| Metal
bands, of course, don’t need any convincing about whether or
not Iron Maiden was great: once upon a time this was a band that changed
a lot of lives. In a world where symbols drain themselves of meaning
before they even get a chance to invest themselves with any weight,
Iron Maiden signified. An Iron Maiden patch on a denim jacket, in
1983, was as communicative a sartorial gesture as can be imagined.
Stylistically, neither death nor black metal owe much if anything
to the melodic, fist-pumping theatrics that were Iron Maiden's stock
in trade, but here as elsewhere, the truth lies in the intangibles.
The look of the album sleeves, how they stuck out like sore thumbs
in the racks, and how that very quality beckoned exactly the kind
of people that the band needed to ascend to icon status. The titles.
(Iron Maiden had the foresight to title an album The Number of
the Beast, making every other metal band in the world mad jealous,
whether they admit or not.) The straight hair, maybe blow-dried but
certainly not teased, projecting blue-collar origins in order to ally
the band with that greatest of blue-collar metal working class heroes,
Black Sabbath. |
