HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Powerslave – Iron Maiden
What can be said about Powerslave that hasn’t already been touched on in a million retrospective articles? Widely regarded as one of, if not THE best IRON MAIDEN album of all time, it rightfully sits – appropriately – around the top of the pyramid of classic metal records thanks to its near perfect songs, iconic artwork and a supporting tour that can only summed up as legendary. So, dear reader, let’s give you an insight into the stuff you may not be familiar with. With the record celebrating its 40th birthday on September 3rd, here’s a look at Powerslave’s hidden treasures.
Powerslave was the first record to be made with the same IRON MAIDEN lineup as the previous one, the band having changed guitarist, singer and drummer between releases prior to this. As with 1983’s Piece Of Mind album, the band finished touring in December and, not long into January, decamped to the Le Chalet hotel on the island of Guernsey for six weeks of writing…well, that was the plan. “We had the only 24-hour bar on the island and that was it; we didn’t do any work for about four or five weeks!” recalls drummer Nicko McBrain on Part II of The History Of Iron Maiden documentary. “We just played pool, bit of table tennis and drank!”
Things weren’t much different when they flew to Nassau in The Bahamas to record the album at Compass Point studios. “Certainly, when you’re the singer, a lot of time is spent waiting in the studio for the others to finish” remembers vocalist Bruce Dickinson, “so you get up to mischief. There was a bar down the road where you could drink lethal, frozen banana daquiris and play Connect Four all day.”
Right now, the development of Powerslave is beginning to sound like a months-long drinking session where songs occasionally broke out, but given how the record transpired, it’s crystal clear that the band put serious graft into the writing and recording – or at least, when the ladder was present for the latter. “We had a ladder in the studio that, when it was taken away, all the gear would break down and wouldn’t start working until it was back,” guitarist Dave Murray recollects, with his technician Bill Barclay backing up the story. “I remember Steve [Harris, IRON MAIDEN bassist and founder member] saying the ladder had to be brought back in, because when it did everything was perfect!”
Powerslave’s eight tracks span a wide range of topics, from Bruce’s love of fencing in Flash Of The Blade to Back In The Village, a sequel to The Prisoner from 1982’s The Number Of The Beast. It also has, to date, the most recent MAIDEN instrumental track entitled Losfer Words (Big ‘Orra). “We’d run out of lyrics and struggling to come up with any,” Bruce told Metal Hammer in 2008. “Someone sad ‘Do we need them’ and I thought ‘No, it’s great enough!’”
Of course, it’s the opening and closing pairs of songs that are the true standouts, which is why they’re often in lists of IRON MAIDEN’s greatest tracks. You’ll be aware of them all – the customary gallop of Powerslave, the full throttle dogfight talked about in opener Aces High and, of course, lead single 2 Minutes To Midnight that discusses the horrors and romanticising of war and conflict. It’s also a song that, quite literally, hit Bruce close to home when the music video was being made.
“The people who were creating the video excitedly said, ‘we’ve found this fantastic, grotty flat in a slimy, east end tenement on the Isle Of Dogs in London; it’s all boarded up, there’s cat piss everywhere and it’s really foul – here’s a picture!’ and I took one look and said ‘That’s Roffey House; I used to live there!”
Bringing the album to a close is the Harris-penned epic Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, inspired by the Coleridge poem of the same name. At thirteen-and-a-half minutes in length, it would be IRON MAIDEN’s longest song for the next 31 years until surpassed by Empire Of The Clouds in 2015. “When we recorded it, the lyrics had to be hung from the top of the wall all the way to the floor, there were so many,” remembers guitarist Adrian Smith. Nobody knew it would be so long either – “We were enjoying it so much that we thought it was only eight or nine minutes in length, so when Martin [Birch, producer] told us it was thirteen we were stunned!” laughs Steve.
The cherry on the top of Powerslave’s cake was the artwork, inspired by the title track and created by longtime artist Derek Riggs. Showcasing an Ancient Egyptian funeral procession, it’s one of metal’s great album covers, let along MAIDEN’s, and even hides a couple of Easter eggs – the work ‘bollocks’ is supposedly written in hieroglyphs somewhere among the detail, although the image of Mickey Mouse is much easier to find (bottom left, just above the second sphinx).
Powerslave would chart highly across the world, with only THE BEACH BOYS keeping it from scoring MAIDEN a second UK #1 album. Finished in the June of 1984, the band took some time off before their attention turned to the impending, gargantuan World Slavery Tour. If only there were an album about that which could give us an excuse to talk about it on its own 40th anniversary next year, eh? Oh, wait…
Powerslave was originally released on September 3rd, 1984 via EMI.
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