Iron
Maiden used to scare me. Granted, I was
just an eleven or twelve year-old boy, a good Christian kid and a Boy Scout to
boot, who’d been raised on The Beatles, The Beach Boys, CCR, and nothing more
edgy than the Stones. But, when these
bands, their stage shows, costumes (or lack thereof), and musical sound came up
against, for instance, Maiden’s “Number of the Beast” album for the first time,
they pretty much got run over by a mack truck going seventy-five on Interstate
5. But let me back up, because this
story actually starts with Kiss.
When
I was in fifth or sixth grade, this was in about 1983/’84, my best friend was a
guy named Derek Draper. Derek had an
older brother named Michael. I never
knew Mike that well, he was in high school and pretty quiet, but I knew him
enough to think that he was cool, funny, and seemed to be some kind of
rebel. My evidence for this resided
chiefly in his long hair (mullet and skuzzy mustache), clothes (jean jacket
with metal and hard rock pins, jeans, and high tops), and music, particularly
hard rock and metal, and especially Kiss.
When
Derek first showed me Mike’s Kiss albums in his bedroom, it was mostly for
their liner photos. I was terrified, and
mesmerized; it felt like we were looking
at some kind of porn car crash that you just couldn’t look away from. These guys looked part Japanese Kabuki
theater, part Times Square drag show, and part vampires that were going to come
into your room at night and force you to be part of a sexual Satanic
ritual. Yes, they were definitely having
sex, whatever that was, and they were definitely doing drugs. . . whatever they
were.
But
when we finally dropped some vinyl ( I can’t remember exactly which album. . .
maybe “Destroyer (Who named their albums like that?).”) on the turntable they
really had me. It was the loudest,
swaggering, over the top, guitar-driven rock music I’d ever heard, with lyrics
that, despite the band’s reputation of being Satanists (“Knights In Satan’s
Service,” claimed the PMRC and like ilk.) and general hedonists (very true),
seemed to be more about partying, having a good time, and maybe having sex—or
at least kissing, and maybe dating. I
felt like I was listening to contraband. . . I felt guilty, turned on (in a
preadolescent way), mesmerized, and totally cool. I didn’t know it then, but this was the
beginning of what has become a life-long love affair with hard rock, heavy
metal, and punk, which brings me to Iron Maiden.
I
can’t remember when I first heard them, but the first image of Maiden that
comes to mind is, of course, “Eddie.”
Eddie is the iconic symbol of the band, not to mention an essential part
of their marketing strategy. He looks
essentially like an evil zombie, an ex-man stripped of his flesh and, despite
his costume (American Civil War soldier (“The Trooper”), science fiction action
hero, World War Two aviator, or an anti-hero fighting the Devil in hand-to-hand
combat (slasher axe vs. pitchfork), among others.) is a multi-pronged symbol of
the band, the evil of men, horror, and a grisly anti-hero defying death and judgment
in the shadowy wings of a man’s ego. The
image of Eddie that first pops into my memory is from the cover of the “Live
After Death” double live LP, which features him, in true horror genre form,
bursting out of the grave under an indigo sky being rent by lightening.
The
first album—tape that is (My first real musical medium of choice in the
mid-1980s.) –that really found a crow-like roosting place in my musical heart
was, and still is, 1982’s “The Number of the Beast—though I didn’t borrow it
from my main Maiden connection, and “frenemy,” Matt Sartwell (whole other story)
until probably 1985 or ’86. “Beast”
featured a classic of Maiden cover art: a grinning Eddie (long blond hair metal
head Eddie) pulling the puppet strings of the Devil, who’s pulling the puppet
strings of an Eddie, etc., etc.. Now,
forgoing an analysis of this image and what it might symbolize (There is no God
or Devil. . . there are only humans and our choices. . . anybody?), that’s a
bad-ass cover—but then there was the music
Two
tracks still stand out in particular, and remain some of my many favorite
Maiden tunes: the title track and “Run To the Hills”—the “Number Of the Beast”
mainly because of its bad-ass intro, a gloriously creepy sample out of some old
horror film. The audio excerpt features
a very deep and authoritative voice reading the infamous lines from the book of
Revelation about the Devil/Beast coming to Earth in later years to take over
the sinful human race (very Vincent Price), and that it’s number is “…six
hundred and sixty-six”. . . . I was terrified, but sure as hell going to keep
listening. With that, the song begins
with just a rhythm guitar track and lead singer Bruce Dickinson’s urgent
introduction of the song’s narrator recounting the horrifying events he
witnessed one fateful night.
I
loved “Run To the Hills” mostly because of its kick-ass drum beat—very eighties
and done perfectly by Nicko McBain, with alternating high-hat sixteenth notes
followed by a tom quarter note. At first
the song’s lyrics seem terribly politically incorrect—a U.S. cavalry soldier’s
celebration of the massacre and displacement of Native Americans on the Plains
during “Westward Expansion” in the early
nineteenth century. At the time I was
not politically correct, though I didn’t identify as a racist, and definitely
not particularly educated in history or politics, so I chalked up Dickinson’s
lyrics as typical metal fare: focusing
on violence, war, and horror—for shock value and entertainment. But when I started listening to Maiden again,
after at least a fifteen year hiatus, the song’s lyrics struck me differently.
Dickinson,
who’s actually fairly well read, for a metal front-man (As well as a champion
fencer in his day and a pilot who flies the band’s plane, a big commercial
bird, on tour.), incorporates at least two narrators into the song: an indigenous voice witnessing the events,
and the cavalry soldier, and the end result does not make the soldier’s side
look good. In fact, Dickinson is a major
figure in the tradition of metal lyricists and/or singers, going at least back
to Ozzy during his Sabbath days, who engage in a lot of critical social
commentary by creating narrators from the wrong sides of history, along with
greedy businessmen, psychopathic generals, corrupt politicians, and your usual smorgasbord
of serial killers, scared teenagers, horny boy-men, etc., etc.. Speaking of horny boy-men and scared
teenagers—it’s time I got to how I ended up in a heavy metal beer garden full
of them. But before I got to them I’d
have to chase the Phantom Drunk Bus at the Auburn
Super Mall.
Whole
other story. . . but the short of it is that the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe,
which owns the White River Amphitheater, where the show was, used to run a free
bus service from said mall to shows at the theater. Given that parking at White River is infamous
as being a one-way-in-one-way-out nightmare, growing to an all-out cluster fuck
when you’re tired and wrung out after a show, and just want to leave, the bus
seemed like a great option. But when I
arrived at the mall, found the Red Robin,
landmark for bus pick-up parking, and identified people who looked like Maiden
fans (black t-shirts, jeans, beer cups) I quickly found that the bus wasn’t
running. Seconds after Joey was leaning
in my window:
“Hey,
there’s no bus service. Do you have room
for my wife and me? We’re from Portland
and our friends from Puyallup just dropped us off at the show. We were planning on the bus was running.”
Well,
I passed his test; so I took a look at
Joey: he’s a handsome dirty blond, tall,
blue-eyed, and buff in that gym way, probably an ex-athlete and/or fraternity
member—definitely straight, compared to me.
He looks all right though, not sketchy, and his wife Marie, a curvy, slightly heavy-set,
attractive blonde Swede, seems nice as well, if a little shy, or not knowing
what to make of me. I blink a couple
times and say, “Sure. . .” and twenty minutes later we’ve used the Red Robin’s bathrooms and are piled into
my empty Outback making small talk
and looking for the highway to the amphitheater.
Twenty
minutes after this the small talk has turned into a decent rapport, for people
who were total strangers forty minutes ago, and we’re getting close to the
venue, driving past a rather stark series of dichotomies on the Muckleshoot
Reservation: a massive, mint green
casino of warehouse proportions, design, and, presumably, décor, well. . . warehousey
and, down the road, short, scrappy-to-decrepit ranch homes and trailers guarded
by rusty, gated chain link fences and a variety of dogs; quirky-looking small businesses and tourist
traps, bars, gambling dens, and campsites (This is one of the main west-east
entrance highways for Mount Rainier National Park.) entered by pot-holed
u-drives, past tackily-colored, weathered mini-billboards. And then we’re there, and then we’re in—being
waved down a smooth-paved, fresh-painted hard road by what could just as well
be a drive-in theater, but it’s an eight thousand capacity amphitheater. Despite the rather negative reviews of
parking and driving to White River, the reality of the drive-in, about a half
hour from the mall, with ten to fifteen minutes of largely stand-still traffic,
wasn’t that bad. And then we’re parking,
hiding belongings in the car, and striding, at times shakily, more due to the
crushed rock of the parking lot than the Irish whiskey we drank out of Joey’s
flask on the way in, into the show.
On
our way, in line at the gates, and throughout the entire show experience, I am
surrounded, for the first time in my life, by metal heads—thousands of
them. The easiest to spot are those with
a seemingly infinite variety of black metal and punk t-shirts, complete with
jeans and sneakers, a sort of modified American youth uniform. Filling the insides of this diversity of
sweaty cotton tribal symbols (Metallica, Megadeth, Maiden (of course), Judas
Priest, Lamb of God, Anthrax, and even obscure Brit anarcho-punk bands from the
80s like Antisect (Worn by actual punk-looking thirty somethings—though their
gear seemed too clean and pressed and made me suspect that they had “real”
jobs.) is at least three generations of Americans, and probably Canadians too,
from their teens to their late fifties.
And they’re all so happy and friendly; the truth is, though I may have
seen a few of the boy-men I mentioned earlier, our crowd is mostly grown men
and women, really excited, drunk, and/or horny, and totally ready to rock the
fuck out with Maiden.
And
they show it; as soon as we’re in after a perfunctory bag/coat check we hit the
beer garden. Luckily there are seemingly
bars everywhere, serving decently priced domestics and ridiculously over-priced
nine dollar regional microbrews, and wine.
We hop in line, picking up on the energy and beginning to talk excitedly
about the show soon to come. While we
wait the sounds of Coheed and Cambria,
the show’s opener, echo out of the amphitheater at random intervals, amidst a
constant bass drone. They sound
entertaining, albeit in the way that most radio-friendly rock bands marketed to
the Hot Topic generation after me
sound, and the crowd’s cheers tells me they’re a decent opening act, but the
gardens are much more interesting.
We
buy beers, toast in Swedish, taught to me by a now-smiling, patient, and
friendly Marie (“Skol!”), and quickly jump into the reasonably-sized line for
the Honey Buckets. There I spot a woman who bartends at my
work local standing drinking beer with a number of guys who look vaguely
familiar from the same establishment.
She sees me, smiles, and walks up to the line to chat. I find out that one of the bar’s owners,
who’s rumored to play bass in a solid Maiden cover band, is also in the garden
somewhere. After we take our respective
leaks, Joey and I meet up with Marie and dive into line again. By this time we’ve got a pretty good beer
buzz and are equally high from our surroundings; not that there’s a lot of marijuana smoke
around—more so the happy, wild, partying vibe that has taken over as Coheed wraps
up their set and the crowd noise surges up.
You
can talk to any of these people, and they feel the same. People walk by, commenting on each other’s
shirts, talk start-time logistics, t-shirt shopping, and how drunk and/or
excited they are. I haven’t been in an
environment with this many strangers who I feel completely comfortable talking
to in years. We ride this to the even
longer t-shirt sales kiosk, complete with ATM.
I went back and forth briefly about whether I wanted to buy a
ridiculously expensive Maiden tour shirt (forty bucks), a rare choice in my
life and, along with Joey and Marie, I decide that there’s no debate. Eddie’s Trooper personality riding a
screaming horse in U.S. cavalry regalia, replete with a bloody sabre? Of course!
We drink our beers, make small talk, chat with our line neighbors, and
are finally ready to hit the pisser and rock out.
Once
we climb the stairs to the back of the concrete amphitheater we split up to get
to our seats. I find myself next to
somewhat snooty teenager/early twenties white rocker on my left, with black
hair and bangs, wearing a jean jacket over her hoody, and standing next to her
date for the night. To my right is a
thirty or forty-something white dude, with a t-shirt and baseball cap on (if I
remember correctly)—right on the demographic for this show: dudes who are Mike Draper’s age. The band has already taken the stage, and the
crowd is totally with them—rocking hard!
Everyone who knows the lyrics is singing them, and Dickinson is working
the stage from every access point he has available—running out the ramps and up
and down the stairs, while the guitarists hold down their respect sections of
stage, and Nicko keeps it all together on his kit. Behind the performance the band’s legendary
visuals hold court: a massive banner
featuring Eddie’s visage waves slightly in the breeze, changes regularly throughout
their set to fit their song choices. At
one point the Civil War cavalry incarnation of Eddie strides out on stage in
the form of a twelve-to-fifteen foot puppet moving threateningly behind
Dickinson and company. Later on various
pyrotechnics, a female vampiric-looking pipe organist, and various malevolent
statues of Eddie with illuminated eyes are employed at the beginning of songs.
The
band’s formal set ends with howls from all of us—demanding an encore
immediately, and the band doesn’t disappoint, seemingly taking enough time
offstage to huddle and decide what they will play before they hit the stage. Two songs in I’m texting with Joey and we’re
making our escape, along with several hundred other fans, to the parking lot
and whatever wait in line lays beyond.
We spend our wait reviewing the show and our experiences of this
legendary metal band and come to this:
check this one off the arts and culture bucket list—so worth the driving
hassle and what an amazing rock concert -- put on by guys almost old enough to
be our Dads!
