Description

Reduced price due to one bent corner

Double album on orange vinyls with gatefold cover, OBI-strip and poster.

Blaze Bayley was the man who got the difficult task to lead Iron Maiden through a hugely stressful and perilous time in the band. He’s not Bruce Dickinson, but no one is, but Blaze Bayley is a great guy and someone who you can root for. And the albums The X-Factor and Virtual XI are both parts of Iron Maiden’s history and they should be respected as such. When the band finished their X Factour on the 7th of September 1996 in Mexico then it had lasted for 128 shows around the world over a period of one year. This was ofcourse far beyond anything Maiden’s new singer Blaze Bayley had ever experienced or even contemplated, his previous band Wolfsbane never having played outside the UK. Blaze himself later said: It was tough you know. Really tough. But it wasn’t just for me. I remember Dave turned to me at the end of it all and said ‘that was one of the toughest tours we’ve ever done’. And of course there was the fact that we were playing smaller shows than Maiden had played for years. So the contrast was clear: big for Blaze was small for Maiden. After the release of the Virtual XI album it was time to hit the road again and the The Virtual XI Tour went from 22 April 1998 to 12 December 1998. This tour saw the group making their first visits to Turkey and Malta. So this was one hell of a ride for Blaze Bayley but now it was obvious for manager Rod Smallwood that this wasnt enough. Maiden’s past glories were by now only a faint memory to the public and by the failure of Maiden’s American tour in the summer of 1998 Smallwood surely knew that they had reached the end of the road with this version of Iron Maiden. My job is to make the band as big as possible, he would later say matter-of-factly. However he still needed to fully convinced Steve Harris that Blaze had to go. By the end of the tour Maiden went off to Japan for four dates in November of 1998 and this album was recorded on the third night at the IMP Hall in Osaka on the 21st. Before they headed off to Asia Harris had been persuaded and it was during this Japan tour that the rest of the band members, beside Blaze, were informed by Smallwood that there would be a band meeting with Bruce when they came back home. This was ofcourse adding some strange vibes between Blaze and the rest of the band during these Japanese shows and the final 4 shows, that took place in South America in December. When these South American dates took place then the band had already had their meeting with Dickinson and decided that Bayley had to go. So any recordings from the Virtual XI tour is of interested for the fact that it was the last tour to feature any Virtual XI songs aside from Futureal and The Clansman in the setlists.

Track list:
1. Futureal
2. The Angel And The Gambler
3. Man On The Edge
4. Lightning Strikes Twice
5. Heaven Can Wait
6. The Clansman
7. When Two Worlds Collide
8. 2 Minutes To Midnight
9. The Educated Fool
10. Sign Of The Cross
11. Afraid To Shoot Strangers
12. Hallowed By Thy Name
13. The Evil That Men Do
14. Fear Of The Dark
15. Iron Maiden
16. The Number Of The Beast
17. The Trooper
18. Sanctuary