Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea

Sometimes it is the subtext surrounding an album that pushes it over the edge of greatness; there are divorce albums (Dylan), death albums, (The God Machine) drug albums (pretty much everybody, to be honest). Then there are those records that are forged under unique circumstances, such as the reunion albums of Aerosmith and Mk II Deep Purple, or the albums Faith No More made while band members honestly and openly hated each others guts. Maybe these albums would be great even if the personal issues had not become public knowledge, but sometimes it’s not initially the music that some hit records are known for. The listening public comes forewarned and fully armed with preconceptions, not all of which were unforeseen during the record’s making.

The Number Of The Beast wasn’t known for being made under the influence of drugs, divorce or death. However it did wear its context literally on its sleeve; there would be no arguing about what this record was about. The image of a big red Devil puppet with an even bigger band mascot Eddie in control, marauding over a hellish landscape of leaping flames and writhing bodies, was a sure-fire indication that the album wasn’t about crop rotation or the post-colour TV decline in average takings at British cinemas. Then there were the interviews featuring bullshit tales of mysterious ghostly studio problems and the £666 repair bill for the producer’s car after crashing into a vicar driving some nuns to church. Not only was this thing all about Satan but everyone in the band wanted to make sure that you, the record-buying public, was reminded of the fact again and again and again.

However, for once it wouldn’t have been the dumbest question on earth if an interviewer had piped up with “so, what’s this new album all about then?” The Number Of The Beast, as it happens, is as much about the Devil as Darwin’s Voyage Of The Beagle is about Snoopy from Peanuts.

The first track is about Vikings, which admittedly is no great departure from traditional Heavy Metal themes, and the following two songs are no more original, being retellings of a film and a TV series respectively. Track four features a prostitute, and the title track rips off Tam O’Shanter. The first single, Run To The Hills, is about cowboys and Indians, and the album then finishes up with a ditty about being an honest criminal and a tale of what it feels like when you’re just about to be hanged. Then there was a bonus track on modern editions, with a storyline that is somewhat similar to the plot of Asimov’s Nightfall. Iron Maiden hadn’t sold their souls to the devil; they’d just been watching films about men who had.

So it seems at first glance that no-one is in any danger of drowning in the lyrical depth of The Number Of The Beast, but this is as false an impression as that given by the excitable cover art.

Children Of The Damned is about retribution and consequence, summed up in the final question “What have we learned?” The Prisoner tells of escape from misused authority and the desire for vengeance, whereas The Number Of The Beast is about a man's horrific dream of the seducing nature of a corrupt power. Hallowed Be Thy Name is about power too, but about being powerless over one’s ultimate fate and contemplating one’s life in those terms.

The most maligned lyric though is that for 22 Acacia Avenue. The first two verses, where a man is encouraged to blow fifteen quid on a whore to cheer himself up, seem standard enough for the lewd male world of heavy metal, but when the music changes then so does the perspective. This is the cue for a description of the man’s conflict between seeing the woman as a cheap object of desire and his equally demeaning craving to rescue and protect her from the degrading treatment she receives. He is unable to equate his lust with that of her ‘other men’ and tries to separate her humanity from her sexuality in his mind. Finally he pleads with her to respect herself and stop selling her body but inevitably falls back into a traditional position of paternal power and orders her to leave with him. Charlotte herself doesn’t get a word in edgeways, but then the song isn’t really about her at all.

Of course there’s the music to consider. Iron Maiden were supposed to be all Boy’s Own; bravado, bombast and big hairy bollocks banging to the beat. They were the heavy metal punks; they’d played fast and raw on the first album but sounded like they were running out of steam on number two. However punk was deader than Sid by 1982 and New Wave had only managed to spawn Duran Duran and Spandau fucking Ballet. What could one expect next? The future was far from certain especially seeing as the entire sound of the band would change without Di'Anno.

But Maiden always had a knack of trading up when they replaced band members; Adrian Smith, who had replaced Dennis Stratton for Killers, proved to be a marvelous addition and Bruce Dickinson, the new singer on The Number Of The Beast, had a frighteningly wider range than his predecessor. This gave the band new abilities; Smith was far more metal than Stratton, Dickinson easily more able and enthusiastic than Di'Anno. Steve Harris could finally be as ambitious as his talents would allow.

Dickinson was legally unable to write for his first album with the band but has claimed ‘moral responsibility’ for some of the tracks. It would be interesting to get him into the same room as Steve Harris to publicly discuss who wrote what, but one fact is irrefutable: Steve Harris upped his game considerably for The Number Of The Beast. The precise crescendae of Children Of The Damned, the constantly offbeat title track, and the Top Ten hit single Run To The Hills are all genre-defining classics.

Adrian Smith didn’t slouch about either, penning The Prisoner and 22 Acacia Avenue with the band-leading bassist. The former is a series of speedy lunges punctuated by skyscraper-sized choruses and an instrumental section bursting with rhythmic challenges; the latter is peppered with strategic changes in tempo and theme to fit the swinging moods of the lyrics.

The crowning achievement of the album is all down to Harris though. Hallowed Be Thy Name has suffered from over-exposure through the years, as have many other tracks from The Beast, but it is simply one of the great multi-faceted epics of musical storytelling from the plucked intro to the guitar-duelling finale.

In many ways this album has never been bettered. But consider the real context behind all the satanic shenanigans. It is a little mystifying how the band found this classic record within them after the soporific cul-de-sac of Killers. But they, unlike some others, managed to keep the momentum going just as the NWOBHM was falling into a terminal decline. The Number Of The Beast wasn't a fluky one-off, it just came out of the blue. One fan recalls hearing the first single on Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show;

It was not introduced at all - but knowing what Maiden sounded like and knowing what Bruce sounded like, it took me until "We fought him hard, we fought him well." to know exactly who this was - and I was jumping up and down like a mad jumper-up-and-downer.

Iron Maiden supported Priest, the Scorps, and Rainbow in the US, and turned themselves into the biggest heavy metal band in the world in the process. The band was still in a state of flux though; Clive Burr, whose rhythmic 'feel' is so vital to these tracks, would be sacked before the next album, and Bruce Dickinson's endearing new-boy lack of self-awareness would also have disappeared by then to be replaced with a not-entirely productive rivalry with Steve Harris. But The Number Of The Beast had set an entirely new trajectory for the band, and for heavy metal as a whole. They were going straight to Number One.

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