HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Virtual XI – Iron Maiden
“Talk about football coming home/And then one night in Rome/We were strong, we had grown…” It was October 1997 when England’s men’s football team left Italy with the goalless draw that ensured their qualification for the World Cup in France the following year. A good thing, too, because back in the UK, one of metal’s undeniable legends, IRON MAIDEN – needing a bit of a rebound – were naming their upcoming album partly in tribute.
“We figure our fans are pretty much the same as we are, with pretty much the same interests, so we thought, ‘It’s World Cup year in ’98. Let’s get the football involved in the new album’” explained Steve Harris, founder of IRON MAIDEN and once a hot, sporting prospect at his beloved West Ham United. In tune with this, the band organised several promotional matches across Europe with professional players and musicians; there’s even a starting lineup in the liner notes of the record.
Said record, Virtual XI, was coming into the world off the back of the band’s most difficult period in their history. Five years prior, vocalist Bruce Dickinson had departed to further his solo career in somewhat acrimonious circumstances, Harris claiming he would only mumble into the microphone on less important shows during their 1993 Real Live tour. In his place came Blaze Bayley, formerly of WOLFSBANE and whom Harris had wanted from the outset to enter the fold. 1995 saw the release of The X Factor, a record significantly darker in tone than anything IRON MAIDEN had done before, partly due to the divorce Harris was going through at that time.
Although not an awful record – the songs Man On The Edge, Lord Of The Flies and eleven minute Sign Of The Cross are all bona fide classics whilst Judgement Of Heaven and 2.A.M are underrated gems – it was the band’s lowest charting release in fourteen years, with a significant amount of the criticism aimed at Bayley for nothing more than, well, he wasn’t Bruce Dickinson “If there needs to be a scapegoat and it’s me, then so be it,” Bayley would reflect in Metal Hammer years later. “The truth is metal sales were down across the board at the time and we fell into that.”
In hindsight, Bayley has a point, but at the time The X Factor (1995) was seen as a big step back for IRON MAIDEN, who also saw their touring venues decrease from arenas to theatres and academies; where they once graced Wembley, now they could only fill Brixton and vocal issues suffered by Bayley that forced the cancellation of several US dates didn’t help either. Nevertheless, the band came through it and, 25 years ago this month, brought out their eleventh studio album, with Melvyn Grant given the honour of depicting mascot Eddie on the front cover.
More upbeat in nature than its predecessor, Virtual XI opens with the explosive Futureal, a track that showed, whether opinion on the band had waned or not, that they were still capable of producing quality metal songs that incorporated their trademark gallop. Lightning Strikes Twice is a chugging, bouncy track with a ‘never-say-never’ message of hope whilst closing track Como Estais Amigos is a touching ballad that tributes the fallen on both sides during the Falklands War. The standout track, however, is The Clansman, inspired by Braveheart and set in medieval Scotland; over nine minutes in length, it’s arguably IRON MAIDEN’s best song to come out of that time period and was a welcome return to the setlist during their Legacy Of The Beast run.
With the good came the bad, though – the three-son run of When Two Worlds Collide, The Educated Fool and Don’t Look To The Eyes Of A Stranger were little more than filler, but the real turkey was The Angel And The Gambler, widely seen as the worst song IRON MAIDEN have ever released and containing a three line refrain repeated no less than 27 times. The album would chart at the band’s lowest ever position in the UK #16 – ironically, the same round England would reach at the World Cup that summer – and the tour that followed for the rest of the year saw smaller venues again in Europe and another stretch of US shows cancelled due to Bayley’s vocal issues. Despite a continuing popularity in South America, Bayley was let go in January 1999 and, for arguably the first time since their halcyon days of the late 70s, IRON MAIDEN were staring the end in the face.
What followed though, of course, was their 21st century renaissance – Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith returned, the band’s following album Brave New World (2000) marked a serious return to form and, in the space of 12 months, they were once again one of the globe’s premier metal acts. However, unlike the strained relationship the band had with vocalist Paul Di’Anno after he departed, Bayley remained on good terms, something that continues to this day.
In 2023, this period of IRON MAIDEN’s history is looked on more favourably; many have grown fond of the stronger tracks and Bayley has received retrospective praise for not only his vocal performance, but his unwavering professionalism in the wake of some serious adversity. However, let it never be forgotten that, a quarter of a century ago, many wondered whether this was the band’s swansong, a final nail in their career coffin as they faded with a whimper, not a bang.
Virtual XI was originally released on March 23rd 1998 via EMI.
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