Iron Maiden, "Wasted Years"

In Retrospect...  

THE VIDEO Iron Maiden, "Wasted Years," Somewhere in Time, 1986, Capitol 

SAMPLE LYRIC "Sooooh-oooooh-ooooh / under-sta-a-and / don't waste your time always searching for those was-ted years! / Face uh-uppp, make your sta-a-and / and re-a-lize you're living in the gol-den years!" 

THE VERDICT Some people think this song is really cheesy, but you know me — I love me some inspirational metal. I have two reasons I wanted to talk about this video, but first, well, let's talk about the video. What happens here? 

Well, the video for "Wasted Years" is a mix of stuff — remember that Somewhere in Time shows Eddie as sort of a badass futuristic space dude, so the entire video is framed with this sort of artwork of the video being played on screens in Eddie's space ship. But that's only at the very end. For most of the video, we just see footage of the band performing more or less for each other in a dark, empty space. 

Unlike Iron Maiden's usual video staging — with, if not a real arena stage, then a fake one — here the boys are just hanging out, a la Tesla. They play the song sort of facing in toward each other, in a loose circle. That's the least interesting part of the video though. 

More interesting is all the nostalgic Iron Maiden stuff woven all through it. First, there are the old photos of the band. We see them posing in different parts of the world (Japan, Brazil, Poland), and lots of them — especially Dave Murray — wearing silly hats, making silly faces, silly poses, etc. There's even a sequence of photos of their crew members and management — it's a family affair here in this video. 

 

Also in the mix is behind-the-scenes footage of the band, some of which appears to be a photo shoot, but more generally seeming to show their hobbies. We see them all playing soccer football. Weirdly, we don't see anything to do with Bruce Dickinson and planes, but we do see him practicing archery and fencing. 

Another theme woven throughout this video is footage from Iron Maiden's other videos. They mix in brief clips of a bunch of stuff, most notably "Run to the Hills", "The Number of the Beast", "The Trooper", "2 Minutes to Midnight", and "Aces High." 

There are also bits of live footage — some of this might be from other videos, but I mostly don't recognize it. In any event, it shows off their epic stage sets to very good effect. I think my favorite is a giant, mummified Eddie shooting sparks out of his eyes as part of the Powerslave sphinx Eddie stage set. 

My very most favorite part of this video though is all the montages of Derek Riggs' artwork. These are so, so cool. You get to see the evolution of Eddie, from a Edvard Munch-inspired-looking wraith to a very stylized sort of skinless dude. I like that the montages go forward in time and sort of build up as they go, leading to a mega-montage that introduces Adrian Smith's solo. (Adrian, btw, wrote this song, but I love that despite this, Steve Harris sings along while he plays as he always does.) It's basically the Eddie from each of their singles, and to see them all together rules. 

So okay, why did I want to talk about this song? Well, we'll do the deeper one first. Lately I have really been in an introspective, reflective mood. Though you can tell obviously from this blog I am big into nostalgia, lately I feel like for the first time in my life I am really looking to the future. Until recently, I feel like I've been one of those people who's always like, "oh, this was when things were cool or my life was good or whatever," and kind of going over things like that constantly. But lately, I'm finding a shift in myself toward a more present-focused orientation. I feel like it's probably a really healthy thing. 

So anyway, yeah, while I can't relate to the parts of this song that are about being on tour (which as metal bands are always having to remind us, is just soul-suckingly hard), lately I find I can really relate to the chorus. Is it cheesy? Yes. But does a little metal motivation ever hurt? No. I'm busting out Oprah-style bitches, living my best life!

 

The other reason I thought to do this song is because of something amazing that happened to me recently. I was out shopping for clothes, which I only buy used (that's a whole other long story). 

Anyway, I was on the very last rack of t-shirts, hadn't really found much, just some stuff that was maybe okay for work, when suddenly, I found... an Iron Maiden 1982 "The Beast On Tour" t-shirt in mint vintage condition. 

You guys, when I saw that thing, it was like, you know the parts in Requiem for a Dream when the people do drugs, and they do all those quick cuts of like different stuff happening, and their pupils going all big and whatnot? It was like that. 

I mean this shirt is approximately a vintage size small (it just fits me, and I'm a pretty small girl), baseball-style tee with a tan body, camo-printed sleeves, and Eddie artwork on the front and back. The front has circular artwork of Eddie stabbing a Union Jack into a globe, and the Maiden logo. The back has the Maiden logo with circular art of Eddie leaning casually against the flag pole, and says "The Beast On Tour 1982." Nineteen-eighty-effing-two! This shirt is almost 30! 

I had seen one other shirt like this with the camo sleeves, and it was framed and hanging on a wall in a vintage store. This one, on the other hand, was $36. I bought it immediamente, practically hyperventilating I was so excited. 

To put this event in perspective, my fiance and I also bought wedding bands that day, and I'm calling people like "You're not going to believe what happened to me! I found an Iron Maiden tee from 1982!!"

I've worn it once, but I am probably going to have to mostly keep it on ice. Why? Well, because once we were home, I went online to look at similar shirts, and find out what they sell for. We couldn't find my exact one (Iron Maiden made a lot of tees back in the day), but it turns out similar ones sell for like $500 - $1,000. What?!!? 

Now I know, like my mom always says, it's only worth that much if someone will actually pay you that much much for it, and I definitely don't intend to sell it, but still. I'm pretty sure it's easily the most valuable shirt in my collection, though I haven't taken the time to actually figure this out. 

In any event, that got me on a big Maiden kick. And given that my other Maiden shirt is a 1987 "Somewhere on Tour" tee (which I bought at the Salvation Army in 2001 for 99 cents!), I wound up at this album. Talk about living in the golden years!

Iron Maiden, "Run to the Hills"

Another Awkward Thanksgiving...  

THE VIDEO Iron Maiden, "Run to the Hills," The Number of the Beast, 1982, Capitol 

SAMPLE LYRIC "Run to the hills / run for your liiii-iiii-iiives! / Run to the hills / run for your liiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiives!" 

THE VERDICT It's Thanksgiving again, and since I publish my posts on Thursday and Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, well, you'll have to endure another Thanksgiving-related post. Naw, I like doing themed posts! Everyone's in the holiday mood anyway (okay, readers in the U.S. are in the holiday mood maybe), but I don't know. I just like it. It feels timely, even if I'm writing about videos that are more than twenty years old. 

https://ironmaiden.com/

As per last year, since there aren't really metal songs about the Puritans, I've gone with a native American theme yet again. But this year I decided to go a bit more overtly topical — instead of just "Cherokeeeeee! Ohh!" we get an actual song about colonization. I know, it's still not Thanksgiving per se, but we're getting closer. 'Cause really, think about it — if any metal band is going to have a song about colonization, it's going to be Iron Maiden. 

If I had to guess, given their interest in British history I would suppose they have a lot of songs about colonization. If this is as close as we get, this is as close as we get (though maybe next year I'll try to dig up something related to the Salem witch trials so it's at least closer to being about the right century). In any event though, I'm going straight to the obvious — "Run to the Hills," which, if not in my opinion one of their best songs, is certainly one of their best known songs. 

If you know one Iron Maiden song, it's probably "Run to the Hills." (If you know two songs you know this and "The Number of the Beast," if you know three it's those and the borderline-cheesy "Two Minutes to Midnight"). If you're under 21, I have a bad feeling you know these from Guitar Hero and/or Rock Band, but that's another story. 

This video is split fifty-fifty more or less between the band performing and an old movie. I'll get to the latter in a minute, but first let's talk about the band. This video is pretty low budget — yes, the band's on a stage, but it's completely dark around them. Even though it looks like a live setup, they don't even try to pretend there's a crowd.

 

Nothing much is going on with the stage itself — there's a neat row of Marshall amps lining the entire back of the stage, and there are rows of colored lights above (one color per row). It's all very tidy. In general though, it's pretty decontextualized — they don't try to convince us it's a concert, or that they're in an empty warehouse, or anything like that. 

One of the weirder things about the performance footage is who gets shown during it. I would break it down approximately as follows: Bruce Dickinson 70%; the about-to-leave-the-band Clive Burr a bizarre 15%; Adrian Smith 10%; Dave Murray 3%; Steve Harris 2%. 

I mean yeah, obviously it's going to be a lot of glamour shots of Bruce. I mean that hair. If I looked that good in bangs I'd have them all the time. And those layers! I mean no matter how much he sweats they have just perfect lift and separation. I have a similar length, color, and texture, and trust me, my hair doesn't look half that good most of the time when I'm just sitting around, let alone were I to be like, screaming my lungs out under a bunch of hot lights. 

Anyway, without going on too long about Bruce (those lips!), it makes sense they show him a lot. This album is his big debut, and this song really shows off his vocal range. Why there are such a large number of shots of then-drummer Clive Burr is a bit more curious. I mean, sure, they went to the trouble to set up a camera to the left of the drum kit, but nothing's really happening back there. It's a little weird. 

And speaking of a little weird — there are like ten shots of Adrian for every one shot of Steve or Dave! I mean Steve Harris wrote the damn song. And as I always say, Dave Murray looks like a friendly cat. Nonetheless, those two have an impossible time getting on camera in this video — in general, you'll only see Steve or Dave if at least one other person is in the shot, whereas like you'll see loads of Adrian Smith just standing there. 

The other most notable thing about this video is, of course, the fashion. I feel like these were their favorite outfits at the time, because you see a lot of old promo photos of the boys wearing this stuff. It's also all the same clothes as the ones we see in "The Number of the Beast". In particular, Steve Harris seems to have really liked that referee-looking vest he has on.

 

But okay, what most people remember about this video isn't the band's performance — it's the bizarre old movie that takes up half the video. So the song itself is a sort of pastiche of native American history — it explicitly references the Cree, but I think that's just 'cause it rhymes with "free." 

Other than that, it's nonspecific to any one tribe's experiences — western imagery, alcoholism, theft, rape, etc. — though you can find people who'll argue it's about one particular conflict or another. Anyway, given that the song takes on fairly serious subject matter, and given that there were only about a zillion movies made covering this sort of territory, who knows exactly how Maiden wound up with a weird parody. But let's go with it. 

The film we're seeing is actually a short from the early 20s called The Uncovered Wagon, which is a parody of a silent film called The Covered Wagon from the same year. 

The Covered Wagon is a pretty straightforward early Western — a wagon train goes west, native Americans attack, white people prevail. Oh, and there's a love triangle. It's based on a western novel of the same name from 1922. It must have been pretty popular, because The Uncovered Wagon isn't even the only parody of it. 

I can't find out much about The Uncovered Wagon beyond what we see in the video. It appears to be more or less a similar scenario, but done in a slapstick way. (The star, James Parrott, was better known for directing Laurel and Hardy shorts). Toward the beginning, we see an ersatz native American applying makeup from a tin labeled "rouge." Instead of horse-drawn wagons, the settlers are driving cars with canopies over them — and rather than riding horses, the tribesmen have bicycles. As they exchange fire, we see lots of goofy things happen — settlers yanking arrows out of their butts, the faux native Americans doing pratfalls, etc. 

Anyway, it's sort of a weird choice for such a serious song. I mean even though the song sounds kind of joyful or exuberant, if you listen to the lyrics it's like "we've already been screwed in every possible way, and we're probably all about to die." The lyrics don't really go with such a goofy movie. The movie clips remind me of Don Martin cartoons in MAD magazine — he often used Old West tropes. 

Who knows though. Maybe Maiden just picked it because it does seem to prominently feature several shots of actors dressed as native Americans literally running to the hills. 

Sort of like how I picked this video because it fits, however awkwardly, with it being Thanksgiving, and my annual "let's remember the Pilgrims were not the first U.S. residents" message.

Iron Maiden, "The Number of the Beast"

Mystery Science Theater 1982  

THE VIDEO Iron Maiden, "The Number of the Beast," The Number of the Beast, 1982, Capitol  

SAMPLE LYRIC "Six! Six, six! / Tha nummmberrrr of the beeeeeast! / Six! Six! Six! The one for youuu and meeeeeee!" 

EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION As per many Iron Maiden videos, this video opens with a clip from an old movie, in this case, The Wolfman, which, unlike most of the movies they use (a) is not silent and (b) I've actually seen in its entirety. Of course, it's been a while, so I'll have to look it up and verify my basic plot description: As I remember it, a man travels to a town that has itself a little werewolf problem. He gets bitten by it, and his only hope is to find this old gypsy woman who can cure him. Possibly, I think she meets an untimely end before he finds her. 

[Okay, I looked it up, here's what really happens in a nutshell: A British expat returns home to claim his lordship, falls for a girl, buys a cane with a wolf's head on it from her, and saves her friend from a werewolf – which does manage to bite him first – by clubbing it to death with his cane. Werewolfiness ensues, and a gypsy woman does indeed dispatch much useful info.] 

 I'm not sure what part of the movie the clip they use is from – I want to say the end, but I'm not sure. Anyway, in this clip, the wolfman is wandering around in the fog in the cemetery (Priory Cemetery, to be precise), and he eventually comes to the door to a mausoleum and turns to look over his shoulder. 

In the meantime, we hear a Vincent Price-sounding dude (whose spookiness has since been severely tempered by his participation in The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo, not to mention "Thriller" — apparently Maiden couldn’t afford the big Hanna Barbera-style bucks VP was demanding, so this is a random actor they hired) reading from the verse in Revelations (Revelation 13:18, adapted somewhat loosely from the King James version) that references the number of the beast. 

"Woe to you, oh earth and sea / for the devil sends the beast with wrath / because he knows the time is short… / let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast / for it is a human number / it's number is six hundred and sixty-six." 

The song begins with a hand strumming a guitar, and then we see Bruce Dickinson singing, lit from beneath in a sort of greenish fog. We see a devil that looks sort of like Dio's Holy Diver guy, then Dave Murray, Bruce again, then Steve Harris, then the creepy dude from Nosferatu.
After more Bruce, there's a scary-ass zombie-type guy that I don't recognize at all (sorry -- you know I'm too weenie for my knowledge of classic horror movies to be that extensive. He looks like the Toxic Avenger, but obviously isn't). 

[Update: Right, yeah now I am older, wiser, and hella into scary movies. It's one of the scorned makeup artist's creations from How to Make a Monster.]

As Bruce continues singing, you can also see a sort of half-there shot of what appears to be dinosaurs fighting, and yes, I'm not sure what that's from either (though I would say one of them looks to be a dimetrodon). [Present-day me: Pretty sure this is a Bert I. Gordon flick.]

Lots of tight shots of Bruce singing and gesturing, and finally a glimpse from over the shoulder at Nicko McBrain, plus more of Dave and Steve as we at last get a more pulled-out view of their location: A stage lit with lots of smoky, greenish fog and something devilish and huge looming behind it. As Bruce starts the sort of yelling part at the end of the verse, there’s a brief shot of a skeleton dude (think the Misfits skull and you've got it). 

Okay, this one I researched, because I can't just let these things go: Both the Misfits dude (and a Misfits song) and the thing we see here are in reference to The Crimson Ghost, a 1946 serial starring a criminal mastermind who is neither crimson nor a ghost nor even a skeleton but a uh, criminal mastermind, in a pretty good mask. It's weird because I have seriously never noticed any of these inset movie shots until now, watching it at pretty much frame-by-frame speed. They go by hella fast. 

ALTERNATE VERSION ALERT: I watched this again on Vh-1 Classic's Metal Mania, it turns out that I haven't been seeing them because they aren't there. My guess is that they couldn't get the rights clearance to use them all (possibly just in the U.S.). In "Can I Play With Madness?" however, when the teacher sees this video playing on that cobweb-covered television, it is the version I describe here with all the monster movies intact. The one I link to from YouTube is the version I'm discussing here, with movie clips intact. 

As Bruce yells, "Yeaahhhhhhh!" we see the classic Godzilla superimposed over the stage with all the lights suddenly coming up. As Bruce raises his fist and we see Steve and Adrian Smith, then a big explosion happening in front of Godzilla. As Maiden rocket their way into the first chorus, the camera moves quickly and we see rapid shots of all the band members as the lights above the stage flash continuously. 

The second verse begins with more of the same, including another shot of Godzilla and almost sepia-tone black-and-white footage of a couple of people running around while burning pieces of a building fall around them. As Bruce sings, "satan's work is done" we briefly see the Holy Diver-style devil (which is basically a shirtless guy wearing a weird mask with antlers), who then disappears in an explosive puff of smoke a la Yngwie Malmsteen videos. 

Ok, ok, here we go. As the second chorus ends, the unidentified zombie dude is shown again. He steps into the frame from the right, and a wolfman dude steps in from the left, and a title comes up over them that says "How to make a monster" with the word "monster" written all scary. And yes! This is how I find out where that zombie dude comes from — as it turns out, these dudes are from a 1958 film called How to Make a Monster. It is about a movie makeup artist who finds out that his studio is about to fire him, so he creates a special makeup that allows him to control the wearers' minds and make them go, uh, basically kill people. 

Ahh, wait! Aha! The zombie dude is actually the main character from I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957, made by the How to Make a Monster people). See? A little bit of googling and it all starts to come together. As the guitar solo continues, everyone rocks out, and they show a different wolfman (have I mentioned yet that all of the movie clips are in black and white? No? Sorry, they are) who sort of rolls his eyes around and looks nervous — I am thinking it is possibly the dude from I Was a Teenage Werewolf, which would mean it's roughly the same dude (or at least the same makeup) we saw with Teenage Frankenstein above. [Me of today again: I can't believe that when I wrote this I didn't mention IWATW as a MST3K movie, or that the titular teenwolf is Michael Landon.]

Steve and Nicko in particular are going nuts, and we see another clip of the Crimson Ghost, who shoots a gun and then hides behind a square pillar that has the words "silver mine" written on it. We briefly see a white spiral superimposed over the video before Dave really starts tearing it up.  

As he does so, we catch our first glimpse of a pantomime Eddie in the background, then a pair of ballroom dancers spin onto the stage. The man is dressed in tails and the woman, who has short dark hair, has on a red and gold dress with a knee length skirt that flares out when she spins. As he finishes spinning her around, she is suddenly wearing a wolfman mask, and they turn and bow to each other. They begin dancing again, and we see that they both have cards attached to their backs (as if they were in a competition), both have the number 6 on the them. 

We then see a shot of Adrian half-screened with an image of some kind of giant, giant skull thing outside of a control room (I can't even begin to guess what it's from). The giant skull thing is then seen from the back reaching its hand toward the window we just saw it looking through, then we see Godzilla once more. [OMG past me, it's another MST3K movie you definitely had seen, Bert I. Gordon's War of the Colossal Beast.]

The band goes nuts, and then the woman dancer smiles and holds up her "6" placard for the camera. The man does the same, and then the wolfman/woman does it too, now also wearing furry gloves with big claws (Get it?). As Bruce begins to sing the penultimate verse, we can see a movie of a giant spider behind the band (my best guess on this ID is Tarantula), and that there are now people dancing on the platforms up on either side of the stage. [Ugh past me knew nothing about horror and sci-fi! It's Angry Red Planet.] 

One of them is a guy in what looks to be red long underwear, and he has on a devil mask and is carrying a giant pitchfork. (He's basically dressed as the devil on the cover of the album, only on the album he looks a good deal scarier). We see a brief shot of a bas relief-style old woman's face carved into a wall morphing into a skull as the devil guy dances around and the dancers display their numbers, then a giant pantomime Eddie who is about twice as tall as the people lurches out onto the stage. 

Eddie is wearing a gray t-shirt under a black leather jacket, jeans, and a large belt. He's shot from beneath being vaguely menacing (if you're the kind of person who considers those WTO-protest papier-mache things to be menacing, that is). That skeptical-looking wolfman [Michael Landon!!] also gets shown again. As the song concludes, the ballroom dancers turn to face Eddie, and the devil guy jumps off a riser (in sync with the music). All the band members sort of punch their fists, and the lights go out. 

THE VERDICT Iron Maiden are the coolest, precisely because they are the biggest geeks ever. On nearly all of their albums, they display mad love for all kinds of arcania (uhoh, did I just make up a word? You know what I mean), from horror films like Village of the Damned and The Wicker Man to Greek mythology to Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (and I never thought seventh-grade English would come in handy again!). Steve of course wrote a lot of these songs, but lord knows Bruce is like master dork (come on, he's obsessed with planes and fencing). 

The point is, all of this geekiness pays off in spades with songs that are as articulate as they are rocking and videos rife with pop culture references (and, for this genre, strikingly lacking in sexual innuendo -- Iron Maiden make even Queensryche look like a bunch of sex-obsessed pervs). 

That said, what is going on in this video? I'm not certain. According to the best Iron Maiden fansite out there, the song was inspired by the 1978 film Damien: The Omen II (why not The Omen? So far as I can tell, the second one is just the first one all over again with a crappier plot) and also a nightmare Steve had. 

I am guessing that it's mostly the nightmare, because I can't discern much relation to the Omen movies. The ballroom dancers are a bit random, and Eddie and the devil are basically just as seen on the album's cover. 

The movie clips make more sense the more I think about them. Since the song itself is just sort of like, ok, I'm out by myself at night, I think I saw something spooky, and now sure enough here are the townspeople with their burning torches etc. Most of the movie clips used reference this sort of plot: The wolfman is hunted down, Godzilla is driven back into the sea, etc., etc. No matter what though, at the end of the day it's a good setting for rocking out, replete with lots of hair-tossing on Bruce's part, and that's what really counts.