Iron Maiden Book:

Iron Maiden - What Are We Doing This for ? (Spanish Edition) Reviews:
Great pictures by a highly skilled photographer, but still....
2007-02-10 - Iron Maiden is actually a rather odd metal band.

Or perhaps "odd" isn't the word I'm looking for. Different is probably better, really. Not only have they been passionately faithful to their genre throughout all the long years they've been playing, they're furthermore - to this very day - a whole lot better at what they're doing, compared to their younger contemporaries. While most other rock/metal dudes grow more and more pathetic, stupid, and retarded as they reach old age, Steve Harris is still as brilliant as ever when he stands with one foot on a monitor while aiming his bass at the audience and flawlessly presenting his trademark bass lines, and Nicko McBrain still looks like the happiest kid in the world whenever he sits down behind his drums, smiling the biggest smile you ever saw. Say what you will about their sometimes eternally long songs; during their long career they're created numerous metal anthems, and today's successors have much to thank them for.

In a day and age when most new metal bands seem to be spending more time getting their mascara right instead of putting out songs worth listening to, Iron Maiden is still a breeze of fresh metal air in this ocean filled with narcissistic brats who, disillusioned as they are, continue referring to their music as "hard" rock.

The majority of these bands come out about as metal as Vanilla Ice came out hiphop. Metalheads? Well, no, not really. Make-upheads is probably a better choice of word.

Be that as it may (and being a Cure freak, it's not the make-up I have a problem with), there's this one thing about these Brits I've always appreciated: I've never come across a band, especially not a metal band, that smile as much as Iron Maiden do. They simply seem to be unusually friendly, and in an honest way, too. And that's a good thing, obviously, even if a happy smile might not be the first think you think of when it comes to metal.

Which reminds me, this is supposed to be a book review, and flipping through the pages of Ross Halfin's thick book Iron Maiden, you'll find smiling band members wherever you look. Halfin became friends with the band early on in their career, and over the years he's covered them on all sorts of stages in countries all over the world. But again, he's a close friend to the band, and as a result many of the pictures are taken off-stage, too. And that's a good thing, because a book filled only with pictures of the smiling Brits on stage would probably feel extremely boring after a while. But luckily, that's not the case with this book.

Well, most of the time, anyways. Because it does get a little boring from time to time, but not because the pictures are bad (most aren't). Instead it's due to lack of context. And that, in turn, is caused by lack of captions. For example, take the pictures of Harris and Dave Murray, when they're standing still smiling goofy smiles on a large outdoor-stage. The captions inform the reader that they're smiling due to the fact that they're doing the soundcheck in front of the whole audience on a stage in Zagreb in former Yugoslavia. Knowing this, the entertainment value of the pictures are drastically increased. Sadly though, this kind of information is rarely present throughout the book.

Iron Maiden is a book that the most devoted fans will most definitely buy, and they're right in doing so. However, you don't have to be a devoted Maiden fan to buy it. If nothing else, the large number of quite hilarious pictures from the 80s, where the band members pose in the most outrageous outfits imaginable, makes the book worth buying. Because whoever said you're not allowed to smile just because you happen to be a metalhead?

A great photographer and an even greater band!
1999-05-11 - This book is written by Ross Halfin. He has followed Iron Maiden with his camera almost since the start in the late 70:s. It is full with great photos and some text as well. If you're a true Maiden-fan this book is a must! Up the Irons!