I Think I'm Turning Japanese

It’s all about having one more, at the end of the heavy metal day when all the hard rock cows have come home and the grebo chickens are doing whatever the bloody cliché requires of them. One more is, well, one more. And my copy of Maiden Japan, purchased from an Older Boy at School, had one more.

Live output from ‘Arry’s Mob was once frighteningly rare, somewhat prized, and usually to be found on b-sides. Maiden Japan was the first live ep, from the Di’Anno era, intended to fill a little gap until the next album was released. It was the nearest thing Maiden fans had to a live album until 1985, and was also the last Iron Maiden record Paul Di’Anno appeared on.

I had the import version, which added Wrathchild to the running order of Running Free, Remember Tomorrow, Killers and Innocent Exile. The excitement of the recordings is infectious, high tempos and husky roars over a shrill thrilled Japanese crowd, but the appetite is whetted, not sated, by this mere morsel. It seems astonishing, especially as seven full live Iron Maiden albums were released between 1985 and 2005, that this was all there was in the record shop racks from a band famed for its live performances.

But Iron Maiden were in trouble by the time this was released. Killers had been received with mixed reviews and was weaker than the eponymous debut, although fan reaction had been strongly positive. By the time of the Reading Festival Steve Harris was looking for a change and within a month Di’Anno had played his last gig with the band. Maiden Japan, released four days after that date, could seem only to be useful as an historical document of the raspy fag-end sound of Di’Anno, before Dickinson’s Air Raid Siren voice was heard in late ’81. However the Maiden Japan recording of Remember Tomorrow was later overdubbed by the new singer and ended up being passed off as a live track from his first dates in Italy on the flipside of a subsequent single….

Maiden Japan is many ordinary things; a rack-filler while the band regrouped and soul-searched, an historical document, and a shambolic swansong for a troubled singer. But, as 1981 drew on and the NWOBHM fizzled out like a cheap sparkler, it could have been the last gasp for yet another band that almost made it big....