The Death On The Road Artwork Story
The artist behind it is Melvyn Grant. I got in contact with him recently for another matter through Maverick (the Iron Maiden Commentary webmaster) and Mel finished off his email to him with the enigmatic phrase "I have now done 3 covers for Maiden".I grabbed the opportunity and mailed him back and I asked about the "umbilical chord" sticking out of Eddies body. Here is the part of his answering email that refers to that subject:
"At this time I can't say more on the third cover as it is still early days.
But one thing, I had not seen it as an umbilical cord, more as 'intestine'.
When you see the rest of the painting, it will become clearer.
"
...so we know all that stuff about it having to do with the SSOASS cover was bogus. We also know that we haven't seen the whole artwork yet...
20 Comments
Moved to Iron Maiden News
yes, but the subtitle of the original thread should have been added to the main text because now the news item begins with ...is Melvin Grant, which doesn't make much sense 
I did the necessary modifications 
cheers Mav
Great stuff gor.
Maybe the cover is actually much bigger, like the album covers for Cathedral (by Dave Patchett) which shows only the 1/6 of the whole painting on the front cover.
This is final version of Death On The Road front cover (just recieved it from EMI):
Click to open in a new window.
Well I still like the artwork. I just hope now Maiden use the same artist for a while. Be nice to see what he can do with Eddie over a couple of albums....assuming Maiden stay around that long.
The rest of the painting... mmh, sorry, but will it be in another cover ? The artwork seems finished with what we've already seen.
Cheers
This is only the right half of the painting. The full picture is a wraparound cover.
...from the horse's mouth!
Wow.
This was done by Grant?
Thats a shock , cause I liked most of his olders works....I've never cared for any of the Maiden stuff he's done , Especially this one...its borderline amateurish.
Maybe I should whip up a quick version of my own....just focusing on Eddie himself to show what I think it should of looked like.
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Do it.
Yeah. Do it.
What would seriously interest me is the reason why Maiden comissioned Melvyn- was it because of the awful reaction to the DOD cover?
Anyway, hearing that Melvyn did this does not really surprise me- his style of drawing Eddie is very distinct from Dereks', and all those other covers tried too hard to get close to Dereks' covers. This one, however, is much different, much more like FOTD and VXI.
Melvyn is better than CGI Animated Shite!
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This is true but he's not quite got the look of Eddies face right in any of his artworks IMO .
Although I still think this cover is quite good it's a step down from his previous work for Maiden.
I wouldn't mind seeing Grant taking over artwork duties for Maiden. His covers aren't as brillliant as Derek's but they're way better than the CGI they used for Dance of Death and it'd be good to estabilish a certain style again.
Best cover they've had for a while though is the Early Days DVD one.
Mmmm... It kind of reminds me of Iced Earth's Something Wicked This Way Comes cover. Anyone else think so?
This was done by Grant?
Thats a shock , cause I liked most of his olders works....I've never cared for any of the Maiden stuff he's done , Especially this one...its borderline amateurish.
Maybe I should whip up a quick version of my own....just focusing on Eddie himself to show what I think it should of looked like.
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Yes. By all means. Do it....and send it to Maiden.
Well , I penciled my version of this DOTR piece the other night and coloured it yesterday in between my NFL stuff and the Eddies I'm doing.
....now I have to get it scanned , then posted....if people like it enough , I'll add it to the Clive Burr MS fund pieces that I'll be listing on Ebay ...I'll have 2-3 of those up (hopefully) by next weekend.
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It indeed looks like it!