Hammond Music

Posts Tagged ‘Iron Maiden’

A Heavy Metal Band with well known hits such as “Run to the Hills”, “The Trooper”, and “The Flight of Icarus”. The name “Iron Maiden” was taken from the name of a medieval torture device. The Bands most recognizable is the zombie “Eddie”, who is found on virtually all Iron Maiden merch.

Iron Maiden was formed in 1975 by the current bassist Steve Harris. The original band consisted of Steve Harris on bass, Paul Day as lead singer, Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance were the guitarists, and Ron Mathews was the drummer. The band would undergo several changes before achieving wide stream success.

The first album released by Iron Maiden was aptly named “Iron Maiden”, which was released on April 14, 1980. By this time, the lineup had changed to Steve Harris on bass, Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton on guitar, Clive Burr on drums, and Paul Di’Anno on vocals. Shortly after the release of Iron Maiden, the band opened for Kiss on the European leg of their “Unmasked” tour. Shortly After the tour, guitarist Dennis Stratton was fired from the band due to creative and personal differences.

Bruce Dickenson was brought in as the lead singer, and after the third album “The Number of the Beast” was released in 1982, the success of Iron Maiden skyrocketed. The album kicked off a world tour. The protests, along with album burning parties gave Iron Maiden even more publicity, and may have contributed even more to the bands success. The follow up album “Piece of Mind”, released in 1983 was the first album to go platinum in the United States.

The band continued wide stream success during the eighties with albums “Powerslave”, “Somewhere in Time”, and “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son”. Iron Maiden video content and merch was selling very well. Bailey’s vocals were very different than Dickerson’s, and his inclusion in the band met with limited success. The album “The X Factor” suffered from poor sales, and a follow up album “Virtual XI” released in 1998 suffered the poorest sales ever.

In 1999 Bruce Dickenson and Adrian Smith rejoined the band, and they embarked on a world tour. Once again you could see Iron Maiden merch everywhere.

A new film was released earlier this year called “Iron Maiden: Flight 666″, which follows the band touring on their first leg of the “Somewhere Back in Time Tour”. 2009 is the year generating with Iron Maiden expecting to release a new album due to be released sometime this year. Iron Maiden is expected to add a new generation of fans to the huge legions of old fans.

What are the benefits of branded merchandise for your band? to proove a point lets take a look at one of last night’s Brit award winners.

Iron maiden, The ‘troopers’ won ‘best live band’ last night to my delight. About time they were recognised for the brilliant band that they are. I saw Iron Maiden at Twickenham last year in June, there were 5 seperate merch stands always surrounded with people needing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. To let you in on one of the dirty little secrets of the music industry- unless you go triple platinum on record sales, you arent going to see money from album sales- all the money bands make comes from touring and merchandise sales. Bands such as Maiden and Metallica sell thousands of t-shirts at concerts, which depending on the stadum size and t-shirt prices can be a very profitable gig. But when they were a smaller band in the late 70’s early 80s those merchandise sales were going towards keeping the band on the road and keeping them going until the Number of the beast album- when ‘Maiden mania’ took off and sales and interest in the band really happened, which made things financially easier on the band. Other bands such as the infamous Cannibal Corpse (yes, they exsist) sell t-shirts just on the basis on the shocking (and awesome) imagery -what can you expect from a band with an album called ‘gallery of suicide’, merch sales have helped keep them going for years and they are currently touring as we speak.

Promotional merchandise can also help get your bands name out there.

People buy band shirts ro display their alligence to a band publically, and the shirt will be seen by other people who may be interested in the band and deicde to investigate further. The more this happens the more people interested in your band, which means more people at your gigs, and/ or buying your merch. people will have one copy of the album, but 2 or 3 different t-shirts (i myself have numerous maiden t-shirts!!!!).

Branded merchandise can usually help keep bands on tour, and some have decided to make their merchandise as eye catching, gory and over the top as possible to shift the stuff -heres alook at some rock bands who’ve sold merchandise by the bucketload because of their genuis.

Cradle of Filth. The Ipswich boys and girl have always liked the hit the controversy button to give the daily mail something to scream about. the ‘Jesus is a c**t’ t-shirt is their most famous one, which has landed some of its wearers in court on public indecency charges. Just as offensive is the ‘guilded c**t’ t and the ‘get thee behind me satan’ t-shirts. Very ‘tasteful’, in a twisted way. Loathe them or love them- they’ve proved that swearings not big, but its clever.

Iron Maiden. When artist Derek Riggs created Eddie, maiden’s zombie mascot managed to sell millions of t-shirts for them. From a pair of trainers with the latest album cover to speical one-off t-shirts, Eddie will be on them to make sure you buy them.

Cannibal Corpse. Also going for shock value, but going about in another way to Cradle of filth. While Cradle have their black tongues firmly placed in cheek, Cannibal corspe are on a mission to guy everyone is sight on their merch. Most of their merchandise shows the gory album covers, which feature zombie lovin’, entrail eating, baby butcherers (CC fans know which albums i mean?) from the mind of artist Vince Locke, helping the band sell thousands of t-shirts. Just dont upset them.

Afew bands with some very interesting ideas of promotional merchandise:

Kiss. Most bands would sell their grans to achieve the fortune and fame they want. Kiss bass player Gene Simmons did that years ago, along with her house and the rest of his family (but no-one would buy grannies teeth). From board games, comics, their own wine, set of collectable coins and a Kiss coffin, which doubles up as a fridge so its not just sitting around waiting for you to kick the bucket.

Manowar. The viking themed metallers have given us the ‘warriors shield’ – Manowar’s own brand of condom. Not as amusing, but still pretty unusual- xmas tree decorations, ear plugs and bottle openers.