EDITOR IN CHIEF TOM BEAUJOUR: MAIDEN FLIGHT

I think that I might have freaked out the lady sitting next to me. We’re on a JetBlue flight from New York to Los Angeles (I’m going to supervise a cover shoot for the magazine—more on that in a different blog installment maybe), and we just hit some pretty major turbulence somewhere over Gary, Indiana. In retrospect, this probably wasn’t the most appropriate time for me to whip out the new reissue (and first DVD iteration) of Iron Maiden’s Live After Death from my bag; the cover of the damn thing does feature a white-haired skeleton bursting from a grave—just what she needed to see as the aircraft bumps and lurches across the sky. But fuck it: If I’m going down, I can’t think of a more fitting soundtrack than “Aces High.”

For me, air travel always represents a rare opportunity to reflect. The phone doesn’t ring, you can’t get email, and you don’t have to do anything but sit still in a seat for several hours. And while I know that flying, statistically, is the safest way to go, I never hit a patch of rough air without having my life flash before my eyes at least a wee bit. Right now what’s coming up on the memory-replay video is the first time that I ever heard the album version of Live After Death. I was 15 or 16, squished between guitar amps and drum hardware in the back of a van headed for New Haven, Connecticut. I had tagged along (nominally as a guitar tech, I believe) when one of my older friend’s bands was going to play a gig, and the group’s drummer, who was jammed in the rear of the vehicle with me, handed me his Walkman, which had the Live After Death version of “The Trooper” cued up.

There have been precious few moments where I can say that a song made my jaw drop, but this did. I’m pretty sure that I had never heard Maiden before, although I had always been curious about them because their T-shirts and album covers were so rad, and the galloping riff, dueling guitars, and punk energy of the performance made me realize then and there that this was definitely a band I needed to know better. I would soon purchase both the album and videotape of Live after Death.

Well, 20 years later, let me tell you, the Live After Death version of “The Trooper” still holds up—way better than the band’s garish (and seemingly 100% spandex) stage garb. I have always maintained that the versions of nearly every song captured on this document surpass those released on the group’s studio albums, and that it’s probably the most impressive release in Maiden’s extensive catalog. And the crazy Eddie mummy that pops out of the back of the stage and wobbles around—that shit is as timeless as the pyramids themselves.