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Magazine
HAPPENING
Intense wall of music
TUSHAR MENON
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Iron Maiden’s concert in Mumbai was all that fans could hope for and more.
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The air of excitement the night before the Iron Maiden concert in Mumbai was palpable. And contagious. The band was looking forward to the start of the “Somewhere Back in Time” tour just as keenly as their most dedicated fans. “R
16;Moonchild’ is sounding great in the rehearsals,” said Bruce Dickinson, unable to keep from sharing a secret about what to expect the next day. At the concert, a fan from Chennai said he would have to spend the night in the railway station. “I don’t mind. I’ve heard ‘Aces High’,” he said.
As one of the hundreds who had struggled with the conditions in Bangalore at the Maiden’s first concert in India in March last year, I was determined to make it to the front row and stay there this time. I reached the MMRDA grounds early enough in the morning to beat even the security personnel. I walked in, planted myself at my dream spot — right in front of where Adrian Smith would be standing some 14 hours later — and waited for the inevitable eviction.
This was handled quite commendably. Rather than being viciously yelled at, as the early birds had been in Bangalore, we were politely asked to line up outside. It was a pleasant surprise. Most of the people who got to the venue well ahead of time seemed to make it to the front. The eight-and-a-half-hour wait, this time, was entirely worth it.
The most bizarre moment of the evening came after Lauren Harris’s set when someone in the crowd tapped the Canadian filmmaker Sam Dunn on the shoulder and asked him for some water! It might just make it into his next documentary on heavy metal.
Great opening
Few things stir a crowd of passionate Iron Maiden fans like Churchill’s famous “We shall fight them on the beaches” speech. This could mean only one thing — the concert was going to begin with the single greatest opening song on an Iron Maiden album. As this taped intro to ‘Aces High’ gave way to the intense wall of sound of three harmonising guitars playing in perfect unison, the crowd did their best to drown it out.
And then there was Bruce Dickinson; possibly the greatest performer alive. Dickinson’s voice sounds better today than it did at Maiden’s so-called peak. It always upset his fans that he never did hit the high note at the end of “Aces High” cleanly in any live version of the song available (including some of the better quality bootlegs). He did that here. Dickinson was the star of the show. And that isn’t easy when one has the likes of Smith, Murray and Harris to contend with.
Malfunction
Unfortunately for Adrian Smith, most of the equipment malfunctions seemed to affect him. Inevitably the first show of a tour will have its share of technical glitches. This is a trade-off fans have to make for the excitement of a brand new stage setting and an unknown setlist. Smith’s guitar technician, Sean Brady, was like a seventh member of the band on the night. Fortunately it didn’t affect the guitar work, which was stellar.
It is not often that a band embarks on such a colossal tour without an album to promote. When it does happen (this is the fourth such Maiden tour since the reunion in 2000), it gives the fanatics something even more drool-worthy. The setlist was neither entirely unpredictable, nor was it the best imaginable. It was, however, the best we could realistically hope for.
The purists might argue that “Fear of the Dark” simply did not belong on this tour, but they would be outnumbered by those who would have been disappointed at its exclusion. To make up for that we got “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Powerslave” and “Revelations”. But most memorable was the inclusion of “Moonchild” as the first song of the encore. Dickinson had been right the previous day. This was definitely the song that benefited the most from having three guitarists, with Adrian Smith playing the heavy keyboard riffs from the intro on the guitar, palm muting the strings to add to the heaviness. It was pure bliss, in spite of the fact that Janick Gers has now usurped this trademark Adrian Smith solo too. But if he can deal with it, we ought to be able to as well.
The overall concert experience, like the setlist, was the best that we could realistically have hoped for. One could always complain about the incessant pureeing the front rows had to endure. But, in all fairness, it wasn’t as often as in Bangalore, and it also served to filter out the less enthusiastic fans who were unwilling to cope with such punishment in the name of Iron Maiden.
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