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This one was hidden particularly deep in the vault. As fans will know, Iron Maiden documented their 1982 The Number of the Beast tour with the Beast over Hammersmith recording, and of course the 1984-85 Powerslave tour was properly archived for posterity with the Live After Death album and video. But in between those two, the 1983 tour for their masterpiece album Piece of Mind was sadly and frustratingly overlooked, only making an official appearance as a radically abridged Dortmund festival set in the Early Days DVD.
Not even in the realm of bootlegs has the World Piece Tour of 1983 been completely satisifying, because there has only ever been audience recordings available, not a stereo soundboard recording taken from the mixing desk and giving a clear and proper impression of the band live on stage.
Somehow, in 2024, someone, somewhere, unearthed a treasure: A soundboard recording of Iron Maiden live at the end of the Piece of Mind tour. Recorded off the soundboard at the Olympiahalle in Munich, Germany on 30 November 1983, this is (to my knowledge at least) the first soundboard bootleg ever available from this legendary album-and-tour cycle in Maiden history
The concert is late in the tour, meaning that singer Bruce Dickinson is a little more worn-out than he was at the spellbinding beginning of the tour in England earlier in the year, but this is still a mind-blowing performance and recording, even featuring the extremely rare and extremely awesome Piece of Mind epic “To Tame a Land” in all its glory, and also a very rare Nicko McBrain drum solo.
SETLIST
Intro (main title from movie "Where Eagles Dare")
Where Eagles Dare
Sanctuary
Wrathchild
The Trooper
Revelations
Flight of Icarus
Die With Your Boots On
22 Acacia Avenue
The Number of the Beast (1st part cut)
To Tame a Land
Guitar Solo
Drum Solo
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Iron Maiden
Run to the Hills
Drifter
This Munich show is now readily available on YouTube, and also as CD and vinyl reproductions under the title Brain Damage at the Olympiahalle. The Iron Maiden management team might be upset that a bootleg (something Steve Harris himself has always owned up to collecting) makes the rounds like this. But the sad fact is that Maiden have let the 40th anniversaries of most of their classic 1980s catalog pass by without any proper official special editions, and so fans are left to scramble for unofficial product to buy.
The 40th of their debut, Iron Maiden, was marked with the official release of a lame picture disc, the 40th of The Number of the Beast with the more interesting triple-vinyl The Number of the Beast over Hammersmith, but the 40th of Powerslave only got the ludicrous and terrible-sounding Zoetrope vinyl. Killers and Piece of Mind got no music reissues or expansions at all for their respective 40th.
The 40th of their debut, Iron Maiden, was marked with the official release of a lame picture disc, the 40th of The Number of the Beast with the more interesting triple-vinyl The Number of the Beast over Hammersmith, but the 40th of Powerslave only got the ludicrous and terrible-sounding Zoetrope vinyl. Killers and Piece of Mind got no music reissues or expansions at all for their respective 40th.
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Steve Harris’ old favorites Jethro Tull have celebrated every single album in their catalog up until the mid-1980s (so far) with elaborate CD/DVD sets of remixes, remasters, and rare and previously unreleased audio and video material. Maiden’s contemporaries Metallica have pretty much set the gold standard for reissues with their exhaustive CD/DVD/vinyl box sets for their first five albums (so far).
Iron Maiden don’t seem to care, even if fans would happily pay good money.
So we’ll enjoy this 1983 bootleg at least.
Iron Maiden don’t seem to care, even if fans would happily pay good money.
So we’ll enjoy this 1983 bootleg at least.
Above text (with some smaller changes) from the amazing site MaidenRevelations
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