There are dead bodies lying on trestle tables in the midst of the tangled scaffolding and controlled chaos that represents Iron Maiden’s rear of stage neighbourhood – and I’m not in the least bit surprised.

I’ve just returned from a tour of the venue where the veteran British Metallers are playing this evening and the place is rammed to burst. Directly out front, a seething mass of humanity is jostling for position in a tightly bound, boarded over space that is usually utilised as an ice hockey pitch. Meanwhile 3 tiers of seats rise steeply up the walls and even through the escalating fug of cigarette smoke that looms like a tainted cloud, you can see that every single damn space is occupied. Moreover, below each dimly lit exit sign you’ll find a wedge of people jammed in the door frame like a cork in a bottle, trying to get inside. Has the gig been oversold? I couldn’t possible say. But it looks as if the entire population of a medium-sized town has been crushed in with all the subtlety of a fisted beer can.

Elsewhere the sides of the catacomb-like corridors that coil throughout the building have been painted light mud colour. The are no stairs, only precipitious ramps that spiral up to cheerless bars or slither down to nowhere. At strategic points, lardy burger van types in puce pinafores preside over glowing bare metal trays full of pale sausages – or are they giant earthworms? The whole place smells like a grease factory.
This, then, is te T-mobile arena in Prague, capital of the Czech republic. Despite the name, it’s a world away from WAP enablement, polyphonic ringtones, built in digital cameras and 50 free text messages a month.
And the dead bodies – the Czech cadavers, if you will? Dressed in World War one uniforms and sporting blackened tin helmets, they stretch out awkwardly and cradle their rusty rifles like new born babies. Earlier had these ex-soldiers been part of an elite-but-archaic fighting fors designed to keep tonight’s raging crowd under control? Had their efforts been repelled by the failing bullet belts of an equally antiquated army of rock fans still stuck in the 1980s, their denim jackets even now emblazoned with faded patches extolling the virtues of Venom and Manowar? Skipping gingerly past the stiff limbed corpses and around the spools of barbed wire, I hope that these questions will be answered as the evening progresses.

Travelling to the T-Mobile arena a few hours earlier, the mood in Maiden’s gleaming jet black tour bus had been more positive than a Manchester City attacking formation (Or given the present company, maybe I should say more bubbly that a chorus of West Ham fans). If Maiden are at all world weary or glumly resigned to being back on the European tour trail for the umpteenth time they’re doing a very good job at disguising it!
‘So the original team is on the road with us again after all these years!’ quips band manager Rod Smallwood, gesturing towards me and Clasic Rock photographer Ross Halfin, who is also on board, And it’s true – following a May 1979 review in Sounds music weekly of a fledgling Maiden in the bill with Angel Witch and Samson at London’s music machine, ross and myself follow it up with a full blown interview and photo session with basist Steve Harris and his compatriots at the time, Paul D’oanno, Dave Murray, Tony Parsons and Doug Sampson. The resultant story was published in the October 27 1979 edition of Sounds, fact fans, and Samllwood assures me was the band’s first ever music press interview.
‘It seems like yesterday… It remember those photos we took outside that strip club… Christ where’s all that time gone?’ Smallwood blurts out in typically blunt Yorkshire fashion – and I wish I was capable of offering a sensible reply.

Later, as the bus careers relentlessly through Prague’s narrow Bohemian streets, the conversation turns to Kiss’s ongoing tour with Aerosmith and the allegation that Peter Criss isn’t actually playing the drums.
‘It’s all taped. Criss can’t hack it anymore – his drum beats sound exactly the same, night in night out’ comes the claim from a shit- stirrer who will remain anonymous.
”Ere ‘Arry, that sounds like a cracking idea,’ pipes up Maiden drumm Nicko McBrain, who joined the band in 1983, replacing Clive Burr (who in turn took over from the aforementioned Sampson). ‘Yea I could have somma that.’ McBrain continues as the bus rattles over coarse cobbles. ‘A nice little drum machine going bippety-bip, bippety-bip. Then I could put my feet up back stage!’
Steve Harris lurches forward on his seat and scowls at the Maiden skin beater ‘I don’t think that would work, Nicko’ he says with droll humour, ‘I’m not used to playing along with something that always keeps time…’

The conversation about my favourite men in make-up (apart from Dale Winton, that is) reminds me of something original vocalist D’ianno told me when I was on the road with Maiden and Kiss in late 1980, joining the east end heavy brigade for prestigious supprt shows in Hamburg, Germany and Leiden, Holland.
‘Gene (Simmons) doesnt usually wear other bands T-Shirts,’ Di’Anno related to me way back then ‘so it surprised me when he came up to me the other day and asked for a Maiden one. I said ‘What do you want it for, you’ll never wear it’. Simmons replied ‘You’re right you won’t often see me in anything other than a Kiss T-shirt But if I had one with the name of a group that’s going straight to the top on it, then I wouldn’t mind…”

That’s ol’ Gene for you – a man of impeccable taste, as always. But enough of these frivilous reminisences. Let’s return to the present day and the teeming T-Mobile Arena. I now find myself sitting in a grim reseption area adjacent to Maiden’s dressing room, waiting to talk to Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson. The walls are still dyed that pale mud hue, only this time they’re etched with an array of circles the size of large dinner plates – oddly I’m reminded of the interior of Doctor Who’s tardis. Although a discerning Time Lord would doubtless have baulked at the accoutrements on display this evening, a squeaky red plastic sofa, bare strip lights on the ceiling weather beaten flight case marked ‘Iron Maiden Wardrobe’ empty can of Red Bull lying on it’s side on a wheezing chest freezer and the unmistakable fragrance of catering food drifting through the back door (Apparently the Maiden entourage is delighted that bread and butter pudding is on the dessert menu tonight!)
‘Right you’ve got Steve in the massage room in about half an hour’ Maiden’s press guy informs me, which sound like something to look forward to.
But first, it’s Dickinson. I meet up with the singer in a glorified cupboard with just enough room for two black leather chairs and a white cloth’d table that bows dangerously under the weight of assorted fresh fruit. In the corner there’s an ice making machine that clatters incessently throughout our conversation.
As Dickinson gets to his feet to push down the plunger on a cafetiere of fresh coffee, it strikes me that he’s much smaller and less heavily built than I remember. His closely trimmed but still unrully haircut, plus rigidly defined sideburns that curve sharply from the top of his ears to the tips of his cheekbones, put me in mind of Elijah Wood in Lord of the Rings. Which may explain why Maiden appear to have adopted an more, erm, mystical bent these days…

‘There was a really big sea change in Maiden between when I left (1n 1993) and when I came back (in 1999)’ Dickinson declares ‘The band’s a bit different now and I’m not exactly sure how or why. But it’s subtley changed from being an outfit where everything had to be 100% fierce all the time.’
It appears that the key word for Maiden in the early Noughties could be – pause for dramatic effect – ‘progressive’.
‘With the two new albums we’ve released since I rejoined that almost sort of proggy side of things has started to filter back in quite strongly.’ Dickinson remarks, now cradling a steaming cup of coffee. ‘In the past we’ve had songs like ‘Strange World’ ‘remember tomorrow’ and ‘Prodigal Son’ and all that, but most people perceived us as a scary heavy metal band – particuarly in America – and no one seemed to notice that we had a sofer side’

The tremble–tremble title aside, on Dance of Death there’s certainly a determined sense of maturity emanating from the Maiden; an atmosphere of understated – and far from histrionic – grandeur. Specifically I referring to tracks such as Paschendale, the story of a bloody World War one battle; Montsegur, which relates to the massacre of thousands of Cathar heretics in at a castle in southern France by 13th century crusaders; and the mad maypole revelry of the folk-tinged title track itself – described by various quarters as being uncomfortably evocitive of Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge. (And with more than a taste, I would wager, of Jethro Tull and the Incredible String Band, not to mention East of Eden’s one-off 1971 hit single ‘Jig-a-jig’, for those of you with memories long enough to remember it.)
Dickinson, naturally, refutes the Tap-esque accusations and affirms ‘ It’s a direction I find quite pleasing actually, because it gives the band a much bigger dimension for the future and it means we don’t have to stake our reputation on just trying to out gun the younger outfits that are coming along, saying ‘we are the most aggressive group on the planet’. That’s just a war of attrition; it’s an arms race no one can possibly win and you need to side-step completely’.
So was the move to the ‘proggy’ side of things – as Dickinson calls it – a conscious one?
“No” he claims, “although I think it’s something Steve has wanted to do for some time. It’s one of those things that, again, people failed to notice on the two albums Blaze recorded with the band because they were probably so shell shocked at Maiden having a new singer…”
But, when all is said and done, Dickinson may only be talking about the fine points and trifling niceties here, subtle shifts in the Maiden sound that only the most dedicated follower of the band would be able to discern. I put it to him that, while there was a certain novelty factor when he rejoined the band, most people will probably perceive ‘Dance of Death’ as being just another Maiden album. Or as the review in Classic Rock no 53 put it ‘An unimpeachable classic for the fans and an impenetrable conundrum for the world at large’.
“That’s manifestly wrong”, Dickinson retorts, spilling half his coffee on the floor in the process, “there’s a lot of differences on this record from ‘Brave New World’, even… in terms of the songwriting expertise, the number of melodies involved, the complexities, the conceits if you like, that we decided to put down. I mean we didn’t just sit down and blithely say ‘Alright lets do a song about a World War One battle blah-blah-blah.’ There’s a hell of a lot of though behind and depth to these songs. To be honest, even previous epics such as ‘Rim of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Powerslave’ sound relatively one-dimensional be comparison. “

That’s fighting talk. But I wonder how Dickinson thinks he can get the message of the ‘new’ Maiden across to people who are locked in the tunnel-vision judgement of the band; a visualisation of a group frozen in time… 80s rockers in crotch grabbing black’n’white stripped leggings with a stage show chock full of dusty Egyptian artefacts.
“Oh sure” nods Dickinson, “we’re at a situation where we appear to have achieved this iconic status, particularly as a live act, and you might wonder where we can go from here. But going back to ‘Brave New World’ it was a very successful record, it doubled the sale of the previous album, which is a good result by anyone’s standards. It surprised a lot of people because they didn’t expect it to be as good as it was.”
Dickinson pauses for breath and scuffs his boot over the spreading coffee stain on the carpet. “But on ‘Brave New World’ we knew that we weren’t being particularly stretched. “ he continues “Of course we were comfortable and happy doing it, recording an album that would whack everyone around the head and get them saying ‘Christ brilliant, Maiden are back’. But we knew there was a lot more work to be done.”

Dickinson says he has high hopes for the Rainmaker single and accompanying promotional video directed by Howard Greenhalgh, who the singer first got to know when he was manipulating the lens for 2 of Dickinson’s solo videos ‘Tears of a Dragon’ and ‘Shoot all the Clowns’.
For the Rainmaker video, Maiden “got hordes of African dancers covered in latex and treacle, trampolinists, a girl dressed as a chicken leg, and exploding cosmic egg that creates this mad Satanic life-form that rains evil over the band…it’s just f*cking brilliant, a tour-de-force of madness,” Dickinson gushes.
So I wonder, is this the one to win over the non-believers? “This is the one that just looks great”, Dickinson states plainly, “We’re not trying to change what Iron Maiden is; we’re simply trying to get people to notice who Iron Maiden are.”

And so to my eagerly anticipated encounter with Steve Harris in the massage room. Although disappointingly, it turns out to be nothing of the sort. After an epic wander through the bowels of the T-Mobile arena of almost ‘hello Cleveland’ proportions, we find ourselves in a utilitarian ice hockey changing room impregnated with a smell that shall subsequently be dubbed ‘eau do Iron Maiden Prague.’
“Deary me” groans Harris, “it don’t half pen and ink…”
He’s not far wrong. The room has been marinated in the rank smell of sweaty feet, clammy jock straps and moist armpits. But Steve and me, we just pinch our noses tightly and decide to carry on in the face of aromatic adversity.
First off, I mention my discussion with Dickinson and the charge that Dance of Death could be perceived as (I repeat) ‘just another Maiden album’.
Harris bridles immediately – and not simply because he’s just sat on a cushion, that looks like it was a carpet tile in London’s old Marquee club in a former life.
“I don’t think it’s just another Iron Maiden album’ Harris responds edgily “but what can you do? We’ve made the best album we possibly could and you can’t ask for anything more than that. If you listen to those sort of people