Iron Maiden: Behind the Beast Legends

RADIO CHATTER: 'Five star 666 clear to land runway 04,

'surface end 1007 knots.'

'Five star 666.'

'I have a check list.'

It was my idea, basically.

It went back to something I did

for an album called Skunkworks,

one of my solo albums,

when we actually took a very much smaller aeroplane

with little propellers on it, little piston engines on it,

and we went and bashed our way around the US,

and I thought, "Wow, why couldn't you do this on a bigger scale?"

And I think his real purpose in coming up with the idea

is so he got two wages, one to be a singer and one to be a pilot.

We were asked to go to Australia in '08

and we hadn't been there for a long time.

We also wanted to go to South America.

So if you think about doing Australia

and maybe somewhere on the way,

and then around South America by scheduled airlines nowadays,

with all the security precautions and everything else,

and the way it's very hard to link up the freight

and the flights efficiently,

then it just seemed to be a good idea

to see if there's some way of doing it.

So I offered up this idea of an aeroplane, and I thought,

"Can we get enough gear in the holds to make it viable?"

And it became pretty clear that we couldn't.

I said, "OK, why can't we use the back end of the aeroplane?"

"Take the seats out and put a big cargo net in?"

The idea of the splitted bus in the air just seemed to be ideal

if it could be done, and so we went to quite immense

logistics and bureaucracy to get it done.

The main thing that has completely changed

the dynamic of our regular touring with Iron Maiden is the fact

that we're flying everywhere on Ed Force One.

Working out the logistics of once we get to the country,

how we get into the venues, how we get into the hotels,

and all of that is all planned in advance, as well,

which Steve Gadd does for me.

From the minute we land, you get away from the airport

where there's up to 1,000 people there watching the plane coming in,

and you think you're out of dodge, but you're not,

because you get to the hotel and there's 500 people

camped out for a couple of days.

Iron Maiden! Iron Maiden!

I think the thing that keeps everybody awake at night

is thinking of what you haven't done,

because the band have been around for so long, but also because of

the changes in the industry, there's a phenomenal amount of detail.

We're obviously covering some territories we've never been to,

so there's been interesting challenges in terms of

going to Korea and those Pacific Rim countries

that we've never been to before.

Everything around the plane is complicated.

You don't actually just get a 757 and put your gear on and fly off.

It's all advance work.

The plane dictates what you can take, nothing else dictates it.

Well, here we are on Ed Force One.

In what would normally be 60 passengers

sitting in this compartment space.

The only restriction we have, really, is that everything

has to be able to fit through the main doors.

As long as it'll go through here, it'll go on board the aircraft.

We'll probably get a heads up of maybe a year, nine months,

something like that, as to the tour's happening,

and then we'll go and have a meeting with Rod and he'll give us

maybe an album name or just a gem of an idea which we'll then

go away with and come up with some designs for the set.

Hangman will send us initial drawings of what it's going to look like,

we'll move that on a bit until we're all happy, then they'll do

a model, and then we'll sign it off and we'll start building it.

The rest of it looks great,

but it just needs to really stand out when he does it. He's very flat.

It's very flat lighting...

It's always the same, I don't know why, but no matter how much time

you have on these things, it always seems to end up

that we haven't got any time at the end of it!

MUSIC: "Brave New World" by Iron Maiden

# Wilderness

# House of pain

# Makes no sense of it all. #

We're in Paris, in a rehearsal room,

and we've just finished rehearsal for the day.

We've got one more rehearsal before we head off on the Final Frontier.

We circulate a copy of the set between us

a couple of weeks before we actually get to the rehearsal.

You know you're going to be playing Hallowed Be Thy Name,

you know you're going to be playing Iron Maiden,

so it was just working in a couple of the new songs, really.

Yeah, been rehearsing for

just over a week and a half now,

and we've got one more tomorrow, one more run through,

and the new songs we're doing off the new album sounded really good.

And yeah, we're all excited to be... Off we go, you know.

We're feeling pretty confident, a little tentative on a few little bits here and there,

but, I mean, that's always the way, and I think, really, it'll take

a couple of gigs before we really settle down.

The first one will be nervy, as usual.

We can rehearse till the cows come home,

but it's only when you get on stage, that first night,

and then everything falls into place.

You find once you get out there, it's good fun, and, you know,

you get in front of the audience and connect with the audience again

and you realise why you do it.

But when you're rehearsing in an empty room

you sometimes wonder why you do it!

Because this band just feeds off an audience,

and it's, you know, that's where it comes alive.

Right.

Morning.

Dreadful, isn't it?

Well, here we are, on the Embankment on our way to Stansted.

We're in civvies at the moment.

Uniform's in the back, so I shall be finding a phone booth

and having a convenient change of clothes.

You'll believe a man can fly.

So we'll be on our way to Moscow shortly,

which I expect will be cold.

Normally marked to go in the front hold.

As and when I start packing it. It's a bit of a Tardis.

This is such a unique aircraft

and it's such a unique way of touring around the world.

Loading it, on average, anywhere between four to five hours.

I have worked with lots of other bands, and A list bands,

and I don't know of another act who would take this risk

and would downsize their equipment to such a level.

It's a high risk strategy in terms of the people,

the aircraft, the crew, you know,

everything has to slot into place, and it's a big wheel.

I'm just one small cog of that.

In terms of flying, the most stressful things about flying

on this particular tour are actually really not to do

with the actual flying bits of it,

they're to do with the administrative bits of it.

Because so much of planning a tour like this

is down to the advent of it. There's no real slack in any of it.

It's not like, "Oh, we can come back tomorrow and get it to work."

It's got to happen exactly on those days,

and it's got to happen like clockwork.

MUSIC: "The Final Frontier" by Iron Maiden

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier

# The Final Frontier. #

AEROPLANE INSTRUMENTS: 50, 40, 30, 20, ten.

We're in Moscow, and it's snowing, and it's cold.

It's snowing and it's getting colder.

Tomorrow will be much colder, unfortunately.

You'll never guess where I am.

Three degrees difference, 15, 18 degrees who cares?

It's bloody freezing! But look at this, what an amazing place.

The first place on the tour. What can I say?

Nastravya!

How far did you come? How many miles?

Oh it's eight, nine hours, especially for this concert,

especially to meet him and special for Iron Maiden,

Iron Maiden are the best.

CHEERING

The fans have been brilliant. They've been waiting outside in the cold, God knows how they do it.

We're standing here since nine o'clock in the morning.

This is it, it's the old Olympic arena, which is a massive building.

Absolutely freezing outside, minus 20 degrees,

so the doors have just opened out there

and some rather cold fans will start coming into here,

but I'm sure we'll warm them up!

It's good to get these tours rolling, you know?

We've been planning it for months and months and months, of course,

and it's great to finally get everyone out on the road.

So, as you just saw, we had a little run through,

a little demo version of the intro,

going through a few ideas with Steve and Bruce

and the rest of the guys there.

I think we've got a little concept. Now we're going to put those ideas

into some kind of comprehensive queue stack,

so I'm not spinning plates tomorrow night.

We've got about 80-odd moving lights,

sort of split evenly between washes and spots.

We've also got some of these great big wash lights with the LED rings.

They're show beams, they're really...

Got two and half K bulb in them, they're pretty punchy.

We've got nice little LED strips around the chevrons that highlight

the shapes of the truss, and we've got a good few hundred PAR cans

thrown in just for good measure, just to beef up the whole thing.

Not to mention all our audience crowd blinders and follow spots.

We don't bring anything, we just bring a lighting desk, that's it.

All I've got is my lighting desk and these truss borders,

Every single nut, bolt, bulb, cable, is all supplied locally.

I have to advance all this stuff,

you know, a series of diagrams and equipment lists and everything,

3D renderings and everything else you can think of, with about 30 individual lighting companies,

who all then kind of give me their interpretation of what I've asked,

and then we have to fine tune it and end up with something resembling this every day.

MUSIC: "Two Minutes To Midnight" by Iron Maiden

# Two minutes to midnight

# To kill the unborn in the womb. #

One of the hardest things is no matter how much effort

we put into all this and all the care and attention we put in,

a big part of the show is a follow spot, and we're putting it

in the hands of people I've never met before

who don't really speak English,

they definitely haven't seen Iron Maiden before.

Upstairs.

I can do it in French, Portuguese, Spanish and German

which has helped a hell of a lot,

but my Russian and South Korean left a little to be..!

This has become a pretty busy part of the show now, right?

Jesus. Getting stressed.

Getting stressed, Nick!

MUSIC: "El Dorado" by Iron Maiden

# El Dorado, come and play

# El Dorado, step this way

# Take a ticket for the ride

# El Dorado, streets of gold

# See the ship, it's oversold

# You've got one last chance To try. #

Get the promoter to come and tell these three security guys

that we've got to open these doors to get our stuff out.

One of the most important things to remember

whenever you're doing a load out,

especially somewhere like Moscow, at one o'clock in the morning

at about minus 18, is to make sure you're wearing some long trousers.

What I do want to do is make sure that the gear,

that everyone's responsible to their gear,

so if each department dedicates one person that,

until that gear's locked up in the back of the truck...

I mean, putting it to the dark

or handing it off to Bill the stage hand isn't good enough.

I want eyes on that gear till it's locked,

because, as you know, like the last tour...

Needs to go down town, boys.

And what else am I worried about?

Jakarta, Jakarta's going to be...

Is probably, as you're all fully aware,

is the show that we're having the most trouble with at the moment,

and that's because at the moment, we don't have a show.

MUSIC: "Mother Russia" by Iron Maiden

# Mother Russia Dance of the tsars

# Hold up your heads Be proud of what you are

# Now it has come Freedom at last

# Turning the tides of history And your past. #

So, here we have show two on the Iron Maiden Around The World Tour.

Last night at nine o'clock, they tore down Eric Clapton

and began to build our show.

And I came down a few months ago and did a site visit,

had a quick look around the venue, met the sound company,

went through all the monitor rig with them,

because they were offering me something I hadn't used before,

so I wanted to listen to it.

So I came down, had a day out here which is nice,

and had a listen to the gear, which was fine.

Basically, carry Bruce's wedges, and we carry the drum fill,

we carry the desks, and everything that connects the desks together,

and then the local companies supply us the stacks, basically,

amplifiers and speakers,

and we have a list of what we like to use, we send that out,

they send us a list back saying, "We don't have this,

"We have that system, we don't have that system",

and this just goes backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards

till we get to a point where everybody's happy.

Then we turn up on the day and hopefully they turn up

with the same gear they've told us they're going to bring us.

So we're going into a venue every day

using a completely different system, and we've just got to make it work

and make it work so the band are happy on stage.

Well with any luck, if we get all this right, you know,

plugged on a daily basis, turns on and fires up, no problems,

but that's the importance of the prep.

Most of it's all about the prep work.

We supply the sound equipment that Iron Maiden use

when they go on tour.

There are discussions as to what's logistically possible

as far as sound is concerned, moving the systems.

Usually, once we've done all this in the warehouse, it works,

and it's very rare we have to mess with anything.

Obviously, we do get things go down, mics go off, mic cables go down,

channels on the multi-pins pack up, and you just deal with it.

Basically, I look after the whole stage end of the show,

so if anything goes down, it's down to me to be able to fix it.

This is my world and everybody else keeps out of it.

MUSIC: "Fear Of The Dark" by Iron Maiden

# Fear of the dark Fear of the dark

# I have a constant fear

# That something's always near

# Fear of the dark

# Fear of the dark

# I have a phobia

# That someone's always there. #

After today, we're going to fly to Indonesia, Jakarta,

and, in fact, probably the first time

that a production of this size and a band of this size

have actually played there in a long time,

and that has been a challenging show,

and we're going to have to make the show work.

Bali's a small venue.

At the moment, they don't have enough PA on the island

to actually fulfil our requirements.

So at the moment, they're looking for more PA,

and we really won't know how good that PA is

until we actually get there, plug it in

and make some noise through it.

We've had a lot of problems up front.

I didn't actually decide finally

until about two days before we were due to arrive there

that we were going to go.

Dickie had to go out from Moscow early to try to put a crew together.

He had to get a new production manager, almost start from scratch.

I mean, I had a sleepless night about three nights before,

wondering, "Are we going to do this or not?"

Iron Maiden, welcome to Jakarta, yeah!

We're from Indonesia. We love you! Up the Iron!

FANS SHOUT AND CHANT

We're waiting for Iron Maiden to come here almost 20 years!

All my friends in Indonesia, they come from every single city,

from different directions.

They finally found their idol here.

They forget their religion, they forget their skin,

they forget everything,

they just want to hear and sing Iron Maiden songs.

You wouldn't call this our normal stage.

This is the show we've had a lot of trouble getting together.

Really nice people who haven't done many shows here.

This stage is made up of all sorts of different steel,

towers and trusses, and there's, like, loads of it back here,

that's all rusty, it's all a little bit bent.

This stage has got a hell of a slope on it!

We spent two months asking them

if there's any layer scaffolding available, they told me there wasn't.

This is the first thing I found when I walked into the building!

Loads of it.

That's the show power right there, the whole lot.

Don't fall into that, that's all live.

That whole thing is live, you know?

Obviously, what we're used to is a door that's closed, when you open it,

it disconnects everything and makes it safe.

This is completely live. The whole lot.

And if it rains, it's going to be getting wet.

Standard procedure, there's a bomb dog.

We're going to go ahead and check the production office for bombs,

and we're doing it all over the venue.

And it's serious, you know, it's a serious threat.

So there we go, the dressing rooms are safe

and we didn't find any bombs in there.

Which is nice to know!

Some tours go dead easy, some go a little bit awry,

and as you know, in Indonesia, there were a few hiccups there.

What have you got in here?

Oh, my God.

This isn't the same as the photograph that we sent you.

What was very heartening for me was, I talked to Dickie,

and a couple of days before, he's getting all very defensive

about the production crew there, saying

"Well, they're really nice people,

"the most wonderful people, and they're trying really hard."

From, really, this nightmare scenario three days before,

then it ended out to be a pretty cracking show.

Is it safe?

It's nice, Jakarta is.

I haven't been out much, due to the fact someone said

I might get kidnapped!

MUSIC: 2 Minutes To Midnight by Iron Maiden

# But don't you pray for my soul any more.

# Two minutes to midnight

# The hands that threaten doom. #

Playing in Bali was absolutely tremendous,

and the feeling that they generated,

they're a beautiful culture, beautiful nation of people there.

So it really had a, kind of, spiritual feel about that show.

It's definitely unusual here, we don't usually play quarries,

but as you can see, we've got really high walls here,

so it's actually like playing in a cardboard box without

a roof on top of it, so what we've tried to do is aim the PA

so that it doesn't bounce off the walls to much, because as

you can see, what's going to happen, the sound hits that wall,

it hits that wall, then it hits that wall, and then comes back at us.

I've mixed the audio for Iron Maiden since December '79,

For the public, I mix the out-front.

They call it the front of house sound.

I mix for what the audience hears.

From here, I can make it sound real good,

but I can't see what's happening up in that corner of the room

or that part of the ballpark or whatever,

so it's Mike's job to make sure that what I'm doing here

gets to all the people.

Expectations for sound these days are a lot higher.

The sound systems are much, much better,

and I think the audience,

they listen to the sound all the time now on CDs.

Ten, 15 years ago it was a different story.

If you were sat at the back of one of these places,

you didn't really expect to hear it quite so well.

So here we have the actual main PA system.

We have two hangs per side for this system,

one covers the main front part of the audience, another hang

exactly the same size covers the outer part of the audience.

So we have four delay speakers. Now, where we're standing here,

we're probably something like 80 to 90 metres from the PA.

If you were seeing the band in a normal big arena, sports arena,

you'd be at the very back at this position.

If you look up to the back, here,

we've probably got another 100 metres of throw to the very back.

So what we do is we put in another set of speakers,

we have two sets here that cover the very back of the arena,

and then we have speakers at the side

that will cover the very top sides of the arena.

MUSIC: "Hallowed Be Thy Name"

Seven shows in Australia, it's like a mini-tour.

We've taken on an Aussie crew, got our own lighting crew,

got our own sound crew,

we've got our own trucks for the next seven shows, which is going to be really nice.

It's going to be more like the regular touring

that we do in the US and Europe.

You know, we'll still be using the plane,

the crew will be travelling on the plane,

but all our equipment will be in the trucks.

I'll tell you the biggest problem I have right now,

is we're not putting equipment in the plane,

so that means we all have to sit in the back of the plane

for take off because there's not enough weight.

That's my biggest logistical problem.

I've got three 48-foot trucks,

we carry our set in one and a half of them,

we carry extra lighting in the other half,

and then we carry our back line of monitors

and front of house in the third one.

It's pretty much a breeze to load in and out.

We flew over our set, our rolling set,

because we need to get out of the way on a festival situation,

so other bands can play in front of us.

As you can see we're having fun with our own stage set,

for when we were back in Norfolk all those months ago,

loading the sea container with the stage set.

Well, this is it in Australia,

and we're using this throughout this leg,

and it saves people building one for us, which is very nice.

It's so much easier. It has wheels, for a start!

And all the back line can live in it,

all the cabs and all the decorations,

everything can all live in there.

Getting in here early so we can get the set here

and work out how it's all going to fit in with everyone else.

We've got Sydney Festival tomorrow,

we don't get there till two o'clock in the afternoon,

the doors are already open, the show's already started,

so we need to build our set behind a black drop, and it's just Bill's job

and the local stage manager, Dougal's, to keep it organised,

because really, really quickly it could turn into a complete cluster.

A festival's a festival at the end of the day,

it's one of those days where you do so much

and you have to wait for all the bands to get off stage

and then you hope that everything's working fine,

because you haven't had that much time during the day

because obviously you haven't had the stage.

Because everybody else will be on there.

You just hope that everything's working.

We're trying to make some noise by six, so I've only got

about an hour and ten minutes to get it all going for Doug.

This whole aspect of the tour's been pretty elastic,

doing, say, festivals, for example, you do a back-to-back festival,

we might not get there until, I don't know,

10:30, 11 in the morning, and the doors are at two.

So it's like, panic, "What comes off the truck first?

"Whatever it is, go ahead and set that up."

It's not just about ourselves, there's a lot of other bands on,

so it's going to be a real tough one,

we could probably be here overnight tonight,

just to get this stuff built, it's what we have to do.

# As the guards march me out to the courtyard... #

Just waiting for these lights to go up and then we'll bring the carts in

and try to get the set built and as much as we can tonight.

And now this is the fun part of festivals

where we have to take certain bits of it apart

and move it for the other bands to get on and off.

Luckily, on this one, we're hoping we can leave the riser

and the two back-line carts.

The next problem is created because of this,

because normally when we would roll these carts on, we'd have room here,

but, obviously, today we haven't because of the structure,

so where the guitar amps would live here,

Sean Brady, as well, looks after Adrian Smith,

that cart would come crashing straight through it.

So we've got to make sure that we let everybody know, because

they're going to build all their kit tomorrow while we're not here.

That's the thing we do in festivals.

Every day we have to change the plot,

every day there's a new problem.

Here we are at Soundwave, the first day, Brisbane, 47,500,

sold out a while ago.

A lot of great bands, we're going to play to a whole load of people

we haven't played to before.

We've only played Brisbane once in the last 20-odd years,

that was last time, we did about 12,000 people,

so there's got to be a big amount of travellers.

30,000 haven't seen us before,

so it's going to be interesting, it's going to be fun.

It's always good to play to a new audience,

because it makes them work hard to get them into the family. I'm expecting a good day.

Always love playing Australia, the Soundwave festivals were fantastic.

Back stage was really nice,

and we had, you know, that guy turn up with the weird animals,

and seeing other bands - its nice to do gigs with other bands,

because we're normally quite isolated, we do our shows,

we get our audience, which is great, but it's nice to get the energy.

There's a different energy at those festivals.

# Happy birthday, dear Adrian... #

Thank you very much.

# Happy birthday to you. #

You're doing this just for the cameras, aren't you?!

# And many more. #

Woo-hoo!

I've still got it mate, I've still got it!

MUSIC: "Hallowed Be Thy Name"

# Whoa

# Whoa

# Whoa

# Whoa

# Whoa. #

We're going to have a late loading,

so it's going to be a rush for us tomorrow,

we just land straight for the gig

and then if the trucks are there, load it in straight away.

We're looking at about one o'clock, I believe.

Come down.

The chain hook has come out the top of the piece,

there's no way of lifting this up,

and we have to lift this up to dismantle it.

Robin, put yourself in there, right? I'm going to send you up a rope.

There's no physical structure down there,

it's just the actual curtain side of the stage,

and obviously working up there in the dark with no safety rails

and stuff they've gotta stay clipped on to at least two points.

If one of them guys falls... No rock and roll show's worth that,

so it literally is that classic story of safety first, you know?

Andy's just putting a rope across it now

just so that we can keep the weight of the tower.

The danger is with the chain that's on

it could swing about 20 foot across the stage,

hit some lights and bring the lights down on everybody,

so it's slowly, slowly, catchy, monkey on this one, I'm afraid.

Nobody got hurt, mate, most important thing,

nothing else really matters today, Andy.

Yeah, a serious pack up, this time.

We have to trim down back to our fighting weight of 12 tons,

so that means our rolling set has to be packed into a sea container

to go forth to England for the summer tour,

and then there's the normal stuff

that goes into the back of Ed Force One,

so it'll be a little bit longer load out and more breaking apart of things

that normally we'd just throw right in the truck, use it the next day.

My boys did an hour and 15 minute load out the last show,

it was really, really good.

Thank you and goodnight, Australia!

February 9th we started this part of the tour,

and today we're in Adelaide, it's the 6th March,

and so far it's 18,000 shots.

I'm averaging about 1,000 pictures per show,

and then you've got all the shots that come outside of that

with the plane, with the loadings and hotels and things like that.

But at the moment it's 18,000.

My job is to edit them down to the cream of the crop

and they're the ones that go out.

We're just about to take some nice portraits of the band

in front of the plane, and you would think

this sort of thing would be simple, but it isn't.

It involves many people clearing runways and taxi ways,

getting special permission to park the plane here

so we haven't got a load of clutter behind it.

And also we're getting the wind moved,

so it's blowing in the other direction,

so it'll be better for the pictures(!)

If only that was true!

We then headed to Japan, which was a really exciting time for us.

We were going to do two shows in Tokyo,

everyone was looking forward to the show so much,

and certainly, from the advance point of view,

everything had gone very smoothly

and everything was in place for the two Tokyo shows.

We were up in the air, about ten minutes away

from landing at Tokyo, when they had a massive earthquake.

BRUCE: 'We haven't any further details on the quake

'at the moment, simply that obviously it's fairly serious,

'the whole of the airports in the region are closed

'and there is no determination

'as to when they will be able to accept aircraft.'

'Air traffic control, as you can imagine,

'is under quite some stress at the moment.'

'We have made a decision early to go to Nagoya,

'where we will get on the ground and find out what the situation is,

'put some more petrol on the aeroplane

'and then see how we can resolve the situation.'

We've landed now in Nagoya, a lot of airplanes are all diverting,

it sounds very serious, there's an 8.8 magnitude quake,

just north of Narita.

We can't get hold of anyone in Tokyo,

all the phone lines are down, all the cell...

I got through to a landline

but there was a recorded message in Japanese

which, of course, I don't understand.

If there's going to be a show, I think the sensible thing

at the moment, for us, would probably be to leave the aeroplane here,

truck the equipment in and out, if there's going to be a show.

By the sounds of it, that's sounding increasingly unlikely.

The show must go on,

but we really don't know what's happening there at the moment.

So it's a question of do we stay here?

The airports are still closed, both airports are closed in Tokyo,

so that means there's something relatively serious,

and we'll figure it out.

There's a rumour that there's a 20-metre tsunami.

Now, how... As we said, we just don't know at the moment.

So here we are, you know, it's the morning after,

we're still having shakes and quakes and stuff going on, aftershocks,

but we're in Nagoya, you know, safe.

We're about to get back on our buses,

we're going to head back to the aeroplane

now that we have a game plan and a decision,

and we're going to fly onto Mexico via Hawaii.

-Griffin?

-Hello.

-Thank you.

That morning, the first show was cancelled.

It seemed fairly obvious as the news unfolded

that the second show would be cancelled.

In light of everything else, that's all pretty secondary.

We just send our love and best wishes

to all Japanese fans and Japanese people.

CROWD: Maiden, Maiden, Maiden!

Right, so here I am, just collecting the washing

that I don't want to put in the dryer, just stuff that's air dried.

This is my wardrobe room today, it's a bit dark and a bit messy.

I just basically look after the band, as in stage clothes-wise,

but if they ever need anything,

I'm usually the one to run and fetch things if they need it.

I'd describe this job as balancing six plates.

So this is the lounge area.

They've done a pretty good job today,

it's always different every show.

These are the drum heads, so I have a stash

and put out three every show for Nicko to sign

so that he can throw them at the end of the show.

MUSIC: "Fear Of The Dark"

# Sometimes when you're scared to take a look

# At the corner of the room

# You've sensed that something's watching you

# Fear of the dark

# Fear of the dark

# I have constant fear that something's always near

# Fear of the dark

# Fear of the dark... #

It's a digital desk, it's got the capabilities of 120 inputs,

30 outputs. We actually use 22 of those.

There's actually 20 mixes,

everything's different, totally, totally different.

If the band want to hear certain things, if they can't hear

a certain thing on the side of the stage,

if they want to listen to that.

We actually go around and make sure that everything's

working properly so it's all blending, hopefully, together.

Then we get the guys to actually make some noise.

HE PLAYS A HEAVY TUNE

We can't bring a lot of our cases, trunks and things,

so all the guitars, keyboards, have to travel separately.

I had to clear out about a third of my workbox

to make space for other people and to get the weight down.

I think the best way to talk about things with Steve

is there is very little to say,

which is how he prefers it, and I've been with him a long time

and pretty much anticipate what he might be wanting.

He knows more about my gear than I do and I'm lost without him.

He also plays keyboards, as people know.

I don't actually consider myself to be a keyboard player as such,

but I can do the stuff that Maiden requires,

and some of it's not simple.

Here's the rig.

We've got all sorts of things in there, you've got wireless,

he uses wireless on a couple of songs,

songs like Iron Maiden, where they like to do

a swinging guitar around his head.

This is a Pete Cornish unit, it's got pedals built into it,

and I control the pedals from here.

Justin Garrick, the man who looks after all my gear,

does a fantastic job.

He presses all the buttons for me,

gets everything together that I need, fixes the guitars,

fixes the amps, and there's a lot of fixing to be done.

So on tour we have to bring spares for everything,

I mean, even on this tour I have changed a pick up on this tour,

volume pots, things like this go when, you know,

you spin them around or throw them, sweat gets in them,

so all these things get changed out so we have spares.

It's not a daily thing,

but it's things that may happen once on a tour.

And he's a very, very competent guy, and not only that,

he's worked with Ronnie Wood, he's worked with Razorlight.

He's a tremendous asset to Iron Maiden

and I'm really thankful that we've found him.

Well, my world, my name is Sean Brady,

and I'm Adrian Smith's butler.

I rely on Sean a lot, because my set-up is not very high-tech,

so, you know, if I'm taking a solo, for example,

Sean usually punches my effects in.

It's also a question of, you know,

the less wiring you have on stage, the better the sound.

It's a 100-watt amplifier, of course, not a 50 and not even 101,

because we don't go to 11 here. As you can see, we only go to ten.

We've looked into 11

but it has been patented by a certain other English rock act.

Yeah, Sean puts up with my moods now and again, you know,

when things aren't going well, and calms me down a bit,

and we have a good rapport, you know?

Usually I have masses of gear, you never know what you're going

to need, but you know, we work it out down to pretty much

the nearest amount of strings we're going to need.

Colin, my guitar tech, has been absolutely tremendous,

he's been with me now for a few years

and there's a great working relationship.

He always kind of knows what sound I'm looking for.

Everybody keeps coming along and making notes of all these dials

to get that perfect Davey tone,

and I just keep doing that, because none of them work!

We're out there to do a job and to play,

but then at the same time, you know, we have a laugh.

The difference is I have six flight cases when we do a normal tour

with trucks in Europe and America.

On this, I've got... I think it's 26 pieces.

Charlie's been with me now for, I can't remember, eight years,

something like that, maybe nine.

He's a fantastic drum tech, he's the only drum tech I've ever had

that I allow to tune my drums for me. I'd showed him

how I tuned them and tone wise, the difference between each drum.

The tuning's got to be bang on, and when you've got nine toms,

it's quite difficult.

And the cymbals. Everything, just the angles of everything,

he notices everything and he'll sit there sometimes

and just close his eyes and just do this with the stick.

And he'll straight away, and you're talking a couple of millimetres.

But it really is very essential,

because it's like a precision instrument, my drum kit,

if one part of it's out, the whole thing's completely...

I'll sit there and if one thing is out on this side of the drums,

by the time you get up here it's way out of position.

But Charlie is very, very good.

MUSIC: "2 Minutes To Midnight"

# Midnight

# All night. #

CHEERING

Oh, yeah!

-BLEEP

-great audience, phenomenal!

This is for the people in Japan tonight.

MUSIC: "The Talisman"

# When I stand and look About the port

# And contemplate my life... #

We're in Monterrey, Mexico,

it's really early o'clock in the morning,

we basically got out of bed at four o'clock, three thirty,

after a great show last night, and by the time we'd loaded

and got to bed, it was one o'clock in the morning. So you do the math.

that's about three hours sleep for some, if we're lucky.

You know, it's tough because you're doing lots of flights,

the crew sleep less than probably we do, but you know,

they're just trying to cram in a bit of sleep here and there.

You find odd guys lying across flight cases and things like that,

just trying to grab a couple of hours' sleep,

because it's tough on them.

So we arrived here yesterday,

we arrived late last night from Lima, Peru on Ed Force One.

Came in early this morning, we've got gear coming from all over,

we've got the Big Eddie's coming on the sea container from the UK,

we have towers that we flew airfreight over from Australia,

we have the goat that's back out, and we have other bits and pieces,

so it's a full-production Maiden show, hence the extra day.

We also have our moving motors which is...

We have parts of the lighting rig move and give it a spaceship effect.

You know, we don't have the luxury of using that everywhere we go,

basically because the technology that you need to use it

is not available everywhere, you just can't get it,

and it's quite costly to fly it around.

But we do have it for these big shows.

We've been going through this tour with basic set and six drapes,

but there's four shows here -

Sao Paulo, Rio, Chile and Argentina - which we'll put a full show in,

which includes two other drapes.

We've got the devil goat and, of course, the Big Eddie at the back.

Big Eddie is in those two carts.

Big Eddie, he's a one off, bespoke.

He's a great big fibreglass and metal structure.

It comes together in the two biggest boxes you've ever seen in your life.

We're going to places that on a normal, routine tour

you would never, ever go to, you'd fly over,

and so we find ourselves in places like Belem in North Brazil,

just on the edge of the rainforest, and my goodness, did it rain!

They don't call it the rainforest for nothing, I suppose.

This is the second day of torrential rain we've had,

pretty typical for this area.

Well, a little stronger than normal, we've been told.

You know, it builds up, all the heat comes out the jungle,

moisture comes into the air, and then about 2:30 in the afternoon

it all falls out again, and today it's falling on top of us.

So anyway, loads of plastic, loads of sweeping,

trying to keep the equipment dry,

lots of mosquitoes, dengue fever, torrential rains,

but, yeah, definitely beats a nine to five job, I can tell you that much!

CROWD: Maiden, Maiden!

It's our Amazonian angel, Eddie.

Maiden!

We're about three and a half hours away from doors,

and there's some more thunder, and it'll be another great show tonight,

you know, it's going to be packed out, really excited Brazilian fans,

have not seen Maiden yet in this area.

In fact, very few bands have actually been up this way,

so that adds some extra excitement for some life-long Maiden fans

that are going to get to see them for the first time

up here in the Amazon Basin, in the jungles of Brazil.

MUSIC: "When The Wild Wind Blows"

# Hey

# Hey, hey

# Hey... #

-AUDIENCE CHANT:

-Hey! Hey! Hey!

# He sees the picture on the wall

# It's falling down

# Upside down... #

Somebody, who will remain nameless,

decided to film a new DVD in Santiago and Buenos Aires

due to the fact of the good crowd reactions and such.

All the logistics were put together, months and months,

sea containing out the Big Eddie.

Air freighting in the towers, extra drapes.

We did rock in Rio, but it just seemed the turn to go further south.

Six o'clock in the morning we got up,

and as you can see, it's still dark,

it looks more like the end of a load out than a load in.

Yeah, early start today, big, big show,

the crew's been at it all night, moved down here yesterday.

Yeah, this is Chile's national stadium.

They were going to pull it down

but then they decided to keep it as a monument.

A monument to all the people that were killed in here by Pinochet,

this is one of the places where he executed thousands of people -

they reckon up to 100,000 people were killed during his dictatorship,

that's not that long ago, 1973.

But we're here for something a bit more lively.

It can be quite distracting when you've got...

I think there was 20 or 30 cameras,

every note, every move you make's being recorded

but you've just got to try and forget about that.

Because there is limited space on the plane,

we have quite a small and compact and sophisticated recording system

which takes feeds from the front desk,

and we record everything digitally, and then we have a few other,

seven or 11 different microphones around to capture the audience.

The audience is an integral part of the Maiden experience,

I mean, the audience is something else, they sing every song,

every lyric, it's something to see.

The Santiago crowd was particularly animated.

60,000 people,

and I don't think there was anyone that wasn't singing along with them.

MUSIC: "Blood Brothers"

# We're blood brothers... # Chile!

# We're blood brothers

# We're blood brothers... # What are we?!

# We're blood brothers... #

Here we are, we're about to launch off from a murky Chile

towards Puerto Rico.

Out of here, obviously, it's seven hours and 16 minutes flight plan

going to Chile, going over the Andes pretty much straight away.

MUSIC: "Flight of Icarus"

# Fly on your way

# Like an eagle

# Fly as high as the sun

# On your wings like an eagle... #

The speed of a beast.

# Fly, touch the sun

# Yeah. #

Because of the size of the Iron Maiden shows,

screens are a really important part of the production.

We use a total of eight cameras, four main cameras

looking at all the band members which you have to direct and cue.

..finishing on four.

We carry three mini cameras of our own which go on Nicko.

There is one other camera, which, of course, Eddie has,

which gives us a good show to the screens.

We're here in Puerto Rico, three shows from the end.

We've had some interesting challenges along the way

with language barriers.

With a lot of these countries, you get what you're given,

and some of the kit I've seen has been hysterical,

I mean, it's like early '80's,

so you do have to take the rough with the smooth.

This has been slightly easier here in Puerto Rico.

It's been a very good meeting.

We have had pretty interesting runs in South America,

but this is a good one

and I've got a good feeling about the show tonight.

LYRICS: "Iron Maiden"

# Oh well, wherever, wherever you are

# Iron Maiden's going to get you, No matter how far

# See the blood flow watching it shed Up above my head

# Iron Maiden wants you for dead. #

CHEERING

PLANE ENGINES ROAR

So we do two shows in Florida, it was great,

and to finish up in Tampa, we hadn't been for 20 years or so,

it capped off the tour well.

I think, at the end, everyone was pretty well about time to go home.

And we're back in America now.

We've been through Chile again, which was a fantastic gig.

We've done Puerto Rico, and now we're in Florida

doing the last two gigs, and it's been an absolutely fantastic tour.

It's not doing the longest tour by any means,

but for some strange reason

having it on Ed Force One magnifies everything.

We really are living in a fish bowl.

You've spent time with everybody every day for months on end

when you're on tour, time zone to time zone, different languages,

different cultures, every day the equipment's different,

and we're all trying to make the show look and sound the same.

It's been great, it's been really good, the spirits have been high.

I think the band's enjoying it as well.

All in all, I've had a blast.

We're still standing, you know,

we might have aged a little bit, maybe a few chinks in the armour,

every night has been absolutely tremendous, you know,

and it's hard to determine one night as better than another

because they're all great.

With all the pre-work, the money, the agreements,

the hotels being provided, which hotels,

when can we land and when can't,

with all that pre-work, to actually make the tour work,

it's the crew who make it work.

We've got a really fantastic crew, and they all know what's needed,

they're all trying their hardest to get the show looking the best

it can be, and that's all you can ask of anybody, really.

Yeah, we're all mates,

we all watch each other's backs in difficult situations.

It's part of what it takes to be in a killer crew. I'm sure it's what makes us the best.

We're all very loyal to Maiden because they are to us,

it really is like one big family.

I wouldn't say one big happy family all the time!

There we go, this'll learn you!

To put that amount of people together

is quite a contrived scenario, but when you think about it

it's like any other regular family, but we're not related.

We're related through rock and roll!

MUSIC: "Coming Home"

# When I stand before you shining

# In the early morning sun

# When I feel the engines roar

# And I think of what we've done... #

It's been a great tour, we've done a lot of miles,

time for a break, recharge the batteries and get home

and put a few shelves up, bit of painting and decorating!

Well, it's the longest we've ever done, actually.

It felt like a really, really long time to be away.

Considering the first one was not much more than six weeks,

the extra three weeks, you know.

It's equivalent to 50,000 miles,

we've been around the planet twice in a couple of months,

you know, obviously we've spent a lot of it in South America,

When you go back, although we've been to a lot of places before,

it always feels new, and especially the audiences, as well,

they seem to be getting younger.

Nothing's perfect in this world

and we try to be the best you can be,

but at the end of the day, I think we've gone out there

and we've done the best we can in the given circumstances,

with quite a lot against us on this tour.

Yeah, we're on a private plane, but the distances are like,

you know, ten hours' flight or whatever,

I mean we actually went through the dateline from Japan to Hawaii

and then Mexico, and we got there before we left,

I mean, work that one out!

I actually had two days' birthdays, and who wants that at my age?

# Show me the way to go home

# I'm tired and I want to go to bed. #

Yee-ha, we're heading home!

See all them names on that side of the plane there?

It doesn't say England on the bottom,

but that's where we're going,

and that's where I'm looking forward to being.

We're coming home!

Is this the bus home, Mark?

OK, the flying bus home.

Yes, baby, yeah.

Success, triumph. Again.

It's been an emotional rollercoaster ride.

Good to be going home.

# I'm going home, I've done my time. #

I don't want to go. Not finished yet.

That's it, it's all over.

# When I see the runway lights

# In the misty dawn, the night is fading fast

# Coming home, far away

# As the vapour trails align

# Where I've been tonight

# You know I will not stay

# Coming home, far away

# When I see the runway lights

# In the misty dawn, the night is fading fast

# Coming home, far away

# As the vapour trails align

# Where I've been tonight

# You know I will not stay. #

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