Mr. Big

Mr. Big is a hard rock super-group that formed in 1988. The band is a quartet composed of Eric Martin (vocals), Paul Gilbert (guitar), Billy Sheehan (bass), and Pat Torpey (drums); Mr. Big also included Richie Kotzen, a reputable blues-based guitarist who replaced Paul in 1999 when Paul decided to focus on a solo career. The band is noted especially for their "shred guitar" musicianship, intense live performances, and well-crafted songs.

Identified early on as a "musicians' band", Mr. Big was able to produce numerous hit songs that ranged across a wide array of rock genres, be it ballad, heavy metal, or blues rock. Prior to the formation of the group, each of the members already had a reputation of being virtuosos as well as established song-writers/ composers. Their songs were often marked with strong vocals and vocal harmonies, and a technical proficiency in all instruments. Their hits include "To Be With You" (Billboard Hot 100 number one single in 15 countries for weeks, in 1991), "Wild World", "Green-Tinted Sixties Mind", "Just Take My Heart", other ballads, and a host of heavy metal songs that were played mostly during their live performances, such as "Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy", "Addicted to that Rush", "Colorado Bulldog", and "Take Cover", among the rest.

Mr. Big's following and reputation remained strong for over two decades, despite the band being challenged by personal internal conflicts and the changing trends in mainstream music. Over the years, through the different heights of the band's career, the fan-base of the group has remained steadfast - even after the demise of the band in 2002. Fans have always asked for the band's reunion.

The newly formed band hired Herbie Herbert to be their manager (he was the former manager of Journey and Santana). By 1989, the newly formed quartet had already inked a recording contract with Atlantic Records, resulting in the release of a self-titled debut the same year. Despite causing a buzz amongst musicians, the album failed to cross over to a mainstream rock audience stateside; however, Mr. Big was an immediate smash success overseas in Japan. In June 1990, the group went on tour in America as the opening act for the Canadian band “Rush”.

It was Mr. Big's second album in 1991, “Lean Into It”, that provided major breakthrough for the band. The album featured two ballads that established them as a commercial success: "To Be with You” (number one song in 15 countries) and "Just Take My Heart", as well as rock songs that remained as staples of their live set for years to come, such as "Green-Tinted Sixties Mind". The album propelled Mr. Big to huge international record sales in the multi-millions. The release of “Lean Into It” was followed by a British tour in April and May of the same year, supported by bands “The Throbs” and “Heartland”.

Another British tour ensured before the quartet opted to release the 'Mr. Big Live' album in 1992 and set to work on a third album to be released in 1993. Live headliners across the U.K. in December saw “Forgodsake” as support. However, the band had broken away from this run to put in support for Aerosmith’s three-night, sold out stand at London's Wembley Arena.

In 1993, another ballad from Mr. Big's new album “Bump Ahead” rose to the top 10 of the charts - a cover of Cat Steven’s “Wild World”. The band also contributed the soundtrack to the Sega Mega CD release of The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin.

And in 1995, their next album,Hey Man, was released. The song "Take Cover" from the album "Hey Man", was included on the soundtrack to the cartoon series Mega Man, which is based on the best selling video game franchise of the same name by Capcom, and was played during the end credits of the episodes "Bad Day At Peril Park" and "Mega X".


In February 2009, as a result of fan-demand and also after several coincidences over the past couple of years that have gradually brought the group back together again, Eric, Pat, Paul, and Billy finally announced their decision to reunite. This announcement was marked with celebration and excitement amongst fans all over the world, especially in Japan. The band members themselves are very happy to be together again as friends, and to perform once more for fans all over the world. Their first tour is in Japan in June 2009.

It was bass player Billy Sheehan who scouted and gathered the people who would, together with himself, become the enduring icons of Mr. Big. Billy Sheehan left David Lee Roth's solo band in 1988, due to differences in musical direction.Almost immediately after his exit, Sheehan began piecing together a new outfit, with the help of Mike Varney from Shrapnel Records, a label specialized in the shredding genre. However, what Sheehan did not know was that he was about to form one of the most revered "supergroups" to come out of America.

The Buffalo, New York-born bassist had already honed his skills during a decade spent touring with his band, Talas, but with the recruitment of Eric Martin in 1988, he knew the foundation for this ultimate musical venture was well in place. Martin (who was born in Long Island, New York, but grew up all over the world as one of the sons of an Army officer) had already ventured into the light, both with melodic rock-oriented Eric Martin Band, and as a more soul-leaning solo artist.

The group was made complete with talents of guitarist Gilbert and drummer Torpey. Hailing from Pittsburgh, Gilbert was already a well-respected guitarist who had released four highly-touted albums with his Los Angeles-based band, Racer X. Torpey came to California after playing his dues behind the kit in the Arizona rock community. He soon became a much sought-after road horse, touring with a number of high-profile artists, most notably Robert Plant.

Although the band never replicated its earlier success in the US market, their popularity continued to soar in Japan; they also gained a stabler following in newer Southeast Asian markets such as Thailand and South Korea. The change in attitudes towards Hard Rock and the media treatment of so-called '80s Hair bands' meant that sales were poor in America and Europe. The music industry started to focus more on other music genres such as grunge rock and rap.

In Japan and in the rest of Asia, on the other hand, they continued to sell out tours, resulting in a number of live releases for the Japanese market throughout their career (from Raw Like Sushi I,II,II in the 1990s to Mr. Big In Japan in 2002).

The group's album, 'Live At Budokan', was another live release intended for the Japanese market only. By the time 'Live At Budokan' appeared the group had been put on ice as the individual band members became more engrossed in other projects. After several years of continuous recording and touring, the band took a much needed break

Paul Gilbert left the band in 1997 to pursue a solo career, and partly because of the internal conflicts within the band. He eventually reformed Racer X. Richie Kotzen, another Shrapnel artist and former guitarist for Poison, was brought in to take on guitar duties, also contributing occasional vocals. Two studio albums were released by this lineup: Get Over It in 2000 and Actual Size in 2001. "Get Over It" was released on September 1999 in Japan, and yielded "Superfantastic," a number one hit that went multi-platinum in Japan. It proved to be Atlantic's biggest selling release in that territory. MR. Big put in a 20-date tour of Japan followed by a rousing New Year's Eve 1999 show with Aerosmith at the Osaka Dome in Tokyo. "Get Over It" was released in the U.S. on March 21, 2000, followed by a short club stint at "Roxy", California.

Forward to the summer of 2001, Eric and the rest of the Mr. Big guys released their next effort "Actual Size" in Japan and the rest of Asia. The CD sat on the charts in the number three spot and "Shine" the first single off the album was number one. The song was also used as the ending theme for the animation series, Hellsing.

1.Electrified
2.Static
3.Hiding place
4.Superfantastic
5.A rose alone
6.Hole in the sun
7.How does it feel
8.Try to do without it
9.Dancin' with my devils
10.Mr. Never in a million years
11.My new religion

Queen

Queen were an English rock band. Formed in London 1970 in by guitarist Brian May, vocalist Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor; bassist John Deacon completed the lineup the following year. The band were noted for their musical diversity, multi-layered arrangements, vocal harmonies, and incorporation of audience participation into their live performances. Their 1985 Live Aid performance was voted the best live rock performance of all time in an industry poll.

Queen enjoyed success in the UK in the early 1970s with the albums Queen and Queen II, but it was with the release of Sheer Heart Attack in 1974 and A Night at the Opera the following year that the band gained international success. They have released fifteen studio albums, five live albums, and numerous compilation albums. Since Mercury's death and Deacon's retirement, May and Taylor have performed infrequently together at special events and programmes as members of other ensembles. Between 2004 to 2009 the duo collaborated with Paul Rodgers, under the moniker Queen + Paul Rodgers.

In 1968, guitarist Brian May, a student at London's Imperial College, and bassist Tim Staffell decided to form a band. May placed an advertisement on the college notice board for a "Mitch Mitchell/Ginger Baker type" drummer; Roger Taylor, a young dental student, auditioned and got the job. The group called themselves Smile.

Smile signed to Mercury Records in 1969, and had their first session in a recording studio in Trident Studios that year. Tim Staffell was attending Ealing Art College with Farrokh Bulsara, later known as Freddie Mercury, and introduced him to the band. Bulsara soon became a keen fan. After Staffell left in 1970 to join the band Humpy Bong,[4] the remaining Smile members, encouraged by Bulsara, changed their name to "Queen" and continued working together. Bulsara, who joined the group as vocalist, explained, "I thought up the name Queen. It's just a name, but it's very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid, It's a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it." The band had a number of bass players during this period who did not fit with the band's chemistry. It was not until February 1971 that they settled on John Deacon and began to rehearse for their first album.

In 1973, after a series of delays, Queen released their debut album Queen, an effort influenced by the heavy metal and progressive rock of the day. The album was received well by critics; Gordon Fletcher of Rolling Stone said "their debut album is superb", and Chicago's Daily Herald called it an "above average debut".However, it drew little mainstream attention and the lead single "Keep Yourself Alive", a Brian May composition, sold poorly. Greg Prato of Allmusic later called Queen "one of the most underrated hard rock debuts of all time."


The group's second LP Queen II was released in 1974. The album reached number five on the British album charts, and the Freddie Mercury-written lead single "Seven Seas of Rhye," reached number ten in the UK, giving the band their first hit. The album is their heaviest and darkest release, featuring long complex instrumental passages, fantasy-themed lyrics and musical virtuosity. The band toured as support to Mott the Hoople in the UK ad they began to gain notice for their energetic and engaging stage shows. However, like its predecessor, sales of Queen II in the US were low.

Because of medical complications, May was absent when the band started work on their third album, Sheer Heart Attack, released in 1974. The album reached number two in the United Kingdom, sold well throughout Europe, and went gold in the United States. It gave the band their first real taste of commercial success. The album experimented with a variety of musical genres, including British Music Hall ("Killer Queen"), heavy metal ("Flick of the Wrist", "Brighton Rock", "Tenement Funster", "Now I'm Here", and "Stone Cold Crazy" – a song which Metallica later covered, earning them a Grammy Award), ballads ("Lily Of The Valley" and "Dear Friends"), ragtime ("Bring Back That Leroy Brown") and Caribbean ("Misfire"). At this point Queen started to move away from the progressive tendencies of their first two releases into a more radio-friendly, song-oriented style. Sheer Heart Attack introduced new sound and melody patterns that would be refined on their next album A Night at the Opera.

The single "Killer Queen" reached number two on the British charts, and became their first U.S. hit, reaching number twelve in the Billboard American Top 40. It combines camp, vaudeville, British music hall with May’s guitar virtuosity. The album’s second single, "Now I’m Here", a more traditional hard rock composition, was a number eleven hit in Britain.

In 1975, the band left for a world tour with each member in Zandra Rhodes-created costumes and banks of lights and effects. They toured the US, headlining for the first time, and played in Canada for the first time in April. At the same time, the band's manager Jim Beach successfully negotiated the band out of their Trident contract. Of the options they considered, was an offer from Led Zeppelin’s manager, Peter Grant. Grant wanted them to sign with Led Zeppelin’s own production company, Swan Song Records. The band found the contract unacceptable and instead, contacted Elton John’s manager, John Reid, who accepted the position. In April 1975 the band toured Japan for the first time.


Later that year the band recorded and released A Night at the Opera. At the time, it was the most expensive album ever produced. Like its predecessor, the album features diverse musical styles and experimentation with stereo sound. In "The Prophet's Song", an eight-minute epic, the middle section is a canon, with simple phrases layered to create a full-choral sound. The album was very successful in Britain, and went triple platinum in the United States. In 2003, it was ranked number 230 on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album also featured the hit single "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was number one in the United Kingdom for nine weeks, and is Britain’s third-best-selling single of all time; it also reached number nine in the United States (a 1992 re-release reached number two). Bohemian Rhapsody has been voted, several times, the greatest song of all time. The band decided to make a video to go with the single; the result is generally considered to have been one of the first "true" music videos ever produced. Although other bands (including The Beatles) had made short promotional films or videos of songs prior to this, generally those were made for specific showings or programs (such as the Beatles' videos for "Hey Jude" and "Revolution", which were specifically made to be aired on the Smothers Brothers' television show). "Bohemian Rhapsody" was the first musical video offered free of charge, to any program, network or station which would air it. The second single from the album, "You're My Best Friend", peaked at sixteen in the United States and went on to become a worldwide Top Ten hit.
Freddie Mercury during a 1979 concert in Hanover.

By 1976, Queen were back in the studio, where they recorded A Day at the Races, what may be mistaken simply as a companion album to A Night at the Opera. It again borrowed the name of a Marx Brothers' movie, and its cover was similar to that of A Night at the Opera, a variation on the same Queen Crest. Musically, the album was by both fans’ and critics’ standards a strong effort, and reached number one on the British charts. The major hit on the album was "Somebody to Love", a gospel-inspired song in which Mercury, May, and Taylor multi-tracked their voices to make a 100-voice gospel choir. The song went to number two in the United Kingdom and number thirteen on the U.S. singles chart. The album also featured one of the band's heaviest songs, Brian May’s "Tie Your Mother Down", which became a staple of their live shows.

Also in 1976, Queen played one of their most famous gigs, a 1976 free concert in Hyde Park, London. It set an attendance record, with 150,000 people confirmed in the audience. News of the World was released a year later. It contained many songs tailor-made for live performance, including "We Will Rock You" and the rock ballad "We Are the Champions", both of which reached number four in the United States and became enduring international sports anthems.[13] Roger Taylor released his first solo effort in 1977 in the form of a single: the A-side was a cover of a song by The Parliaments "I Wanna Testify", and the B-side was a song by Taylor called "Turn On The TV".

In 1978 the band released Jazz, including the hit singles "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" which were also released as a double-A-side single. The word "jazz" was not used in a strict sense, and the album was noted by critics for its collection of different styles, jazz not being one of them.Rolling Stone Magazine criticised it for being "dull", saying "Queen hasn’t the imagination to play jazz – Queen hasn't the imagination, for that matter, to play rock & roll." Important tracks of the album include "Dead on Time", "Don't Stop Me Now", "Let Me Entertain You", and "Mustapha", in which Arabesque music is combined with heavy rock guitar.

The band’s first live album, Live Killers, was released in 1979; it went platinum twice in the United States. They also released the very successful single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", a rockabilly song done in the style of Elvis Presley. The song made the top 10 in many countries, and was the band’s first number one single in the United States.

Queen began the 1980s with The Game. It featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the United States. The album stayed number one for four weeks in the United States, and sold over four million copies It was also the only album to ever top the Billboard rock, dance, and R&B charts simultaneously. The album also marked the first appearance of a synthesiser on a Queen album. Heretofore, their albums featured a distinctive "No Synthesisers were used on this Album" sleevenote. The note is widely assumed to reflect an anti-synth, pro-"hard"-rock stance by the band, but was later revealed by producer Roy Thomas Baker to be an attempt to clarify that those albums' multi-layered solos were created with guitars, not synths, as record company executives kept assuming at the time.
1980 also saw the release of the soundtrack Queen had recorded for Flash Gordon.

In 1981, Queen became the first major rock band to play in Latin American stadiums. Queen played to a total audience of 479,000 people on their South American tour, including five shows in Argentina and two in Brazil where they played to an audience of more than 130,000 people in the first night and more than 120,000 people the following night at São Paulo (Morumbi Stadium). In October of the same year, Queen performed for more than 150,000 fans on October 9 at Monterrey (Estadio Universitario) and 17 and 18 at Puebla (Estadio Zaragoza), Mexico.


Also in 1981, Queen worked with David Bowie on the single "Under Pressure". The first-time collaboration with another artist was spontaneous, as Bowie happened to drop by the studio while Queen were recording.[27] The band were immediately pleased with the results, but Bowie did not play the song live for several years.[citation needed] Upon its release, the song was extremely successful, reaching number one in Britain. The bass line was later used for Vanilla Ice's 1990 hit "Ice Ice Baby", prompting the threat of a lawsuit over the use of the sample. The lawsuit did not make it to court and was settled for an undisclosed amount.

Later that year, Queen released their first compilation album, entitled Greatest Hits, which showcased the group's highlights from 1974-1981. It was highly successful, and as of 2007, it is the United Kingdom's best selling album. Taylor became the first member of the band to release his own solo album in 1981, entitled Fun In Space.


In 1982 the band released the funk album Hot Space. The band stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their success there had waned, although they would perform on American television for the only time during the eighth season premiere of Saturday Night Live. Queen left Elektra Records, their label in the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and signed onto EMI/Capitol Records.


After working steadily for over ten years, Queen decided that they would not perform any live shows in 1983. During this time, they recorded a new album, and several members of the band explored side projects and solo work. May released a mini-album entitled Star Fleet Project, on which he collaborated with Eddie Van Halen. A computer musician composer in Canada, Kevin Chamberlain, helped with vocals and background music for Mercury's solo project[citation needed], which was later cancelled due to creative differences.

In 1984, Queen released the album The Works, which included the successful singles "Radio Ga Ga" and "I Want to Break Free". Despite these hit singles, the album failed to do well in the United States. "Radio Ga Ga" was the band's last original American Top Forty hit until 1989's "I Want It All".

Queen embarked that year on a set of dates during their The Works Tour in Bophuthatswana, South Africa at the arena at Sun City.Upon returning to England, they were the subject of outrage, having played there during the height of apartheid and in violation of worldwide divestment efforts. The band responded to the critics by stating that they were playing music for fans in that country, and they also stressed that the concerts were played before integrated audiences.

On 12 January 1985, the band headlined two nights of the first Rock in Rio festival at Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). They were the main act on the January 11 and 18 lineups. On each night, they played in front of over 180,000 people. A selection of highlights of both performances was released on VHS on May with the title Queen Live in Rio.


At Live Aid, held at Wembley on 13 July 1985, Queen performed some of their greatest hits in what has been considered their best performance to date. The band, now revitalised by the response to Live Aid and the ensuing increase in record sales, ended 1985 by releasing the single "One Vision". The song was used in the film Iron Eagle. Also, a limited-edition boxed set containing all Queen albums to date was released under the title of "The Complete Works". The package included previously unreleased material, most notably Queen's non-album single of Christmas 1984, titled Thank God it's Christmas.

In early 1986, Queen recorded the album A Kind of Magic, containing several songs written for the Russell Mulcahy film Highlander. The album was very successful, producing a string of hits including the title track "A Kind of Magic", which contains the key lyrics 'There can be only one', a reference to the movie's plot; "Friends Will Be Friends", "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "Princes of the Universe".

Later that year, Queen went on a sold-out tour (the band's largest) in support of A Kind of Magic. The Magic Tour's highlight was at Wembley Stadium in London and resulted in the live double album, Queen Live At Wembley Stadium, released on CD and as a live concert film. They could not book Wembley for a third night because it was already booked, but they did play at Knebworth Park. The show sold out within two hours and over 120,000 fans packed the park for what proved to be Queen's final live performance with Mercury. More than 1 million people saw Queen on the tour – 400,000 in the United Kingdom alone, a record at the time.

After working on various solo projects during 1988 (including Mercury's collaboration with Montserrat Caballé, Barcelona) the band released The Miracle in 1989. The album continued the direction of A Kind of Magic, using a pop-rock sound mixed with a few heavy numbers. It spawned the European hits "I Want It All", "Breakthru", "The Invisible Man", "Scandal", and "The Miracle".

The Miracle also began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy. Since the band's beginning, nearly all songs had been written by and credited to a single member, with other members adding minimally. With The Miracle, however, the band's songwriting became more collaborative, and they vowed to credit the final product only to Queen as a group.

After fans noticed Mercury's gaunt appearance during 1988, rumours began to spread that Mercury was suffering from AIDS. For reasons that are still not confirmed, Mercury flatly denied them at the time, insisting he was merely "exhausted" and too busy to provide interviews. However, the band decided to continue making albums free of internal conflict and differences, starting with The Miracle and continuing with Innuendo, which was recorded during 1990 but not released until the beginning of 1991 as Mercury's health was a major factor in the delay[citation needed].

Despite his deteriorating health, Mercury continued to contribute. The band released their second greatest hits compilation, Greatest Hits II, in October 1991.

On 23 November 1991, in a prepared statement made on his deathbed, Mercury confirmed that he had AIDS. Within twelve hours of that statement, he died of bronchial pneumonia, which was brought on by AIDS. His funeral service was private, held in accordance with the Zoroastrian religious faith of his family.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with "These Are the Days of Our Lives" as the double A-side. The single went to number 1 for the second time in the UK. Initial proceeds from the single – approximately £1,000,000 – were donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust.


Queen's popularity increased once again in the United States after "Bohemian Rhapsody" was featured in the comedy film Wayne's World, helping the song reach number two for five weeks in the United States charts in 1992. The song was made into a Wayne's World music video, with which the band and management were delighted.

On 20 April 1992, the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium. Performers included Def Leppard, Lisa Stansfield, Elton John, David Bowie, Robert Plant, Tony Iommi, Annie Lennox, Guns N' Roses, Extreme, Roger Daltrey, George Michael, Ian Hunter, Mick Ronson, Zucchero, Metallica, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor and Spinal Tap, along with the three remaining members of Queen, performed many of Queen's major hits. It was a successful concert that was televised to over 1 billion viewers worldwide. The concert is listed in The Guinness Book of Records as "The largest rock star benefit concert. It raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.

The band also terminated their Capitol Records contract and signed a deal with Hollywood Records as their new U.S label.
The statue of Freddie Mercury in Montreux that is also featured on the cover of the album Made in Heaven (1995).

Queen never actually disbanded, although their last album of original material, titled Made in Heaven, was released in 1995, four years after Mercury's death. It was constructed from Mercury's final recording sessions in 1991, plus material left over from their previous studio albums. In addition, re-worked material from Mercury's solo album Mr. Bad Guy and a track originally featured on the first album of Taylor's side-project The Cross were included. May and Taylor have often been involved in projects related to raising money for AIDS research. John Deacon's last involvement with the band was in 1997, when the band recorded the track "No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)". It was the last song recorded by Queen, and it was released as a bonus track on the Queen Rocks compilation album later that year. Due to demand from Queen fans, the song was later released as a single reaching #13 in the UK chart.

1.The show must go on
2.Heaven for everyone
3.Living on my own
4.Driven by you
5.The great pretender
6.Let me live

The Who

The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964. The primary lineup consisted of guitarist Pete Townshend, vocalist Roger Daltrey, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon. They became known for energetic live performances. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, their first year of eligibility. According to the New York Times, The Who have sold 100 million records.

The Who rose to fame in the United Kingdom with a pioneering instrument destruction stage show and a series of top ten hit singles (including "My Generation") and top five albums, beginning in 1965 with "I Can't Explain". They hit the top ten in the U.S. in 1967 with "I Can See for Miles". The 1969 release of Tommy was the first in a series of top five albums in the U.S., followed by Live at Leeds (1970), Who's Next (1971), Quadrophenia (1973), and Who Are You (1978).

Moon died in 1978, after which the band released two studio albums, the top five Face Dances (1981) and the top ten It's Hard (1982), with drummer Kenney Jones, before disbanding in 1983. They re-formed at events such as Live Aid and for reunion tours such as their 25th anniversary tour (1989) and the Quadrophenia tours of 1996 and 1997. In 2000, the three surviving original members discussed recording an album of new material. The plans were delayed by the death of Entwistle in 2002. Townshend and Daltrey continue to perform as The Who. In 2006 they released the studio album Endless Wire, which reached the top ten in the UK and U.S.


In the early 1960s, Townshend and Entwistle started a trad jazz band called The Confederates. Townshend played banjo and Entwistle played the French horn, an instrument he had started playing while in the school band. Daltrey met Entwistle walking down the street with a bass slung over his shoulder and asked him to join his band called The Detours, which he had formed the year before. After a few weeks, Entwistle suggested Townshend as an additional guitarist. In the early days the band played a variety of music suitable for the pubs and halls they performed in, then became influenced by American blues and country music, playing mostly rhythm and blues. The lineup was Daltrey on lead guitar, Townshend on rhythm guitar, Entwistle on bass, Doug Sandom on drums, and Colin Dawson vocals. After Dawson left, Daltrey moved to vocals and Townshend became sole guitarist. In 1964 Sandom left and Keith Moon became drummer.

The Detours changed their name to The Who in February 1964 and, with the arrival of Moon that year, the line-up was complete. However, for a short period in summer 1964, under the management of mod Peter Meaden, they changed their name to The High Numbers, releasing "Zoot Suit/I'm the Face", a single aimed at appealing to mod fans. When the single failed to chart, the band reverted to The Who. Meaden was replaced as manager by Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp, who saw the band play at the Railway Tavern, offering to manage them afterwards and buying Meaden out. They became popular among the British mods, a 1960s subculture involving cutting-edge fashions, scooters and music genres such as rhythm and blues, soul, and beat music.

In September 1964, during a performance at the Railway Tavern in Harrow and Wealdstone, London, Townshend accidentally broke the head of his guitar through the ceiling. Angered by sniggers from the audience, he smashed the instrument on the stage. He picked up another guitar and continued the show. A large crowd attended the next concert, but Townshend declined to smash another guitar. Instead, Moon wrecked his drumkit after Townshend received catcalls from the crowd.Instrument destruction became a staple of The Who's shows for several years. The incident at the Railway Tavern is one of Rolling Stone magazine's "50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock 'n' Roll".

The band crystallised around Townshend as primary songwriter and creative force. Entwistle also made songwriting contributions, and Moon and Daltrey contributed occasional songs in the '60s and '70s.

The Who's first release, and first hit, was January 1965's "I Can't Explain", a record influenced by the Kinks, with whom they shared American producer Shel Talmy. The song was first played in the USA by DJ Peter C Cavanaugh on WTAC AM 600 in Flint, Michigan, where Moon drove a car into a hotel pool on his 21st birthday. "I Can't Explain" was a top 10 hit in the UK and was followed by "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere", a song credited to Townshend and Daltrey.

The debut album My Generation (The Who Sings My Generation in the U.S.) was released the same year. It included "The Kids Are Alright" and the title track "My Generation". Subsequent hits, such as the 1966 singles "Substitute", about a young man who feels like a fraud, "I'm a Boy", about a boy dressed as a girl, and "Happy Jack", about a mentally disturbed young man, show Townshend's use of the themes of sexual tension and teenage angst. More hits followed, including "I Can See for Miles" and the 1968 single "Magic Bus".

lthough successful as a singles band, Townshend wanted The Who's albums unified rather than collections of songs. Townshend said "I'm a Boy" was from a projected opus, the first sign of which came in the 1966 album A Quick One, which included the storytelling medley "A Quick One While He's Away", which they referred to as a mini opera, and which has been called the first progressive epic.

A Quick One was followed by The Who Sell Out in 1967, a concept album like an offshore radio station, complete with humorous jingles and commercials which included a mini rock opera called Rael (whose closing theme ended up on Tommy), as well as The Who's biggest U.S. single, "I Can See for Miles". The Who destroyed equipment at the Monterey Pop Festival that year and repeated the routine on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour with explosive results as Moon detonated his drumkit. Supposedly, too much explosive was used in the drum kit, resulting in damage to Townshend's hearing. In 1968, The Who headlined the first Schaefer Music Festival in New York City's Central Park. Also that year, Townshend became the subject of the first Rolling Stone interview. Townshend said he was working on a full-length rock opera. This was Tommy, the first work billed as a rock opera and a landmark in modern music.

Around this time the teachings of India's Meher Baba influenced Townshend's songwriting, continuing for many years. Baba is credited as "Avatar" on Tommy. In addition to commercial success, Tommy became a critical smash, Life Magazine saying, "...for sheer power, invention and brilliance of performance, Tommy outstrips anything which has ever come out of a recording studio," and Melody Maker declaring, "Surely The Who are now the band against which all others are to be judged."

The Who performed much of Tommy at the Woodstock Music and Art Festival that year. That, and the ensuing film, catapulted The Who in the USA. Though the festival became free, the Who demanded to be paid before performing despite banks and roads being closed 2–3am on Sunday morning and only agreed to play when one of the promoters, Joel Rosenman, came up with a certified check for $11,200(the manager of White Lake branch of Sullivan County National Bank opened the bank so performers could be paid)

In February 1970 The Who recorded Live at Leeds, thought by many critics the best live rock album of all time. The album, originally relatively short and containing mostly the show's hard rock songs, has been re-released in expanded and remastered versions. These versions remedy technical problems with the original and are expanded with portions of the performance of Tommy, as well as versions of earlier singles and stage banter. A double-disc version contains the entire performance of Tommy. The Leeds University gig was part of the Tommy tour, which not only included gigs in European opera houses but saw The Who become the first rock act at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

In March 1971, the band began recording the available Lifehouse material with Kit Lambert in New York, and then restarted the sessions with Glyn Johns in April. Selections from the material, with one unrelated song by Entwistle, were released as a traditional studio album, Who's Next. The album became their most successful album among critics and fans, but terminated the Lifehouse project. Who's Next reached #4 in the USA pop charts and #1 in the UK. Two tracks from the album, "Baba O'Riley" and "Won't Get Fooled Again", are cited as pioneering examples of synthesizer use in rock music; both tracks' keyboard sounds were generated in real time by a Lowrey organ (though in "Won't Get Fooled Again", the organ was processed through a VCS3 synthesizer). Synthesizers can be heard elsewhere on the album, in "Bargain", "Going Mobile", and "The Song is Over". On 4 November 1971 The Who opened the Rainbow Theatre in London and played for three nights.

Who's Next was followed by Quadrophenia (1973), which can be seen as an autobiographical or social history piece about early 1960s adolescent life in London. The story is about a boy named Jimmy, who struggles for self-esteem, with his family and others, and is mentally ill. His story is set against clashes between Mods and Rockers in the early 1960s in the UK, particularly at Brighton. The U.S. tour started on 20 November 1973 at the San Francisco, California Cow Palace in Daly City where Moon passed out during "Won't Get Fooled Again" and, after a break backstage, again in "Magic Bus". Townshend asked the audience, "Can anyone play the drums? - I mean somebody good." An audience member, Scot Halpin, filled in for the rest of the show, a jam featuring "Smokestack Lightning", "Spoonful" and "Naked Eye".

The band's later albums contained songs more personal for Townshend, and he transferred this style to solo albums, as on the album Empty Glass. 1975's The Who by Numbers had introspective songs, lightened by "Squeeze Box", another hit single. Nevertheless, some critics considered By Numbers Townshend's "suicide note."A movie version of Tommy released that year was directed by Ken Russell, starred Daltrey and earned Townshend an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. In 1976, The Who played at Charlton Athletic football ground in what was listed for over a decade in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's loudest concert.

In 1978, the band released Who Are You, a move from rock opera towards a radio-friendly sound, though it did contain one song from a never-completed rock opera by Entwistle. The release was overshadowed by Moon's death in his sleep after an overdose of Heminevrin - prescribed to combat alcohol withdrawal - a few hours after a party held by Paul McCartney[citation needed]. The last album cover shows Moon in a chair with the words "not to be taken away"; the song "Music Must Change" has no drum track. Kenney Jones, of The Small Faces and The Faces, joined as Moon's successor.

On 2 May 1979, The Who returned to the stage with well-received concerts at the Rainbow Theatre in London, at the Cannes Film Festival in France and at Madison Square Garden in New York City. A small tour of the United States was marred by tragedy: on 3 December 1979 in Cincinnati, Ohio, a crush at Riverfront Coliseum killed 11 fans. The band was not told until after the show because civic authorities feared crowd problems if the concert were cancelled.

Also in 1979, The Who released a documentary film called The Kids Are Alright and a film version of Quadrophenia, the latter a box office hit in the UK and the former capturing many of the band's most scintillating moments on stage. In December, The Who became the third band, after the Beatles and The Band, featured on the cover of Time. The article, written by Jay Cocks, said The Who had "outpaced, outlasted, outlived and outclassed" all of their rock band contemporaries.

The band released two more studio albums with Jones as drummer, Face Dances (1981) and It's Hard (1982). Face Dances produced a US Top 20 hit and UK Top Ten hit with the single "You Better You Bet" and a string of MTV and AOR hits like "Another Tricky Day". Three videos from the album played on MTV the day it took to the air in August 1981. While both albums sold fairly well and It's Hard received a five-star review in Rolling Stone, some fans were not receptive to the new sound. "Athena" was a U.S. Top 30 hit and "Eminence Front" charted as well and became a favorite. However Townshend's life was a mess - his marriage had fallen apart due to his drinking and he had become a heroin user, something which shocked his friends due to his previous anti-drug stance. He cleaned up in early 1982, but Daltrey told him he would stop touring if it meant keeping Townshend alive. Shortly after It's Hard, The Who embarked on a farewell tour after Townshend said he wanted one more tour with The Who before turning it into a studio band. It was the highest grossing tour of the year, with sellout crowds throughout North America.

Townshend spent part of 1983 trying to write material for the studio album still owed to Warner Bros. Records from a contract in 1980. By the end of 1983, however, Townshend declared himself unable to generate material appropriate for The Who and announced the breakup of the band in December. He then focused on solo projects such as White City: A Novel, The Iron Man (which featured Daltrey and Entwistle and two songs on the album credited to "The Who"), and Psychoderelict, a forerunner to the radio work Lifehouse.

On 13 July 1985, The Who—including Kenney Jones—reformed for a one-off at Bob Geldof's Live Aid concert at Wembley. The band performed "My Generation", "Pinball Wizard", "Love Reign O'er Me", and "Won't Get Fooled Again". The band had also intended to play a new Townshend composition, "After the Fire", but were unable to learn it well enough; it became a solo hit for Daltrey that year. The BBC transmission truck blew a fuse at the beginning of "My Generation", meaning the picture was lost completely, but the band kept playing. This caused most of "My Generation" and all of "Pinball Wizard" to be missed by the rest of the world.

In February 1988 the band was honoured with the British Phonographic Industry's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Who played a short set at the ceremony (the last time Jones worked with The Who). In 1989 they embarked on a 25th anniversary "The Kids Are Alright" reunion tour which emphasised songs from Tommy. Simon Phillips played drums with Steve "Boltz" Bolton playing lead guitar, as Townshend had massive hearing problems and would be relegated to strumming acoustic guitar. A horn section and backing singers were added. Newsweek said, "The Who tour is special because, after the Beatles and the Stones, they're IT." There were sellouts throughout North America, including a four-night stand at Giants Stadium.In all, over two million tickets were sold. The tour included Tommy at Radio City Music Hall in New York and at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, with Elton John, Phil Collins, Billy Idol, Patti LaBelle, and Steve Winwood as guest stars. Townshend injured himself in Tacoma, WA when he gashed his hand during one of his windmill moves (he was playing more electric guitar in the latter half of shows). The tremolo bar pierced his hand and he was sent to the hospital.

A 2-CD live album Join Together was released in 1990, limping to #188 in the U.S. A video of the Universal Ampitheatre show was also released and went platinum in the U.S.

In 1990, their first year of eligibility, The Who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by U2, Bono saying, "More than any other band, The Who are our role models." The Who's display at the Rock Hall describes them as prime contenders for the title of "World's Greatest Rock Band". Only The Beatles and The Rolling Stones receive a similar accolade at the Rock Hall.

In 1991 The Who recorded a cover of Elton John's "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting" for a tribute album. This was the last time they released any studio work with Entwistle. Townshend toured in 1993 to promote his Psychoderelict album. One night Entwistle made a guest appearance at the end of the show. In 1994 there were rumours of a 30th anniversary tour. This never happened but Daltrey turned 50 and celebrated with two concerts at Carnegie Hall. These included guest spots by Entwistle and Townshend. Although original members of The Who attended, they did not appear on stage together except for the finale, "Join Together", with the other guests. Daltrey toured that year with Entwistle and with John "Rabbit" Bundrick on keyboards, Zak Starkey on drums and Simon Townshend filling in for his brother. Pete Townshend allowed Daltrey to call this band The Who, but Daltrey declined. The live album recorded during these concerts, Daltrey Sings Townshend, was not a commercial success.

In 1996 Townshend joined the lineup for a concert at Hyde Park. He intended to perform Quadrophenia as a solo acoustic piece using parts of the film on screens. However, faced with the enormity of the show, he decided to form another "big band" to play the piece. Entwistle and Daltrey agreed to a one-off performance. The band was augmented by Starkey, Rabbit on keyboards and Simon Townshend and Geoff Whitehorn on guitars. Jon Carin was an additional keyboard player, a horn section was added alongside backing vocalists and guests played characters from the album. These included David Gilmour, Ade Edmonson, newsreader Trevor McDonald and Gary Glitter. The performance was narrated by Phil Daniels who played Jimmy the Mod in the film. Despite technical difficulties the show was a success and led to a six-night residency at Madison Square Garden. These shows were not billed as The Who.

The success of the Quadrophenia shows led to a U.S. and European tour. Rabbit, Starkey, Simon and Carin remained for the shows. The show was reworked for the tour and included three Who standards as an encore. The show was billed under the members' names but later as The Who to aid ticket sales. Idol and Glitter played these dates.

The Who toured in the summer of 1997 with the same show, although they played five or six Who classics as encore instead of three. P.J. Proby and Ben Waters replaced Glitter and Idol. The European dates ranged from 23 April to 18 May, the U.S. from 19 July until 16 August. It was after this tour that Townshend admitted he had enjoyed it fully and he wanted to keep The Who as a semi-permanent unit from then on. Daltrey and Entwistle were delighted.

Townshend performed many acoustic shows, Entwistle mounted shows with The John Entwistle Band and Daltrey toured with the British Rock Symphony performing Who and other rock songs. In 1998, VH1 ranked The Who ninth in the 100 Greatest Artists of Rock 'n' Roll.

In late 1999, The Who performed as a five-piece for the first time in concert since 1985, with Rabbit on keyboards and Starkey on drums and performed seven shows, all but one for charity. Many songs were from Who's Next; others had not been performed for 30 years. The first show took place 29 October 1999 in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden. From there, they performed acoustic shows at Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA on 30 and 31 October. Next, they played on 12 and 13 November at the House of Blues in Chicago, as a benefit for the Maryville Academy. The first Chicago show was the first of the shows to be booked. Finally, two Christmas charity shows on 22 and 23 December at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London. For these Townshend was again playing electric guitar for the full show. The 29 October show in Las Vegas was partially on TV as well as the internet and would later see release as the DVD The Vegas Job. Reviews for the shows were good.


The success of 1999 led to a U.S. tour in 2000 and a UK tour in November. The tour started on 6 June at the Jacob Javits Center in New York to benefit the Robin Hood Foundation and ended with a charity show on 27 November at the Royal Albert Hall for the Teenage Cancer trust. With good reviews, all three members of The Who discussed a new album. VH1 placed The Who eighth in the 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock.

The band performed at The Concert for New York City on 20 October 2001, during which they played "Who Are You","Baba O'Riley", "Behind Blue Eyes", and "Won't Get Fooled Again" for the fire and police departments of New York City. The Who were also honoured with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award that year.

In winter 2002, The Who played five shows in England; in Portsmouth on 27 and 28 January and Watford on 31 January, in preparation for two shows for the Teenage Cancer Trust Benefit at the Albert Hall on 7 and 8 February. Just before a tour in summer 2002, Entwistle was found dead at the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. The cause was a heart attack in which cocaine was a contributing factor.After a brief delay, the tour commenced in Los Angeles with bassist Pino Palladino. Most shows from the tour were released officially on CD as Encore Series 2002. Before the tour "Real Good Looking Boy" and "Certified Rose" were rehearsed alongside classics such as "I Can See for Miles", but due to the death of Entwistle, they were not performed. In September, Q magazine named The Who as one of the "50 Bands to See Before You Die".


1.I Can't Explain
2.Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
3.Substitute
4.Boris The Spider
5.Happy Jack
6.I'm A Boy

Deep Purple

Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford, Hertfordshire in 1968.Along with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, they are considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although some band members have tried not to categorize themselves as any one genre. The band also incorporated classical music, blues-rock, pop and progressive rock elements. They were once listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's loudest band, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide. Deep Purple was ranked #22 on VH1's Greatest Artists of Hard Rock program.

The band has gone through many line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus (1976-84). The 1968-76 line-ups are commonly labeled Mark I, II, III and IV.Their second and most commercially successful line-up featured Ian Gillan (vocals), Ritchie Blackmore (guitar), Jon Lord (keyboards), Roger Glover (bass guitar) and Ian Paice (drums). This line-up was active 1969-73 and was revived from 1984-89 and again in 1993 before the rift between Blackmore and other members became unbridgeable. The current line-up including guitarist Steve Morse has been much more stable, though Lord's retirement in 2002 has left Paice as the only original member.

In 1967, former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis contacted London businessman Tony Edwards in the hope that he would manage a new group he was putting together, to be called Roundabout: so-called because the members would get on and off the band, like a musical roundabout. Impressed with the plan, Edwards agreed to finance the venture with two business partners: John Coletta and Ron Hire (Hire-Edwards-Coletta – HEC Enterprises).

The first recruit was the classically-trained Hammond organ player Jon Lord, who had most notably played with The Artwoods (led by Art Wood, brother of future Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, and featuring Keef Hartley). He was followed by session guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, who was persuaded to return from Hamburg to audition for the new group. Curtis soon dropped out, but HEC Enterprises, as well as Lord and Blackmore, were keen to carry on.

For the bass guitar, Lord suggested his old friend Nick Simper, with whom he had played in a band called The Flower Pot Men and their Garden (formerly known as The Ivy League) back in 1967. Simper's claims to fame (apart from Purple) were that he had been in Johnny Kidd and The Pirates and had been in the car crash that killed Kidd. He was also in Screaming Lord Sutch's The Savages, where he played with Blackmore.

The line-up was completed by vocalist Rod Evans and drummer Ian Paice from The Maze. After a brief tour of Denmark in the spring of 1968, Blackmore suggested a new name: Deep Purple, which was his grandmother's favourite song.

In October 1968, the group had success with a cover of Joe South's "Hush", which reached #4 on the US Billboard chart and #2 on the Canadian RPM charts. The song was taken from their debut album Shades of Deep Purple, and they were booked to support Cream on their Goodbye tour.

The band's second album, The Book of Taliesyn (including a cover of Neil Diamond's "Kentucky Woman"), was released in the United States to coincide with this tour, reaching #38 on the billboard chart and #21 on the RPM charts, although it would not be released in their home country until the following year. 1969 saw the release of their third album, Deep Purple, which contained strings and woodwind on one track ("April"). Several influences were in evidence, notably Vanilla Fudge and Lord's classical antecedents such as Bach and Rimsky-Korsakov.

After these three albums and extensive touring in the States, their American record company, Tetragrammaton, went out of business, leaving the band with no money and an uncertain future. (Tetragrammaton's assets were assumed by Warner Bros. Records, who would release Deep Purple's records in the U.S. throughout the 1970s.) Returning to England in early 1969, they recorded a single called "Emmaretta", named for Emmaretta Marks, then a cast member of the musical Hair, whom Rod Evans was trying to seduce, before Evans and Simper were fired.

In search of a replacement vocalist, Blackmore set his sights on 19 year old singer Terry Reid, who only a year earlier declined a similar opportunity to front the newly forming Led Zeppelin. Though he found the offer "flattering" Reid was still bound by the exclusive recording contract with his producer Mickie Most and more interested in his solo career.[13] Blackmore had no other choice but to look elsewhere.

The band hunted down singer Ian Gillan from Episode Six, a band that had released several singles in the UK without achieving their big break for commercial success. Six's drummer Mick Underwood—an old comrade of Blackmore's from his Savages days—made the introductions, and bassist Roger Glover tagged along for the initial sessions. Purple persuaded Glover to join full-time, an act that effectively killed Episode Six and gave Underwood a guilt complex that lasted nearly a decade—until Gillan recruited him for his new post-Purple band in the late 1970s.

This created the quintessential Deep Purple "Mark II" lineup, whose first, inauspicious release was a Greenaway-Cook tune titled "Hallelujah," which flopped.

The band gained some much-needed publicity with the Concerto for Group and Orchestra, a three-movement epic composed by Lord as a solo project and performed by the band at the Royal Albert Hall with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Together with Five Bridges by The Nice, it was one of the first collaborations between a rock band and an orchestra, although at the time, certain members of Purple (Blackmore and Gillan especially) were less than happy at the group being tagged as "a group who played with orchestras" when actually what they had in mind was to develop the band into a much tighter, hard-rocking style. Despite this, Lord wrote and the band recorded the Gemini Suite, another orchestra/group collaboration in the same vein, in late 1970.



Shortly after the orchestral release, the band began a hectic touring and recording schedule that was to see little respite for the next three years. Their first studio album of this period, released in mid-1970, was In Rock (a name deliberately chosen to distance the rock album from the concerto[citation needed]) and contained the then-concert staples "Speed King," "Into The Fire," and "Child in Time." The band also issued the UK Top Ten single "Black Night." The interplay between Blackmore's guitar and Lord's distorted organ, coupled with Ian Gillan's howling vocals and the rhythm section of Glover and Paice, now started to take on a unique identity and become instantly recognisable to rock fans throughout Europe[citation needed].

A second album, the more mellow[original research?] and creatively progressive Fireball (a favourite of Gillan but not of the rest of the band[citation needed]), was issued in the summer of 1971. The title track "Fireball" was released as a single, as was "Strange Kind of Woman" - not from the album but recorded during the same sessions (although it was included on the US version of the album instead of the UK version's song "Demon's Eye.")


Within weeks of Fireball's release, the band was already performing songs planned for the next album. One song (which later became "Highway Star") was performed at the first gig of the Fireball tour, having been written on the bus to a show in Portsmouth, in answer to a journalist's question: "How do you go about writing songs?" Three months later, in December 1971, the band traveled to Switzerland to record Machine Head. The album was due to be recorded at a casino in Montreux, using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, but a fire during a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention gig burned down the casino. The album was actually recorded at the nearby empty Grand Hotel. This incident famously inspired the song "Smoke on the Water." Gillan believes that he witnessed a man fire a flare gun into the ceiling during the concert, prompting Mark Volman of the Mothers to comment: "Arthur Brown in person!"

Continuing from where both previous albums left off, Machine Head has since become one of the band's most famous albums, including tracks that became live classics such as "Highway Star," "Space Truckin'," "Lazy," and "Smoke on the Water." Deep Purple continued to tour and record at a rate that would be rare thirty years on: when Machine Head was recorded, the group had only been together three and a half years, yet it was their seventh LP. Meanwhile the band undertook four US tours in 1972 and the August tour of Japan that led to a double-vinyl live release, Made in Japan. Originally intended as a Japan-only record, its worldwide release saw the double LP become an instant hit. It remains one of rock music's most popular and highest selling live-concert recordings (although at the time it was perhaps seen as less important, as only Glover and Paice turned up to mix it).

The classic Purple Mk. II line-up continued to work and released the album Who Do We Think We Are (1973), featuring the hit single "Woman from Tokyo," but internal tensions and exhaustion were more noticeable than ever. The bad feelings culminated in Ian Gillan quitting the band after their second tour of Japan in the summer of 1973 over tensions between Gillan and Blackmore, and Roger Glover being pushed out with him. Auditions were held. Two primary candidates surfaced: a Scotsman Angus Cameron McKinlay and David Coverdale. Angus, not having a high enough voice, was eliminated.[citation needed]. They settled on the unknown singer from Saltburn in Northeast England, David Coverdale, and Midlands bassist/vocalist Glenn Hughes, formerly of Trapeze. After first acquiring Glenn Hughes, they debated continuing as a four piece with Hughes as both bassist and vocalist . This new line-up continued into 1974 with the heavier blues-rock album Burn, another highly successful release and world tour. Hughes and Coverdale added both vocal harmonies and a more funky element[citation needed] to the band's music, a sound that was even more apparent on the late 1974 release Stormbringer. Besides the title track, the album had a number of songs that received much radio play, such as "Lady Double Dealer," "The Gypsy," and "Soldier Of Fortune." Yet Blackmore voiced unhappiness with the album and the direction Deep Purple had taken. As a result, he left the band in the spring of 1975 to form his own band with Ronnie James Dio of Elf, called Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, later shortened after one album to Rainbow.

With Blackmore's departure, Deep Purple was left to fill one of the biggest bandmember vacancies in rock music. In spite of this, the rest of the band refused to stop, and to the surprise of many long-time fans, actually announced a replacement for the "irreplaceable" Man in Black; American Tommy Bolin.

There are at least two versions about the recruitment of Bolin: Coverdale claims to have been the one who suggested auditioning Bolin. "He walked in, thin as a rake, his hair coloured green, yellow, and blue with feathers in it. Slinking along beside him was this stunning Hawaiian girl in a crochet dress with nothing on underneath. He plugged into four Marshall 100-watt stacks and...the job was his." But in an interview originally published by Melody Maker in June 1975, Bolin himself claimed that he came to the audition following a recommendation from Ritchie Blackmore.Bolin had been a member of many now-forgotten late-60s bands - Denny & The Triumphs, American Standard, and Zephyr, which released three albums from '69-72. Before Purple, Bolin's best-known recordings were made as a session musician on Billy Cobham's 1973 jazz fusion album Spectrum, and as Joe Walsh's replacement on two James Gang albums: Bang (1973) and Miami (1974). He had also jammed with such luminaries as Dr. John, Albert King, The Good Rats and Alphonse Mouzon, and was busy working on his first solo album, Teaser when he accepted the invitation to join Deep Purple.

The resulting album, Come Taste the Band, was released in October 1975. Despite mixed reviews, the collection revitalised the band once again, bringing a new, extreme funk[citation needed] edge to their hard rock sound. Bolin's influence was crucial, and with encouragement from Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, the guitarist developed much of the material. Later, Bolin's personal problems with drugs began to manifest themselves, and after cancelled shows and below-par concert performances, the band was in danger.

The end came on tour in Britain in March 1976 at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. David Coverdale reportedly walked off in tears and handed in his resignation, to which he was allegedly told there was no band left to quit. The decision to disband Purple had been made some time before the last show by Lord and Paice (the last remaining original members), who hadn't told anyone else. The break-up was finally made public in July 1976.

Later, Bolin had just finished recording his second solo album, Private Eyes, when, on December 4, 1976, tragedy struck. In Miami, during a tour supporting Jeff Beck, Bolin was found unconscious by his girlfriend. Unable to wake him, she hurriedly called paramedics, but it was too late. The official cause of death: multiple-drug intoxication. He was 25 years old.


After the break-up most of the past and present members of Deep Purple went on to have considerable success in a number of other bands, including Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath and Gillan. There were, however, a number of promoter-led attempts to get the band to reform, especially with the revival of the hard rock market in the late 70s/early 80s. By 1980, an unauthorised version of the band surfaced with Rod Evans as the only member who had ever been in Deep Purple, eventually ending in successful legal action from the legitimate Deep Purple camp over unauthorised use of the name. Evans was ordered to pay damages of $672,000 (U.S.) for using the band name without permission.

In April 1984, eight years after the demise of Deep Purple, a full-scale (and legal) reunion took place with the "classic" early 70s line-up of Blackmore, Gillan, Glover, Lord and Paice. The album Perfect Strangers was released in October 1984. A solid release, it sold extremely well and included the singles and concert staples "Knockin' At Your Back Door" and "Perfect Strangers." The reunion tour followed, starting in Australia and winding its way across the world to the USA, then into Europe by the following summer. Financially, the tour was also a tremendous success. The UK homecoming proved limited, as they elected to play just a single festival show at Knebworth (with main support from the Scorpions; also on the bill were UFO, Bernie Marsden's Alaska, Mama's Boys, Blackfoot, Mountain and Meat Loaf). The weather was bad (torrential rain and 6" of mud), but 80,000 fans turned up anyway. The gig was called the "Return Of The Knebworth Fayre".

The line-up then released The House of Blue Light in 1987, which was followed by a world tour (interrupted after Blackmore broke a finger on stage) and another live album Nobody's Perfect (1988) which was culled from several shows on this tour, but still largely based around the by-now familiar Made in Japan set-list. In the UK a new version of "Hush" was released to mark 20 years of the band. In 1989, Ian Gillan was fired as his relations with Blackmore had again soured and their musical differences had widened too far. His replacement was former Rainbow vocalist Joe Lynn Turner. This line-up recorded just one album, Slaves & Masters (1990) and toured in support. It is one of Blackmore's favourite Purple albums, though some fans derided it as little more than a so-called "Deep Rainbow" album.

With the tour done, Turner was forced out, as Lord, Paice and Glover (and the record company) wanted Gillan back in the fold for the 25th anniversary. Blackmore grudgingly relented, after requesting and eventually receiving 250,000 dollars in his bank account and the classic line-up recorded The Battle Rages On, but tensions between Gillan and Blackmore came to a head yet again during an otherwise stunningly successful European tour. Blackmore walked out in November 1993, never to return. Joe Satriani was drafted in to complete the Japanese dates in December and stayed on for a European Summer tour in 1994. He was asked to join permanently, but his record contract commitments prevented this. The band unanimously chose Dixie Dregs/Kansas guitarist Steve Morse to become Blackmore's permanent successor.

Steve Morse's arrival revitalised the band creatively, and in 1996 a new album titled Purpendicular was released, showing a wide variety of musical styles. With a revamped set list to tour, Deep Purple enjoyed success throughout the rest of the 1990s, releasing the harder-sounding Abandon in 1998, and touring with renewed enthusiasm. In 1999, Jon Lord, with the help of a fan who was also a musicologist and composer, painstakingly recreated the Concerto for Group and Orchestra; the original score having been lost. It was once again performed at the Royal Albert Hall in September 1999, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Mann. The concert also featured songs from each member's solo careers, as well as a short Deep Purple set, and the occasion was commemorated on the 2000 album Live at the Royal Albert Hall. In early 2001, two similar concerts were performed in Tokyo and released as part of the box set The Soundboard Series.


Much of the next few years was spent on the road touring. The group continued forward until 2002, when founding member Jon Lord (who, along with Ian Paice, was the only member to be in all incarnations of the band) announced his amicable retirement from the band to pursue personal projects (especially orchestral work). Lord left his Hammond Organ to his replacement. Rock keyboard veteran Don Airey (Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, Whitesnake), who had helped Deep Purple out when Lord's knee was injured in 2001, joined the band. In 2003, Deep Purple released their first studio album in five years, working with new producer Michael Bradford, the highly praised[citation needed] (but controversially titled) Bananas, and began touring in support of the album immediately. In July 2005, the band played at the Live 8 concert in Park Place (Barrie, Ontario) and, in October of the same year, released their next album Rapture of the Deep. It was followed by the Rapture of the Deep tour.

In February 2007, Ian Gillan asked fans not to buy a live album being released by Sony BMG. This was a recording of their 1993 appearance at the NEC in Birmingham. Recordings of this show have previously been released without resistance from Gillan or any other members of the band, but he said: "It was one of the lowest points of my life - all of our lives, actually."

Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton, East London, England, formed during 1975. The band are directed by founder, bassist and songwriter Steve Harris. Since their inception, the group has released a collective total of thirty-five albums. Respectively: fourteen studio albums, nine live albums, four EPs and eight compilations.

As pioneers of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal music, Iron Maiden achieved success during the early 1980s and after several lineup changes, went on to release a series of platinum and gold albums. These include the US platinum-selling landmark The Number of the Beast during 1982 and Piece of Mind in 1983. Their most recent studio effort, A Matter of Life and Death, was released in 2006 and peaked at number nine on the Billboard 200. The album was certified gold in the UK.

As one of the most successful heavy metal bands to date, Iron Maiden have sold more than 70 million records worldwide, without significant mainstream or radio support. The band won the Ivor Novello Awards for international achievement in 2002, and were also inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, California during their tour in the United States in 2005. Their influences include: Thin Lizzy, UFO, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and Wishbone Ash.

The Iron Maiden team was formed Christmas Day 1975, by bassist Steve Harris, shortly after he left his previous group, Smiler. Harris attributes the band name to a movie adaptation of The Man in the Iron Mask from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, which he saw around that time, and so the group was named after the iron maiden torture device.

Steve Harris and guitarist Dave Murray remain the longest-surviving members of Iron Maiden. Original vocalist Paul Day was fired as he lacked "energy or charisma onstage". He was replaced by Dennis Wilcock, a Kiss fan who utilised fire, make-up and fake blood during live performances. Wilcock's friend, Dave Murray, was invited to join, to the frustration of guitarists Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance.This fuelled Harris to temporarily disunite the band in 1976, though the group reformed soon after with Murray as the sole guitarist.


Iron Maiden recruited another guitarist in 1977, Bob Sawyer, who caused a rift between Murray and Wilcock, prompting Harris to fire both Murray and Sawyer.A poor gig at the Bridgehouse in November 1977, with a makeshift line-up including Tony Moore on keyboards, Terry Wapram on guitar, and drummer Barry Purkis resulted in Harris firing the entire band. Dave Murray was reinstated and Doug Sampson was hired as drummer.

A chance meeting at the Red Lion pub in Leytonstone evolved into a successful audition for vocalist Paul Di'Anno. Steve Harris has stated, "There's sort of a quality in Paul's voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge."

Iron Maiden had been playing for three years, but had never recorded any of their music. On New Year's Eve 1978, the band recorded a demo, The Soundhouse Tapes. Featuring only three songs, the band sold all five thousand copies within weeks.[12] One track found on the demo, "Prowler", went to number one on Neal Kay's Heavy Metal Soundhouse charts in Sounds magazine. Their first appearance on an album was on the compilation Metal for Muthas (released on 15 February 1980) with two early versions of "Sanctuary" and "Wrathchild".

From late 1977 to 1978, Murray was the sole guitarist in the band until Paul Cairns joined in 1979. Shortly before going into the studio, Cairns left the band. Several other guitarists were hired temporarily until the band finally chose Dennis Stratton. Initially, the band wanted to hire Dave Murray's childhood friend Adrian Smith, but Smith was busy with his own band, Urchin. Drummer Doug Sampson was also replaced by Clive Burr (who was brought into the band by Stratton). In December 1979, the band landed a major record deal with EMI.

Iron Maiden's eponymous 1980 release, Iron Maiden, made number 4 in the UK Albums Chart in its first week of release,and the group became one of the leading proponents of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. In addition to the title track, the album includes other early favourites such as "Running Free", "Transylvania", "Phantom of the Opera", and "Sanctuary" — which was not on the original UK release but made the U.S. release and subsequent re-releases. The band played a headline tour of the UK then went on to open for Kiss on their 1980 Unmasked Tour's European leg. Iron Maiden also supported Judas Priest on select dates. After the Kiss tour, Dennis Stratton was dismissed from the band as a result of creative and personal differences. Stratton was replaced by Adrian Smith in October 1980.


In 1981, Maiden released their second album, titled Killers. This new album contained many tracks that had been written prior to the release of the debut album, but were considered surplus. With songs already created well in advance during tour, only two new tracks were written for the album: "Prodigal Son" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (the title was taken from the short story by Edgar Allan Poe).

By 1981, Paul Di'Anno was demonstrating increasingly self-destructive behaviour, particularly through alledged cocaine usage,[citation needed] although Di'Anno himself denies the charge. His performances began to suffer, just as the band was beginning to achieve major success in America. At the end of 1981 the band dismissed Di'Anno and sought a new vocalist.

Bruce Dickinson, previously of Samson, auditioned for Iron Maiden in September 1981 and joined the band soon afterwards. He then went out on the road with the band on a small headlining tour. In anticipation of the band's forthcoming album, the band played "Children of the Damned", "Run to the Hills", "22 Acacia Avenue" and "The Prisoner" at select venues, introducing fans to the sound that the band was progressing towards.

Dickinson's recorded debut with Iron Maiden was 1982's The Number of the Beast, an album that claimed the band their first ever UK Albums Chart #1 record and additionally became a Top Ten hit in many other countries. For the second time the band went on a world tour, visiting the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, UK and Germany. The tour's U.S. leg proved controversial when an American conservative political lobbying group claimed Iron Maiden was Satanic because of the new album's title track.The band members' attempts to stop the criticism failed. A group of Christian activists destroyed Iron Maiden records (along with those of Ozzy Osbourne) as a protest against the band.

Dickinson at the time was still having legal difficulties with Samson's management, and was not permitted to add his name to any of the songwriting credits. However, he was still able to lend "creative influence" to many of the songs. In a Guitar Legends interview he claims he contributed to the overall themes of "Children of the Damned", "The Prisoner" and "Run to the Hills".

In December 1982, drummer Clive Burr ended his association with the band due to personal and tour schedule problems. He was replaced by Nicko McBrain, previously of French band Trust. Soon afterwards, during 1983, the band released Piece of Mind, Soon after the success of Piece of Mind, 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 in length. "Back in the Village" followed up on an earlier hit "The Prisoner", both based on the television show starring Patrick McGoohan.

The tour following the album, dubbed the World Slavery Tour, was the band's largest to date and consisted of 193 shows over 13 months. This was one of the largest tours in music history. Many shows were played back-to-back in the same city, such as in Long Beach, California, where most of the recordings were made for their subsequent live release Live After Death. This tour was physically gruelling for the band and they took a 6-month vacation when it ended. This was the first vacation in the band's history, including even cancelling a proposed supporting tour for the new live album.

Returning from their vacation, the band adopted a different style for their 1986 studio album, titled Somewhere in Time. This was not a concept album, though it was themed loosely around the idea of time travel and associated themes - history, the passage of time, and long journeys. It featured, for the first time in the band's history, synthesised bass and guitars to add textures and layers to the sound. Though considered different from the norm of Maiden sounds, it charted well across the world, especially with the single "Wasted Years".

The experimentation on Somewhere in Time resulted in Seventh Son of a Seventh Son during 1988. Adding to Iron Maiden's experimentation, it was a concept album featuring a story about a mythical child who possessed clairvoyant powers. For the first time, the band used keyboards on a recording, as opposed to guitar synthesisers on the previous release. Critics stated this produced a more accessible release. It was a great success, and became the band's second album to hit #1 in the UK charts.

In 1990, to end Iron Maiden's first ten years of releasing singles, they released The First Ten Years, a series of ten CDs and double 12" vinyls. Between 24 February and 28 April 1990, the individual parts were released one-by-one, each containing two of Iron Maiden's singles, including the B-sides.


In 1989, after touring with Iron Maiden, guitarist Adrian Smith released a solo album with his band ASAP entitled Silver and Gold. During this break in 1989, vocalist Bruce Dickinson began work on a solo album with former Gillan guitarist Janick Gers, releasing Tattooed Millionaire in 1990.

Soon afterward, Iron Maiden regrouped to work on a new album, Adrian Smith left the band due to a lack of enthusiasm. Janick Gers, having worked on Bruce Dickinson's solo project, was chosen to replace Smith and became the first new team member in seven years. The album, No Prayer for the Dying, was released during October 1990.

The band obtained their first (and to date, only) UK Singles Chart number one successful single with "Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter", originally recorded by Dickinson for the soundtrack to A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. It was released on 24 December 1990, and was one of the first records to be released on several different formats with different B-sides. The single has the record for being the fastest release to rate number one and then lose any chart rating again over the following couple of weeks.

Dickinson performed a solo tour in 1991 before returning to studio work with Iron Maiden for the album Fear of the Dark. Released in 1992, the album was noticeably longer (due to this being Iron Maiden's first album recorded for CD rather than LP) and had several songs which became fan favourites, such as the title track and "Afraid to Shoot Strangers". The disc also featured "Wasting Love," one of the band's softer songs, and "From Here to Eternity", the third installment of the 'Charlotte the Harlot' narrative (although some fans will argue that 'Hooks in You' is actually the third installment, making 'From Here to Eternity' the fourth). The album featured the first songwriting by Gers, and no collaboration at all between Harris and Dickinson on songs.


In 1993, Bruce Dickinson left the band to further pursue his solo career. However, Dickinson agreed to remain with the band for a farewell tour and two live albums (later re-released in one package). The first, A Real Live One, featured songs from 1986 to 1992, and was released in March 1993. The second, A Real Dead One, featured songs from 1975 to 1984, and was released after Dickinson had left the band. He played his farewell show with Iron Maiden on 28 August 1993. The show was filmed, broadcast by the BBC, and released on video under the name Raising Hell.

In 1994, the band auditioned hundreds of vocalists, both famous and unknown before choosing Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane. Bayley had a different vocal style from his predecessor, which ultimately received a mixed reception among fans.

After a two year hiatus (and three year hiatus from recording - a record for the band at the time) Iron Maiden returned in 1995. Releasing The X Factor, the band had their lowest chart position since 1981 for an album in the UK (debuting at number 8). Chief songwriter Harris was experiencing personal problems at the time with the end of his marriage, and many fans and critics[who?] feel the album's sound is a reflection of this.

The album included the 11-minute epic "Sign of the Cross", the band's longest song since "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". It also included "Man on the Edge", based on the movie Falling Down and "Lord of the Flies", based on the novel of the same name. The band toured for the rest of 1995 and 1996, playing for the first time in Israel, before stopping to release The Best of the Beast. The band's first compilation, it included a new single, "Virus".


The band returned to the studio for Virtual XI, released in 1998. Chart scores of the album were the band's lowest to date, failing to score one million worldwide sales for the first time in Iron Maiden's history. At the same time, Steve Harris assisted in remastering the entire discography of Iron Maiden up to "Live at Donington" (which was given a mainstream release for the first time) and released the set.

In February 1999, Bayley left the band by mutual consent. At the same time, the band surprised their fans when they announced that both Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith were rejoining the band, and that Janick Gers would remain. Iron Maiden now had three guitarists and a hugely successful reunion tour, The Ed Hunter Tour. This tour also supported the band's newly released greatest hits Ed Hunter, which also contained a computer game of the same name starring the band's mascot.

Iron Maiden's first studio release after the reunion with Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith came in the form of 2000's Brave New World. Thematic influences continued with "The Wicker Man" — based on the 1973 British cult film of the same name — and "Brave New World" — title taken from the Aldous Huxley novel of the same name.

The world tour that followed consisted of well over 100 dates and culminated on 19 January 2001 in a show at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil, where Iron Maiden played to an audience of around 250, 000.[31] This performance was recorded and released on CD and DVD in March 2002 under the name Rock in Rio.

In 2003, Iron Maiden released Dance of Death. As usual, historical and literary influences continued — "Montsegur" in particular being about the Cathar stronghold conquered in 1244 and "Paschendale" relating to a significant battle during World War I.

Their performance at Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, Germany, as part of the supporting tour, was recorded and released in August 2005 as a live album and DVD, entitled Death on the Road.

In 2005, the band announced a tour to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the release of their first album, Iron Maiden, and the 30th anniversary of their formation. The tour also was in support of the 2004 DVD entitled The Early Days and as such during the tour they only played material from their first four albums. As part of the celebration of their early days, the "Number of the Beast" single was re-released and went straight to number 3 in the UK Chart.

At Iron Maiden's last Ozzfest performance (20 August 2005 at the Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen in San Bernardino, CA), Sharon Osbourne interrupted their performance by turning off the PA system, after which the MC chanted: "Ozzy! Ozzy!". Members of the audience threw eggs at the band, causing singer Bruce Dickinson to question how eggs had got past Ozzfest security. During some of Maiden's best-known numbers, the band's PA system wavered. On the Ozzfest website, Mrs. Osbourne later accused Bruce Dickinson of disrespecting Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, and the production quality of the Ozzfest tour, while praising the rest of the band and their crew.

The band completed this tour by headlining the Reading and Leeds weekend festivals on the 26th and 28 August, 2005. For the second time, the band played a charity show for former drummer Clive Burr's Clive Burr MS Trust Fund charity.

In Autumn 2006, Iron Maiden released A Matter of Life and Death. While the album is not a concept album,[35] war and religion are recurring themes in the lyrics throughout, as well as in the album's artwork. A successful tour followed, during which they played the new album in its entirety; though response to this was mixed.

Iron Maiden recorded a live session at Abbey Road Studios for Live from Abbey Road in December 2006. Their performance was screened in an episode alongside sessions with Natasha Bedingfield and Gipsy Kings in March 2007 on Channel 4 (UK) and June 2007 on the Sundance Channel (USA).

In November 2006, Iron Maiden and manager Rod Smallwood announced that they were to end their 27-year-old relationship with Sanctuary Music and were to start a new company named Phantom Music Management. No other significant changes were made.

The second part of the "A Matter of Life and Death" tour was dubbed "A Matter of the Beast" to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Number of the Beast album, and included appearances at several major festivals worldwide. The band announced plans to play five songs from A Matter of Life and Death and five from The Number of the Beast as part of their set but in fact played only four songs from The Number of the Beast. They played in the Middle East for the first time at the annual Dubai Desert Rock Festival in 2007. On the 24 June they ended the tour with a performance at London's Brixton Academy in aid of The Clive Burr MS Trust fund.

On 5 September 2007, the band announced their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour,which ties in with the DVD release of their Live After Death album. The setlist for the tour consisted of successes from the 1980s, with a specific emphasis on the Powerslave era for set design. The tour started in Mumbai, India on 1 February 2008 where the band played to an audience of about 30, 000. The first part of the tour consisted of 24 concerts in 21 cities, travelling over 50, 000 miles in the band's own chartered airplane "Ed Force One". They played their first ever concerts in Costa Rica and Colombia and their first Australian shows since 1992. On 12 May, the band released a new compilation album, titled Somewhere Back in Time. It includes a selection of tracks from their 1980 eponymous debut to 1988's Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, including several live versions from Live After Death. With the sole UK headline show at Twickenham Stadium, this tour also marked the first ever stadium headlining show in the UK by the band. A final part of the tour took place in February and March 2009, including the band's first ever appearance in Peru and Ecuador, and their first performances in New Zealand for 16 years.

On 20 January 2009, the band announced that they were to release a full-length documentary film in select cinemas on 21 April. Titled Iron Maiden: Flight 666, the movie was filmed during the first part of the "Somewhere Back In Time" tour between February and March 2008. Flight 666 is co-produced by Banger Productions and was released by Universal Music Group in the U.S. and EMI Records in the rest of the world.

During a Rock Radio interview promoting Flight 666, Nicko McBrain revealed that Iron Maiden had booked studio time for early 2010 and would be likely to be touring again late that year or the year after. At the 2009 BRIT Awards the band won the award for British live act.

During their live presentation in São Paulo, on 16 March 2009, Bruce announced on stage that the show was the biggest of their career. In fact, the crowd over 63,000 people was Iron Maiden's all-time biggest attendance for a solo show, without other bands. The attendance was bigger than Chile's show, according to the organisers.In an interview with Metal Hammer Magazine, Adrian Smith dismissed rumours that the band would break up after their fifteenth studio album, He stated "...we write music, we're musicians, we'll carry on... It's not always easy to make an album, you've got six guys with their own ideas and focusing it into one outcome is quite difficult".

During the Somewhere Back In Time tour, Bruce Dickinson said that there are plans for Iron Maiden to write and record a new album, most likely to come out in 2009, and in an interview with Metal Edge, Steve Harris said there definitely would be another album, stating that, "I always had this vision that we would do 15 studio albums, and the next one would be the 15th. Hopefully, we'll do another one or two for luck, but we'll see how we go, really." Dickinson has also informed audiences that future tours would feature more recent Iron Maiden material. Asked about the possibility of a new album and Harris's fifteen-album limit, Adrian Smith commented that "we're musicians. We'll carry on. The great thing is that there's clearly a huge audience out there waiting to hear what we do right now", renewing hopes that a new album is forthcoming


1.Invaders
2.Children Of The Damned
3.The Prisoner
4.Acacia Avenue
5.The Number Of The Beast
6.Run To The Hills
7.Gangland
8.Total Eclipse
9.HALLOWED BE THY NAME