Gig Review: Iron Maiden Live — Long Live Eddie!

A review of Iron Maiden in Auckland. September 16, 2024.

Iron Maiden

Spark Arena, Auckland

Monday, September 16

I am something of a tourist in the Iron Maiden world, which is to say I actually like and/or adore most of their 1980s material, and after that I’m more interested in the ‘concept’ of the band, their longevity and iconography — I know what they sound like, always, because they are as if Spinal Tap ditched the comedy and wrote interpretative soundtracks for Tolkien. Calling Iron Maiden absurd is much like calling water wet, in that it is obvious and it misses the crucial point that they are replenishing, refreshing, and in fact life saving.

So I was excited to finally get to see them, having somehow managed to keep living without filling my cup previously. But, it’s lucky I used to do this for what almost passed for a living (review gigs that is). Because it means I knew I wasn’t going to get to hear Aces High or Run To The Hills or The Number of the Beast on this tour. And knowing that meant I didn’t act like a typical New Zealander at an international gig: Expecting every single song that I know and like and nothing else!

The Future Past World Tour blends material from most recent album, Senjutsu with songs from 1986’s Somewhere In Time, a record that wasn’t supported by its own tour at the time. Given that Iron Maiden — and Maiden fandom — is almost as much about the imagery, font, merchandise and support of the brand via a devotion that might not quite be blind but is most certainly impervious to seasonal change, it all somehow makes sense and allows some gimmick around passage of time. Add lyrics that might make Robert Plant second-guess some of his own cod-Tolkien-isms, and you have a successful idea for a show. Add to that, an era and age defying band that knows two incredible secrets, firstly how to forever rock, and secondly how to not look stupid wearing your own brand T-shirts, and it’s all going to be so good, Aces High or not.

Bruce Dickinson is our circus master for the evening. Lead singer, carnival barker, and of course he flew the bloody lot of them there on a plane emblazoned with the inspiration for 98% of tattooists working today.

See Bruce circle the stage (Stranger In A Strange Land), see him run (Caught Somewhere In Time), see him inhabit old crone caricatures (Fear of The Dark) and listen as he nails absurdly brilliant banter, generally endears himself (and by association the entire band) to the crowd, and just owns the entire stage for the entire duration. He might be a marvel of science and medicine, but he also just seems like a nice guy having a sincerely good time. Yeah, yeah, not every high note is there, but for the most part he sounds good.

The same is true of the band, at 72, and fresh back this year from suffering a stroke, drummer Nicko McBrain is compromised, I doubt he’d thrash through Run To The Hills to tempo if it had been included, his ‘hobbling’ has to be part of the creative way the band continues to build a fresh setlist for a new tour; it’s not just not repeating themselves entirely so that fans continue to return. It’s also to look after the aging and ailing among the group. But, everything he did play worked, and he was still incredible if maybe not as vital as once was the case. (But then who is these days?) Astounding that he was able to repair himself to this level.

Guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick Gers were all in fine form, trading licks, and taking turns to peel solos from the embedded skin of each song. A classic three-pronged guitar attack is of course as much of a luxury in the current, ahem, gig-economy, as a symphonic gong behind the drummer that’s used for only one song, or flame cannons, or an acoustic guitar on a stand for incongruous song intros and outros, or an on-stage gun fight between the singer and the band’s enduring mascot, Eddie. This, folks, is why you go to see Iron Maiden. You go because they are still vital. They are still committed to the ‘bits’ that shape a proper old-fashioned rock’n’roll show.

And there were some great old hits too. The Prisoner is huge, encore The Trooper even bigger of course. But we can’t discount the new songs. Several of them in the middle of the set form a crucial hinge — The Writing On The Wall, Days of Future Past, and The Time Machine are perfectly crafted Iron Maiden nonsenses, and just right for extrapolating the theme of the evening’s show.

But really, the whole thing is a carnival of bogan devotion. I loved Can I Play With Madness almost the most, because as much as I might love all of the albums that came before it, 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was, due to my age, my proper introduction to the band.

That was the nostalgia blast I was looking for.

But everything else was, in its way, equally important, because Iron Maiden could never be a single song, or album, or for that matter a single show — it is a lifelong brand. And to see them live was to give a thanks for many years, however sporadic my own fandom. As I was listening and watching, I was thinking about how I’d seen The Rolling Stones and AC/DC and Van Halen and Metallica and Def Leppard and The Cult and how there are really only a small handful of bands that can rock a stadium or arena so regularly, so well, for so many years.

Maiden is at the top of that list for ability — and now I can finally confirm that.

There was, too, as you’d expect, within metal, within stadium rock, and with nostalgia, such a sense of community within the crowd; moving as one, a huge swell of applause to congratulate these songs that bassist and founder Steve Harris, as the primary songwriter, has chiseled out of rock to stand as his caveman paintings for his tribe.

It was brilliant. It was emotional. And it was so much better than a band pushing close to 50 years as an entity had any right to be. That’s the beauty of simple, solid music which surges forward with heart. It’s uninterested in parody, cannot be called on it in any way, for perhaps they always were a self-parody in some ways, somehow just forever stronger as the years pile up behind it.

Killswitch Engage opened with enough of the vibe to correctly connect with enough of the crowd, and suggest they were in the right place. They could never be the focus of my review, even if they played an all-time blinder, but a shout to the wisdom and fan passion they had in closing their bracket with a cover of Dio’s Holy Diver. Banging good rendition and just a high note for them to end on, the crowd lightly warmed as the torch was handed over to the evening’s legends.

What a show!