26. Maiden reunited
1999’s Ed Hunter tour marked the triumphant return of both Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith, but the action really started with the following year’s single, The Wicker Man.
The song and its accompanying video were all we needed to put a spring in our step in the spring of Y2K: Bruce’s cut-off denim, the flaming torch and the pagan colossus set pulses racing, even before we heard the song’s jubilant gallop.
27. Rock in Rio 2
The original Rock In Rio in 1985 was Iron Maiden’s coronation in South America. They returned to the festival 16 years later as conquering heroes. An insane quarter of a million people watched them tear through a two-hour set, immortalised on 2003’s Rock In Rio live album and DVD.
28. Headlining the first Download
Fifteen years after they headlined Monsters Of Rock at Donington, Maiden triumphantly returned to the site as generational figureheads to help launch the inaugural edition of Download in 2003. It would go on to become the UK’s most iconic rock and metal festival.
Maiden vs The Osbournes
When Iron Maiden were invited to co-headline the 2005 Ozzfest with Black Sabbath, it looked like the dream ticket. But things soon turned sour, with Bruce Dickinson criticising Ozzy for using a teleprompter onstage and taking a pop at the Osbournes for doing a reality show.
Sharon Osbourne retaliated by organising an egging while Maiden played. Who won? Let’s just say no one came out of this one covered in glory… just egg.
30. Boosting the other Iron Maiden
Before Iron Maiden, there was actually another Iron Maiden – a blues-rock trio formed in Bolton in 1969. Their career ended in 1976 after guitarist Ian Boulton-Smith died from cancer, but when the original Maiden released a compilation album in 2006, with proceeds going to charity, the more famous Maiden plugged it on their website. Class.
31. A Matter Of Live And Death tour
Bands who are more than 30 years into their career should be settling into nostalgia. They shouldn’t be playing their new album, a 71- minute prog-tinged metal epic, from start to finish on their latest tour. But that’s what Maiden did with 2006’s A Matter Of Life And Death.
“It’s just so important that you do stuff you believe in, and keep everything alive. Otherwise there’s no point in doing it,” said Bruce at the time, tacitly telling fans who only wanted to hear oldies to jog on.
32. Ed Force One takes off
Bruce had been flying recreationally and commercially for a number of years, and on 2008’s Somewhere Back In Time jaunt (and subsequent tours) he piloted the band’s chartered Boeing 757, dubbed Ed Force One, for the whole shebang. The initial adventure was captured on the documentary Iron Maiden: Flight 666.
33. Onstage Footy Hijinks in NYC
Madison Square Garden, June 15, 2008: a power outage derails the show during the final chorus of Powerslave. Naturally, there’s no awkward standing about or rock star tantrums for these boys; someone produces a football and the band enjoy a bit of a kickabout onstage, in front of 20,000 people who think it’s called ‘soccer’.
34. Lady Gaga: Maiden fan
Maiden have a legion of famous fans, from tennis legend John McEnroe to Hollywood stars Cameron Diaz and Benicio del Toro. And then there’s Lady Gaga.
In a 2011 interview with Rolling Stone, the singer frothed that Iron Maiden had “changed my life” after she braved the pit at a gig in Florida. “We were dancing and singing and everyone was into it… no judgment, no prejudice… freedom and love for music.”
35. Make ours a pint
Has there been a more successful band-branded beer than Trooper? What could have been a cynical corporate spin-off has taken on a life of its own, helped by real ale buff Bruce’s hands-on involvement in getting the whole thing off the ground in 2013.
Cue every other band on the planet-hopping on the booze bandwagon. Twelve years on, there have been 24 different beers and over 40 million pints supped. That’s a hell of a hangover.
36. Eddie walks!
It may have been a roadie in a mask (yeah, sorry to break it to you), waving around a machete, but the original 1980 full-figure stage invader is still iconic to this day.
37. Show me the mummy!
A giant, bandage-wrapped torso shaking his ragged limbs over the World Slavery Tour stage. A contender for greatest Eddie of them all.
38. Ice, Icy Eddie
With blazing eyes, cranial flames and writhing foetus, this animatronic Seventh Son-era Ed was a high-tech upgrade from the OG 80s inflatables.
39. Flash of the blade
In a smart cavalry uniform and nursing nasty head wounds, Eddie’s 2019 incarnation made the mistake of sword fighting with Olympic fencer Bruce.
40. Firepower!
The super-long-running Legacy Of The Beast tour produced one of Iron Maiden’s most exciting live set-pieces to date, this sleekest and sexiest of Eddies engaging Bruce in an onstage gunfight. Sparks flew and minds were blown.
41. Aces high over Donnington Park
In 2013, Maiden kicked off their third Download headlining appearance with a jaw-dropping flypast by one of the few remaining Spitfire fighter planes. The following year, Bruce went one better by taking part in a WWI dogfight recreation in the skies above Sonisphere.
42. Speed Of Light egg hunt
After a wait of five years for new music, The Book Of Souls’ rollicking first single was almost overshadowed by its fantastic video. Crammed with a ton of sneaky visual references to classic Iron Maiden artwork, videos and games, this is what YouTube’s slo-mo function was made for.
43. Maiden vs The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
Despite being eligible since 2005, Maiden have made the Hall Of Fame longlist just twice – and been shut out both times. Are they bothered?
“The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is an utter and complete load of bollocks,” spat Bruce in 2018. We’ll take that as a ‘no’.
44. University Challenge
You know you’ve made it when you inspire a round on highbrow TV quiz show University Challenge. In 2018, a team of Cambridge students faced three questions on The Number Of The Beast (“Which track shares its title with a 1960s TV series filmed in North Wales?”). And how many did these brainboxes get right? None. What are they teaching kids in schools these days?
Eugene sings Maiden in The Walking Dead
The coolest use of a Maiden song in a movie or TV show came in a 2020 episode of zombie series The Walking Dead, when the character Eugene sang The Final Frontier’s haunting closing track When The Wild Wind Blows just before a big battle.
The kicker? TWD’s zombie apocalypse apparently began on August 26, 2010 - less than two weeks after The Final Frontier came out, meaning in the TWD universe, that was the last song Maiden ever released.
46. Maiden support Di'Anno
It was heart-warming to see Steve and Bruce hanging out with Paul Di’Anno in his wheelchair before a concert in Croatia in 2022 - the first time the two singers had met. Maiden subsequently covered all remaining costs for their ex-frontman’s vital knee surgery, and when Paul died in 2024, Bruce paid moving tribute onstage.
47. Iron Maiden stamps
Philately is metal! Actually, who are we kidding, of course it’s not. But in 2023, Maiden became only the fifth band ever to have a dedicated set of stamps issued by Royal Mail.
“When I was younger I was a bit of a geeky stamp collector,” confessed Steve Harris of this rare honour. “So it’s quite a thing for me.”
48. Nicko McBrain bounces back
“Chaps, just so you know, I had a little bit of a stroke the other day,” was how Nicko informed his bandmates of the medical emergency in January 2023 that left him partially paralysed.
By May, the indefatigable drummer was back behind the kit for one more tour. In 2024, he announced his retirement from touring. No one can begrudge him that.
49. Alexander The Great, finally
“I challenge anybody to sing ‘Hellenism he spread far and wide’ and not lose their fucking front teeth!” said Bruce Dickinson of 1986 historical epic Alexander The Great, which explains why it remained unplayed for 37 years.
It was finally unveiled in 2023 in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the start of the Future Past World Tour. Bruce’s choppers remain thankfully intact.
50. The golden anniversary
OK, so we’re borrowing the crystal ball from the original inside sleeve of Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son here, but we’ll put decent money on Maiden’s 50th anniversary Run For Your Lives tour being epic.
As Bruce Dickinson says: “If it’s not real, it’s not Maiden. The idea that you can turn it into the Disneyland Maiden, by using backing tracks, a few tricks… No! Maiden has to be 100% real – and fucking fierce!”
