Description

The most classic heavy metal happening in the universe was the historic event ‘Rock Pop Festival’ that took place in Westfalenhalle in Dortmund on the 18th of December 1983. Judas Priest, Def Leppard, Scorpions, Ozzy shared stage with acts like MSG, Krokus, Quiet Riot and Iron Maiden (Who finished their Brain Surgery tour with this gig by slaughter their mascot Eddie). The recording on this album is unfortunately not the complete concert as it seems to be taken from ‘The Early Days’ dvd (which material is taken from the German TV programme that was airing the show, but whose producers decided not to show the much talked about killing of Eddie at the end of the track ‘Iron Maiden’ (it was supposedly deemed too violent). This is actually a shame, as it must have been hilarious to see the scene, complete with Bruce pulling out women's tights covered in red stuff that were supposed to be Eddie's brains and Dave smashing his guitar on the straight-jacketed mascot – incidentally, he was supposed to switch to a cheap imitation Stratocaster, but he got annoyed when he frequently played a chord wrong in another song, so he decided not to switch, and smashed his favourite, most valuable guitar up on Eddie's head. There again, with the exception of ‘Sanctuary’ (which is played a little bit too slow as compared to earlier versions), the rest of the songs are taken from the Number Of The Beast and Piece Of Mind albums, the Di'Anno era being mostly ignored. At the end of this album, the drum kit got trashed and Dave and Nicko getting pied by the crew. Although pieing has always been a tradition with Iron Maiden when one of the musician's birthdays was coming up or for the very last gig of a tour, the destruction of the instruments was not at all common and this seems to be the only occurrence of such behaviour on stage throughout their career. As it was the very last concert of the tour, it is quite likely that Maiden wanted to let off a bit of steam and, in the excitement, relished the final moments of a long and successful tour. By this point, the band were now recognised worldwide as a major touring and recording force, having completed three World Tours in three consecutive years. The phenomenal work rate and effort that the band and management had committed was possibly captured best at this, the last date of the World Piece Tour. Originally, this show was filmed and broadcast by ZDF Television in Germany to a Europe-wide TV audience, and, to the best to our knowledge, has never been repeated since. Unfortunately, following extensive research, the original rushes have since been destroyed and all that still exists are the songs broadcast by ZDF TV, which represent 95% of the set performed. The one missing song is 'Iron Maiden', which was the violent climax to the show where Eddie was violently lobotomised and "murdered" on stage by the band. This was deemed far too excessively violent for conservative European TV audiences in 1983 and cut from the broadcast, and only short clip remains of this violent event from Maiden's own '12 Wasted Years' video. However, as most of you know, Eddie made a full recovery in the form of being completely resurrected in Egypt shortly afterwards… but that's the next part of the story. Track listing: 1. Sanctuary 2. The Trooper 3. Revelations 4. Flight Of Icarus 5. 22 Acacia Avenue 6. The Number Of The Beast 7. Run To The Hills