiden became the spearhead of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, the exploding new wave around bands like Saxon, Raven, Tygers of Pan Tang, and Angel Witch, with whose emergence metal was born as an independent, distinct genre.

This is their legacy. This is Steve Harris' legacy. When you think of heavy metal, you're largely thinking of this man's work. And then he just stands in front of me, shakes my hand, and asks if I saw the show the night before. Bruce Dickinson comes by, recognizes me—I met him twice for a portrait—and chats. The world is a crazy place. And nowhere is the world crazier for me than in the lobby of the Budapest hotel where all this is happening in May 2025.

A week and a half later, I meet Harris again. Backstage at the Royal Arena in Copenhagen. We've arranged to meet for an interview. The journalist in me is focused as usual. But the fan's chest is heaving. "Hey, how are you?" he says as he enters the room. I reply with something. And then we talk about what it's actually like to have fans like that. Like me, like super-collector Ramus, like the crazy South Americans, like millions of others around the world. "I think," says Harris, "it's like being on a soccer team, only you don't have an opponent. Everyone's rooting for the same team."

So, football again. But it's true: It really does feel like a never-ending victory to like this band. The sense of belonging they create, the unifying force this band exerts, is remarkable. Maiden concerts aren't concerts. They're holidays. And never-ending conversation starters. Wearing a Maiden shirt is enough. That's why a Hungarian man approaches me at breakfast in Budapest. He shows me a photo of the trucks at the arena; he's obviously helped unload them and set up the stage. We don't speak each other's language. And yet we understand each other. "Iron Maiden - great," he manages to say. And that says it all.

Perhaps the world needs a band like Iron Maiden now more than ever. "It's, in a way, more than just music," says manager Smallwood. It's a shared attitude, a shared stance, across all borders. Although the brand is obviously a lucrative multi-million dollar business for everyone involved, Maiden are surrounded by something primal, something genuine. It's hard to grasp. You just feel it. And once you've felt it, you can never let it go.

Still accurate: Maiden boss Steve Harris during one of his famous bass salvos.

Source: JOHN McMURTRIE

"The Maiden fan base is incredibly loyal," says band founder Harris. "I know other bands have loyal fans, but I can't think of anything that compares to Maiden. I think Maiden fans are the best when it comes to loyalty. I don't know exactly what we've done to deserve it, but I like to think it's because of our hard work. Because we try to put on the best show we can. That's what we've always done."

The show is indeed the best one could wish for. Not because of the cinematic effects now offered by the completely new stage production, which the behind-the-scenes team has been working on for over a year. Partly because of the band's request to fans to leave their phones in their pockets. The bad habit of filming the concert and annoying other people has noticeably decreased as a result. It feels a bit like it used to be. For two hours, you live in the moment.

Above all, the quality of the show is due to the band's own performance. Their joy in the music. This is how they manage to play a song like the 13-minute-long "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" so cleanly and powerfully, as if they had recorded it yesterday and not 41 years ago. "We rehearse and we work hard physically," says Harris, "to make sure we're in shape for a full tour. We give it our best. That's really all you can do: go out there and give it your best. And I believe that our best is still good enough."

Maybe the best is simply better than ever. And maybe they had to reach retirement age for that. "I think," says manager Smallwood, "that musicians somehow become more relaxed as they get older, which creates a certain vibe. As a band, Maiden have been better than ever in recent years, in my opinion." That's why, after McBrain's departure, ending his career was "never an option." "These guys love to play," says Smallwood.

50 years. And beyond. Did he ever think the band would last this long? "Of course not," says Steve Harris. "You don't think that far ahead. You just think about the next album, the next tour, that's it. It's just an ongoing thing. And as long as we're having fun, we'll keep going. Some people say we should have retired years ago. I find that strange. I don't understand why people who say things like that still come to our shows. If you don't like it anymore, just go see another band or stick with the old stuff. That's fine. It's their decision. People just love to complain."

That's the spirit. The old spirit that keeps the fire alive, that nonconformity that has always surrounded metal. Harris's eyes sparkle. It's still there. "You can't please everyone. We're not even trying to," he says. "We just do our own thing. We do what we think is right first."

This attitude has brought them to where they are. In the here and now, and has been for what seems like an eternity. Iron Maiden are in their golden years . And so are we, who are privileged to witness this.

Tour dates Germany : July 11th: Gelsenkirchen, Veltins-Arena, July 15th: Bremen, Bürgerweide, July 25th: Frankfurt, Deutsche Bank Park, July 26th: Stuttgart, Cannstatter Wasen, July 29th/30th: Berlin, Waldbühne.