For Steve Harris, Iron Maiden’s 2025 gig at the London Stadium, home of his beloved West Ham United, was one of the pinnacles of their 50-year career as a live band.
“Some people have joked that it was the best performance ever seen at the stadium,” the bassist says with a grimace, referring to the fact that the Hammers have just been relegated from the Premier League after a disastrous season. “Which is cruel but fair,” he adds wryly.
Results aside, how the hell do they top that? With Eddfest, a monster two-day celebration of all things Maiden at Knebworth, site of fabled gigs by everyone from the Rolling Stones to Oasis. Taking place on Friday July 10 and Saturday July 11, the main bill features flamboyant rockers The Darkness, Mongolian folk metallers The Hu, Aussie crew Airbourne and Brit warhorses The Almighty, along with Maiden themselves.
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It’s more than just a gig. An area of the festival dubbed Maidenville features Eddie’s Dive Bar and fairground rides, plus there’s the Infinite Dreams Experience, a collection of Maiden props and memorabilia from over the years. And the Friday night will see a bunch of Maiden alumni performing with their current groups on the Maidenville stage.
It’s a fitting way of continuing the 50th anniversary celebrations that have already taken in lavish hardback book Infinite Dreams and this year’s Burning Ambition documentary, as well as the ongoing Run For Your Lives tour, which will finally wrap up at the end of the year after an epic 91 gigs in 11 months. This stretch alone, which runs from May to the tour’s conclusion in Japan in November, will see them play to 2.5 million people.
“Has it made me reflect on things? Not really,” says of his band’s Golden Jubilee, as we sit in the lounge of his 10th floor hotel room in Sofia, Bulgaria. In a few hours, Maiden will take to the stage at the 43,000-capacity Vasil Levski National Stadium, a vast bowl of a venue where the Bulgarian football team usually play. “I only reflect on things when journalists like you bring it up. I suppose when you think of the numbers and how old we are, it’s incredible.”
An hour earlier and a few floors below, a customarily garrulous Bruce Dickinson is sitting in the hotel’s lounge bar. He’s just met up with the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, whom he knows via his connections to the aviation world.
“He was the head of the Bulgarian air force – that Top Gun kind of guy,” Bruce says. “The next minute he became President. Now I meet him again and he’s Prime Minister.’”
Like his bandmate, Bruce is looking forward to Maiden holding their own festival, though he cheerfully admits he’s not sure of how it will all work.
“I think it’s like a big garden party,” he says. “It’s a bit of an experiment for us, because we’re planning various things, half of which I don’t fucking know about. I do know about the beer festival, though, which I’m very excited by.”
As always, the two of them are polar opposites. Steve is the pragmatic generalissimo who has kept the show on the road for half a century via a combination of hard work, stubbornness and sheer force of will. Bruce is the cavalier livewire with the hurricane-force personality who sometimes says things he knows he shouldn’t but goes ahead anyway. But today, as ever, they’re united by one thing: Iron Maiden itself.
Whose idea was Eddfest? And who suggested holding it
at Knebworth?
Steve Harris: “I think it was Rod [Smallwood, Maiden manager]. When he ran it past me, I said, ‘Yeah, that’s great’, because it’s something different. Playing the West Ham Stadium really captured people’s imaginations, and it was a very special thing for obvious reasons. But what do you do after that? We’ve done Knebworth before [headlining Sonisphere in 2010 and 2014], but it wasn’t our own show. We thought we could do something different with this one.”
Bruce Dickinson: “I just saw it on the poster and thought, ‘Knebworth – that sounds a bit like Knobworth.’”
Is Eddfest just another gig for you, or does it mean something bigger?
Steve: “I think it’ll be an event. There’s the exhibition [the Infinite Dreams Experience]. And we’ve talked about different things relating to the songs, which I don’t want to give too much away about. But it’s the same old thing – you talk about stuff, and then you have to actually put it into practice. You just hope it’s all going to work out. It usually does, but you never know, haha.’
Bruce: “We’re not trying to go out and have the biggest ever crowd anywhere. Doing London Stadium and selling it out – I think that got it out of everybody’s system: ‘Yeah, we can do big stadiums… big deal.’ If it’s just a pissing contest about who can do the biggest stadium, then that’s bollocks. It’s all about leaving people with something memorable.”
The Darkness are one of the support bands on the Saturday. That’s an unusual choice for Maiden.
Steve: “I personally chose The Darkness. I think they’re a great live band. I’ve seen them a couple of times on the Monsters Of Rock cruise, and they’re just really entertaining. It’s not the norm for us, and it’ll be interesting to see how they go down. I think they’ll win over a Maiden crowd. I hope they win over a Maiden crowd! Ha ha ha! And The Hu, too – they’re just a really unusual band.”
Friday night’s line-up features several ex-Iron Maiden members, including Blaze Bayley, ex-guitarist Dennis Stratton’s current group, and onetime keyboard player Tony Moore. Steve’s pre-Maiden band, Gypsy’s Kiss, are on the bill too. Any plans to get up and join them?
Steve: “No. I suppose I could get up with all of them – Gypsy’s Kiss, Blaze, whoever. But I’ll let them get on with it. If I get up, it’s just going to become a thing about me, and I don’t want that. I want them to have their time.”
Bruce, did you think about re-activating your very first band, Speed, for Eddfest?
Bruce: “Oh God, no. You can go down the rabbit hole, but eventually you get to the bottom.”
If Paul Di’Anno was still around, would he be on the bill?
Steve: “Yeah. Of course he would.”
You’ve added Infinite Dreams to the setlist on this leg of the Run For Your Lives tour – the first time you’ve played it in 38 years. How on earth do you decide which songs to play and which songs to drop?
Steve: “A lot of it is governed by what Bruce wants to sing. He’s singing better than ever in my view, but none of us are getting any younger and it gets tougher. He really wanted to do Infinite Dreams. I wasn’t that bothered about it, even though it’s my song, but we did it and it sounded great. I’d have loved to have a couple of deep cuts on this tour, like Only The Good Die Young [a song that Maiden have never played live].”
What do you prefer: big gigs like this or smaller, more intimate gigs like Maiden played in the early days?
Steve: “People might think I have to say this, but I like both. Any gig is exciting to me. The only bugbear I’ve got with bigger gigs these days is the barrier and the distance from the crowd. I understand the health and safety stuff, it’s important, but it makes it a bit more difficult. Sometimes when I throw my wristband, I can’t even reach the crowd ’cos they’re standing so far away. But it’s worth putting up with at the end of the day,’cos what else can you do?”
Bruce: “Performing is performing. I don’t give extra because I’m in a little venue, and if I’m in a big venue, you get the same intensity and energy. There are things you do on a big stage that nobody will see, but if you do them on a small stage, everybody will see. In that sense, people have more of a connection with you in a small venue. Unless you’ve got a camera stuck in front of your face, in which case you’re not in the moment at all. But that’s another story.”
What’s your favourite ever Maiden tour?
Steve: “It’s difficult to say because I like different tours for different reasons. If you’re talking about audiences, it’s in South America. If you could rent a crowd from anywhere, it’s there. The downside is that they’re so crazy that you can’t really go out much when you’re down there, ’cos you just wouldn’t get very far. But when that passion transfers to the gig, it’s incredible. Greece is a good one too, and Italy, Spain, Portugal and France give them a run for their money.”
Bruce: “The Brave New World tour. Why? Because it was that lovely hybrid moment of yes, some old stuff, and yes, some great new stuff, with an energised band. Everybody was at the top of their game, and everybody loves a comeback story.”
What’s your all-time favourite Iron Maiden stage prop?
Steve: “The Somewhere In Time stage set was incredible, where the hands came up [either side of the drum riser] and I stood in the palm of the hand. And the Piece Of Mind one, where the eyes lit up, was a good one too, because it was one of the first ones.”
Bruce: “My two-fisted flamethrower. Sadly, there’s nowhere on this tour where it’s been appropriate.”
Have you had any ideas for props that have just been too mad to make?
Bruce: “I wanted to have a zip line from the PA tower to the stage, and that’s how I would enter the stage. It was just too fucking complicated. And it would also be really nice to levitate and fly and all that stuff, but we would only be told it’s too difficult and not to bother with it.”
Have you ever been onstage completely trolleyed?
Bruce: “Yes. In the early days of [his pre-Maiden band] Samson, we thought we’d play better when we were completely fucked up. We listened back to it a few days later with a degree of horror and went, ‘Oh fuck, it doesn’t work like that, does it?’”
Steve: “No, not really drunk. But we did ChicagoFest in ’82, which was a free festival. We were just hanging around getting a bit bored, and I had a few drinks before we went onstage. At the time, I was having a wonderful time, but I realised I didn’t play very well and I was really annoyed with myself. But I wasn’t trolleyed like some people I’ve seen in bands, mentioning no names. Some people thrive on it, but I just think, ‘God, how can you do it?’”
What’s the worst damage you’ve ever done to
yourself onstage?
Steve: “Nothing major. I’ve tripped over in my own sweat. I was running across the stage and just slid. I managed to throw myself around and land on my shoulder so I didn’t do much damage. The most recent time was in Leeds. We were playing Stranger In A Strange Land, and there was a gap between the catwalks that wasn’t supposed to be there. I nearly went down this gap but I managed to throw myself sideways. That could have been nasty. I just got up really quick and got on with it. Is that embarrassing? You don’t have time to be embarrassed.”
Bruce: “I fucked up a disc in my neck on the Number Of The Beast tour [Beast On The Road, 1982], basically by shaking my head around and headbanging. Rattling my brain around made me feel good at the time, but it definitely didn’t make me feel good after a while. It hit me in America. I basically lost the use of my left arm because of it – I couldn’t feel three of my fingers, I had muscle spasms everywhere. I wore a neck collar during the daytime, took it off for the shows and basically faked it in terms of using my left arm.”
Have any support bands really lit a fire under your backsides and made you up your game?
Steve: “I thought [veteran Southern rockers] Blackfoot were great back in ’82. They’re still one of the best bands that ever supported us. I always say that it’s the support band’s job to go out and try to take the audience. They’ve got to go out, give it large, and make the main band work hard. But it’s sometimes hard with Maiden because our fans are so partisan. I’ve seen it a couple of times where I’ve felt sorry for the support band. They can’t bottle it. The audience can smell fear.”
Bruce: “Back in the day, the toughest support act we ever had was Guns N’ Roses in America [in 1988]. They’d just released their first album and were reaching this huge wave of popularity. They were full of angst and venom, where Maiden were a bit proggy – it was around Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son.”
Are there any live bands out there that are better than
Iron Maiden?
Steve: “That’s a difficult question because there are so many
great bands out there. AC/DC are a great live band. Slade back in the day. But as to whether Iron Maiden are one of the best in the business, we must be up there.”
Bruce: “We’re not out there to emulate anybody or beat anybody. Like I say, it’s not a pissing contest. We’re just trying to be the best version of us.”
Maiden are finally getting inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame later this year. Did you have any discussions about turning it down?
Steve: “No, there have only been comments from a couple of members of the band here and there. Bruce has his own strong feelings about it, which is his opinion. It’s never really bothered me one way or the other, because awards aren’t what we do this for. But in a weird way I’m glad it’s happened so the Americans will stop banging on about it. To me, if you get offered something, you say, ‘Thank you very much.’ But did I lose sleep over getting it or not getting it? No.”
Bruce: “I can’t even summon the energy to be vitriolic about it. I appreciate that a significant number of people are happy for us. That’s nice. It’s not something we’re bothered about.”
If you weren’t on tour in Australia at the time, would you go to the ceremony?
Bruce: “No.”
Steve: “I don’t do those sort of things. I didn’t even go to the recent red carpet thing for the documentary. It’s not me.”
Can we expect a big, Live Aid-style singalong at the end of Iron Maiden’s set, with all the current and former members onstage?
Steve: [Looking pained] “No. That’d just be cheesy.”
Bruce: “No. Those kind of things make some people feel,
‘Oh great, what an event’, but musically usually it’s a mess.
I absolutely don’t have any problem with Blaze or any of those other guys on the bill – I love Blaze, he’s a fantastic guy. But we’re not planning on having Nicko playing three drums during the show or anything like that. No, people have paid money to see this incarnation of Iron Maiden. It will be an Iron Maiden set. This is the band, this is what you get.”
Any plans to start work on a new Maiden album?
Bruce: “Would I like to do a new Iron Maiden album now? Yes. Would I like to do one starting next year? Yes. So over to you, Steve.”
Steve: “No. We haven’t had a band discussion about it yet. I know Bruce wants to do one. He said in an interview that I didn’t want to do one, which is not true. When he told me about it, I just said, ‘Yeah, maybe, we’ll see.’ At the moment it’s more important that we focus on playing live. Plus, Bruce is doing stuff with his solo project next year, so we’ll see.
What keeps you touring and playing so intensively at this point in your lives? You could be at home with your feet up…
Bruce: “I could be at home, you’re absolutely right. But it’s a very simple thing; when I walk out onstage, it’s one of the few moments during my life when the rest of the world can go to hell. On a really good night, you completely lose yourself in some weird higher power that takes you over. You inhabit the song, your voice just seems to anticipate everything, and that’s why I do it. Simple as that.”
Steve: “It’s the love of playing and the feeling you get being in front of an audience. I don’t care about the size of that audience – I’ll happily go out and play with British Lion in front of a few hundred people. I love it all. You have to keep going as long as you can. Maybe I’ll do a Tommy Cooper [British comedian who died onstage on live TV] one day and just go out right on a football pitch or at a gig, I don’t know. Until then, I’ll just carry on playing.”
Iron Maiden are on the cover of the brand new issue of Metal Hammer – which comes with an exclusive Maiden Eddfest water bottle! Order your copy online here and have it delivered straight to your door. You can also get an alternate cover version of the magazine with a glow-in-the-dark Maiden shirt in an exclusive bundle here.
