The Live Album Section 1985
Iron Miaden Live After Death 1985 (EMI)
When you’re the biggest heavy metal band in the world, it makes sense to then go out and record a live double album and that is exactly what Iron Maiden did in 1985.
Live After Death would be a whopping almost two hours long and would be garnered from the band’s highly touted ‘World Slavery Tour’ which the band had undertaken after their acclaimed
Powerslave album had rocked the top of metaldon. The tour would also be one of the longest and most extensive undertaken by a rock band, which in turn gave the band little chance of recording a studio album in 1985. The sets for the tour would be lavished with the Powerslave theme, which would be Egyptian sarcophagi and hieroglyphs and the sections for the live album would be taken from the Long Beach and Hammersmith Odeon legs of the tour. The album is noted for avoiding overdubs that were often be used on a number of live albums and bassist Steve Harris stated that the band were strongly against this from the beginning anyway and were dedicated to putting out a completely and truly live experience. Side by side with the album a live video of the experience was also recorded by director Jim Yukich and would include 14 tracks. After the opening ‘Churchill’s Speech’ and the customary “Aces High” the first half of the album is dominated by tracks from both the
Powerslave and
Piece of Mind albums. The second half of the album would be dominated by
The Number of the Beast and the Paul D’Anno era albums
Iron Maiden and
Killers. As always with live albums there is some debate over the choice of material but for me the choices are pretty good and mostly obvious. Some negative reviews of the album complain about Bruce Dickinson’s voice as being off on a couple of tracks but personally I think he does ok here, especially on the Paul D’Anno tracks, which was always going to be a contention anyway between Paul v Bruce lovers of the band. Kerrang! would describe the album as being ‘The nearest that any person could get to being on an Iron Maiden world tour without actually leaving town’ and the album would be regarded as one of the great live albums of the decade. The 1970s may well have been the era of the live album but throughout the 1980s monster live albums like
Live After Death would still continue to enhance the live genre.
Bruce Dickinson- Vocals
Dave Murray- Guitar
Adrian Smith- Guitar
Steve Harris- Bass
Nicko McBain- Drums
Production- Martin Birch
Long Beach 1985
Hammersmith Odeon 1985