23. Where Eagles Dare
(Piece Of Mind, 1983)
Punkte: 295
Votes: 28
Schnitt: 10,5
"Well, I mentioned to Nicko that I needed some kind of drum intro. Nick was still kind of nervous, being the new kid on the block and all, but he stayed in working almost all day on an intro for the song. At the end of the day, he had a little 67-second thing that entailed hitting basically every piece of his kit, going from small tom to big tom, like a kind of ending to a song and then jumped into the chorus. The next day, Nicko played it to me and I went "No, no, no....nothing like that, just something simple like rat-tat-tat-tat....rat-tat-tat-tat (you get the idea)!!". I then tried to play something on Nicko's kit and he said "Oh....you mean like this?", and played it. And it became this brilliant technical piece we all know. There's a part in the instrumental section of that song that is supposed to sound like a machine gun. It's not very loud in the mix, but we wanted it that way so people who listened to it a couple of times would say "What's that?" This song was done in two takes. It was much harder to write stuff like this than 'Run To The Hills' for example, so up to that point "Piece Of Mind" was our hardest album to listen to. And our best one until "Seventh Son Of A 7th Son"." (Steve Harris)
"The song is based on an Alistair Maclean novel, published in 1967, and that was also made into a film starring Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, about a World Wwar II covert rescue of an american general from a Nazi stronghold in the Bavarian Alps. Burton is absolutely fantastic in the role of Major John Smith. Who really is this character? Could he be a double agent spying for both Britain and Germany? And why is this american general so important? Read the book and watch the film, you'll love every minute of it. I was a huge fan of the movie, actually we all were. There’s a drum part in 'Where Eagles Dare' which is great. Nicko wanted to use a double bass drum and we wouldn’t let him and he did the whole thing with a single bass drum, and he still does and still refuses to use double bass drums. Because after playing that bit with a single bass drum pedal, he was like "No, that’s it. I’m going to use a single bass drum pedal. Everybody else is going to have to catch up"." (Bruce Dickinson)
""The Number Of The Beast" had been recorded only a few months after Bruce Dickinson joined Iron Maiden. Fast forward one year and he’d done significant roadwork with the band. He was also now contractually free to compose songs. The twin guitar team of Adrian Smith and Dave Murray had become a well-oiled machine. And while Nicko McBrain didn’t have the feel of a swinging Jazz/Rock drummer like Clive Burr, he instead brought the chops of a progressive master to the fold. With this team behind him, Steve Harris could finally create an Iron Maiden album that fused the power of Deep Purple with the perfectionism of Rush. Newbie McBrain gets the first word on "Piece of Mind": album opener 'Where Eagles Dare' kicks off with a complicated drum fill a la 'Stargazer' by Rainbow. That was the effect the band wanted, but Bruce Dickinson states in his autobiography "What does this button do?" that he had actually referenced a drum lick from a not so well known 1973 album by English guitarist Gordon Giltrap. "Oh yeah," replied McBrain, "'Heartsong', that was me!". By the way, McBrain had been the drummer on that Giltrap album a decade earlier.
Like every other song on "Piece of Mind", 'Where Eagles Dare' has literary origins. In this case, Maiden took notice of the simultaneously written 1967 novel and screenplay, "Where Eagles Dare", by "The Guns of Navarrone" & "Ice Station Zebra" author Alistair MacLean. A film was made a year later starring Clint Eastwood, Richard Burton and Mary Ure. The excitement of special ops paratroopers raiding a Bavarian castle during WWII was a fertile and kinetic subject for interpretation by Iron Maiden. Dickinson spits out the lyrics like bullets from a machine gun, and wails like his chute didn’t open ‘til the last possible second. This kind of urgency only whets the listener’s appetite for the feast to come, which is appropriate since the original working title of the album was "Food For Thought". No one can recall who suggested "Piece Of Mind", but once it was stated during a drunken brainstorming session, there was no looking back." (rockandrollglobe.com)
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