New Maiden Bio Extracts: Rock In Rio
Run To The Hills 3rd Edition (updated to include Dance Of Death) is in the shops, or get it from Eddie's Megastore right now. Here's the next extract...Rock In Rio
If Maiden were looking for a grand statement to finish off what had been the band’s most successful world tour in years then Rock In Rio would provide the perfect backdrop. Unlike other festivals Rock In Rio is not an annual or even biennial event – you’re lucky if you get to see one even once a decade! The last Rock In Rio festival – only the second ever – had taken place ten years before in 1991 at the Maracana stadium and been headlined by the original Guns N’ Roses. Having played the opening day of the first ever Rock In Rio festival in 1985 as part of their World Slavery tour (as special guests to Queen during the blazing heat of the day), Maiden knew just what to expect from the intensely passionate Latin crowd.
Needless to say, offers of headline slots at Rock In Rio festivals are a rare event and as soon as Maiden’s performance had been confirmed, in the previous autumn, plans were set in motion to record a live album and Iron Maiden’s very first home concert DVD to commemorate the event. If anyone was looking for an appropriately giant-sized exclamation to underscore Iron Maiden’s worldwide legacy then nothing was likely to top a show of this size!
“For me Rock In Rio was a chance to show how good this band can be,” says Bruce, rolling his eyes at the very thought of Maiden’s headline show. “We desperately wanted to do it but the stress level was exponential. It was genuinely one of the most intense gigs of my life for a whole variety of reasons,” he gasps. “The whole day before the show I locked myself in a room and just didn’t come out. I went down to the gym. I didn’t party and I didn’t sunbathe. I shut the curtains and lived in a cave and thought about the gig, just like a championship boxer before a title fight – because that’s what it takes to play a gig that size. When I went out and finally did the show, it was like all hell breaking loose!
“I remember that I was so jazzed up when I ran up onto my little catwalk, and the first thing that I saw was all these damn cameras stuck to my ladder that I’d usually climb and I took an instant dislike to them. I thought, ‘Fuck this!’ and I ripped them off in a fit and threw them all off the back of the stage. The camera guys went nuts! But that was my little temperamental moment, and you have to have one every now and then otherwise it’s just not real enough,” says Bruce, flashing a mischievous grin.
“The energy that we expended that night was just incredible. I’ve never been so exhausted in my whole life, not just physically – I was tired but that was easy. It was an emotional and mental tiredness to the extent that I felt like someone had sucked all the marrow out of my bones ’cause I had never felt like that before. I remember sitting there at four in the morning after the show in a daze. The whole band was like that. Normally after a show we all go have a few beers and say, ‘Yeah, what a great gig’, but after that one we all sat there dumbfounded, which is very rare for us and I’ve never seen everybody that way before or since,” laughs Bruce. “But what a fantastic way to end the tour!”
Steve also has vivid memories of the pressure the band faced going into a show that would provide Maiden with their very first DVD and a third double live album.
“We all thought we’d played well. But we had to – the pressure was huge: live on telly to millions and filming a DVD too, but we tend to do well under pressure,” he says confidently. “We usually like to get right in people’s faces but we just couldn’t that night. I remember running out to the edge of the stage to get the crowd going but the PA on the side wasn’t working, so I couldn’t hear a bloody thing out front and that meant I had to stay firmly within my area for the whole night,”
remembers Steve, with just a hint of frustration. The sheer size of the crowd demanded respect from the members of Iron Maiden but, reckons Steve, having played the event once before in broad daylight the number didn’t affect everyone in the same way.
“They’d made a big deal about the size of the crowd and we’d flown in over them in the helicopters so we’d seen just how big a quarter of a million people looked like, but – and I know this is gonna sound odd – you just can’t really differentiate between 100,000 people and 250,000 people – it’s just a bloody lot of people! And at night with the spotlights on them you can’t really illuminate the entire crowd anyway so you just get on with it. That said, the crowd that night were amazing and they made all the difference.”
Source: Iron Maiden.com
7 Comments
QUOTE(Shadow @ Aug 19 2004, 02:34 PM)
“They’d made a big deal about the size of the crowd and we’d flown in over them in the helicopters so we’d seen just how big a quarter of a million people looked like, but – and I know this is gonna sound odd – you just can’t really differentiate between 100,000 people and 250,000 people – it’s just a bloody lot of people! And at night with the spotlights on them you can’t really illuminate the entire crowd anyway so you just get on with it. That said, the crowd that night were amazing and they made all the difference.”
Source: Iron Maiden.com
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Source: Iron Maiden.com
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That night (19/01/2001) was really a special one. I feel good just to remember that I was part of that crowd
.BTW, It was 150,000 people not a quarter of a million people.
150,000? everywhere i have read it was 250,000 
does anyone know exactly?
It was six. The rest were done with an ellaborate collection of mirrors
Impressive 
hehe
QUOTE(Real World @ Aug 20 2004, 01:22 PM)
It was six. The rest were done with an ellaborate collection of mirrors
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A trick not done by Simon Drake...
Cheers
QUOTE(DarkKnight @ Aug 19 2004, 10:09 PM)
150,000? everywhere i have read it was 250,000 does anyone know exactly?
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does anyone know exactly?[right][snapback]83825[/snapback][/right]
The venue capacity was 250,000 people. The festival organizers decided only to sell 150,000 tickets because they were afraid that could be dangerous have in a Metal Concert a quarter of a million people in the same site.
QUOTE(Shaman @ Aug 19 2004, 01:06 PM)
That night (19/01/2001) was really a special one. I feel good just to remember that I was part of that crowd .
BTW, It was 150,000 people not a quarter of a million people.
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.BTW, It was 150,000 people not a quarter of a million people.
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I was there. It was 150.000. That night was perfect, but the gig early this years was the best ever.