Piece of Mind – 1983
Tracklisting:
1. Where Eagles Dare.
2. Revelations.
3. Flight of Icarus.
4. Die With Your Boots On.
5. The Trooper.
6. Still Life.
7. Quest for Fire.
8. Sun and Steel.
9. To Tame a Land.
https://open.spotify.com/album/7I9Wh2IgvI3Nnr8Z1ZSWby?si=f3DRYKceQ26Wh2F_73E6SAYep. That was the first little break in the action I was talking about. Sorry all, been a rather eventful little stint there. Went out 7 hours into the desert to play a couple of solo gigs then ended up playing a fairly significant show for my band’s album launch (
https://gyro.to/TooLongBetweenDrinks for anyone kind enough to give that a shot).
Anyway, here we are with the first album from the band’s most classic lineup of Bruce Dickinson, Steve Harris, Dave Murray and Adrian Smith, now joined by Nicko McBrain. In December of 1982, at the end of the Beast on the Road tour, the band fired Clive Burr. While Steve would say it was because offstage activities were affecting his onstage performance, Clive would go on record saying it was unfair dismissal. Funnily enough, Nicko McBrain had left the French band Trust to join Maiden, where Clive would end up joining the band not too long after.
The band soon found themselves taking over the out of season Le Chalet hotel in Jersey, arranging and rehearsing in the restaurant, before heading to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas recording the songs. These sessions yielded the band’s fourth album,
Piece of Mind. The album’s artwork of Eddie being lobotomised was conceived first, but for quite a while the album was known as Food for Thought. The final title came as a part of a drunken conversation towards the end of the writing period.
How do you start an album with a new drummer? Well, you open up with one of the most classic drum intros in metal, of course!
Where Eagles Dare is an absolute tour de force instrumentally with one of the band’s heaviest riffs to date taking centre stage, sitting beautifully above the percussive powerhouse of Nicko’s drumming. Bruce’s vocals are in top form here too, screaming out the plot synopsis to the 1968 war thriller starring Clint Eastwood by the same name. The middle solo section is rather unique, serving to provide breathing space in the song’s rather frantic feel before ending up with a tight rhythmic section between all instruments. This is easily the best opening track to this point, really serving a high point of the entire album in its opening minutes!
Inside the album’s liner notes is this rather peculiar passage. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more Death. Neither sorrow, nor crying. Neither shall there be any more brain; for the former things are passed away.” While this is playing on the themes of the album cover and its title, if we replace the word brain with pain, this becomes a direct quote from chapter 21, verse 4 of the Book of Revelation. Enter track 2,
Revelations, which takes its first verse from a hymn titled
O God of Earth and Altar. The rest of the lyrics take more direct influence from Aleister Crowley. This song is rather unique, standing as a rocker and a ballad at the same time. It’s also the first song that features Bruce Dickinson as its sole composer and as a composer in any sense. The riffs in this song are fairly simple, but the lead work is beyond reproach. Just listen to the amazing solo section and the harmony that wraps it up. Dave and Adrian have taken it a step beyond with this album.
A fairly simple song follows, this one recounting the Greek story of the
Flight of Icarus. This song is fairly centred around the vocal work rather than the guitar work, but it really allows Bruce his first foray into what I call his “storytelling vocal delivery” and for the first shot, I think he carries it out fairly well. There’s still some really enjoyable solo work from Adrian and Dave here, but this is really a Bruce song. This was the first single released from the album, and they toured Piece of Mind and Powerslave with it in the setlist, but it disappeared after the first Somewhere in Time show. It then reappeared over 30 years later as part of the Legacy of the Beast setlist (and I’m hoping it might end up replacing
Can I Play With Madness when the Future Past hits Australia in September, but dreams are free, right?).
The instrumental prowess I didn’t feel from the riffs of
Icarus are more than made up for with the opening of
Die With Your Boots On in my opinion. It’s definitely an interesting riff, counting as both the main riff and a harmony, but I just love it! I’m also a huge fan of Bruce’s vocals on this song, here taking on people who like to spin the end of the world to anyone who’ll listen (wait, was this song released in 1983 or 2023?). The harmony section straight after the solo is probably my second favourite harmonised section on the entire album, but damn, I love that riff. This song is simply awesome and yet so often overlooked, even in the fan groups. If reading this gets any kind of response from you, I hope it’s to give this song one more spin.
“Into the valley of death rode the 600. Cannons to the left of them, cannons to the right of them, volleyed and thundered, THE TROOPER!!” – Bruce Dickinson, Rock in Rio, 2001.
Is there really anything to say about
The Trooper that hasn’t already been said? Take a look at any streaming platform and this is their number one song. It’s their fourth most played song, so big it’s the one staple they kept on the Future Past tour It’s
The Trooper, man. The song is based on the Crimean war, most specifically the charge of the light brigade and it’s also the name of Iron Maiden’s beer line. I think that’s about all I can really say, this is Iron Maiden’s signature piece, even more so than their self-titled song or
Number of the Beast. It was the second single from the album, one of the few songs of Maiden’s to ever get radioplay in America and it remains essential metal listening to this day. Let’s move on.
Still Life is an interesting one.
The Number of the Beast arrived kinda close to the whole Satanic Panic era, and soon after that came the whole thing about backmasking. For those not sure what that is, it became a bit of a thing where people would play albums in reverse and listen for hidden “evil” messages. Well, the intro to
Still Life has a very drunk Nicko making a vocal cameo. Played forwards, it’s a very strange sound. But, played in reverse (which I guess is playing it forwards since the track is reversed on the album, confusing) Nicko starts with an Idi Amin impression saying “What ho said the t'ing with the three 'bonce, don’t meddle with things you don’t understand” and then burping. A piss take, to be sure, but the message was clear. Don’t mess with it, you don’t get it.
Onto the actual song. Here’s a rare Dave Murray contribution, and a rocking yet creepy one at that. This song is grim, with a character seeing demons at the bottom of a pool that slowly drive him insane and convince him that he should drown himself and his girlfriend and the bottom of the pool. DARK! The riffs supporting the song are great, providing just enough to propel the vocals forward while also allowing some lead moments. I love the progression into the final verse where Nicko’s drumming becomes even more staccato, driving the desperation of the final moments. The song is far from common live, but you can find a pretty good performance of it on
Maiden England ’88 along with a good handful of other rarities.
Everyone has opinions on what’s the best and what’s the worst when it comes to music. This is definitely taking a long lead towards the latter.
Quest for Fire is a really goofy song where Bruce overshoots a lot of his vocal notes on lyrics about cavemen and dinosaurs. This song has a really cool instrumental section, and the bass on this is really good, not to mention the solos. But man, when you look at the last few albums holding back a song to be a B-Side, it raises the question of why this made the album. Maybe they needed something a bit more light-hearted after the grimness of an insanity based drowning? It’s a hard pass from me.
Sun and Steel on the other hand, this is a pretty decent song. This is very much the biography of Miyamoto Musashi, a samurai renowned for double-bladed swordsmanship and an undefeated dueling record of 61 victories. The chorus on this one is an earworm if ever I heard one, and it just leaves me in a good mood. Really not one to say a whole lot about, but it’s a good time and that’s still more than I can say about
Quest for Fire.
Now, the delay on this chapter has made for excellent timing, seeing the last song of this album has a certain literary theme to it.
To Tame a Land is the only song that Maiden has ever had to change the title of after initial pressings of the album. Originally, the song was called Dune, but when Rod and Steve asked Frank Herbert’s agent for permission to use the title for the track, they received a written response that said “No. Frank Herbert doesn’t like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands and especially rock bands like Iron Maiden”. According to Bruce, Frank threatened to sue them and prevent the album from coming out if the song was titled Dune. So they named it
To Tame a Land, but maintained the lyrics that will seem beyond strange to anyone who hasn’t read the book or seen any of the films. Mention is made of Freman, Caladan, stillsuits, the Gom Jabar and the Muad’Dim. The song has a particular Middle-Eastern feel which lends well to the desert. The best parts of the song all begin from 2:55 when the song drops back to bass and vocals for the final bridge. This then kicks into an absolutely beastly instrumental coda to
Piece of Mind, starting with a great trading solo and then capped off with not just the best harmonies of the album, but one of the greatest harmonies of all. This shifting section is just HUGE, and then they make it even bigger by breaking the bass and drums down to simple sustains. Man, it’s a beast of a song, and I can see why Steve remarked at the time This is the best song I've ever written. I was really pleased with
Phantom, but now I have to say that this is the best." Shame they haven’t done it since 1983, but Nicko has recently done it with his Rock n Roll Ribs house band Titanium Tart, so I hope there’s a growing interest in the song for next tour.
And that’s
Piece of Mind. What an album! So why do I not come back to it more often? I feel like while this album is very much known for being “the one with
The Trooper and
Revelations”, there are songs like
Quest for Fire and
Sun and Steel which get looked down upon as being lesser entries from Maiden, especially when compared to where the discography had been going to this point. It’s a part of the classic trio of
Beast-
Powerslave, but it just feels like the middle child in a sense. It’s so good that we don’t pay attention to it. Well, maybe we should. Maybe it’s time to give this one another go.
Next week should still be a go, but
Somewhere in Time may be another delay as I'll beheading to Adelaide to catch Dsiturbed and Pantera. Sorry if ther delays are bothering you, but life first, right?
Topic: Re: Deadeye Deep Dives: Iron Maiden (Volume 11. Virtual XI) (Read 2525 times)
