29. Various significant dates in IRON MAIDEN history part4
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This article is from the Iron Maiden FAQ, by Vartan Narinian vsn@pobox.com and Steve Payne Sirpapa@aol.com with numerous contributions by others.
29. Various significant dates in IRON MAIDEN history part4
82/08/10 - Gig in Beaumont, TX. The night before, Bruce walks into a bar
with some pretty short shorts, showing off his stocky hairball
legs and red and white socks. The bar manager deemed them
"offensive" (even though he had worn them the night before), so
Bruce left and came back a few minutes later with a T-shirt that
said "FUCK" on the front of it, and jean cut-offs, cut off just
under the bottoms of those same shorts. Nobody said a thing.
82/08/11 - Gig at Corpus Christi, TX, a very solid set. They drag Ross
Halfin (photographer) up on stage and strip him naked in front of
8,000+ people who count to 30. The rest band gets him backstage
and get some naked photos of him taking a shower (revenge), and
get them distributed to record companies all over London.
82/08/28 - Another performance at the annual Reading Festival. For this
Maiden had to make a round trip of about 12,000 miles (from El
Paso, TX to London to Los Angeles, CA), all for one gig! They
had a couple of warm-up gigs a few days before the big night, but
Bruce was still "petrified with fear" right before the Reading
gig. They almost didn't make it on the flight there okay, since
Bruce and Dave Lights opted to take 3 of those horse tranquilizers
and didn't wake up properly for days. Also, Bruce was so nervous
36 hours before the gig, he actually had lost his voice totally,
and was worried about the gig going on at all! The gig for the
band wasn't without incident either. At first all the band could
hear was Steve's bass, then that cut out completely so Steve
panicked. Dave Murray was playing with one ear stuck inside his
guitar cabinets; Adrian Smith was wandering around looking
bewildered. But apparently the crowd really didn't notice, and
all was cool. Bruce was said to have al his usual leaps on and
off the amps, the Number Of The Beast came complete with horror
clips on the video screen, and the show ended with a series of
protracted encores, witnessing both the time-honored 'yo yo yo'
routine (half stolen from the Police, from which it was stolen
originally by Paul Di'Anno) with the audience, and the arrival
on-stage of Ricky Medlocke from Blackfoot to jam with them.
Incidentally, they supposedly always (to this day) get *really*
nervous before special gigs like this, and huge ones like Monsters
Of Rock, etc.
Aug/Sep '82 - Maiden opened 2 festival bills with Foreigner, Loverboy and the
Scorpions, the Oakland gig and the Anaheim one saw them playing
to 57,000 and 75,000 people respectively!
82/09/11 - 82/09/12 - Maiden opens for the Scorpions in Portland, OR. It
was apparently pretty wild and wacky. The Scorpions
struck first, handcuffing Bruce's hands behind his back
during Drifter, which left him trying to get the crowd
clapping without the use of his hands. At the end of
the Scorpions' set, they go to leave the stage, at
which point Maiden comes out dressed up with towels on
their heads, and forks over their eyes in the manner of
the Scorpions "Blackout" LP sleeve.
82/09/21 - Dave Murray throws his guitar into the crowd at a free festival in
Chicago, IL. Of course, he forgot to take his lead out, and it
hit a guy in the back and it cost $50 to make sure he was okay.
82/10/02 - Sold out gig at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, as special
guests of Judas Priest. This occurred 3 years to the very date
of their gig at the Hammersmith Swan in London where they first
invited record company A&R men along.
End of Oct '80 - Maiden vacations in Honolulu for 8 days, and freeze their
asses off in the rain.
82/11/07 - First gig in Australia (Beast On The Road Tour), Sydney,
Australia. Maiden was the first big foreign rock band to play
there down under since Rainbow in 1976. THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
album went top ten, selling 80,000 copies in the process (which
was 27 times as many as KILLERS had sold there) and went platinum.
Nov/Dec '82 - Sold out concerts in Japan (their return). They got another
gold album there.
Dec '82 - Clive Burr quits IRON MAIDEN.
83/01/08 - IRON MAIDEN begins recording Piece Of Mind in Jersey in the
Chanel Islands (they took over a hotel called Le Chalet for 5
weeks).
83/04/11 - Flight Of Icarus b/w I've Got The Fire single is released. Not
too successful in America (it was Maiden's first single released
there). It was thereafter pretty much viewed as a mistake to
release it there. It was the first single released in Britain in
over a year, and reached #11 on the UK charts. The video for this
single was recorded at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas (Nicko
is the 'hooded character' in the video, with a mouth full of
strawberry jam that dribbles out of his mouth). As he was doing
it, there was a huge electric storm, and they tried to catch it
on film with lightning in the background, and jam dripping down
his mouth for half an hour (but of course it didn't work!).
83/05/16 - PIECE OF MIND was released. Maybe because of fears that the band
was 'softening up', the album entered the UK charts at #3 (instead
of #1). British fans voted it Number One Metal LP of all time in
KERRANG magazine less than a year later. PIECE OF MIND was USA's
biggest release by a long shot (at the time) - it entered the
Billboard charts at #127 on 06/02/83, and leaped an incredible
92 positions to #35. By its 8th week of release it had reached
#15, where it stayed for 5 weeks, and 3 months into the tour, it
had made #14. It went gold after 10 weeks, stayed in the charts
for an incredible 43 weeks, and even got THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
back into the charts and also going gold, getting as high as #79
on its 2nd lease on life. In the US, a picture disc was also
released, which contained "Cross-Eyed Mary" as a bonus track.
83/05/25 - 83/05/28 - IRON MAIDEN plays at the Odeon, Hammersmith, London,
England for 4 straight powerful nights, the first time
they had done multiple nights there! By this time,
Adrian Smith's trousers has still only been washed once
since the beginning of the tour (since May 2nd)!
83/06/01 - First gig in Finland (World Piece Tour), Helsinki Ice Hall
(Jaahalli), Helsinki, Finland. The Ice Hall is incorrectly
called "Ishallen" in some places. I am told that "Ishallen" is
Swedish, whereas "Jaahalli" is the proper Finnish name :)
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