I go full pedal to the metal when I hits Iron Maiden’s sold-out gig in Los Angeles. I attend a theatrical masterclass in metal that leaves Bruce Dickinson howling at the moon and conjuring werewolves.
I arrive at BMO Stadium, a gothic thorn amongst over 20,000 metal-headed roses. As the sun sets over Los Angeles, I gaze in awe at the sold-out crowd. Even if I wanted to (which I didn’t), it would be impossible to escape the fact that I’m at an Iron Maiden gig. The uniform here is the Iron Maiden tee, vintage preferably. You earn your stripes here: the older the T-shirt, the more loyal the wearer. This is the heavy metal army. The audience here have stood the test of time, just like Iron Maiden themselves. I attended opening night – well, in Los Angeles anyway. This was the first of two sold-out nights where the band are in town. Quite honestly, Los Angeles is the ideal climate for music under the stars, and Iron Maiden were born ready to make me mosh under the moonlight.
The intro to Doctor Doctor blasted around the stadium walls. An injection of fuel pulsated through the crowd, hungry for the hits, and they roared! Bruce Dickinson emerged like God himself, descending from a dense cloud of fog. Immersive background projections on the big screen took us on a journey to Paris, but nobody wanted to be anywhere apart from right here, right now. Bruce took the whole crowd on a musical journey, wielding his mic stand like a weapon of mass destruction. His anchoring powerhouse vocals bounced off the walls like liquid velvet.
The Run For Your Lives Tour is a celebration of 50 years of music. You’d never for a second guess that Bruce Dickinson is 68 years old and a throat cancer survivor. My personal favourite from the set was Phantom of the Opera. As a lover of symphonic metal, this track has been a huge inspiration to my own work as a musical artist. The drama, the opera, was all served like a medieval banquet, with no jester in sight. The band’s honoured seventh member, Eddie, took to the stage, towering over the crowd like a possessed demon. This mascot is loved by fans almost as much as the band themselves; it’s fair to say they’ve certainly created a monster.
As night fell over the stadium, the full moon captured my attention out of the corner of my eye, and my mind began to wander to werewolves. In a weird moment of synchronicity, Bruce Dickinson paused to look at this huge moon. It was actually a waxing gibbous moon, so was eerily prominent in the night sky. We all know what happens under the light of the full moon? Bruce knew it too, and he summoned any potential werewolves to reveal themselves. Twenty thousand metalheads roared.
Sadly, not one transformed, and yes, I was looking. My eyes hovered over the heaving crowd of metalheads. I was eagerly looking for some out-of-character twitching, unsuspected rippling, tearing of the skin, but not one Iron Maiden T-shirt got ripped off at the seams. No fangs appeared, no dense hair sprouted, and the only howling at the moon was coming from the band’s frontman.
We were werewolf-free. The show must go on!
And go on it did. For a 17-track set and a two-hour show, Iron Maiden brought the house down, and the army of fans left full to the brim on Maiden magic.
