Iron Maiden celebrate their big 5-0 with an enormous historical coffee table tome that will delight Maiden ’Eds.
On Christmas Day this year, Iron Maiden will mark their half-century. For some sort of scale, last week The X Factor album turned 30. What to many of a certain age still feels like a new era, when Bruce Dickinson returned to the mic after leaving the band in 1992, now encapsulates more than half of that timeline.
That Maiden still endure – indeed, they played their biggest-ever headline gig in London earlier this year at Steve Harris’ beloved West Ham, a gig so Iron Maiden that the fact that they’ve only just done it speaks satisfyingly of there still, even now, being worlds left to conquer – is clearly to be celebrated. As is their desire to keep looking forward rather than settling on a setlist of 10 classics and two token new ones.
Looking back has never been much of Maiden’s thing, always being absorbed in what they’re doing right now. Still, when they do, it’s a special occasion in its own right. As with their historical tours, massive new coffee table book Infinite Dreams is the very best version of what such a thing could be, packed with enough memorabilia to get even the most hardened heads giddy with excitement.
The band’s history is told in deep detail, the ups and downs, by the men themselves. Which is good enough to take a bath in on its own. But you get fully pulled into Maidenworld by everything else around it that brings the words to life.
There are literally hundreds of photos from every point of their history, unseen overs from photoshoots, candid tour shots, horsing around, studio stuff, epic shows to 100,00 people, and simple passport pics, all in a size big enough to do them justice. The early days stuff in particular is brilliant, a proper time capsule back to another era and a very different world, telling the story on their own without need for an actual written narrative.
There are breakdowns of bits of stage sets, like the ghouls from the Seventh Son era, and sketches and unused ideas for artwork. Album and single covers are all given an examination, as are the band’s instruments. There’s handwritten lyrics and fan jackets and tour passes and setlists. There’s detail of Bruce and his fencing stuff, and a shot of him with only a towel for modesty. There’s also one where Rod Smallwood has a beard like Jeremy Beadle. And then there’s Eddie, in all his various forms, as close to his own book as one might ever get.
“I’ve never taken particular notice of anniversaries,” is ’Arry’s opening throw in his foreword. When they do, though, Iron Maiden do them like nobody else.
Infinite Dreams is out now via Thames & Hudson
