Fear Of the Dark Tour (1992)
In early ‘92, Maiden were approached to headline the Donington Monsters of Rock festival for the second time. A historic moment, as the only other band to headline twice was AC/DC. Since they had to work their schedule around the festival again, the tour started in the US. However, true to the tradition of the last few years, they put on a few small gigs before officially starting the tour. The first show was in the UK under the name of Nodding Donkeys (after the b-side: Nodding Donkey Blues). They then visited Iceland for the very first time en route to New York for the Ritz performance that TAC has already given his account on. The Fear Of the Dark tour was one of the band’s most adventurous and there’s actually a ton to talk about here. I’m probably not going to get to update this again until Wednesday at the earliest, so I recommend everyone take their time going through all the releases and YouTube clips discussed.
The Stage
Similar to Fear Of the Dark’s concept of maintaining the raw sound established on No Prayer while subtly reintroducing elements of the band’s more progressive side, Maiden put a little bit more into the stage production for the tour. The backdrop of artwork drapes and the row of Marshall amps remained, but stage decorations were added to match the creepy nighttime vibe of the album artwork. Some shows featured a bat-winged Eddie at the top of the rafters. There were also the usual two appearances of Eddie, once as a walk on and the second time as a massive head with two hands behind the drum riser. The elaborate floor design also returned keeping with the night time theme. It wasn’t the spectacle of the band’s 80s tours, but it was a still less bare-bones than the previous tour. Additionally, there was a more elaborate lighting rig this time around.
The Setlist
The Fear Of the Dark tour was probably the first time a Maiden show didn’t really have an obvious focus on a single album. Only five out of the twelve songs from Fear of the Dark were performed. Powerslave and Somewhere In Time were the last albums to only have five songs performed on the tour, but the songs were longer on those albums and were centerpieces of the shows. The Fear of the Dark songs were shorter and didn’t really seem to be the focus of this show. There was no gauntlet of new songs like on the No Prayer tour. Instead, they were spread out and mixed with the “classics”. Personally, I think a lot of that has to do with them starting the tour in the US. The album wasn’t very successful there so it made sense for them to not put as much emphasis on it as they normally would. When it was time to take the production to Europe, they were probably so comfortable with it that it didn’t seem necessary to add new songs.
It was also a predictable selection of songs: the three singles (including the album opener) and the two Harris epics. Overall, this tour seemed like the first time an album was getting the shaft. Still, it wasn’t necessarily a setlist dedicated to the band’s “Golden Years”. There were two songs from No Prayer performed, Tailgunner and Bring Your Daughter To the Slaughter were included the beef up the 90’s representation.
The Seventh Son of a Seventh Son album also made a return after being completely disregarded on the previous tour. Three songs from the album were performed: The Clairvoyant, The Evil That Men Do, and Can I Play With Madness. These three songs would go on to be the “staples” from the album.
The rest of the setlist featured the usual suspects. By this time the band had definitely settled on a “typical” Maiden setlist. While the previous tours would often trade out songs from various albums (for example, Die With Your Boots On instead of The Trooper in 1988), less adventurous setlist choices were being made as it became clear what the live favorites were. This is not necessarily a bad thing though. The last tour had a narrow focus, featuring No Prayer and Number of the Beast in particular. The setlist for Fear Of the Dark, on the other hand, is much more balanced and you really get a taste of every album. From that view, it’s a good retrospective of the band’s career up until this point, the way the World Slavery Tour was 7 years earlier.
The Tour
The tour proper began in Canada with Corrosion of Conformity and Testament as the opening acts. The tour was very short, lasting just a little over a month. It was their shortest run in the US as a headline act. This wasn’t an overnight shift, Maiden were seeing a decline in the US since Seventh Son as the American public moved on to other styles of music. As a result, the tours continued to get shorter. The band also just wasn’t touring as heavily as in the 80’s.
Where Maiden weren’t getting the same reaction in the US that they were used to, their popularity in other areas continued to grow. The band’s next stop was their first tour in South America. They had visited before for the legendary Rock In Rio 1985, but had never toured there. They were greeted by huge crowds and some of their biggest performances ever. Fortunately, the South American tour was captured on video with a TV broadcast of their Argentina performance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJkNETPUSlgNext it was time to return to Europe for Monsters of Rock. There were a few warm up shows and then it was time for Donington. Their return to Donington was triumphant and in some ways better than in 1988. The rest of the lineup wasn’t quite as strong, mainly featuring Skid Row, Slayer, and WASP. Still, Maiden put on a great performance and were clearly energized by the warm welcome from their home country as well as being fresh off a successful South American run.
The highlight of the show was undoubtedly the return of Adrian Smith, who joined them for Running Free. At the time it was a nice reunion and great to see them still on good terms, but looking back of course it’s also a historic moment as it’s the first performance of the current three guitar lineup of Maiden. A foreshadowing moment.
The performance was broadcast on radio and TV and immortalized with a live VHS and CD release, which I will discuss further later on. However, unlike the 1988 Monsters of Rock, Donington was not the only location where Maiden were broadcast. Their appearance at the Italian Monsters of Rock a few weeks later was also broadcast. This was a much stronger lineup, featuring Black Sabbath, Pantera, and Megadeth among others. The broadcast, which is only missing the opener, is a nice alternate look at the band’s European run. This show was also the source of Heaven Can Wait on A Real Live One.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bxI0I75190Following the European tour, Maiden conquered new territory again with their first visit to Central America. Like South America, the band were greeted to a largely untapped market and discovered a huge fanbase there. There’s yet another TV broadcast for this tour, this time in Mexico City.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsd1zeJTIFoMaiden wrapped up their Fear Of the Dark tour with some short runs in Australia and Japan. This marked the first time the band visited Japan two tours in a row. On the other hand, this was their first time in Australia since 1985.
Spanning 4 continents and several never-before-visited countries, the Fear of the Dark tour ended up being the band’s most extensive tour so far. They bucked their usual touring schedule for the first time and explored new markets. While their popularity in America may have been waning, it was hard to be worried for the band’s future after such a successful tour everywhere else in the world.
You may be wondering about the UK tour. For the first time in the band’s 13 year touring history, there was no UK tour. This was the beginning of a series of controversial decisions by Maiden to favor the festival circuit over a full UK tour. The band would tour the UK again, but these tours would be less frequent and with only a few shows in the future.
Official Releases
One reason I want to split this tour and the accompanying releases is to give some context on how they were released. They probably seem mostly redundant to a lot of fans, but there are some key differences. A Real Live One was the first live release from the Fear Of the Dark tour and also the first officially released live album since Live After Death. There was Maiden England, but the CD version wasn’t released until 1994 as a limited bundle with the VHS. Live At Donington was almost an afterthought, not being released until the end of 1993 and with not much emphasis put on the CD. So with that in mind, a single CD live album focusing entirely on material from 1986 and later was actually quite smart.
So with that out of the way, we move on to:
A Real Live One (1993)
This is the result of Steve Harris compiling what he felt to be the highlights of the Fear of the Dark tour. Instead of selecting one show, Steve combined various recordings from throughout the European tour. He also focused exclusively on material from the latest four albums, so fans were treated to the first officially released recordings of songs from No Prayer and Fear Of the Dark, as well as some selections from Heaven Can Wait and Seventh Son, of particular interest due to the presence of Janick Gers. As previously mentioned, Maiden England wasn’t yet available on CD, so none of these songs had appeared on a live album yet. They were also soundboard recordings, so it’s a much more raw sounding album, more akin to b-sides than Live After Death. It may not be polished, but it does capture the band’s energy and there is more crowd presence.
The raw sound was pretty off putting to a lot of fans and it’s questionable whether Steve truly picked the best performances. I have a soft spot for this (along with A Real Dead One) personally and I actually reach for it quite a bit when I’m in the mood for 90s Maiden. I like that it’s not polished and that it just captures the band in their normal touring mode, as opposed to a special performance like five nights at Long Beach. It also has a nice track list. Since it’s a compilation of various performances and focused on a particular era, Steve was able to mess with the sequencing a bit. The typical setlist tropes aren’t there and you’re not getting the 80s staples, so it’s a fairly unpredictable listen. Overall, it’s a nice way to punctuate the last two tours.
Live At Donington (Recorded 1992, Released 1993)
(Original limited CD cover)
(1998 Remastered cover)
The band decided to make their second stop at Donington the official video for this tour. A CD was given a limited release with a plain white cover (meant to resemble a bootleg), but it wasn’t given a wide release until the entire catalog was remastered in 1998. So, at the time, Live At Donington was meant to be the visual document of this tour and A Real Live/Dead One was meant to be the audio document. Where A Real Live One is a compilation of various performances, Live At Donington gives a better look at what a show on this tour was actually like, in terms of the order and flow of the setlist. It also gave a look at the band’s new stage show and the larger than life crowd at Donington.
The video was once again directed by Steve Harris and is probably the first example of his seizure-inducing editing style. Not only is it filled with quick edits, but it also annoyingly switches between color and black and white. Honestly, I haven’t watched it more than once or twice, the edits make it completely unwatchable for me. It is also the last Maiden video that has not yet been released on DVD. It’s not certain as of yet when the DVD will be released, but, given their usual pattern of archival releases, it’s reasonable to expect it very soon. Hopefully it’ll be reedited to at least be fully in color. Because there is no official DVD release of this, I recommend sticking to the CD, which is still in print and on spotify, and for videos check out one of the TV broadcasts from this tour. Obviously the audio video quality won’t be as good, but it’s still better than what we got with the Live At Donington video.
Next week: A Real Live Tour, featuring A Real Dead One, Raising Hell, and the departure of Bruce Dickinson.
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