Iron Maiden biography
In December 1982, drummer Clive Burr ended his association with the band due to personal and tour schedule problems and was replaced by Nicko McBrain, previously of French band Trust. Soon afterwards, the band journeyed for the first time to The Bahamas to record the first of three consecutive albums at Compass Point Studios. In 1983, they released Piece of Mind, which reached the No. 3 spot in the UK, and was the band's debut at the North American charts, reaching No. 70 on the Billboard 200. Piece of Mind includes the successful singles "The Trooper" and "Flight of Icarus", the latter of which being particularly notable as one of the band's few songs to gain substantial airplay in the U.S.
Soon after the success of Piece of Mind and its supporting tour, the band released Powerslave on 9 September 1984. The album featured fan favourites "2 Minutes to Midnight", "Aces High", and "Rime of The Ancient Mariner", the latter based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem of the same name and running over 13 minutes long.
The tour following the album, dubbed the World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date and consisted of 193 shows in 28 countries over 13 months, playing to an estimated 3,500,000 people. Many shows were played back-to-back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California (4 consecutive sold out concerts to an overall audience of 54,000), where the majority of their subsequent live release, Live After Death, was recorded, which became a critical and commercial success, peaking at No. 4 in the UK. Iron Maiden also co-headlined (with Queen) the Rock In Rio festival, where they performed to an estimated crowd of 300,000. The tour was physically gruelling for the band, who demanded a six month break when it ended (although this was later reduced to four months). This was the first substantial break in the band's history, including the cancellation of a proposed supporting tour for the new live album, with Bruce Dickinson threatening to quit unless the tour ended.
Returning from their time off, the band adopted a different style for their 1986 studio album, entitled Somewhere in Time, featuring, for the first time in the band's history, synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. The release charted well across the world, particularly with the single "Wasted Years", but notably included no writing credits from lead singer Bruce Dickinson, whose material was rejected by the rest of the band.
The experimentation evident on Somewhere in Time continued on their next album, entitled Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which was released in 1988. A concept album, based on The Tales of Alvin Maker series of novels by Orson Scott Card, this would be the band's first record to include keyboards, as opposed to guitar synthesisers on the previous release. After his contributions were not used for Somewhere in Time, Dickinson's enthusiasm was renewed as his ideas were accepted for this album. Another popular release, it became Iron Maiden's second album to hit No. 1 in the UK charts, although it only achieved a Gold certification in the U.S., in contrast to its four predecessors.
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