The veteran English Heavy Metal band Iron Maiden, which has been active for about half a century, has performed thousands of shows throughout its brilliant career. In their presentations, the group led by bassist Steve Harris plays their great classics, such as "The Number Of The Beast", "Iron Maiden", "Run To The Hills", "The Trooper", "2 Minutes To Midnight", "The Evil That Men Do" and "Fear Of The Dark".
Given the gigantic number of classics signed by Iron Maiden, it's imaginable that choosing the setlists for the group's shows is a thankless task. And Steve Harris himself agrees with such an assumption, as pointed out in an interview he gave to the French magazine Hard Rock in October 1986 (via Fan Club Iron Maiden Bulgaria).
"Yes, it's terrible to be forced to discard some songs. Sometimes, when we meet fans, they tell us about the songs they like. But if we were to listen to them, we would play all the songs from our six albums," declared the Iron Maiden leader, who was asked why his band doesn't usually play covers in live performances.
"We have enough options, it's true, but we don't want to play songs that everyone already knows by heart. We prefer to play more obscure tracks, as we did with 'Cross Eyed Mary' [a Jethro Tull song]. In the beginning, we used to play covers because our setlist was quite limited, but that's in the past! It's very boring to see bands making money just playing covers," Harris said.
And speaking of Iron Maiden shows, the sextet will celebrate its 50 years through the "Run For Your Lives" tour, which was announced in the second half of September.
