Hell yes to this! I'd even let them use my avatar for the album cover! My only regret is not taking pics of DT that night.
I do have the boot, and James is ridiculous on it.
Wait, you were there? Was it your first impact with the band? What a scene it must have been!
I've told this many times before.
Yes I was there..
I was a huge Iron Maiden fan. When I was in college, Iron Maiden played L'Amours in Brooklyn as a tuneup for the 7th Son tour. I lived in Massachusetts, but my college roommate lived in New Jersey. We always planned visits around concerts. Anyway, we made a pact that if Iron Maiden ever played another club show in NYC, we'd try like hell to make it. Well, he ended up getting tickets to the show at The Ritz.
I had my camera that day. My avatar is a pic of the marquee that I had taken that afternoon. We got there early to get a good spot, which obviously meant having to stand through some no name band. But whatever..it was Iron Maiden!!
I can tell you that they weren't 30 seconds into PMU and I was fucking blown away. My jaw was literally on the floor. They were playing the best music I'd ever heard. They were so tight.
My two first observations were:
The bass player is nuts (seriously!), and the drummer was amazing. Seemed as soon as I was on to whatever the drummer was doing, he was on to something else. I regret not taking pictures, as we had a good spot. But I wasn't taking any chances of getting busted with my camera before Iron Maiden came out. Suffice to say, my musical life was changed in that 40 minutes.
I bought I&W a few weeks later when it was released. And lo and behold, they played in Boston the first week of October. They came back that December, where they played an electric version of Oh Holy Night. That boot is mine, and unfortunately it hasn't aged that great. I did take some pics at that show as well. Both shows were at a club called Axis, which was extremely tiny.
June 8, 1992
The Ritz, New York City




In fact, in the video boot of this show, you can see my flash going off down in front of Dave.
December 16, 1992
Axis, Boston


