Description
Set of two lps on green vinyls in separate gatefold covers, double sided poster, artcard, postcard. Limited 50 copies
Somewhere In Time. One of Iron Maiden’s most popular albums. One of their most troubled productions. The point where singer Bruce Dickinson nearly left the band. The last Maiden tour that featured a genuinly different kind of stage production. And one of two classic tours in the 1980s that never got a proper concert video, the other one being the 1983 Piece Of Mind tour. In other words, anything live from the Somewhere On Tour is a rare gem in the vaults of hardcore Maiden fans. On paper, Iron Maiden’s Somewhere On Tour road trip of 1986 should have been something worth celebrating. But the band seems averse to kicking that particular gravestone too hard. Which is a shame, because by all accounts it was a spectacular show in support of Maiden’s well-received, if non-standard, sixth album, Somewhere In Time. This tour featured an impressive stage show with a giant inflatable version of Maiden’s Eddie mascot in futuristic bounty-hunter form that took over the stage. Nicko McBrain’s drum kit is elevated to the ceiling as the head appears beneath him, while singer Bruce Dickinson and bassist Steve Harris take their places on platforms at either side of the stage, standing in the palms of Eddie’s hands. “This was the ‘Great Inflatable’ tour,” Dickinson told later. “Dave Lights was still doing our lighting stuff, and he was well into inflatables. He had a bit of an inflatable megalomania, in fact. He built inflatables that were so big they wouldn’t actually fit inside the sodding buildings! We had two big hydraulic hands, which would raise up – not Spinal Tap at all! – with big Eddie claw hands that would inflate.” “Me and Bruce stood in the palms of the inflatable hands,” Harris added. “On one night, a lamp was too close and burnt a hole in it. Consequently it was like [deflating noise] – I felt a right plonker being up there like that. But not only that! The best thing about it, the next gig we did, they’d patched it up. They tied the fingers back so it came out with the middle finger up. … That was quite hilarious!” Dickinson recalled “roadies frantically coming out and [pumping air] sort of like alien hand fluffers!” He noted that the head underneath McBrain’s kit “was great, except when the pressure started to go and it looked a bit like a saggy bin liner.” In the meantime, the singer had gotten used to abandoning the top part of an outfit that was supposed to look like his heart and arteries were throbbing with light outside his torso. “I mean, obviously I didn’t think it was Spinal Tap at the time,” he admitted. “The idea was that the whole suit would be covered in veins that would just be pulsing the whole time so, in the end, the way they got it to work was about 30 pounds of copper wire inside a big jacket and a six-volt lead acid battery stuck in there which ran out of juice about halfway through the song!” It was probably less funny back then – maybe that’s one reason why none of the shows was ever recorded (manager Rod Smallwood also said it was too soon for another live project). But Maiden appeared to be quickly falling out of love with Somewhere In Time by the time it arrived on Sept. 29, three weeks after the tour started. By the end of the eight-month, 151-show journey, only four songs from the new album remained in the set – the fewest number of new songs ever to be performed on a Maiden tour supporting an album. This two lp set, released as two single albums, features a show recorded at the Halle Des Fetews De Beaulieu Samedi in Lausanne, Switzerland on the 13th of December 1986
Track list:
1. Intro
2. Caught Somewhere In Time
3. 2 Minutes To Midnight
4. Sea Of Madness
5. Children Of The Damned
6. Stranger In A Strange Land
7. Wasted Years
8. Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
9. Guitar Solo
10. Heaven Can Wait
11. Phantom Of The Opera
12. Hallowed Be Thy Name
13. Iron Maiden
14. The Number Of The Beast
15. Run To The Hills