Well, we’ve come to the last 24 hours or so of voting in the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame “fan vote,” and I thought I’d start expanding my territory, so to speak, into talking more often about things other than politics, by taking a look at this year’s Rock Hall vote – in part because it’s a pretty fascinating class and the decision-making was definitely not easy.
I was super tempted to vote for Iron Maiden out of sheer personal bias; my early musical career was filled with them. I was a long-haired white male rock/metal musician in the 80’s, of course I love Maiden. Covering “Run To The Hills” was an absolute requirement to prove you were a “real drummer” in my circle when I was about 14, 15 years old. Unfortunately for them and for my biases, that doesn’t rate them for HOF in this field. Maybe in another, but not this one. So let’s talk about objective merit.
As with our two previous contenders, the first thing that must be acknowledged is the immeasurable influence this band have had on their peers and successors. As one of the unholy trinity of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal along with Judas Priest and Motorhead, they can properly lay claim to the foundational slabs of every modern metal genre. The list of metal classics is ridiculous – Run To The Hills, The Trooper, Die With Your Boots On, Wasted Years, Two Minutes To Midnight, Number Of The Beast, Flight Of Icarus, Rime Of The Ancient Mariner are just the tip of the iceburg.
Another thing Maiden share with several of this year’s class of Fan Vote competitors is they tended to lay in heavy on the literary and historical references – more toward science fiction than the fantasy of Zeppelin or Yes, but no less literary for all of that. The Flight of Icarus, inspired by Roman myth; . While they only borrowed the title and not the themes of Heinlein’s science fiction classic “Stranger In A Strange Land,” they full out based entire songs on historical literary works from Coleridge (“The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”) to Aldous Huxley (“Brave New World”), and ranging everywhere across the landscape from the obscurity of Ramsay Campbell and Cornelius Ryan to the now cliche Frank Herbert and Edgar Allan Poe references and, of course, the obligatory homage to one Aleister Crowley. And Umberto Eco, and Orson Scott Card, and the list is endless and we haven’t even talked about all the historical references.
Iron Maiden are unquestionably a great example of what Led Zeppelin’s frolics through Tolkien hath wrought on the metal landscape, but they’re also just great musicians. Drummer Nicko McBrain was one of the core go-to references for literally every rock drummer who came up in generally my time and context, and Steve Harris’ classic galloping triplet groove (which he doesn’t use as much as you think but is still an immediately recognizable staple of the sound of Iron Maiden) has worn the fingertips of many thousands of bass players aspirant to nubs. The classic-era twin guitar harmony attacks of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith are now joined by Janick Gers, who originally joined the band after Smith departed in 1990. All of this capped off for the majority of their careers by the unearthly voice of the returned Bruce Dickinson, a man not only well and truly ranked with Ronnie James Dio, Robert Plant, Rob Halford, and Chris Cornell as among the all-time legendary high vocals in rock history but so draped with esoteric hobbies from fencing to commercial airline piloting that on close examination he starts looking like one of those legendary historical characters like Nicolas Flamel. You could probably get a fun little conspiracy going that he’s the latest incarnation of the Comte de St. Germain.
In spite of all of this, in this class, they’re just not quite there enough to make the cut. While their impact within metal is unquestionable, they haven’t had such a big influence outside of “their lane” the way so many Hall of Fame artists have, and I also understand their enthusiastic appeal is, in the picture, pretty limited and niche. Plus there are already several NWOBHM bands in the hall.
In the end, this is another band I really feel should get an official, non-fan nomination and induction – and soon, while they can still perform! – in spite of their not quite making the cut on my fan ballot this year. Don’t hold your breath on this one.
Fun little make you feel old point: at the beginning of this video there’s a computer console from ‘the future’ showing a date in 2050. At the time of this writing, the time between this video’s release in 1987 and the present moment is about 36 years.
We’re nine years closer to the future this video depicts than we are to the past in which it was created. Let me grab a handful of Geritol while you enjoy some Wasted Years, and we’ll move on to our next artist…
