Bruce Dickinson - The Chemical Wedding (1998)
Released just 4 months after Virtual XI, The Chemical Wedding marked the first time Maiden and Bruce Dickinson were in direct competition. Maiden were going back to a more traditional sound with Virtual XI and Bruce was finally embracing his Metal side again. There was no question that the two camps were running a parallel course.
Accident Of Birth was a critical and commercial success for Bruce, outselling Skunkworks by a pretty large margin and receiving universal acclaim. As such, it only made sense for Bruce to use the same musicians and further develop the sound of Accident of Birth for the follow-up. The Chemical Wedding was however not to be a retread. This time the music was heavier, darker, and more progressive.
The Chemical Wedding is also unique for being the closest Bruce has come to making a concept album. The initial inspiration came from the paintings and poems of 19th Century artist William Blake. Bruce has stated that he frequently visits bookstores for art books and his inspiration for music often comes from images. His first exposure to Blake’s work came in the form of album artwork for Death Walks Behind You by 70’s progressive rock band Atomic Rooster. The album’s cover, which was Blake’s painting Nebuchadnezzar, also found its way inside the packaging for The Chemical Wedding. William Blake’s estate was so impressed with Bruce’s lyrics that they allowed him to use the work, along with all other Blake paintings, including “Ghost Of a Flea” which was used as the album cover. Other pieces used include “Satan Smiting Job With Sore Boils” and “The Good and Evil Angels”. Eddison, the puppet from Accident Of Birth was left out of this album, as Bruce felt that the album was “too heavy” for him.
However, the real inspiration was not from Blake’s paintings. Bruce was also enamored with Blake’s poetry, adapting it for spoken word interludes between songs on the album, performed by prog rock legend Arthur Brown (another one of Bruce’s childhood heroes). He also used Blake’s poem “And Did Those Feet” in the bulk of the lyrics for Jerusalem and based Book of Thel on the poem of the same name.
That being said, The Chemical Wedding is still not purely a concept album. It is heavily based on Blake’s work and alchemy, but there is no story or central theme that binds the songs together. Instead, it would be more accurate to compare its lyrical content to Dark Side of the Moon. Each song is centered around a theme that can be tied with other themes on the album. In this case, the theme is alchemy. According to Bruce, “This one is about alchemy and specifically the poetry of William Blake which is very much based on the philosophy of alchemy.” The alchemy themes are most apparent in the title track, The Tower, and The Alchemist. Gates of Urizen is about two brothers separated at birth and Trumpets of Jericho explores the idea of the Biblical Battle of Jericho failing.
The music on The Chemical Wedding is appropriately heavier, given the darker subject matter. Roy Z and Adrian Smith began to use bass strings on their guitars (similar to Petrucci’s baritone guitars) to give them a heavier tone and allow for low tunings. King In Crimson and Trumpets of Jericho in particular are tuned all the way down to A (the same A as on a bass). Just like the previous album, most of the songs were written by Bruce and Roy Z; however, Adrian also contributed a few tunes. This time he was a full member of the band from the start and his influence is felt a bit more. He also gets more solos (the solos are conveniently credited in the booklet, something that Maiden never did). His writing contributions include Killing Floor, Machine Men, and The Alchemist. Bassist Eddie Casillas also earned a writing credit on Book Of Thel.
The Chemical Wedding was even better received than Accident of Birth. It is widely considered not just Bruce’s best album, but one of the best Metal albums of all time. It had all the great qualities of Accident Of Birth but with an added sense of unity and a more adventurous take on the traditional Metal style. There was clearly a modern influence, Bruce often talked about bands like Fear Factory and Dimmu Borgir in interviews. Comparisons to Maiden were naturally abundant with many fans preferring The Chemical Wedding to Virtual XI. Still, Bruce handled the comparisons with total class. Two interview quotes about Maiden from promoting The Chemical Wedding:
Oh, I’m not going to go anywhere and start making comments on Maiden and stuff. There's too much respect between the guys in Maiden and me and me and the guys in Maiden. I don't go there.
And one of the reasons why we both get along with eachother is that we both kept this respectful distance about commenting on each other's past and things like that. We all have to live in the same universe and we share the same management. So it's a bit like being divorced and still sharing the same bathroom.
(source:
https://mariseb0.tripod.com/interviews/bd_seriahazkath_98.htm )
Maiden weren’t asked about Bruce quite as much, but they were more complimentary to each other than earlier in the decade. Overall, both bands were completely respectful to each other which made the reunion more feasible and successful.
To this day, Bruce considers The Chemical Wedding to be his greatest solo effort and one of his crowning achievements. When speaking about his solo career in retrospect, he often states that it was necessary for him to do less successful projects like Skunkworks in order to get to The Chemical Wedding (and to an extent Brave New World). Years of creative confusion and doubt had finally paid off.
Scream For Me Brazil (1999)
Bruce hit the road to support The Chemical Wedding and this time there was an official album to document it. Recording in South America was an obvious choice as Bruce’s popularity was continuing to grow there. The fans are totally into it, check out how they sing along with Tears of a Dragon.
The setlist naturally had heavy focus on the latest album, with seven out of the ten cuts from The Chemical Wedding being performed (Jerusalem was also performed at a few shows but not on this recording). The show opened with six of the songs performed in a sequence with Bruce reciting Blake’s poetry in between. Like most of Bruce’s solo tours, the opening track was not the album opener, this time it was Trumpets of Jericho. The rest of his catalog was decently represented, with three songs from Accident of Birth and two songs from Balls to Picasso. Tattooed Millionaire was also played but not included on the CD for unknown reasons. There were also a few Maiden songs (nothing that wasn’t played on the previous tour) but those also weren’t included on the CD. Skunkworks was completely ignored again.
A video containing most of the show was also included on Bruce’s Anthology DVD (essential for fans of his solo work). The footage is just from the screen feeds that were shown during the concert, so it’s not particularly great quality, but still worth seeing.
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