The Iron Maiden Era

I listened to “Number of the Beast” thousands of times that year. I finally got permission to go to my first concert when Def Leppard came to town. It was fun and good. My juvenile exuberance took over, and briefly led me to believe that they were the best band in the world, but I soon fell back to the purity of Iron Maiden. My family left the US and moved to the Panama Canal Zone. Soon after we arrived, “Piece of Mind” came out. It was even better than NOB, and my infatuation was complete. I couldn’t get enough, so I bought their first two albums also. I couldn’t stop listening………

Time passed in the tropical climes, and then one fine day, my Mom came to my brother, the Zenmaster, and me. She told us that we could both order anything we wanted from the Sears catalog. I know that sounds funny, but it was the best news we’d ever heard. We grabbed the ragged dog-eared catalog and opened right up to the skinny musical instrument section. Zenmaster chose a white Explorer shaped guitar, and I chose the only bass they had. The guitar and the bass both came with little amps. I couldn’t wait. I passed the time by learning Iron Maiden bass lines on my acoustic guitar and beating up Zenmaster, he passed the time by taunting me and listening to Rush.

The packages finally arrived one day, and I ended up locked in my room for weeks on end. My favorite bass line was from ”Phantom of the Opera”, so I sat there and played it over and over. Since it was on an album, I ended up learning all the songs on that side of the record. Eventually, I flipped it over and learned the other side too, then I learned all the songs on all the albums.

In 1984, my family left Panama, and moved to sunny southern California, and Iron Maiden put out “Powerslave”, a great album, which I quickly added to my repertoire. I was getting to the point where I needed more and I needed it now, so I bought every thing Iron Maiden ever made; every import, every picture disc (remember those?) and every EP I could get my hands on. I learned those songs too. I got a job at the Taco Bell in the mall, and bought a killer black Gibson Explorer and a new Peavey combo amp with my earnings. Me and Zenmaster started a band called Beowulf, and it was good. But something awful was happening; something vile, absurd and disgusting was creeping into my world and I wanted to kill it. It was afflicting the people I knew, it was changing them, it was making me sick. It came to a head when the drummer of Beowulf came out with his hair curled and suggested we start wearing spandex and acting like a real band. That was it. I moped around bandless for months, wondering how my leather jacketed brethren could be overtaken by the eyeshadow wearing, lip puckering, pose striking, sock in the spandex idiots. I appeased myself by jamming with my Iron Maiden albums at 45 rpms instead of 33 rpms. Of course, it sounded like chipmunk metal, but I had a new goal…………………… to play the bass as fast as hell.