When does a side-project become the main event? As we set up the photoshoot for Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen at Bristol’s O2 Academy, it seems a pertinent question to contemplate.

Back in February 2020 these two star players traded riffs for the first time on the Turks and Caicos Islands – of course, a few days later and the pandemic would have scuppered the project before it even began.

However, six years on and Smith/Kotzen have a brace of acclaimed albums under their belt, from 2021’s self-titled debut to last year’s Black Light/White Noise (by comparison, Smith’s mothership, Iron Maiden, haven’t recorded since 2021’s Senjutsu).

Having completed soundcheck and now settling on a leather couch, the pair display a complementary chemistry: Kotzen is happy to hold court, while Smith prefers to sit back, hat pulled low, and chip in as necessary.

But as they explain, it’s their opposing guitar styles that has made Smith/Kotzen such an enjoyable enterprise, with both musicians happy to be nudged from their comfort zones.

How does the second album progress from your debut?

Adrian Smith: We actually recorded it in two parts. We did about six songs, then I went on tour with Maiden and Richie went off with his band. Then we came back together the following year.

So it gave us the opportunity to let the dust settle and think, ‘What do we have here?’ I think it’s a more focused album, more ‘up’, more cohesive. You know, we’re developing a writing and playing relationship. It’s more of the same – but a progression.

When did you realise that you clicked as a partnership?

Adrian: “The first time we got together at Richie’s studio. I’ve sat down with other guitarists and you just end up playing blues licks all day and not writing anything. But Richie and I went to work straight away. I had the riff and he came up with the chorus for Running. That was it – “Bang!” – in a couple of hours. We did jam, too, and came up with Scars.”

Richie Kotzen: To me, the creative process is the most important aspect. Even more so than playing, if I had to choose. That’s why I kept at playing the guitar because I wanted to make original music.

Out of everything, I get most satisfaction from an idea coming out of the speakers and going, “Yeah, that’s what I was hearing in my head.” So that’s the part we connect on, the core of what this is. Because anybody can go jam some covers.

Have the songs evolved as you play them live?

Adrian: Yeah, to see that song breathing and living in front of an audience…

Richie: The songs take on this whole other life. And I’ve never done this, but it’d be interesting to write a bunch of music, have the band learn it, then take it on the road and play it for a year – then record it.

Adrian: The trouble is, if you do anything now, it’s on the internet the next day.

Richie: That’s true. The creepy, evil internet!

How do you approach the solos in this band?

Adrian: Richie and I are very different. I’ve been playing in Iron Maiden for such a long time, and the solos are part of the song. Almost without exception, they’re 16 bars and that’s it. There’s no extended solos. And most of the solos I play with Maiden [live] are the same as on the record because that’s what people want to hear, especially with old stuff like The Trooper.

But the way Richie plays is much more improvisational and it’s encouraged me to be more like that in S/K. Trying to keep up with this guy, y’know? And I’m getting more confident about branching out. I’ve only got three solos in the whole set that I play the same every night. The rest is off the top of my head.

Richie: That’s the way I’ve been doing it since I started recording myself. Like, ‘Well, I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but let’s see what happens.’ I’ll do a take and typically I’ll hear a melody in my head. Then I’ll go off from that, record it and say, ‘Okay, I liked the way I started and ended, but I got lost in the middle. Let me see if I can pull this off.’ So I’m kinda constructing in real-time.

On the other side of the coin, there are solos, like, at the end of a song, where I’ll just go for it. That’s a lot of fun. I grew up playing with guys that would jam and improvise, so that’s relatively easy for me.

I know a lot of guys that sit at home and write out the solo: ‘Okay, I’m gonna play this, let me practise it seven times then I’ll go to the studio…’. I’ve never done that. Maybe I should. But it’s a different approach.

It helps that you have a killer rhythm section…

Richie: They’re fantastic. Julia Lage is the bass player and Bruno Valverde is playing drums, and they just really lock in and make it so easy for us. Especially on the solos where we’re improvising. You need a support mechanism. And that was a great thing that I learned from my short time with Stanley Clarke’s band.

We had a band called Vertú in 1999, which seems like a thousand years ago. But I learnt that when someone’s soloing, everybody else is there to support. You don’t go, ‘Look what I can do!’ when someone else has the floor. When the four of us play together, we have that same mentality. So the solo at the end of Running, Adrian can go for as long as he wants and the foundation is always gonna be there.

What particular guitars have you brought with you on the road, Adrian?

Adrian: This is my Jackson San Dimas signature model. It’s a slightly later one because it’s got the adjustable truss rod that you can get at more easily. It’s a great working guitar. Stays in tune. Sounds great. It’s light, easy to play, big frets. That’s a Seymour Duncan JB at the bridge.

It’s a slim neck. I don’t really like chunky necks. That’s why I don’t like old, old Les Pauls. This has a kind of flat profile. When I first hooked up with Jackson, I took an old Strat to the factory and they copied the neck dimensions because it was so comfortable.

I also use this Les Paul Classic. When I was a kid, I had a black Les Paul copy. It was my first guitar and I loved it, and I modded it and put in Gibson pickups. I just maxed it out as much as I could. But, eventually, I sold it. I wish I still had it.

But this one, I bought in New York. It’s not an old guitar. I think it might be a reissue. I use it for a few songs and it’s got the mojo factor. I suppose you play it a certain way, get more sustain, so you can maybe play a little less if you want and get away with it.

And then, this Les Paul Custom, Gibson gave me a few years ago. It’s my favourite guitar, looks-wise. Just absolutely beautiful. But it’s got slightly smaller frets. My hands were slipping, so I’m going to put bigger frets on, then it’ll be back in action. The tuning can be volatile because it’s not got the locking nuts. But it’s a lovely guitar.

Talk us through your guitar rack, Richie.

Richie: This is my signature Fender Telecaster. My ‘main’ Telecaster is at home, and the reason is because that guitar stays tuned at 440 [standard tuning] – whereas with S/K we tune down a half-step.

So this is the dedicated Telecaster for everything Smith/Kotzen, and it’s completely stock, off the rack, with the exception that I take sandpaper to the neck – I just like the way that feels. The pickups are a DiMarzio Chopper T with a regular replacement Tele single coil. And that’s not a tone dial – it’s a series/parallel knob.

I only have two guitars on this tour – and the other one is my signature Strat, in this one-off custom baby-blue colour. They used a really nice piece of maple for the neck. It almost looks like birdseye and it’s not quite as chunky as the Telecaster. And, you know, I love the gold hardware and DiMarzio pickups. I play both guitars almost equally in the set, but I finish the show with Running on the Strat.

I’ll tell you something: all the decisions with my gear were made very early on, very deliberately, because my focus has always been, “What am I going to write,” y’know? I don’t like to exhaust too many resources mentally on gear because I like to reserve that for my creative process.

And all the S/K guitars are dropped a semitone?

Adrian: Yeah. Tuning down was more for the vocals. It’s just the way Richie and I started working together. We immediately dropped. I mean, he’s got more range than me, but it helps me. So this white Jackson, for example, it’s the equivalent of a standard tuning drop D, but this would be a C#. So you get that heavy kind of barring situation. The one-fingered bandit, I call it.

The way a guitar interacts with a physical amp is such a big part of the excitement of rock ’n’ roll. What’s your take on that?

Adrian: With S/K, we’re pretty old-school. We both use amplifiers. I mean, a lot of bands now just don’t use backline: it’s all processed and they’ve got in-ears. We’ve got the wedges and half-stacks and we just go for it. And there’s so much choice of amps these days.

Back when the electric guitar came to the fore – the ’60s and ’70s – there wasn’t much around. You really had to work to get a sound. Having said that, a lot of it is in here [holds up hands] and in here [points to head] and what you feel. You’ve just got to have something that enables you to express that.

Richie: It doesn’t have to be loud to be good. A lot of times, being loud can be a problem.

Adrian: And if I go to see a band, I don’t like ’em to be too loud.

Richie: I want them to be good.

Adrian: Exactly!

What was your go-to amp for the album, Richie?

Richie: In the studio, I had my four-input Marshall Super Lead 1959 Handwired. Adrian was using it as well. I plugged into the top-right input, which is the ‘normal’ channel. And then the cabinet is obviously in another room with microphones on it.

I’ve got a lot of Marshall heads. I have one from 1967, a Super Bass. I bought it when I was in my early 20s at a guitar show in Texas. And back then, I paid, like, $1,100 – now I see ’em go for 12 grand. But I haven’t recorded with that in years because it was blowing fuses.

On the road, I’m using reproductions, like this 1959 HW. When I plug into it, I know what I’m in for. It’s not a guessing game. Again, my concern isn’t gear. It never was. It’s like, ‘Let’s get to it, let’s make music.’ This is the most responsive head I’ve ever played through. If I hit it hard, it barks. And it takes pedals really well.

I don’t use a lot of wah in Smith/Kotzen, so my signature Tech 21 [RK5 Fly Rig] pedal is not with me on the road. But I have my Fly Rig, and this one is modified with more switches for my Leslie simulators.

Then there’s the SansAmp, which is how I get a bit of rock ’n’ roll grit in the sound and not have it absurdly loud. And just as I said that, my tinnitus just kicked off, like it knows that I’m talking about it [laughs].

How about your backline, Adrian?

Adrian: A lot of my equipment is in England and we record in America. And I lost a bit of gear in the LA fire last year as well. So I do some stuff at home with a JVM. But mainly I used Richie’s amp because it’s so easy. It’s so fast: you’ve got an idea, plug in and ‘bash’. Maybe I put a Tube Screamer with that amp [on the road, Adrian is using a Marshall JVM210 with 1960A and 1960B cabinets].

So what’s next for Smith/Kotzen?

Richie: Well, we’ve got more shows and we’re very excited about how well received the album was. It’s a great creative outlet and something that I think both of us would like to see carry on, right?

Adrian: Yeah, I’m having a great time on the road. I love taking these songs on stage. I’m up there and I’m lost in a world where I get to play solos and rhythm, sing, do harmonies – there’s so much going on. It’s so fulfilling.

• Black Light/White Noise is out now via BMG.
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Adrian Smith might be a member of one of the most iconic heavy metal bands of all time, but the Iron Maiden guitarist – whose journey is documented in the new documentary Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition – has recently looked back on a time when the band was impacted by the explosion of grunge.

“In South America and Europe, the band was still big, but in America, I think it struggled,” Smith tells Forbes. “Nirvana came along, and that changed everything.

“It was like punk in the late ’70s. I’d been probably playing in bands for about five years, and our bands were getting to a certain level [of success].”

He continues, “You work hard and all of a sudden, bang! You couldn't get a gig unless you had spiky hair and played punk. You thought, ‘Who are these people?’ They've only been playing for a year, and they're proud of it that they can't play. And yet everyone's buying their records, and they're selling out gigs.”

Ultimately, Smith likens the grunge era to the punk movement, calling it a “changing of perspective”.

“For bands like Maiden, it was hard,” he admits. “But like I said, the driving force is still there, and you just got to weather the storm a little bit.”

As for the experience of Maiden falling out of favor in the ’90s and being forced to play smaller venues, Smith says he cannot directly comment on that, as he left the band in 1990 – right before grunge went mainstream.

“I never did it with them. I never did the club thing,” he explains. “I mean, I’ve done clubs since then. I did a club tour with Bruce [Dickinson] in the States in the ’90s.

“So I did have a taste of that, but I just like playing whether it’s in a club or in a stadium, obviously I’d rather play stadium,” he adds with a laugh.

Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition will be released in cinemas worldwide on May 7.

In more recent news, Iron Maiden will finally be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, after more than two decades of eligibility.

Adrian Smith says his work alongside Richie Kotzen is more freeing than life in Iron Maiden, as he has more room to express himself.

The Jackson signature artist joined Maiden in 1980, five years into their existence, and has remained with them ever since, save for a spell away during the 1990s when he was in the running to join Def Leppard. During that time, he's proved an invaluable figure.

But though he and Richie Kotzen come from very different worlds – Smith says he learned to play to get girls, in contrast to Kotzen’s want to master the craft – the pair have proved a formidable partnership in the eponymous duo, Smith/Kotzen.

“Richie and I are very different,” he says in the new issue of Guitarist. “I’ve been playing in Iron Maiden for such a long time, and the solos are part of the song. Almost without exception, they’re 16 bars, and that’s it. There’s no extended solos.”

Outside of Maiden, then, he’s able to solo outside of those rigid constraints. Though cuts like his Powersalve solo – recorded while hungover, no less – showcase his chops, he prefers being able to spread his wings.

“Most of the guitar solos I play with Maiden [live] are the same as on the record because that’s what people want to hear, especially with old stuff like The Trooper,” he adds. “But the way Richie plays is much more improvisational, and it’s encouraged me to be more like that in S/K.”

He admits that keeping up with Kotzen – whose signature Strat was finally rolled out worldwide last summer – isn’t easy. But he’s embraced the challenge.

“I’m getting more confident about branching out,” he says. “I’ve only got three solos in the whole set that I play the same every night. The rest is off the top of my head.”

The pair welcomed a surprise guest to join them on the Maiden classic, Wasted Years, in London recently, as they continue to promote their second album, Black Light/White Noise.

Elsewhere, Smith has become the latest big-name player to spend some time with Kirk Hammett’s iconic ‘Greeny’ Les Paul – and promptly fell in love with it – while Kotzen revealed why he didn’t get the Nine Inch Nails gig, despite being the best man for the job.

The latest issue of Guitarist is out now, and features a bumper celebration for the Telecaster’s 75th anniversary, including a deep-dive into the new anniversary models, as well as a new interview with Eric Johnson.

Head to Magazines Direct to pick up a copy.

Adrian Smith might have started his Iron Maiden career with a Gibson Les Paul – alongside a rarebreed Ibanez Destroyer – but he’d soon be converted to playing Jacksons. It was a switch, he says, that came about for one big reason.

Smith and Richie Kotzen are currently on tour, supporting their second album as Smith/Kotzen, Black Light / White Noise, with Bruce Dickinson joining them in London for a run through of Wasted Years. As such, Guitarist linked up with the pair for a set of rig tours – and Smith has revealed what convinced him to trade Les Pauls for Jacksons.

“It's a slim neck,” he says of his Jackson signature guitar, the X Series SDXQM, which comes loaded with a Seymour Duncan JB humbucker in the bridge. “I don't really like chunky necks. That's why I don't like old Les Pauls. Or, you know, some Les Pauls. So the Les Pauls that I have have got slimmer necks.

“This has a flat profile that's modeled off an old Strat,” he adds of his Jackson. “When I first hooked up with Jackson, I took an old Strat to the factory, and they copied the neck dimensions, because it was really comfortable.”

Indeed, it was company founder Grover Jackson himself who delivered Jacksons backstage to an Iron Maiden show in the 1980s in a bid to tempt Smith to his camp. And Smith, struggling with many fatter neck LPs, was open to change.

His custom-built Jackson uses a Charvel San Dimas body and a Floyd Rose. His latest signature model came in December, with Iron Maiden getting a band-wide drop to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

But that doesn’t mean his rig is completely free of Les Pauls.

“When I was a kid, I had a Black Les Paul copy, and I loved it,” Smith continues. “I modded it, put Gibson pickups in it, and maxed it out as much as I could. Eventually, I sold it, and I wish I hadn't.”

In its place, he shows off a Gibson Les Paul Classic reissue, which he bought in New York: “Its neck is chunkier,” he admits, “but I'll use it for a few songs. It's just got that mojo factor.”

In related news, Smith has ruminated on his failed Def Leppard audition and what could have been, and has told Guitar World that his collaborations with Kotzen have been a success because they come from completely different worlds.

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith invited a familiar face onto the stage as he and Richie Kotzen performed in London over the weekend (February 21), with Bruce Dickinson making a cameo on a blazing take of Wasted Years.

Away from the galloping rhythms and stadium tours of Iron Maiden, which recently afforded him the chance to babysit the legendary “Greeny” Les Paul for an afternoon, Smith has allied with Strat stalwart, Kotzen.

The straightforwardly titled Smith/Kotzen partnership has produced two studio albums so far, with 2025’s Black Light / White Noise seeing them reveling in their shared love of the blues. And with the group hitting the English capital – marking a hometown show for Smith – the pair were joined by heavy metal royalty for a performance of the Smith-penned song.

The track, inspired by Smith's purchase of a Roland guitar synthesizer, has been on the Smith/Kotzen setlist since day dot, but this is the first time Dickinson has (lovingly) gatecrashed their party.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only, Mr. Bruce Dickinson,” Smith says, introducing the singer to the stage while wielding one of his Jackson signature guitars.

Of course, the trio of musical heavyweights made nailing the song look as simple as breathing; some credit has to go to the band's bassist, Julia Lage, who played Steve Harris's parts superbly. And what a tone.

Each string-bothering member of Iron Maiden was recently bestowed with a new Fender signature model, with Smith staying true to his Jackson loyalty, after Grover Jackson personally convinced him to trade Les Pauls for Super Strats.

Last Summer, Kotzen's sought-after Strat was finally rolled out worldwide, having previously been a Fender Japan exclusive.

The history of rock ’n’ roll is full of interesting “What if?” moments, and looking back on his unsuccessful Def Leppard audition, Adrian Smith has thrown up another one.

In the early 1990s, the British glam rock giants were looking to replace Steve Clarke, whose alcoholism struggles had already seen him take a leave of absence to focus on his recovery, as the group worked on their fifth LP, Adrenalize.

Though Vivian Campbell – the man who still holds the position to this day – would eventually get the job, the Iron Maiden guitarist has confirmed he was in the running for the prestigious gig.

“I went over to L.A. for a couple of days,” Smith nods (via Blabbermouth). “Phil [Collen, the band’s other guitarist] phoned me up and said, ‘Would you be interested in coming over?’”

Smith had recently left Iron Maiden, citing clashes with chief songwriter Steve Harris as the trigger. Sensing the opportunity, Collen and co. included him on a shortlist of players – alongside former Thin Lizzy and Whitesnake great John Sykes.

“I went to L.A. I played with him for a couple of days,” Smith develops. “I sat down with Phil. We went through some songs. It sounded good, and they're a great bunch of guys. But it didn't work out.

“Plus, my album with Psycho Motel [the band he formed after his Iron Maiden departure] was just about to come out. But who knows? It was worth pursuing. They did okay without me.”

In a 2023 interview, Collen said Dio’s former foil, Campbell, “fit in straight away,” while also confirming Sykes, who passed in 2024, also auditioned.

“With Adrian,” Collen added, “he played in context with what we were doing when we were rehearsing. We weren't doing Iron Maiden songs, we weren't doing Dio songs. So, whoever comes into our house has to play by the same rules.”

In more Adrian Smith news, the guitar player has recalled the time he got to spend an afternoon with the infamous “Greeny” Les Paul.

Adrian Smith has become the latest in a growing list of superstar players to have become infatuated with the illustrious “Greeny” Les Paul.

When Kirk Hammett became the third high-profile owner of the legendary Gibson, he had no intention of keeping it as an ornament. The electric guitar, famous for its quirky and quacky middle position – and for its starring role on a host of classic blues rock tracks – is a key part of his touring rig, and he’s also been keen to share the love.

Already, Jack White’s played it, Al Di Meola has taken it for a spin, and Jake E. Lee said that when he played it at Back to the Beginning, he didn’t want to put it down.

Greeny's charm, it seems, is infectious, and Hammett’s willingness to let other guitarists play it has afforded Iron Maiden’s Smith the chance to test it out, too.

“I bumped into him [Hammett] in a hotel in Canada,” he explains to eonmusic. “We were just waiting for the lift. We're just checking in, and Metallica were there. The first thing I said to him was, ‘Oh, you bought Greeny.’ He goes, ‘Yeah. I've got it. You want to play?’”

Suffice to say, Smith – who’s just released a new signature guitar as part of a band-wide Fender drop – eagerly took Hammett up on his offer.

“I went to his room. Ross Halfin [photographer] was there as well, because he's a mutual friend, and he gave me the guitar and a little practice amp, and of course, I did [Fleetwood Mac’s] Oh Well.”

The blues rock classic is one of the most iconic tracks to be associated with “Greeny”. Gary Moore bought the guitar after its original owner, Peter Green, left Fleetwood Mac. Hammett then bought it for an undisclosed fee.

But Smith’s playing session didn’t end there. When Hammett and Halfin left for a photoshoot, Smith was left to babysit.

“He said, ‘Take the guitar’, so I took it to my hotel room, and I had a little practice amp in there,” Smith says. “I played it all afternoon. It plays great. It's the intonation, the feel, the sound.

“There's no doubt about it, that is a special guitar. The mojo is off the charts. I'm glad somebody's using it, and it's not on a wall in somebody's climate-controlled guitar locker. It's out there being played, as it should be.”

Gibson produced a reissue of the guitar in 2023, with an Epiphone version arriving shortly after. Smith is just the latest star to fall head over heels for “Greeny.” He certainly won’t be the last.

In 2021, longtime Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith and nomadic virtuoso Richie Kotzen came together to form the aptly titled Smith/Kotzen, a blues-based duo showcasing the two veteran guitarists’ chops and vocals.

The self-titled record was a surprise hit, leading to further collaboration by way of album number two, Black Light/White Noise, the title of which reportedly has nothing to do with their idiosyncrasies, though Kotzen admits that “would be a really cool spin.”

According to Smith, Black Light/White Noise is “more cohesive” than Smith/Kotzen, which is interesting as their process is decidedly separate – until it’s not.

“I tend to do guitars on my own,” he says. “Richie will disappear upstairs and have a coffee, and I’ll do a solo. Sometimes, Richie will come down, and I’ll sit there while he plays his solos. It’s quite mind-boggling what he does. I don’t know how he does it. He’s got endurance in his hands that’s natural to him.”

The light and shade throughout Smith/Kotzen’s music shouldn’t be surprising, as the two couldn’t be more different. “I started on guitar because I wanted to be in a band and meet girls,” Smith says. “Richie wanted to be a guitar player, probably because he wanted to play guitar, so his technique is very individual.”

Smith and Kotzen’s vibes and origins are so different that one wonders how the project works at all. But it does, and Kotzen has an idea why. “Maturity,” he says. “We don’t really feel like there’s anything to prove in this situation. If I were playing in a straight-ahead jazz band, I might feel like I’ve got to convince people that I know what I’m doing. But neither of us feels that kind of desperation.

“We find ways to fit together; somehow, that creates a big picture that wouldn’t be there had we not collaborated. I’m not going to drag Adrian into a full-blown jazz-funk-fusion jam-out. And Adrian’s not going to drag me into a full-on heavy metal gallop.”

Black Light/White Noise is your second record together. Has the success of the project surprised you?

Adrian Smith: “I had a good feeling about it and was pleasantly surprised by the success. Although this started as a [Covid] lockdown project, we were determined to get it out. Music isn’t a given; you’ve got to have good music. But getting it out there, and getting it heard meant it did really well. We’re thrilled about that.”

Richie Kotzen: “I’ve learned not to have expectations. I don’t mean to sound dark, but when you’re making music, if you’re doing stuff you like, at that point, you’re winning. That’s always been my attitude. I said to Adrian, “Let’s see what we can come up with,” and we hit it off and had a great time. I’m happy it’s being well-received.”

Adrian, you’re known for metal, but Richie seems to bring out your bluesy side. Would you agree?

Smith: “With [Iron] Maiden, Dave [Murray] and myself grew up playing more bluesy rock, you know? Even [Jimi] Hendrix was heavily rooted in the blues. But, yeah, this gives me an opportunity to do that; the songs have much more space in them, and I like that. Sometimes you don’t have to play so much; it’s about phrasing. I don’t think too many people do what we’re doing by having two singers and two guitarists. It’s different.”

Richie, you’ve been all over the map in your career. What does Adrian bring out in you?

Kotzen: “I think Adrian brings out the blues in me in some weird way. He’s really such a blues guy – but a lot of people don’t realize that. He’s known for being very melodic, which is fantastic, and he’s hook-oriented. I think he brings me in a bluesier direction than I would if I’d been left to my own devices.”

That shared love for the blues aside, what’s the main overlap?

Smith: “Even though Richie’s done things in the blues space, he takes it into the stratosphere. He’s got this whole technical prowess and more of a technical background than I do. With me, it’s more about phrasing, tone and choice of notes. But it just kind of works, even though Richie is far better technically than I am. But as long as you have enough technique to express what’s in your head, it’ll get across to people.”

Kotzen: “Adrian is in the greatest heavy metal band of all time. He’s a primary writer and, like I said, definitely rooted in heavy blues and the soulful rock arena. But [Bad Company’s] Paul Rodgers comes to mind when I hear him sing. I’m a rock guy; I make rock records. I listen to Curtis Mayfield and George Benson, yet I’m plugging a guitar into a Marshall stack.”

What was the process in terms of composing songs and solos for this record?

Smith: “When we first got together, we had a jam at my house and became friends. I’d sit down on my own and think, ‘Where do we go?’ So I’d come up with an idea for a song or a riff, and I’d think, ‘I could see me and him doing that.’ I’d take it to Richie and he’d come up with a chorus. We’d swap vocals, and that became the blueprint for what was to be our double-vocal, double-guitar thing.”

Kotzen: “Sometimes there are parts in a song where it’s obvious, and you say, 'You should play over that.' But that can work either way; it can be me or him. One or the other might say, 'Hey, man, go take that section. I think you’d do it better than I would.' I might say, 'Adrian, do you want to see if you can make this come to life?' It’s those simple conversations that lead us into something that maybe would’ve ended up on the back burner.”

Do you ever feel like there’s not enough space to shine?

Smith: “No. We discuss the whole thing we’re writing, and we’ll come up with sections. The meat and potatoes of the song are the verse and chorus – and we have a little bit of fun with the instrumental bits and split the solos up the middle. We just say to each other, ‘You play this bit,’ but we roughly split it up 50/50.”

Is there a song from this record that best demonstrates who you are as a duo?

Kotzen: “That’s a good question. Black Light is a standout. If someone were to say, ‘Oh, you’re playing with Adrian? I had no idea. Let me hear the new record!’ I might play that song for them.

“It meets in a place where it’s still funky and wacky enough to be associated with Richie Kotzen, but it’s heavy and blues-driven, so Adrian is well represented. And Darkside is unlike anything I might have done on my own. That’s what happens when I’m associated with something outside of my wheelhouse.”

Adrian, what’s the recipe for your tone while working with Richie?

Smith: “It’s pretty straightforward. In the ’80s, when I joined Maiden, I spent many years chasing tone. Something was in my head that maybe didn’t exist. It’s mostly in your fingers. As long as you’ve got a good amp and a good guitar, you should be able to dial in a sound. So I mostly used this little hand-wired Marshall that Richie had. I wanted a little extra pop, so I used a [Ibanez] Tube Screamer for sustain, and I always put on a little bit of delay.”

How about you, Richie?

Kotzen: “It’s the same room and amp we used on the first record. [Laughs] Actually, on the first record, we had one of my Victory amps and some other stuff – and then we went to the Marshall, my hand-wired 1959HW plexi. I have a lot of them, but there’s one in particular that we used on the album; it’s the same amp I used on Nomad. I just plug it in and we mess around with pedals.”

What have you learned from working together that you might not have learned otherwise?

Kotzen: “I’ve been recording myself since my late teens, so I don’t know if I’ve picked up any studio trickery, but through years of being in situations, I think I’ve learned 'people.' The ultimate goal is to move the composition forward and make sure you’re both excited about it.

“It transcends well beyond just working on one album when you’re working with people in a creative environment. You have to feel good. That’s the most important thing. You have to feel good about your music.”

• Black Light/White Noise is out April 4 via BMG.

Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith has explained how he became enamored with Jackson Guitars, blaming one fundamental flaw for ditching his Gibson Les Paul.

The guitarist has been part of the British metal heavyweights since their second album, Killers, but has since come to stand as one of Jackson’s biggest-name artists, resulting in a series of signature guitars.

It turns out he was headhunted by the firm’s founder, with Smith’s growing discontent about his electric guitar’s suitability for touring the final straw for the pivot.

“What happened originally was Grover Jackson himself used to come down to [Iron] Maiden shows when we played in California,” Smith tells Guitar World. “He was a really lovely guy, and he is very easy to get on with, very easy to talk to.

“I was using a [Gibson] Les Paul at the time, and I had so many tuning problems with it that I’d get very frustrated,” he continues. Jackson, ever the businessman, saw his opportunity.

“Grover Jackson used to bring down these guitars, but some of them weren't even finished,” Smith recalls. “It was just like raw wood, and he’d change the pickups backstage. He’d say, ‘Try this,’ and I’d go out and try it on that night, you know?”

With Smith well and truly on the hook, he was invited to the Jackson factory where the seeds for his Stratocaster build – which uses a Charvel San Dimas body – were planted.

“He brought me to the factory, and I copied a neck off an old Strat. That's basically the guitar but with a few refinements. The truss rod was more accessible, so you could adjust the truss rod without taking the neck off. It’s just a superb, easy-to-play, great-sounding, reliable guitar.”

He admits that the guitar has seen “a few little mods over the years,” but has otherwise stayed true to its original Strat-gone-metal template. A quote from Smith on the Jackson website says, “if I have to mess around with a guitar too much, I kind of lose interest in it,” and so it was vital Jackson nailed the recipe at the first time of asking. His first signature model arrived in 2007.

Adrian Smith has also revealed how he pushed through the pain barrier to track a Powerslave solo while hungover as the band completed their transformation from punk band to world-conquering metallers.

Looking forward, Smith is readying another guitar duo record with ex-Poison and Winery Dogs guitarist Richie Kotzen, the project rather creatively named Smith-Kotzen, having swapped signature guitars on their 2021 debut LP.

Among the thousands of buildings decimated and damaged by the ravaging L.A. wildfires are the homes of Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith and Primus guitarist Larry ‘Ler’ LaLonde, both of whom confirmed the news via social media.

Smith's wife, Natalie Dufresne-Smith, shared the news on Instagram, writing, “We are safe. We have each other. We will start again. #malibustrong,” before thanking everyone who has supported the family during this difficult time.

Primus founder and bassist Les Claypool shared the news that LaLonde's house had suffered the same fate, sharing images of the ruins of his bandmate's home.

“All that is left of our good friend Ler Lalonde’s home,” he wrote. “When Mother Nature gets up on her hind legs, it can be brutal. My heart hurts for him and his family.”

Meanwhile, Anthrax's Scott Ian confirmed that he and his family evacuated their home and thanked the Los Angeles Fire Department for their vital work. “Sending all our love to the men and women of the Los Angeles Fire Department,” he shared on social media. “Over and over you risk your lives to save ours and I can’t thank you enough. Tonight is going to be a hellish night for so many. Stay safe my friends, that’s all that matters.”

Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan also shared a personal video recounting his experience: “Wanted to share with everyone as last night we had to evacuate as a family from where we were staying. The situation here in Los Angeles is very overwhelming and at times chaotic but our love to the first responders who so courageously run into these situations...

“Praying for everyone today as hopefully this can come under control for the entire area, which is vast in scope and so full of nature. The loss overall is awful and unspeakable and that is what I wish to highlight; as the fires touch every strata of society.”

The LA wildfires are being described as the most destructive disaster in the city's history, with losses expected to exceed $250 billion.

In an effort to assist the thousands of musicians impacted by this catastrophe, Guitar Center has launched an initiative to replace instruments and gear destroyed in the blaze, while MusiCares, the NAMM Foundation, and Sweet Relief Musicians Fund are providing immediate financial assistance to musicians in need.

Going into 1984, Iron Maiden were on the precipice. They’d gone from a raggedy-assed quasi-punk outfit posing as a metal outfit to a certifiable powerhouse bursting with pomp and circumstance. 

Part of that shift was due to Adrian Smith, who, after replacing Dennis Stratton in 1980, cozied up alongside holdover Dave Murray. It was all too easy, as Smith, like Murray, was a real-deal gunslinger who got off on plugging his ax directly into a Marshall and diming it.

Smith’s blues-inspired, gentle arpeggios and modal stylings were the proverbial yin to Murray’s Hendrix-worshiping, legato yang. They’d rattled off two albums together, Killers (1981), The Number of the Beast (1982) and Piece of Mind (1983), that proved it. But now it was time to firmly cement themselves as halcyon greats. 

And so, after Christmas of ‘83, Maiden hauled ass to the Channel Islands in Britain to begin writing their fifth album, Powerslave, with world domination on the brain. The pressure was surely ratcheted up, but if that bothered Smith, he doesn’t let on.

“As far as our intent, it was still about the song,” Smith tells Guitar World. “We’d just write the song, and then Dave and I would worry about the solos after.”

Despite Smith’s oversimplification, solos were critical. On Powerslave, there are 14: seven by Smith and seven by Murray. With those solos came dueling harmonies and raging bravado, but perhaps unsurprisingly, little thought was put into it. 

“Dave and I rarely spoke about it,” Smith says. “I’d started writing more, but Steve wrote many of the harmonies. Steve wrote the harmony sections on Aces High, which was typical. When I’d write, I never had harmony guitars; I arrived at things differently. So it came down to Dave and I knowing each other rather than talking.”

Murray and Smith never riffed harder or soloed more melodically than on Powerslave, where guitar magic was conjured, secret sauces were crafted and Kool-Aid was drunk. Of course, with a guitar-loving producer like Martin Birch twirling the knobs at Compass Point Studios, that was never in doubt. “Martin worked with all the giants,” Smith says. “When he suggested something, you took notice.”

As for how Birch impacted him directly, Smith says, “Considering all he’d done, it was a matter of trying to impress him and wanting to do a good job. You were probably doing pretty well if he thought highly of you.”

With the heroics heard on songs like 2 Minutes to Midnight, Powerslave and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, odds are that Birch was indeed impressed. But even if he wasn’t, there was an unexpected guest who was. 

“As we were working on Powerslave, AC/DC came into the studio to work on their new album. I remember Bruce [Dickinson] and I got to talking with Brian Johnson, and we played him the final version of 2 Minutes to Midnight. He seemed quite impressed. Brian seemed very positive about it, but maybe he was just being polite!”

Johnson aside, 2 Minutes to Midnight is a rager featuring Murray and Smith peeling off righteous solos. Smith says the song “originated from a demo done on a four-track recorder.” Then there was Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which Smith says was “recorded in sections, as we couldn’t play it all the way through because it was 13 minutes long.”

But neither of those tracks stood out like Powerslave did for Smith, who laughs, saying, “I remember doing the solo for Powerslave. I was extremely hungover. We were a bunch of young guys, and we’d go out at night and party very hard. We were out until three in the morning, and I went home thinking, ‘We’re not working tomorrow, we’ve gone too hard.’ 

“But at 10 in the morning, Martin – who partied harder than any of us – called me into the studio, and he was sitting there with Robert Palmer – the Addicted to Love guy. He had me sit at the desk and do the solo. I was really in pain, but I pulled it off. Funnily, it’s my favorite.”

Of the seven solos Smith signed his signature to, of note is the sweet yet rage-filled tone he harnessed, which shockingly, he did without much help. “I was using Lado [Earth] guitars,” he says. “All I paired them with was a 100-watt Marshall and maybe an [Ibanez] Tube Screamer. Believe it or not, that was it as far as the guitar sound of Powerslave goes.”

Despite the partying, AC/DC intrusions and hung-over solos – and before the world would see to it that Powerslave would race to Number 21 on the Billboard 200 and go platinum – the vibe at Compass Point was that Maiden were sitting on a stunner. 

Even an overly critical guy like Smith knew it. “I just plowed ahead and played my guitar,” he says. “I didn’t think about it, but knew we had something. I was too close to it. I knew it was good, but there was no being objective.”

With 40 years having passed and the wounds of self-analysis closed, Smith offers up his final word on Powerslave, that album that put Maiden on the map.

“It was important,” he says. “We were out for 13 months supporting it, and maybe that was too much. That affected Bruce badly. Singing for 13 months straight was hellish. We had no life other than touring for Powerslave. I wasn’t married, I had no kids, but I needed a break. The whole process pushed a few people over the edge. 

“Don’t get me wrong – we had good times, and Powerslave was important, but in the end, it was a bit too much, which led to a lot of changes after.”

• Powerslave is out now via Rhino.

Though the late Paul Kossoff was famed for wielding his iconic ‘Stripped Top’ 1959 Burst Les Paul, that was by no means the only ‘50s-era Gibson Les Paul that the late electric guitar great had in his collection.

As has been well-documented, the Free titan was an avid fan of LPs from that particular decade, and had also owned the ‘58 ‘Darkburst’ model he acquired from his contemporary Eric Clapton, as well as a ‘55 Gibson Les Paul Custom Black Beauty that just so happened to pass through Slowhand’s own collection at one point throughout the years.

The latter guitar currently resides in Matt’s Guitar Shop in Paris – a high-profile boutique vintage guitar emporium, which recently welcomed Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith through its doors.

During his time in the shop, Smith took that aforementioned ‘55 LP for a test drive and – instead of ripping through various riffs from the heavy metal outfit’s back catalog – decided to put it through its paces with four-minutes of all-out blues.

After Smith sets himself by see-sawing through the pickups to solo over the changes (with a few customary rock ‘n’ roll power chord progressions thrown in for good measure, too), the Iron Maiden maestro then doubles down with an improvised blues shuffle that cycles between swampy strums and ad lib licks.

Unfortunately, the video cuts out just before Smith decides to run the guitar through one of Gary Moore’s amps.

“It’s a great guitar,” Smith can be heard saying in the video. “It’s not a relic – it still works. It works very well!” The shop’s owner, meanwhile, described the visit as “absolutely mind blowing” in an Instagram post.

Even without its association to both Clapton and Kossoff, the guitar itself is a notable piece of guitar history. As explained by the Matt’s Guitar Shop site, it is an early-years Black Beauty, produced before the arrival of the humbucker-clad model that is well-known today.

That means it has a bridge P-90 and an Alnico ‘Staple’ unit in the neck – a pair of pickups that no doubt helped Kossoff hone his craft before he stepped up to the humbuckers of his Bursts.

As the story goes, the ‘55 Les Paul Custom was allegedly purchased for Paul by his father, and was Kossoff’s first “real guitar”. According to its current custodian, the lacquer had been removed by Kossoff, who didn’t want the binding to turn yellow.

It would eventually end up in Clapton’s possession, but the specifics surrounding that part of the story are slightly hazy. Matt’s Guitar Shop notes Slowhand got a hold of the Les Paul sometime in the mid-to-late ‘60s, and was apparently snapped playing it at The Marquee in 1967.

This chimes with information from other sources – including Ground Guitar – which sites an old auction listing of the guitar that claimed Kossoff used the LP while a member of Black Cat Bones, before it went to Clapton.

The guitar is also said to have passed through the hands of Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan, but evidence to support that theory is hard to come by.

It’s not the first time a high-profile guest has swung by Matt’s Guitar Shop to take the ‘55 LP for a spin. In 2023, Marcus King gave it another blues-fuelled workout while on tour in France.

On the surface, the collaboration between ex-Poison and Winery Dogs guitarist Richie Kotzen and Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith is one of the more surprising double acts of recent years. 

However, they are united by a shared love of classic rock, having grown up listening to bands such as Deep Purple and Kiss. They both sing on records and on tour, and the live band is completed by Kotzen’s wife Julia Lage on bass guitar and drummer Bruno Valverde. Although their debut album is built on classic rock, there are R&B, blues and soul elements here, and even moments that lean towards jazz-fusion.

The pair began writing together remotely in 2019, then recorded and self-produced the album on the Caribbean islands of Turks and Caicos. They were joined in the studio by Nicko McBrain and Tal Bergman who played some of the drums, although Kotzen played the majority of drum tracks, while Smith and Kotzen both contributed bass.

Having started on the Mike Varney Shrapnel label along with Jason Becker and Paul Gilbert, Kotzen’s style is the more technical of the two, whereas Smith has always been rooted in blues-rock, even though he is one of the pioneers of heavy metal guitar. On recordings and at gigs their different guitar playing and vocal styles complement one another perfectly.

The track this month is built on an E minor rock riff and chord progression and with bluesy pentatonic playing from Smith and speedier Kotzen style licks in the solos. 

We’re in E minor (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D) but with the inclusion of an A major chord (A-C#-E) and the C# note in the Kotzen style solo. The E Dorian mode E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D is also used frequently. This leads to a more upbeat sound than E natural minor.

The guitar in the left channel is Smith style, while the right channel is Kotzen. When playing as two guitarists we have the opportunity to vary the parts in terms of timing, tone and delivery which can create interesting results. 

This is very different to the common double-tracked parts which are usually played as tightly together as possible. The recording and the chart have a second rhythm part to signify the Richie Kotzen input (bars 9-16), which is different to the guitar in the left channel. 

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 7, Bass 4, Middle 6, Treble 6, Reverb 3

Both players use Marshall style tube amps, with Smith’s tone being more high-gain. Smith also uses a Jackson electric guitar with a humbucker in the bridge and Floyd Rose vibrato, while Kotzen uses Stratocasters and Telecasters with single-coil pickups. 

Set your main sound to a medium gain (Smith), then jump on an overdrive pedal for your Kotzen tones. Add light delay or reverb.

Example 1. Rhythm

Richie Kotzen stopped using a pick a number of years ago, so it would be good practice to try playing the right channel guitar with fingers and thumb, as it is on the recording. This will likely lead to a few new challenges both in terms of rhythm and lead playing.

Example 2. Lead

There are some fast legato lines in this Kotzen style solo using both picking and fretting-hand hammer-ons, so it would be good to practise this slowly and also to focus on string muting. The Smith part is less demanding, but will still require attention to your timing, and the pitching accuracy of string bends.

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen took to the stage for their first-ever live gig as Smith/Kotzen last night (January 20) at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood, California.

As well as hearing debut live performances of tracks from the pair’s self-titled debut album those in attendance were also treated to a rendition of the 1986 Iron Maiden classic, Wasted Years.

Thanks to a few eagle-eyed attendees, plenty of up-close-and-personal footage from the gig has made its way online, meaning we get to see Smith roll back the years and – with the help of his new bandmate – revisit the track he originally wrote.

With his Jackson X Series signature guitar in hand, Smith can be seen reeling off the intro’s open-string motif, before taking up the lead vocal baton that had previously been held by his Iron Maiden bandmate Bruce Dickinson.

As per the original, a return to the opening melody precedes Smith’s solo – a fiery tour of the E minor pentatonic scale and surrounding area that culminates in some flashy bends and a dive on the whammy bar.

There’s no room for a Kotzen solo, which perhaps feels like a missed opportunity – having the pair trade open-string licks, or maybe harmonize a run or two, could have provided a neat addition to the track.

Joining Smith and Kotzen onstage was Kotzen’s wife and bass player Julia Lage, whose credits include the Latin Grammy-nominated Brazilian rock band Barra De Saia. A selection of videos from the concert can be found below.

Last year, Smith and Kotzen teamed up to release their self-titled debut effort, which was followed up with a four-track EP titled, Better Days. 

Smith/Kotzen have five more dates in the US as part of their current tour, in a run that will see them play Les Vegas, San Diego, Morro Bay, Ventura and Roseville between the January 23 and 28.

After that, they will head over to the UK to play a string of cities across February and March.

For a full list of tour dates, visit the Smith/Kotzen website.

Dave Murray is laughing at Guitar World’s question, and, honestly, we can’t really blame him. We’ve connected with the Iron Maiden guitarist to discuss his iconic metal band’s new record, Senjutsu. 

It’s an epic double album bursting with complex, head-spinning guitar action – and we’ve just asked him to pick out its single most challenging six-string moment.  “Anything that sounds difficult… was difficult to play!” he says with a chuckle. 

Murray’s good-natured jibe aside, Senjutsu is a truly formidable work of art. The New Wave of British Heavy Metal trailblazers’ 17th album is a 10-song, 80-plus-minute collection of classic Maiden grandeur and inimitable triple-guitar assault, courtesy of Murray and his compatriots Adrian Smith and Janick Gers. 

It’s stacked with Iron Maiden’s signature calling cards: dual-guitar harmonies, soaring solos, galloping rhythms, loud-soft dynamics and more merge with enthralling lyrical tales to lead listeners on one hell of a headbanging journey.

“Senjutsu is very cinematic,” says Smith of the stirring title track, which features taiko-esque drums, exotic guitar runs and multiple fiery leads. “There’s a lot of dramatics on the album: Days of Future Past has a modern vibe, The Writing on the Wall has a folky vibe. [Bassist-songwriter] Steve [Harris] has come up with some classic stuff. His songs are getting longer and longer. He’s gonna need a triple album next time. [Laughs] But if you’re a Maiden fan, you’re going to love it.”

“Because of our past we’re a band that can afford to do that,” says Gers of Senjutsu’s extended running time. “We take chances. There’s no set three-minute song that goes exactly where you want it. … You can have your fast metal stuff, Death of the Celts where there’s all the Celtic things, the Eastern-kinda [sounds] of The Parchment. You’ve got the huge choruses of Hell on Earth. It all adds to the album. So many ideas – it’s quite breathtaking, really.”

As Gers points out, any Maiden fan knows that the band has a well-established track record of pushing boundaries and continually raising their own creative bar. They helped set the standard for the NWOBHM sound with the one-two punch of their 1980 self-titled debut and the following year’s Killers – before elevating the form to its stadium-filling, album-selling and artistically ambitious heights with their ensuing five-album run of stunners: The Number of the Beast (1982), Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984), Somewhere in Time (1986) and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988).

Iron Maiden continued to follow their own course during the shifting musical trends of the '90s and the new millennium – and they’ve been rewarded. They’ve sold more than 100 million records, headlined thousands of shows across the globe and created some of metal’s most identifiable sounds and imagery, the latter built around their ever-evolving mascot Eddie (whose latest samurai incarnation ties into the themes of Senjutsu – a Japanese term that loosely translates as “tactics and strategy”).

 Along the way, they’ve influenced countless musicians – many of whom would become huge stars (including Kirk Hammett, Dimebag Darrell and John Petrucci). Iron Maiden have accomplished all this despite weathering multiple key personnel changes over the years. 

Their current long-running lineup – which has been in place since 2000’s Brave New World – consists of bandleader Harris and the Murray/Smith/Gers guitar trio, plus drummer Nicko McBrain and singer Bruce Dickinson.

After nearly five decades as a band, Iron Maiden are an institution, and their legacy is secured. They could easily kick back, release greatest-hits compilations, play exclusive one-off shows – and watch the money roll in. But, Smith says, Maiden’s motivation comes from a different source altogether. 

“I suppose you’re trying to prove yourself every time,” he says. “You’re only as good as your last thing. Maybe it’s some sort of deep-seated insecurity? I don’t know. I just like to bring the best I’ve got to the table every time. I try hard. We all do.”

Maiden’s self-directed drive has helped the band hit new creative and commercial heights as they age. Their previous record, 2015’s The Book of Souls, was the group’s first-ever double studio album, and it debuted at Number 1 in more than 43 countries. 

In 2018 they launched their most extravagant world tour to date, Legacy of the Beast, which presented a visually arresting experience filled with a career-spanning setlist of fan favorites.

Senjutsu continues the band’s current prolific period. The two-disc behemoth was recorded back in 2019 and was originally supposed to arrive last year. But Covid stopped that plan in its tracks and put a halt to their ongoing Legacy tour. Things were quiet in the Maiden camp until summer 2021, when a few cryptic teasers started to appear online. 

In July of this year, Maiden went wide with the announcement of Senjutsu and dropped its rousing single The Writing on the Wall. 

The new song – which builds from a vaguely Western-style acoustic guitar line into a larger-than-life anthem – arrived with a stunning apocalypse-themed animated video conceptualized by Dickinson. The Writing on the Wall was written before the coronavirus encircled the globe, but the end-times concepts its video explores are pitch perfect for the unsettling, and often dire, global events of the pandemic era.

When Guitar World connects with the guitarists in August 2021 – Murray dialing in from his home in Hawaii, with Smith and Gers calling from opposite ends of England (south and north, respectively) – the coronavirus has just infected one of their own. Only days before we speak, Dickinson announced that he’d caught a breakthrough case of Covid.

“Bruce picked something up, but I didn’t speak to him yet,” says Gers of the singer, who at press time was recovering at his home in England. “I think he went out for a birthday meal and picked something up from one of his kids. But I think he’s okay, he’s a tough boy. And he’s had all his injections and whatnot, so he should be good.”

Gers, Murray and Smith report that they’ve each managed to remain healthy. “Touch wood,” Smith adds. “I’m very careful… I stay at home a lot anyway.” 

The last time Iron Maiden were all in the same room together was when they recorded Senjutsu. The band had a break in the Legacy of the Beast tour, so they booked time with longtime producer Kevin Shirley at Guillaume Tell in Paris – the nearly 100-year-old theater turned recording studio where they cut The Book of Souls. “That room in Paris is amazing,” says Murray. “It was an old art-deco theater: gorgeous, high ceilings and great vibe.”

The studio and producer may have been familiar, but the process of creating Senjutsu looked a bit different from past Maiden records. “Some albums we’ve spent weeks in a rehearsal room working out six, seven songs and then gone into the studio,” Murray continues. “[This time] nothing was rehearsed. When we turned up to Paris, everything was done there on the spot.”

The band members brought in material – from full demo tracks to riff snippets – and began to knock the ideas into full-fledged songs. But instead of strapping on their electrics and cranking their amps, the guitarists broke out their Gibson, Taylor and Martin acoustics. 

“We sat down quietly,” Murray says of Senjutsu’s early sessions, for which he employed a Gibson Hummingbird. “Steve had an acoustic bass, we had acoustic guitars and we’d work it all out … scribbling the chords down in our notepad. [Laughs]”

“We take the song in sections, break it down,” Smith adds. “Nicko will sit there with his sticks, playing on his knees, just watching what we’re doing. For sorting out songs, acoustic is the way to go. Especially because the songs we do are quite complex – you can’t just go hell for leather, straight into it.”

With the song foundations in place, the band grabbed their electrics to finalize and record the tracks. Murray’s axe of choice was his sunburst Fender Stratocaster “that I’ve been using live for the last 15, 20 years. It has Seymour Duncans on it… You can pretty much get anything out of it: from clean to heavy.” Like Murray, Gers employed a live mainstay: his custom black Strat outfitted with Seymour Duncan JBs that Fender made him in the '90s.

For his part, Smith says he relied primarily on his custom green Jackson San Dimas with the “really distressed classic maple neck,” plus his custom Jackson 12-string and his “old faithful” Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Deluxe that he’s had since he was 18. 

“It’s a great all-singing, all-dancing guitar,” Smith says of the San Dimas. “You can get a real Strat sound out of it [and a] heavy humbucker sound, and you’ve got the whammy bar.”

The guys say they kept their studio setups relatively simple for Senjutsu. They opted for tried-and-true British amplification: Marshall JMP and 2000 valve amp for Murray, JVM for Smith and a 100-watt prototype Marshall built for Gers (based on an old 200-watt monster he used in “the Gillan band back in the day”). 

The guitarists often went direct into their amps and preferred minimal effects. “For solos I kicked in a couple pedals, like Uni-Vibes and some phases and flanges,” Murray says, “and Kevin would add some stuff from his magic rack of effects.”

Maiden spent a couple months in Paris tracking Senjutsu, and when the sessions wrapped “everybody went off with grand hopes,” Murray recalls. “We were to get back together and carry on the Legacy of the Beast tour. Then things happened …” 

The “things,” obviously, were the coronavirus pandemic and its fallout, which still have much of the music industry (and the world) in a state of sustained disruption. The Legacy of the Beast tour has been pushed back until 2022, but, thankfully, Senjutsu is here to hold us over. 

Clearly, it’s been a long journey to get this far – and the guitarists are beyond excited that fans are finally going to hear their latest opus. In the following Q&A, which has been condensed and collated for clarity, Murray, Smith and Gers discuss the roots of Senjutsu, how they weave Maiden’s three-guitar “tapestry,” the benefit of embracing musical imperfections and much more.

The pandemic continues to impact so many people’s lives. Iron Maiden are no exception. Bruce getting sick is the latest unfortunate example. Has the guitar been a good distraction during these uncertain times?

ADRIAN SMITH: “Yeah it was, especially during the first part of it. I did a lot of woodshedding, recording and writing. I went through periods for weeks when I was in the studio every day, playing cover versions, working on my singing… It was a great distraction and outlet during a crazy time.”

DAVE MURRAY: “I’ve been playing more acoustic than electric, actually… just keeping my fingers in semi-match shape. [Laughs] Just playing for the fun of it. If we’re sitting down watching a movie, I’ll have a guitar on my lap to keep my fingers working. I’ve been listening to Django Reinhardt. I love his stuff; he’s amazing. It’s difficult to play and really pushes you. I like that gypsy jazz style of playing because it’s fun, exciting, upbeat and happy… That’s what I’ve been doing to keep my fingers on the pulse.”

JANICK GERS: “I play guitar all the time. I have them all over the house. I pick them up and just muck around… I don’t consider it practice. I’ve never been one of those people to sit and practice for six hours. I play quite a lot, but [I’m not] running over scales. Music’s not that for me. I just enjoy playing guitar to bring the emotions out in your playing.”

When did you start writing for Senjutsu? 

SMITH: “I started thinking about the album about a month or two before we went in the studio. I always had recording equipment, going back to the '80s with a little four-track TEAC with the cassettes. I had 2 Minutes to Midnight, Wasted Years that kind of thing on there. Nowadays, Pro Tools is an amazing tool for writing.

“I’m able to bring in fairly sketched-out demos. I had eight or 10 [demos] and various bits or pieces. The main song I had was Senjutsu – with the big Kodo drums at the beginning, going into a very dramatic soundscape. I enjoy the process of seeing a germ of an idea turn into this gigantic sonic wave onstage. It’s really an amazing process… it can be very stressful, though!”

MURRAY: “Sometimes the guys would come in with demos, other times they’d have riffs. Also, a lot of it was worked out in the studio completely from scratch.”

GERS: “There’s no set way we do the writing. The Time Machine, I was intending that to be all acoustic. But I put a guide down on the electric and it sounded so eerie. I thought, Oh, there’s something in there… So we ended up keeping that.”

Senjutsu has some epic compositions on it. Was there a particular song, or guitar moment, that was especially difficult to pull off?

MURRAY: [Laughs] Good question. It’s a lot of heavy riffs and difficult patterns on this album. Complex pieces. A lot of it was getting the timing: If you’re playing a melody line, sometimes you don’t have to be right on the note. You can lag back or push it forward a little bit to create a different kind of feel.

SMITH: “The most difficult ones were the ones I wrote myself, because you’re invested in them so personally. I had a lot of trouble with The Writing on the Wall. You’ve got three guitars playing the same riff – an open D chord – and the intonation is crucial. It’s simple, but it’s got to have the three guitars ringing on that one D chord, and everyone plays the chord slightly differently. 

“We started recording and people were like, ‘Oh yeah, it’s going well.’ And I’m like, ‘Nope. It sounds sour and out of tune.’ I’m very sensitive to that. I had to take a break and walk around Paris for a couple hours to get my head straight. [Laughs] I think we ended up having one guitar play through and then the other guys overdubbed it.”

GERS: “I think the challenging thing was the amount of melodies behind the vocal stuff. But it’s not about me. I’m looking to bring the songs together. From that context I think everything seems to fit and it all feels good.”

Janick, following up on your point of playing for the song: how would you say Dave and Adrian’s styles complement your guitar playing in that pursuit?

GERS: “Dave has got a very legato sound to his playing, a much smoother style. Adrian’s very rhythmic in his playing. He has a different sound to what Dave has, probably a bit more spikey. It’s more of a rock-n-roll sound. Then I bring in a ragged, aggressive, edgy sound that can move in a different way than Dave and Adrian.

“When you put those ways of playing together they balance off each other and give it a different texture. You might have one guitar crashing, one chugging, one playing behind the vocal melody – it’s kind of like a tapestry. 

“All the guitarists in the band are quite dynamic; we can all pull a solo off if we need to. [But] it’s not about ego, it’s about letting other people step forward and helping the song along. If we were egotistical, it wouldn’t work. It would just be guitar battles flying all over the place. It’s supposed to be about emotion.”

Senjutsu does have a lot of emotionally evocative moments. I’m thinking about The Parchment, the lyrical solos and stirring guitar harmonies.

MURRAY: “There’s some mysterious melodies there. It almost reminds me of a movie soundtrack theme…”

SMITH: “I don’t actually write a lot of guitar harmonies in my stuff. I did a little bit on this album, but Steve is crazy for this. He loves guitar harmonies. I’ll take what he writes and put it into a musically [correct form], and he’ll say, ‘No, that sounds too formal.’ So, he’ll get you to play a harmony and then finish on a unison. Or Dave and I will play something and clash, and he’ll go, ‘Ah no, leave that. I like that.’ So, it’s not just like putting a guitar through a harmonizer – it’s got a different edge to it.’”

You’ve all had long and influential careers with Maiden. What is the biggest area in which you’ve grown as players since you first started? 

GERS: “Um, that’s for the people to say, really. [Laughs] I think your guitar playing changes when you get older. There’s no need to go mad all the time. It depends on what the other guitar player is doing. If he’s playing a nice melody there’s no point in you playing the same thing. You’re trying to make the song interesting. It’s not about you.”

SMITH: “As far as composition goes, I seem to be more prolific these days. Years ago, it was a struggle to write something. You’d bring in your ideas and sit there with your guitar [volume] on number one, really clean, and tell the guys, 'Here it goes.' That is difficult. You’re bearing your soul… to a bunch of hairy-ass musicians. [Laughs] But now I can take in my nice Pro Tools demos, and they get the picture straight away.

“As far as playing goes, I grew up singing and playing in a band, so I wasn’t focused 100 percent on guitar. My influences were more [a] bluesy kind of rock. Of course, I loved Ritchie Blackmore, but I had no idea what he was doing. [Laughs] I couldn’t play that. 

“But Pat Travers, Johnny Winter, Paul Kossoff, the Thin Lizzy guitarists … you could get more of the idea. I took that with me in Maiden the first time. … And Dave taught me some stuff and away I went. Then when I left the band [in 1990] I worked with different people. 

“I learned a lot from Roy Z, who was the guitarist in Bruce’s band. [Editor’s note: Dickinson left Maiden in 1993 to focus on his solo career. He rejoined in 1999.] He was very well schooled in technique, and he had a good way of putting it across. It really transformed my playing. So when I rejoined Maiden [in 1999] I felt a lot more confident – especially playing over fast stuff and alternate picking.”

MURRAY: “I think now I feel more open to listen to any type of music. Back then it was blues or rock and that’s it! [Laughs] Now I listen to all sorts of music: jazz and some country rock stuff that’s coming out now, because a lot of it is very heavy. Also, fusion – complicated stuff like Al Di Meola, or anyone who’s playing something you don’t expect. 

“I keep going to Django, but that guy was amazing. For guitarists, and all musicians, it’s about expression. You don’t need to just play fast to express yourself. As they say: one note sounds better than a thousand notes a lot of the time. For guitarists, just enjoy what you’re doing. It’s like, guitar should be a form of therapy. And everybody needs that at the moment. [Laughs]”

• Senjutsu is out now via Parlophone / BMG. 

Iron Maiden guitarist and virtuoso rock journeyman Richie Kotzen have announced their first US shows under their Smith/Kotzen moniker.

The run of six dates kicks off in January 2022 and sees them stick mainly to the West Coast, playing five shows around California, with a quick stop in 'Vegas. In addition, the duo will play seven shows throughout the UK, beginning in late February.

“It’s always been our intention to take these songs on the road and give them a good kicking about,” says Smith. “We’re delighted that we’ve been able to set up this tour around a very hectic 2022 schedule and we both can’t wait to finally get out there and play live.”

The pair released their debut album S/K back in March and quickly followed that up with the four-track EP, Better Days, in November. 

Kotzen and Smith reportedly traded signature guitars during the sessions, so it will be interesting to see if the gear swaps play in to the live dynamic. Indeed, it seems like both players are looking to loosen their collars a bit on the shows.

“We’re excited that we can take Smith/Kotzen to the next level and bring our music to the stage,” says Kotzen. “We’re still figuring out which musicians we’ll be bringing with us to deliver the songs in the way we’ve always envisaged to give fans a dynamic live experience. We’re really looking forward to this tour and we’re planning to have a lot of fun!”

For more information on tickets and Smith/Kotzen US/UK dates head here.

Smith/Kotzen 2022 US and UK tour dates 

• January 15 Ventura Theatre, Ventura, CA    
• January 20 The Whisky A Go-Go Los Angeles, CA          
• January 22 Count’s Vamp’d, Las Vegas, NV 
• January 23 Brick By BrickSan Diego, CA 
• January 26 Goldfield Trading Post, Roseville, CA
• January 27 The Siren, Morro Bay, CA

• February 27 Club Academy, Manchester
• February 28 Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
• March 02 Garage, Glasgow
• March 03 KK’s Steel Mill, Wolverhampton
• March 05 Winters End, Leamington Spa
• March 07 Fleece, Bristol
• March 08 Islington Assembly Hall, London

Smith/Kotzen – the super-duo project formed by Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith and The Winery Dogs’ Richie Kotzen – only released their debut self-titled album earlier this year, but it seems as though the pair have absolutely no intention of resting on their laurels.

As such, the duo have announced an all-new four-track EP, titled Better Days, which arrives on Record Store Day – November 26 – via BMG.

Accompanying the news is the effort’s lead single, which can only be described as yet another demonstration of the pair’s undeniable musical chemistry and compositional compatibility.

Adopting a slightly heavier approach than the duo’s debut material, Better Days is supercharged with some moody overdriven riffs and complementary counterpoint exchanges that see one axe-slinger serve up a melodic motif while the other assumes chordal duties.

Of course, there’s a boatload of tasty lead work scattered throughout the five-minute run time, with highlights including Kotzen’s first fingerpicking-loaded extended effort on his Fender Telecaster, Smith’s uber-melodic interlude passage and some gnarly call-and-response interplay between the pair.

While the final two tracks of the EP – Hate And Love and Rise Again – were recorded in March 2020, Better Days and Got a Hold On Me were composed at The House recording studio in LA, when Smith and Kotzen finally reconvened to record after lockdown.

Of the upcoming offering, Kotzen reflected, “When Adrian came over to LA earlier this year, we got together and started throwing ideas around and we very quickly came up with the new songs. 

“Better Days almost seemed to write itself,” he continued. “It’s got a nice groove to it. Adrian came in with the riff and we came up with a melody for the chorus together, pretty much working to the same formula we used when writing the S/K album, bouncing ideas off each other.”

Smith added, “Better Days is a song I’m really excited about. I think it’s slightly different to the songs on the Smith/Kotzen album – it’s kind of heavy but melodic. I’d played Richie the riff and I was looking for a reaction, and I got one! 

“Kind of like the old grey whistle test scenario – there was a spark and we started building the song from there,” he said. “I’d have an idea, then Richie would have an idea and we’d go back and forth, like building blocks.”

• Better Days is available to preorder now ahead of its November 26 release.

They are in one of the biggest bands in the world, but when Adrian Smith and Janick Gers talk about guitars, there’s not a trace of arrogance. Quite the opposite. 

Speaking to TG from their homes – Adrian in Buckinghamshire, Janick in the North East – they’re in buoyant mood about the new Iron Maiden album Senjutsu, the 17th studio set of the band’s storied career, and the sixth to feature the three-guitar line-up of Adrian, Janick and Dave Murray. 

But before they get into the fine detail of Senjutsu (the title loosely meaning ‘the art of war’ in Japanese), they both offer sound advice for less experienced players. Janick has a tip for those on a modest budget, having played an Epiphone Les Paul Custom, instead of his usual Strats, when Maiden performed the song If Eternity Should Fail on their last tour. 

“I wanted to do that because if you’re a kid watching Iron Maiden, I don’t want you thinking you’ve got to spend three grand to sound good,” he says. “So many guitar players think expensive guitars sound better, but the reality is people rarely can tell the difference. 

“Decent guitars are out there and everyone can afford them. The difference is very slight – if there was only one guitarist in the band, you might be able to hear the difference between something costing three grand or £500. But there’s three of us, and I couldn’t hear the difference. It tells kids: ‘You can do this, get a guitar, put a band together and get playing! You don’t need to be rich to do this.’ So that’s why I chose to use that guitar.”

And what Adrian says about technique is both instructional and remarkably self-deprecating. This is a man who has written some of Iron Maiden’s greatest songs, notably the '80s anthems Flight Of Icarus and 2 Minutes To Midnight. But in the '90s, when he and singer Bruce Dickinson were out of the band and working together, Adrian had a rude awakening from Roy Z, the other guitarist in Bruce’s band.

“I’ve never really studied technique,” he admits, “because there wasn’t much information around when I was younger. But when I was playing with Roy Z, he actually called me out on it and said, ‘Your technique’s not very good!’ At first I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, mate!’ But he was right.

“He showed me some alternate picking exercises and I worked on them for hours and hours because I had to keep up with him. It really improved my playing and helped me use my fingers in the right way, as well as strengthening them.”

Both of them describe Senjutsu as a challenging album to make, not least due to the complex material provided by the band’s founder and leader, bassist Steve Harris.

Recorded at Studio Guillaume Tell in Paris with producer Kevin Shirley, the album was actually completed in 2019, before the global pandemic. And across a range of styles and moods, from straight-up heavy metal to more progressive and folk-influenced textures, there is some truly stunning guitar work.

“There’s so much creativity in this band,” Janick says. “We’re always trying to expand and come up with new things, and on this album, we have such a mixture of sounds and huge choruses too. It’s a double album, and on vinyl it’s a triple! Back in the old days, an album would be 40 minutes max. Well, this is three times that! And that’s what validates this band.”

In every sense, this is a heavyweight album. And in the following track-by-track guide, Adrian and Janick reveal the secrets of its creation – weird tunings, odd time changes and a super-sized solo included!

1. Senjutsu

A dramatic opener that uses Phrygian ideas to hammer home the album’s Eastern themes 

Adrian: “The title track was inspired by Japanese drums. We put my demo up on Pro Tools and Nicko [McBrain, drummer] played along to it. Then we took the digital drums out and added guitars. 

“We got the drum and guitar track ready to go first. I had a couple of melodies and because of the Eastern nature of it, Steve [Harris, bassist] suggested a battle scene – an army trying to scale the walls of a city. Full-on drama!” 

2. Stratego

One of the more succinct offerings, using the same power chord to minor sixth shifts heard on some of the group’s classic '80s material 

Janick: “I wrote a lot of the music for this one and Steve brought his melodies in. It’s a basic rock ’n’ roll track with some extra creativity thrown in. 

Adrian: “That power chord to minor sixth shift is very dark-sounding and always very effective. It sets up a mood and away you go! It defines the sound of the song, with that element of discordance to it.” 

3. The Writing On The Wall 

The lead single that goes from cowboy to Celtic in just 30 seconds 

Adrian: “This was one of my songs so I gave myself a nice long solo! It’s always been 16 bars with Maiden – every solo is that length. I’d never done 32, so I thought I’d give myself double this time. And that was actually quite a challenge, trying to build it up into something interesting. So I did the big melodic solo, then Dave plays one too and Janick plays the outro stuff. But we had a lot of trouble with that main simple riff in the D position. 

“When three guitars play it, because of intonation, it never sounded right to me. Two guitars sounded right but three sounded a bit off. So Janick tracked the higher one and I played the lower one. And that part almost sounds like a horn line.” 

Janick: “There’s definitely a Celtic feel to this one. When we bring songs in, anything goes. Nothing is sacred. That’s what gives this band so much depth. There’s that cowboy feel at the beginning, too. It all goes together really well and still sounds like Iron Maiden.”  

4. Lost In A Lost World

An experimental 10-minuter, with some head-turning time shifts and mirrored vocal melodies 

Adrian: “Steve has a very different take on things, which for the most part is a real strength – because it makes us sound different to anything else. He’s got a knack for these time changes, and sometimes they’re hard to get your head around, but having worked with him for many years, I can almost anticipate where he’s going to go. I think we all can. That’s the beauty of having a band that have played together all these years.”

Janick: “We’re not scared to head off in different directions in the middle of a song. It doesn’t matter how long the song ends up being – if it feels right, be prepared to go there. As for guitar tracks mirroring the vocals, sometimes we might put them down before Bruce and other times we’ll add them after. It’s different each time. It gives the guitars a higher octave and takes the sound to a different place, adding to the vocal line.” 

5. Days Of Future Past 

An uptempo, Smith/Dickinson-penned modern metal rager 

Adrian: “It’s got quite a modern feel in places and it’s only four minutes, so it’s the shortest track on the record. The riff that comes in at 30 seconds feels very fresh and youthful. It uses the E position on the seventh fret and then you use one finger to play a C bass note, then down to the A. 

“It’s almost a Spanish flamenco thing if you play it on acoustic with a bossa nova rhythm, but then you plug into a Marshall and play it differently, it sounds like a rock song! I like that E chord with the movement underneath.” 

6. The Time Machine

The sound of Gers and Harris penning their own prog rock opera 

Janick: “This is the one with the weird tunings for all the extra colour at the beginning. It was actually all done on the Strat. To be honest, I was going to redo it on acoustic, but the Strat had such a weird sound that the acoustic wouldn’t have gotten. 

“I threw everything into the works for this one. We’ve always loved longer, more drawn-out tracks and even though we’re considered heavy metal we can also be folky, edgy, progressive and also very soft in places. In some respects, our way of looking at an album is everything’s possible! 

“All you need, really, is a powerful chorus. Then you layer the guitars, it’s our job to make a tapestry underneath that enhances Bruce’s vocals rather than getting in the way. We have a natural way of playing. We don’t work it out much, it’s just there.”

7. Darkest Hour

A brooding neoclassical ballad with some extra depth from Smith’s double neck 

Adrian: “For this I used my double-neck Jackson, with a six and a 12. It weighs about three-quarters of a ton! But it sounded really good in the studio, especially for a ballad-y kind of song.”  

8. Death Of The Celts 

The first of the album’s three Harris-penned closing tracks – with some surprise shifts from minor to major 

Adrian: “It’s funny – Steve will have these ideas and then look at me, Dave or Janick. The ideas are usually quite complicated, so sometimes you might see guitarists hiding away behind their amps, waiting for the others to take up the gauntlet and learn these super-complicated parts! But we all do our bit. It takes a lot of concentration to play Steve’s stuff. Honestly, it can be quite a challenge.” 

Janick: “We made this album very differently. Normally, we get a studio to rehearse in and then get seven or eight songs ready as a live band first before we record. But this time it was all done in the studio. We went in and actually learned things there, putting them down soon after and then moving on to the next. So it got quite confusing, especially with the longer songs. 

“There were so many melodies and riffs floating around in the studio. Songs like Death Of The Celts were done in parts. Sometimes we’d be playing three-part harmonies together. And there were a lot of tempo changes. Steve would have a riff and melody for us to memorise, then there would be a tempo change, then we’d be back to the melody but a different tempo! It wasn’t an easy album to make.”  

9. The Parchment A

A moody mixture of Phrygian and Phrygian Dominant tonalities on arguably the album’s darkest track

Janick: “This one has that Egyptian feel to it. With Maiden, we love the imagery that comes through the music. We can take people places, and that’s the great thing about music and playing guitar. You think about what you’re playing and how you can transport the listener. That’s something magical.” 

10. Hell On Earth

A fittingly epic conclusion to the album, with mellowed clean tones before the heavy metal thunder arrives…

Adrian: “On those Marshall JVMs, you’ve got two clean channels and two dirty channels, and each one has three different modes. There are a lot of different tonal options there. With clean sounds, compression is very important – well, compression is important in general for recording because it keeps everything tight and punchy-sounding. Maiden have always been known for putting lighter shades in songs. Dynamics are very important to us.” 

Janick: “This is such a thematic end to the album, with so much power. It’s very cinematic and I love how all the guitars interact with each other. It’s heavy but it has so much soul to it. It’s an album we can be proud of. I can’t sit here and tell you this is the best album we’ve ever done. That would be stupid. But I’m very proud of it – as proud as I am of any Maiden album.”

• Senjutsu is out now via Warner Bros.

It's been quite awhile since we last heard new music from metal legends Iron Maiden – six years in total.

That wait ends today with the band's new single, the appropriately epic The Writing On The Wall. Written by Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith & frontman Bruce Dickinson, the song was produced by Kevin Shirley with assistance from the band's bassist, Steve Harris.

The song's beautiful music video was created by two former Pixar executives – Mark Andrews and Andrew Gordon (both of whom are massive Iron Maiden fans) – and the London-based animation studio BlinkInk.

You can give the song, and its video, a spin below.

“I had a pretty clear idea of the concept to accompany the song and when I met Mark and Andrew, on Zoom, it quickly became clear we were all very much on the same wavelength, and this was reinforced with the addition of Nicos and his young BlinkInk team," Dickinson said of the video in a statement. "Our weekly team Zoom meetings were then usually both highly creative and a lot of fun!  
 
“I’m very proud of the way the video turned out, it’s more like a mini-film really. I knew it was going to work out as soon as Mark brought my treatment to life with his incredible storyboards – I thought we could make something very special together. I think we did and hope our fans will agree. In fact it’s pretty much created by Maiden fans!”

No word yet on whether or not this is the lead single from a potential follow-up to the band's last studio effort, 2015's The Book of Souls, but we'll definitely keep our eyes peeled. 

In the meantime, if you're craving some more Adrian Smith hard-rock guitar heroics, you'd do well to check out his new album with Richie Kotzen.

Following the death of Def Leppard guitarist Steve Clark in 1991, Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith was strongly considered to fill the slot, according to Rick Allen.

In a new interview with eonmusic, the long-serving drummer reveals that he “really loved the idea” of Smith joining the band.

“I mean, there was a kid called Huwey Lucas that was a contender; there was [ex-Thin Lizzy/Blue Murder guitarist] John Sykes; there were all these people kind of lined up.”

“It's interesting,” he continues, “you put somebody in a slightly different situation and new things are revealed about them, and it was cool. It was a complement that he was so into it. But I think ultimately, Vivian [Campbell] was the absolutely perfect choice.”

Adrian Smith – who left Iron Maiden in 1990 before rejoining in 1999 – cautiously revealed in a 2020 interview, also with eonmusic, that he was considered for the role.

“Yeah I was. I’m not sure… I want to write more books; that might be in my next one! [Laughing] There’s whole story about that.” 

Smith was referring to a potential followup to his 2020 fishing book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life As Iron Maiden's Compulsive Angler.

Also in the eonmusic interview, Rick Allen remembers Steve Clark. “I found Steve to be a very deep person; a very deep thinker,” he says. “I miss him every day.”

It’s telling that the new collaboration between Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith and genre-hopping virtuoso Richie Kotzen was one born out of friendship. 

On the pair’s new album, titled simply Smith/Kotzen, the way their vocals and guitars trade off is much like a conversation, each telling their own bluesy chapter in the unfolding story.  

Adrian is often considered the most technically driven of Maiden’s guitar trio, and has played a central role in evolving the metal genre into what it is today, while Richie has progressed from his roots as an 80s shredder and one-time member of glam rock stars Poison to make a series of modern soul-tinged solo albums in which he marries his sky-scraping voice with finger-twisting fusion lines and improv blues to stunning effect.  

As fate would have it, Adrian buying a house in close proximity to Richie’s is what got the pair initially acquainted... 

“I bought a place in California seven or eight years ago,” Adrian explains. “And obviously there’s a great music scene in LA and everyone knows everyone. I was vaguely aware of Richie from the early bands he played in, but hearing him do all this bluesy rock and sing was very cool. I think maybe 20 years ago someone brought one of his solo albums to a barbecue and I was impressed then. 

“It was actually Pat Cash, the tennis player, who is a big fan of Richie’s! We met a lot later through mutual friends and got to know each other a bit, doing Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bad Company songs in my jam room. My wife said we should get together and try to do some writing, see what happens...” 

For Kotzen, who once told TG he wore his Iron Maiden shirt to school like it was uniform, it’s been quite an experience. 

“To now have an album out with someone like Adrian is pretty darn cool,” he says. “I would have The Number Of The Beast as my wake-up song in the mornings, ‘Woe to you, oh earth and sea!’ I would start every day like that. Over the years we’ve had various jam sessions and dinners, just socialising whenever Adrian would be in Los Angeles. There was a lot of common ground to build a foundation from, everything just fell into place...”

You’ve both mainly played in standard tuning over the years, so it’s interesting you chose to record this half a step down…

Richie: ”That’s an interesting point. And yeah, I’m generally in 440, although there was one album I did called Get Up that had some songs a whole step down. It just happened out of picking up a guitar and it already being tuned to that. On this album I guess being a semitone down gave it a heavier tone...”

Adrian: ”And some tracks like Running have the E-string tuned down even further. It is a driving rock song but having that low string in it gives a bit of a modern twist. It does sound a bit more metal, yeah, which is great! Of course, it was also helpful for the singing because it gives you a bit more range.”

What were the main amps used during the sessions? 

Richie: ”My new 100-watt Victory signature ended up being the main one for most of the record, we were plugging into it quite a bit. For me, it was 100% Victory. It’s loud, powerful, clean and sings well. I’ve really fallen for this amp.” 

Adrian: ”To be honest, because of how we recorded, I didn’t have access to all my gear. It was in a warehouse in England and getting it out of storage would have been a real pain. I used Richie’s Victory and my Marshall DSL a bit too – you always get a good sound out of a Marshall. 

”I had a wine-red Les Paul Standard and my favourite green Jackson, the new one I used on the last Maiden tour... And that’s it! I didn’t have any effects so I ended up going through whatever Richie had. He ended up using more and I kept it pretty straight.

”I did use a bit of wah on Taking My Chances and chorus on Scars, where I was trying to get that eerie Soundgarden-y effect. I didn’t have a lot to choose from, but in some ways keeping it simple is good. After all, it should mainly come from the fingers!”

So your prized ’72 Goldtop didn’t make the record? 

Adrian: ”No, sadly that one was also over in England. I just didn’t have access to it, but it’s still one of the best guitars I’ve owned. I bought it as a teenager and when I first got home with it I was frustrated because I didn’t immediately sound like Gary Moore [laughs]. 

”I was only 19, I quickly realised there’s a lot more work in between getting a Les Paul and making it sound good. But that guitar has aged really well. I think when guitars are new, it takes a while for the wood to settle down. 

”You get intonation and tuning problems, which I’ve had with the Goldtop, but now it just never goes out of tune. The wood is seasoned! I had the same problem with a new Les Paul Custom, the intonation and tuning was terrible but 10 years on that guitar plays like a dream.

Richie, you’ve used Leslie sounds in the past – but it sounds like you kicked in the rotary mode on your Tech 21 Fly Rig quite a bit more this time round... 

Richie: ”Yeah, I guess I went a little berserk with it [laughs]. And you nailed it, the Fly Rig is what you’re hearing. In the old days, I would have had the Leslie mic’d up and I also had this Mesa/Boogie rotating speaker cabinet. But on this album, I actually used the pedal. Maybe subconsciously, I may have wanted to mix the tones. 

”I tend to go back and forth between the Tele and the Strat, this one was pretty down the middle. The Telecaster can be a very versatile guitar, especially my signature – you can really do a lot of damage with that thing because of the bridge pickup.

”The Strat is expressive in a different way, because there’s the option of the tremolo. And interestingly, towards the end my brain was moving faster than my body so rather than setting up my own guitar, I ended up grabbing Adrian’s Jackson!

”He already had a tone dialled in so I did a couple of leads using that. Listening back to those leads, I felt like I was hearing the 18 year-old Shrapnel-era Richie Kotzen because I got a little crazy with the tremolo arm. You can do things on that which you can’t with a traditional Strat. I was digging the way it played, it’s badass!

Adrian: ”It was quite something watching him do that close up [laughs]. I think because of that whammy bar, he really got into using my guitar...”

Adrian, there’s a really powerful rhythmic delay at the beginning of the Running solo – which nods back to some of your late-80s tones... 

Adrian: ”We had the chord sequence for that breakdown and I just thought of this guitarist called Pat Thrall who used to play with Pat Travers. He used to do a lot of things with delay – this was back in the day before U2 – with all these repeating lead lines. It’s great on record but it can be very hit or miss live. 

”I did it on a Maiden track called Moonchild many years ago and to recreate it live you have to play at exactly the same tempo... which, as any player can imagine, can be very difficult – especially when you’re in a band and everyone’s getting carried away. 

”When we recorded that track with Maiden, the way I had my rig set up at the time was one cab dry and one wet. Of course, they didn’t mic the wet one, so for my solo, there was no delay on it. I guess it was a bit like that Bill Bailey sketch, where he plays The Edge without effects! [Laughs] It can be a bit like that when you’re not careful. But when it works, it’s a great little trick.”

Taking My Chances features some great cues, like the opening tapping riff and the unison line before the solo section... 

Adrian: ”The intro I play is actually a pretty simple part. We already had the riff but put that intro on afterwards, thinking it would set it all up nicely. Especially as it was the first track on the album, we almost wanted a bit more of an overture.” 

Richie: ”The line before the solo is a bit left-field! We wanted to do something a bit crazy to open the solo. I got into that stuff back in the day when I was listening to David Lee Roth’s first record [Eat ‘Em And Smile] with Steve Vai and Billy Sheehan doing all these amazing unison licks. 

”That specific line is quite interesting, because if you were to write it out, it would be quarter-note triplets. But because of how it’s phrased, we’re really pulling it back. It became this really feel-oriented thing, in order to create this musical tension.”

Adrian, this is quite possibly the bluesiest album you’ve put your name to. Which players left the biggest mark on you? 

Adrian: ”When I was a kid, it wasn’t so much the original ones, but more the people who were influenced by them. Players like Gary Moore, Pat Travers, Johnny Winter, Brian Robertson, Scott Gorham. They were sort of second-generation, influenced by the old blues guys but passing it on. That’s just the way it goes. But I went back and listened to the originals and was blown away.

”BB King was amazing, lovely playing just because of the phrasing of the notes. Eric Clapton, too – if you think about him versus Eddie Van Halen, you’ll probably think Van Halen was a far superior guitarist, but Clapton’s phrasing is perfect. He puts every note in exactly the right place, which is really difficult to do. I’ve been trying for years, aspiring to that idea of clean phrasing and maximum effect.”

But as for the busier lines, what’s the secret to getting so much mileage out of the humble blues scale?

Adrian: ”It’s interesting, I think it’s a scale that hit you in the gut and will always be the simple go-to. But it depends how you play it, one person might play a lick and it will sound okay, someone else might play it and it might sound fantastic. It comes down to feel and where you place the notes, what you’re playing over and so many other things. 

”I feel like I’ve almost gone back more to playing pentatonics these days. I do like to use other scales and mix it up, but that’s always the main attack. You just know, that’s the blues scale, that’s the one that hits you in the chest. I have tried to get into jazz, but to me it’s like mathematics!”

• Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen's Smith/Kotzen is out now via BMG.

Note: this article is also featured in Australian Guitar #142, which is out now wherever great magazines are sold! Click here to read more about what’s in this jam-packed issue!

Especially true in the last two decades, hard‑rock supergroups and team-up albums come at a dime a dozen: it’s an easy way to sell one product to multiple fanbases, and brand value alone means quality can be an afterthought. We’re not saying it’s okay, but we get why so many veteran rock dogs – especially those whose primary outlets have either run their course or severely minimised their output – turn to these types of releases. 

The upside is that when it’s easy to see behind the cheap gloss of most supergroups, it’s also easy to see when one comes about out the collaborators’ legitimate, genuine passion for their art. Such is certainly the case with Smith/Kotzen, the self‑titled debut effort from Iron Maiden’s inimitable lead shredder Adrian Smith and The Winery Dogs’ genre‑bending singer-strummer Richie Kotzen (who’s also played in Poison and Mr Big, amongst a slew of other projects and solo LPs). 

Meddling well-seasoned blues and volcanic metal vibes, the record works for two equally compelling reasons: it combines each player’s individual strengths and creative idiosyncrasies, but it also takes them both out of their respective comfort zones, etching out otherwise unrealised potential – ideas that Smith wouldn’t have had without Kotzen, and vice versa. Considering both players have had their hands on fretboards for over 40 years, that alone is undoubtably impressive.

Before the record lands at the tail end of March, Australian Guitar got down to wire with both Smith and Kotzen.

Let’s start at square one: how did this collaboration come about? 
Kotzen: I met Adrian a long time ago. Actually, to be honest, I met his wife Natalie first. She ended up introducing me to Adrian and we just hit it off right away; whenever he and Natalie would come out to Los Angeles, we’d all get together and catch up. 

Adrian’s got a really nice room in his house out here where he’s got a few guitars, some amps and a console set up, so we’d lock ourselves in there and jam for hours. And we’d done this for years. Usually around Christmas, they’d throw a party and everybody would come around, and one year, I believe it was Natalie who said, “Hey, you guys seem to really play well together, why don’t you try to write something?” And the rest is history! I think the first song we actually worked on together became “Running”.

So how did the project evolve from that first idea to what we hear now?
Kotzen: Well y’know, we kind of just went for it. I think the reason the record sounds the way it does is because of the influences we have – I grew up listening to a lot of classic R&B music, and Adrian loves the American blues, and we like a lot of the same bands – Bad Company, Free, The Who… A lot of those kinds of groups. And then when we got together, I think we really complement each other very nicely. I’ve got this history of doing everything on my own, singing and guitar playing, while Adrian is more accustomed to the two-guitar band setup. 

So right out the gate, one thing I was really excited about was Adrian’s sensibility in the studio, between the production and his approach to the second guitar. Many times I’d do something and think, “Okay, we’re done,” and he’d be like, “No no no, I’ve got an idea!” And he’d come up with some cool countering guitar line – something I wouldn’t have thought of. So y’know, I think the style of the record came about the way it did because of our instincts and how we naturally play together.

Did you find that in working together, you were both encouraged to explore some different playing techniques, or try any new things out with the guitar?
Smith: It was certainly a little different to how it works in Maiden – Maiden is obviously quite metal and I’m quite ingrained in that way of playing, but I love bluesy rock as well. I always have – I grew up in the early ‘70s listening to bands like Free and Deep Purple, so that sort of bluesy rock is in my blood. I wanted to explore that a bit. I’d been playing more blues guitar in the last ten years or so anyway; I’ve gotten deep into it. 

I always thought the blues would be pretty easy to play, but to actually nail the phrasing on a guitar – to get all the notes perfectly in the right place – is a real art. Take someone like Eric Clapton: although he’s not an Eddie Van Halen-type guitarist, he’s putting all the notes in all the right places, and every single note counts. So that’s what I wanted to try doing a bit more with this project. Richie’s got a lot of that spirit in his musicianship; when I discovered his music seven or eight years ago, I was surprised by how good a singer he was and how much soul he put into his playing.

How did you utilise effects to capture the energy you were looking for? 
Smith: Well y’know, I didn’t have access to a lot of my equipment because we recorded abroad; most of my stuff was locked up in the warehouse with all the other Maiden gear. So I just had a Les Paul Standard and my green signature Jackson guitar, which I’ve been using on the latest Maiden stuff. And we used one amp, mainly, which was a Victory amp. It was very straightforward. We got a good sound and mic’d it up, and away we went. I didn’t have any of my effects with me either, so for any effects I wanted, I had to rummage through Richie’s collection – I’d pick out a chorus and a wah pedal, and that was about it. It was pretty stripped-down, really. 

Richie, I have to ask about your stunning cherry red signature Telecaster – is that what you played on this record? 
Kotzen: That, and the Telecaster version of the same guitar. However towards the end, there was a song or two where I had to do a solo and Adrian had his Jackson with the Floyd Rose tremolo set up, so I thought to myself, “Hm, let me try this.” It’s funny – a couple of the solos I did on Adrian’s guitar sound like the old Richie Kotzen, back when I was 18 and I had the Ibanez with the locking tremolo; I’d listen back and go, “Ah, that sounds like me when I was a kid!” So that was kind of fun – and that would have never happened had I not thought to grab Adrian’s guitar. Things like that made it such a fun collaboration. It’s nice to play with a guy that has good taste and a great facility, and that you can bounce ideas off. I’d never really had that type of a partner before.

Do you think a second record could be in the pipeline one day? 
Kotzen: Sure! Why not? As long as we feel inspired and actually want to do it, let’s do it. But y’know, it’s funny because everyone else has asked that too – “Is there going to be another record? When’s the next one out?” We haven’t even released the first record yet! Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves! But if we’re just talking in the sense of what we’d like to do, then yeah, of course, I’d love to do more. 

While we’ve all swapped rigs with our bandmates, not many of us are in the position where we can swap our very own signature electric guitar with our friend who, erm, also happens to have a signature six-string.

For Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, however, this is exactly what happened, with the rock icons recently revealing in an exclusive interview with Guitarist that they traded signature models while recording their upcoming self-titled debut album.

This means that, at points during the record, Smith wielded Kotzen's signature Fender DiMarzio-loaded Stratocaster, while Kotzen can be heard slaying Smith's signature Jackson San Dimas.

“I did do something I’ve not done in a long time," recalled Kotzen when asked if the pair tried anything new with their gear in the studio. "Towards the end of the recording, I grabbed Adrian’s Jackson a few times.

“He has a locking tremolo and I was joking that on a couple of those solos, I sound like the 19-year-old Richie Kotzen,” he continued. “I found myself doing some tremolo bar things that I just couldn’t do on my guitar.”

Smith certainly had no desire to be left out of the signature-swapping action, and decided to take Kotzen’s own signature six-string for a spin, saying, “I tried his rig too. On the song Running, I used his signature Strat with the DiMarzio pickups.

“It’s got quite a chunky neck,” he mused, before adding, “I’ve never really got on with the Telecasters, but he gave me one of his signature models, which I haven’t had a chance to get going on yet. So many guitars, so little time…”

On whether their rig swapping made any difference to their individual tone, Kotzen commented, “If I get a guitar and amp, and neither are mine, I’ll start fiddling with the knobs to get the sound I hear in my head… So in the end, I’m pretty much gonna sound like me.”

Elsewhere in the interview, the duo touched on their experiences of sharing bass duties and leapt to the defense of bass guitar players around the world, with Kotzen stating, “Not any guitar player can play bass. Bass is a different instrument.”

Commenting on the theory that any guitarist can play bass, Smith added, “The few times I’ve jammed on bass it’s very difficult because you can’t always hear what you’re playing. It’s a boomy bottom-end, it’s like you’re playing in the dark."

Kotzen continued, “It does something different to the guitar. As I evolved, I had the luxury of playing with great bass players. I have a long history of playing with great bass players. 

"I’ve actually studied what the bass does at the same level that I’ve studied guitar. So I am a bass player. I’m not a guitar player who plays bass.” 

Head over to Magazines Direct to pick up the latest copy of Guitarist, which features in-depth interviews with Adrian Smith, Richie Kotzen and Angus Young, as well as a close-up look at a collection of anniversary Gibson Les Paul models from the mid-'70s.

The year is 2021, and the Foo Fighters have made a funky, pop-influenced post-rock album in a haunted mansion... Anything is possible in these crazy times, we suppose! To celebrate the wicked new set of tunes that is Medicine At Midnight, Australian Guitar caught up with shredder extraordinaire Chris Shiflett, chatted all about the gear, grooves and ghosts that led to it, and immortalised the yarn in an epic six-page feature for the cover of our 142nd issue!

Of course, there's much more in Australian Guitar #142 that'll have your inner rockstar going mental – like the ultimate guide to mastering the style of Led Zeppelin's legendary lead riffer Jimmy Page. Or for the history buffs out there, a loving look back on the history of Fender to celebrate the Californian legends' 75th birthday. And for those with a soft spot for true crime, we take a deep dive into the vexing story behind the most iconic stolen guitar of all time, Eric Clapton's "Beano". 

Once you've learned how to play it like Page, try punching it like Perry with the full tablature to Aerosmith and Run DMC's classic "Walk This Way". And we know what you're thinking – "Man, how wild would that track sound if you threw a loop pedal in the mix?" Well, what a coincidence – flip to page 74 and you'll find a shootout of all the biggest and best loopers on shelves right now! Flip back a few pages, and you'll find our DIY special on how to add a killswitch to your guitar – y'know, just in case you wanna make your cover of "Walk This Way" extra crazy.

But what if simply playing the song is not enough? Why not record it and share your virtuoso shredding skills with the world? Don't worry if you're green to the world of guitar vlogging – Australian Guitar #142 features a special on the best new camera to commit your jam sessions to memory. And speaking of recording guitars, we got down to the wire with one of the most storied producers in the world of Australian heavy music, Shane Edwards. 

You can read all about how Shane's making punk and hardcore history in this issue's Producer Profile column, then suss the Fresh Frets column to find your new favourite local band, and the Spotlight column to catch up with some of the buzziest names on the scene right now. There's also the Hot Gear column hated by wallets everywhere – and once you've drooled over all the goodies in that, head to the last pages of the magazine for a stack of reviews for the latest and greatest gear on the market.

That just about covers all the biggest features in Australian Guitar #142 – that is, aside from over 20 one-on-one interviews with such red-hot acts as Greta Van Fleet, Chrissie Hynde, Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen, Tomahawk, NOFX, Cheap Trick, Evanescence, Yvette Young, Mogwai, The Pretty Reckless... Honestly, we're starting to run out of breath – there's too many top-shelf names for us to fire off in the one sentence!

Australian Guitar #142 is available now from newsagents all around the country, and online via techmags.com.au or iSubscribe.

Artist interviews in this issue:

• A Day To Remember
• Adrian Smith & Richie Kotzen
• Carla Geneve
• Cheap Trick
• Chrissie Hynde
• DZ Deathrays
• Epica
• Evanescence
• Foo Fighters
• Greta Van Fleet
• Lande Hekt
• Melvins
• Middle Kids
• Miss Grit
• Mogwai
• NOFX
• The Pretty Reckless
• The Rubens
• Tigers Jaw
• Tomahawk
• Yvette Young
• Shane Edwards (Producer Profile)
• Axel Carrington of New Talk (Spotlight)
• Jack Gray (Spotlight)
• Kai Cult (Spotlight)
• Marie Ulven Ringheim, a.k.a. Girl In Red (Spotlight)

All the hottest gear reviews:

• Empress Effects ZOIA
• Blackstar Live Logic
• MXR Timmy Overdrive Pedal
• Boss Acoustic Singer Live LT Amp
• Ernie Ball Music Man Jason Richardson 7-String Cutlass
• Godin Radiator
• Vox Valvenergy Pedals
• Fender American Professional II Stratocaster + Telecaster Deluxe
• Fender Play
• EVH Striped Series Frankie
• Epiphone Prophecy Flying V
• Epiphone Joe Bonamassa Black Beauty Les Paul Custom
• Electro-Harmonix 1440 Stereo Looper
• Eventide PowerMax + PowerMini
• Orange Crest Edition Wireless Headphones

Subscribe to the print edition of Australian Guitar, and you'll enjoy each new issue on the day it's published, delivered straight to your door. Click here for all the details, including how to get 12 issues delivered for under a hundred bucks and win a ZOOM G6 Multi-Effects Modelling Floorboard valued at $799!

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen's long-awaited debut album is out March 26, and we’ve already been treated to two singles, Taking My Chances and the bluesy Scars.

Now the duo have unveiled a third track, the straightforward rocker Running.

The new song finds the Iron Maiden and Winery Dogs electric guitar players sharing guitar and vocals duties, as well as writing and production credits. Kotzen also plays bass and drums on the track.

Said Smith of the song, “It’s a really cool sort of driving track, one of the heavier ones on the album and we’re excited to get it out there ahead of the album release. We’ve both been thrilled by the reaction to our music so far and are very much looking forward to meeting up again as soon as we can, to write some more songs together.”

Added Kotzen, “Running was the first song Adrian and I worked on. Adrian came in with that heavy verse riff which lead me to conjuring up what lives as our chorus to the composition. Running is surely one of my top three favorites on the Smith/Kotzen album and I really look forward to playing this one live.”

Smith/Kotzen was recorded on Turks and Caicos in February 2020, and features guest appearances from Smith's Iron Maiden bandmate Nicko McBrain and Kotzen's touring partner Tal Bergman. You can preorder the album here.

With the release of Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen’s long-awaited debut album looming, the pair have treated fans to a new ‘70s blues-rock-inspired follow-up single, Scars.

The latest offering from the upcoming album comes after the release of the duo’s stomping debut single, Taking My Chances, which served up a tasty mix of high-gain electric guitars and heavy-hitting riffs.

Scars pays homage to classic blues-rock tones of the 1970s – a style that the pair found particularly fun to work on.

Recalls Kotzen, “I remember Scars being one of the songs we wrote in the very beginning of the process. There is something moody and mysterious going on in this track that I find quite engaging.”

The Winery Dogs frontman went on to say that Scars “would be a great track for us to stretch out live for some guitar improvisation between the two of us”.

As well as sharing guitar, vocal, writing and production duties with the Iron Maiden axeman, Kotzen also plays bass guitar and drums on the track.

The single is accompanied by another music video, which closely follows in the footsteps of the Taking My Chances video. Featuring ominous black and white landscape shots, the video also shares footage of the two guitar heroes in action at their London and LA-based home studios.

Commenting on Smith/Kotzen, Smith said, “Pretty much everything on the album is handled between Richie and myself including the production. We had developed a really strong idea of how we wanted it to sound and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

“There’s a lot of cool songs on there that we are really happy with.”

Smith/Kotzen is available now for preorder, available in CD, digital and vinyl formats.

An original Jackson Custom Shop prototype electric guitar that was played by Adrian Smith on Iron Maiden's recent Legacy of the Beast tour has joined the list of guitars that have gone up for charity raffle to support Stagehand's #ILoveLive campaign.

Heavy metal icons Iron Maiden have donated the Jackson Custom Shop Adrian Smith San Dimas 2 Minutes to Midnight prototype model in aid of the cause, which seeks to help UK live crew members who have been affected by the pandemic.

Sporting a striking 2 Minutes to Midnight artwork designed by Craig Fraser, the guitar features an alder body, a one-piece bolt-on maple neck, maple fretboard and a Floyd Rose Original Double Locking two-point tremolo.

Other appointments to this one-of-a-kind axe include a DiMarzio DP100F Super Distortion pickup controlled via volume and tone controls, in addition to a 12"-16" compound radius and Jackson Sealed Die-Cast tuners.

As well as being the proud owner of the unique instrument, the winner of the raffle will also be given the chance to bring the guitar to an Iron Maiden show of their choice to have it signed by the entire band.

Other prizes up for grabs include handwritten lyrics for 2 Minutes to Midnight signed by Bruce Dickinson, and two VIP passes to a future Iron Maiden show where you will watch the performance from the mixing desk.

As per the other #ILoveLive raffles, entry level tickets can be purchased through £10, £20, £30 or £50 donations, which works out to be approximately $14, $28, $42 and $70.

Entries can be purchased between February 17 and March 17, with the winner being picked at random on March 24.

Stagehand's #ILoveLive campaign looks to support live crew members who have been hit by the impact of the pandemic, and provides support to those who have struggled with the absence of live music.

To enter the prize draw, head over to Stagehand's Crowdfunder page, and visit Stagehand to learn more about its mission.

The Custom Shop Jackson joins a number of other guitars being raffled off to support the #ILoveLive campaign, including a limited-edition Muse-signed Manson guitar.

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen have revealed their highly anticipated debut album Smith/Kotzen will be released on March 26, while the music video for its lead single, Taking My Chances, is out now. 

Recorded on the Turks and Caicos Islands in February 2020, the nine-track long-player is set to feature guest appearances from Smith's Iron Maiden bandmate Nicko McBrain and Kotzen's touring partner Tal Bergman.

Says Smith, “Richie and I started working together a couple of years ago. We’d been jamming as we’d been friends for a few years before that. We both share a love for classic rock and bluesy rock so we decided to get together and start writing some songs and it went from there. 

“Pretty much everything on the album is handled between Richie and myself including the production. We had developed a really strong idea of how we wanted it to sound and I’m very pleased with how it turned out. There’s a lot of cool songs on there that we are really happy with.”

“We had a very fluid process in writing,” Kotzen adds. “Sometimes Adrian would send me a riff and I would immediately hear some kind of melody or a vocal idea. And sometimes it was the other way round so it was a kind of circular motion. 

“We’d get together whenever we could and throw some ideas around and it just evolved, which was great because there was no pressure and nothing other than just a natural course and I think the record really speaks for that.”

Smith/Kotzen is available now for pre-order, with CD, digital and vinyl formats up for grabs. The full tracklisting is as follows:

1. Taking My Chances
2. Running
3. Scars
4. Some People
5. Glory Road
6. Solar Fire
7. You Don’t Know Me
8. I Wanna Stay
9. ‘Til Tomorrow

Back in August, Iron Maiden's resident axe-wielding angler Adrian Smith alluded to a potential collaboration with Winery Dogs frontman Richie Kotzen. At the time, he confessed he was “sworn to secrecy”, but now, the veil has been lifted, as the pair introduce Smith/Kotzen's debut single, Taking My Chances.

The '70s classic rock-inspired track was recorded in February 2020 in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies, and the pair promise there'll be more to come in 2021.

“I think Richie and I complement each other really well,” Smith says. “He’s a virtuoso guitarist but he’s got a great sense of melody - the whole thing just felt very natural.”

Echoing Smith's thoughts, Kotzen adds, “We found common ground in classic and blues-based rock. We both come from that mentality. We’ve been writing and recording together for the past year and I’m ecstatic with the results.”

Smith's August revelation was, of course, not the first time a collaboration between the pair has been alluded to. Back in February, Kotzen posted a photo on Instagram of Smith and himself walking on a beach in the island of Providenciales with the caption, “Adrian Smith and I discussing the magic of writing songs in C-sharp minor.”

The same month, Kotzen told the Another FN Podcast, "I don’t like talking about things until they’re finished, but if you look at the photographs and who I’m with, and that sort of thing, you could assume that there may be a collaboration in the works.” 

• Smith/Kotzen's debut single Taking My Chances is out now via BMG.

Since joining Iron Maiden more than 40 years ago, Adrian Smith has toured the world and played to millions of fans. But if you look beyond his time spent on stage, a traveling musician can have a lot of down time. 

Smith recently published his first book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler, which chronicles his love of fishing and how it helps keep him grounded.

You just published Monsters of River & Rock. How did the idea come about?

“I was sitting around with friends one evening, just talking stories, and somebody said I should write books. That was the seed of it, really. So I did a couple of test chapters. 

“I’d already written a few things I was going to send to fishing magazines, but I never did. I took them out and sent a few test chapters to some publishers and got some feedback from [the publisher]. That was it – I started off writing.”

Why a fishing book and not a scathing, tell-all book about the people you’ve dealt with in the music business?

“I don’t think I could do that. It’s just not my personality. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of doing a book in the future purely on life in music. This started off as a 100-percent fishing book. 

“As I went on, I found there were parallels with my two passions of fishing and music. I found I was combining them more. I’d say it’s probably 70 percent fishing and 30 percent is stories from the road, the studio and personal stuff. 

“I don’t think at this point I would do an autobiography on purely music. The publisher thought it would be interesting to do sort of a cross-over style.”

You’ve written many songs over the years. Do you feel anxiety over presenting your written work? We know you as Adrian Smith the musician. Writing a book is, I would imagine, a completely different window into the world of Adrian Smith. 

“It’s very easy to write. I enjoy the process of looking back over my life and reflecting on the changes I’ve seen. There’s some quite personal stuff in there about the highs and lows of being in a successful band and touring, especially in the '80s when it was kind of crazy with drugs and alcohol and stuff like that. Just wild times. 

“But it took me back to fishing – when things got a bit rough. I was able to take a bit of time off. For example, after the Powerslave tour, which was almost 13 months of straight touring, we were all kind of fried. I remember sitting in a hotel room in LA after that just being zonked out, and my girlfriend, now my wife, suggested we take a trip to Canada. 

“That forms the basis of one of the chapters in the book. It is sort of restoring to me going out in the wilderness to just sit in a boat in the middle of a lake with no man-made sounds and just cast out a fly. It just did me the world of good. That led me to thinking about how fishing is a great balance for the crazy times you have sometimes in a successful band.”

You talked in the book about fishing as a youngster, then getting away from it when you got a little older and getting heavily into music and the guitar. Fishing is obviously quite different from the madness of touring. Was it hard for you when you rediscovered fishing to kind of let yourself relax, or was that an easy thing to kind of get back into?

I think the difference is if you go on holiday and you’re sitting on a beach. I’ve never liked that. I’d like to be doing something. I use a line from a famous Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly. He said fishing is like meditation, but with a punchline. 

“In other words, you can get totally absorbed in the process of fishing. You get all your stuff ready and go out and find a nice, quiet spot. Then you get the excitement of maybe contacting something big and wild on your line as well. So it is that excitement. It definitely balances you out.”

You often hear the joke that they call it fishing and not catching. Do you enjoy the days when you’re out there maybe in your chest waders in some cold stream trying to catch a trout and maybe you come up empty? Is that still enjoyable or are you more about the thrill of the catch?

“It’s all about being out there for me. You know, it’s nice to catch a fish and that is the point of the exercise. But it’s the journey you go on to do it and the places you visit. I’ve been lucky enough to fish all over the world and not always successfully, but sometimes you can just enjoy being out. 

“I mean, I could walk for miles along a river without fishing just looking at the pools, looking under the bushes and just looking for fish. I just love being out there. The moving water just does something to me. It’s just good for the soul.”

When you look at a tour itinerary do you think I’m going to be here, here and here, I could sneak away and go two hours east on this day and hit this river or on this off day I could hit Lake So-and-So that might be on your fishing bucket list for lack of a better term?

“Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to. Let’s face it, we’ve been touring for a long, long time. These days it is slightly less at about three months a year. But even so, you have to have a balance. Otherwise, it’s just two hours of fun on stage and 22 hours of killing time. 

“So, yeah, it’s great. You know, some of the guys play golf. I mean, I remember when we toured with Judas Priest back in the '80s and Glenn [Tipton] and KK [Downing] used to go off and play golf on days off, which we thought was strange. 

“They used to turn up backstage in their golf gear before they went on. Then the next time you would see them they would be in their leathers and stuff. They had it worked out and you have to have the balance between work and play. There’s a chapter in the book called 'Sturgeon and Falling Over in Vancouver.'

“I was in Vancouver sometime around maybe 2015, something like that. We played the show and I remember it because I actually fell on my ass on stage in the middle of Fear of the Dark. 

“We were doing this big instrumental bit and the lights were blazing. There were 15,000, 20,000 people out there and the other guys still used guitar leads. I was wireless in those days and have been for years. But Dave Murray went behind me and his roadie forgot to let out the lead on his guitar and it was stretched taut behind me. 

“I moved backwards without looking and down I went. That is a very, very peculiar feeling falling over in that situation. So, I just got that in the book. Then the next day I decided I wanted to check out the frozen river at a place called Chilliwack [British Columbia]. 

“So I hired a car, went up there, hired a guide and just went out sturgeon fishing. We caught two sturgeon topping 100lbs. That was a great weekend. I do look at itineraries and maybe think about cramming in a bit of fishing.”

Do you get recognized much when you’re fishing? I mean, obviously when you’re outside of a venue or in a hotel people might be swarming around looking for autographs. Do you find yourself tucked away somewhere at a lake and have people kind of come up? Or can you get away with a ball cap and some polarized glasses?

“It does happen, but usually people of my generation that aren’t crazy teenagers. So they might come up and say, how’s it going or that they may have seen you at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1985 or something. They are very cool about it. 

“One time I was in Ireland, I was actually fishing with my dad, in the west of Ireland on a river called the Rogue River. We were trout fishing and some kids from the local village recognized me. I saw that they were following me, but they were very shy. 

“Then I was fishing. I looked up and I could see them on a bridge, and they were waving an album that they wanted me to sign. I said why didn’t they come down. 

“And I came out of the river and I was signing their album. It was Number of the Beast. As I was doing that these two Irish nuns came along the river and they came over to see what all the fuss was about. 

“I will never forget, one of them picked up The Number of the Beast and it’s got Eddie and the devil. I’m like, oh, my God she’s going to drag me straight to the church and hear my confession. But she just laughed. She thought it was great and went on her way.”

You’ve had a signature-model guitar with Jackson for years. Would you ever consider doing any signature fishing gear? 

”Yeah, I’ve got some ideas about stuff unique to me that I’d like to do. I haven’t been approached by anyone as yet. I could certainly think of a few ideas over the years that I’ve come up with out of necessity for my own fishing. 

“Maybe I could give something back there and help some other people with some items of gear. That’ll be fun.”

Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler (BMG Books, 2020) is available now.

Iron Maiden electric guitar player Adrian Smith recently appeared on The Metal Voice to talk about his new fishing book, Monsters of River & Rock. But invariably the talk turned to guitars and, more specifically, Eddie Van Halen.

Asked if Eddie, who passed away on October 6 at the age of 65, was an influence on his playing, Smith responded, “Probably him and Jimi Hendrix, certainly in my lifetime, had the biggest effect on the electric guitar. I loved his playing, although when he came out, I had already been playing five or six years. If I had been starting out when I heard him, I would have just copied him, you know, like 99 percent of the other guitarists did.”

He continued, “But, yeah, he was fantastic. I'd love to have met him. I came close a couple of times, but I never met him. And I love his guitar sound. If I've got a guitar and an amp and I'm just trying to get a sound, I'd probably use him as a reference point."

As for his own guitar playing, Smith recently hinted at a long-rumored collaboration with Richie Kotzen, saying, "I'm doing a lot of singing, but the person I'm working with, we're sort of splitting the vocals. But that'll be coming. 

"I'm very excited about it," he added, "but I'm sworn to secrecy at the moment."

Iron Maiden’s three-man electric guitar lineup of Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers has been going strong for a good two decades now. But according to Smith – who left Iron Maiden in 1990 and was replaced by Gers, who then stayed on when Smith rejoined in 1999 – the idea initially didn't seem so obvious.

In a new interview with the My Planet Rocks show (via Blabbermouth), Smith explained, “it could have gone horribly wrong, couldn't it? I mean, imagine that with three Yngwies or three Ritchie Blackmores. It wouldn't work.”

He continued, "Dave [Murray] and I go way back. At first, maybe I thought that Jan and I would do half a set each or something. But Steve [Harris, Iron Maiden bassist] came up with this mad idea. He suggested to them to have three guitarists. I'd like to have been in the room when he said that. But we tried it out.

"We went down to Portugal. We started knocking a few ideas together in this warehouse. It was like a motorcycle club; there was all these motorbikes in there. We were all standing and looking at each other, and someone said, 'Anyone got any ideas?' So I said, 'I've got a riff.' So I had The Wicker Man, and we started playing it, and it just clicked. So we went on from there."

As for how things have gone since then, he said, “It works out. Amazingly enough, it works out. In the old stuff, there's so many harmonies, unison solos, riffs — I mean, it's so much work. It actually really works well with three guitars, especially live."

Like every other band in existence, Iron Maiden cancelled all of their 2020 live dates in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Smith has been keeping busy, preparing for the release of his first book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler, and also, it seems, collaborating with Richie Kotzen.

Adrian Smith might be gearing up for the release of his first book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler, but the Maiden electric guitar player also has something else more musical in the works, hinting at a rumored collaboration with Richie Kotzen.

"I'm very excited about it, but I can't say," he told Eonmusic. "I'm doing a lot of singing, but the person I'm working with, we're sort of splitting the vocals. But that'll be coming. I'm very excited about it, but I'm sworn to secrecy at the moment."

As for whether there’s a possibility of any live dates from the project, Smith said, "Hopefully, hopefully. It depends on the bloody virus, you know? At the moment, everything's screwed, so…"

Recently, Kotzen has posted photos his Instagram page of he and Smith spending time together, leading to speculation that the Winery Dogs singer and guitarist has been working with the Maiden man on new material.

Elsewhere in the interview, Smith answered affirmatively when asked if he might have a “guitar book” in him as a follow up to Monsters of River & Rock.

“Yeah, I was bitten by the bug when I was a kid, you know; Ritchie Blackmore, Paul Kossoff, all those people, I was just fascinated,” he said.

“I actually started off as a singer / guitarist. I was more of a singer because I hadn’t really played a guitar. I kind of blagged my way into [Maiden guitarist] Dave Murray’s world – he was already quite competent – by saying I was a singer. So we started jamming, and I learned as I went along.

“But yeah, I had a love/hate relationship with the guitar. I used to beat myself up about it. I was never really taught by anyone, I didn’t have a mentor; it was all self-taught.

“Don’t forget, at the time when I joined Maiden, we were going out with Judas Priest; we had Yngwie Malmsteen open up for us; Michael Schenker, and I was thinking; I grew up idolizing Michael Schenker, and he’s opening up for me? I just felt a bit of insecurity about it – not so much now, but because I didn’t really have any training." 

We’ve seen everyone from Zakk Wylde to Judas Priest’s Richie Faulkner tackle David Gilmour’s lead in Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.

Now it’s Iron Maiden electric guitar player Adrian Smith’s turn to take a whack at what Guitar World ranked as the fourth greatest guitar solo in history.

The above video was filmed last year, and shows Smith, with his signature Jackson, tackling the famous solo - with plenty of improvisation thrown in - at RnR Studios in London.

Smith also recently announced the release of a fishing memoir, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler.

The new book chronicles adventures ranging from “his first sturgeon, a whopping 100-pounder from Canada's swirling Fraser River that nearly wiped him out mid-Maiden tour, to a close shave with a large shark off the Virgin Islands whilst wading waist-deep for bonefish.”

It’s out in September, though given Smith’s impressive Comfortably Numb performance, we suggest he give this guitar thing a shot as well.

Sure, Iron Maiden front man Bruce Dickinson can pilot a plane and compete as a fencer, but how handy is he with a fishing rod?

Probably not nearly as skilled as Maiden electric guitar player Adrian Smith, who has just penned a fishing memoir, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler.

The new tome takes readers “through the highs and lows of life on tour, and on the river-bank, as [Smith’s] fishing gear travels with him across the world.”

Smith, who has appeared on the cover of Angler's Mail magazine, has been fishing since his childhood days in East London.

Monsters of River & Rock chronicles adventures ranging from “his first sturgeon, a whopping 100-pounder from Canada's swirling Fraser River that nearly wiped him out mid-Maiden tour, to a close shave with a large shark off the Virgin Islands whilst wading waist-deep for bonefish. 

"Not to mention an enviable list of specimen coarse fish from the UK.”

The book is scheduled for release on September 3 via Virgin Books.

You can preorder Monsters of River & Rock at Amazon.

Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith recently sat down with Chris Jericho for an appearance on the Fozzy front man’s Talk is Jericho podcast.

Among the many topics they hit on was the electric guitar player's return to Iron Maiden in 1999 after ten years away, a move that transformed the band into a three-guitar lineup, with Smith joining up alongside Dave Murray and the man who had initially replaced him, Janick Gers.

As for why the three-guitar approach worked at the time, and continues to work to this day, Smith said:

“Well, put it this way – if you had three Yngwie Malmsteens in the band or three Ritchie Blackmores, it would have been a fight after about five minutes. But because Dave’s one of my oldest friends – we've worked together for years – we know the score.

As for Gers, he continued, “Janick’s a lovely guy. But I have to say you know Jan wasn't going to change what he was going to play. He's very set in his ways. I sensed that immediately, so I started looking at different ways of doing things.

According to Smith, “different ways of doing things” involved finding new tunings and new parts to bring into older Maiden classics.

“I'd been playing with a drop-D tuning in Bruce's [singer Bruce Dickinson, who rejoined Maiden at the same time as Smith] band, I was somewhat used to that,” he said. “So when I first joined up [with Maiden in 1999], we played Wrathchild, I played it in drop-D tuning. Run to the Hills was in D, so again, I tuned it down. It gave it a slightly different sound. I was bringing that in, playing lower octaves on the harmonies and stuff like that.

“So I played a lot of stuff totally different to what I did when I was in the band before, which is quite interesting."

Earlier in the interview, Smith joked about the idea of making Maiden into a three-guitar band, saying, “Steve [Harris, bass] does come out with some wacky ideas that at first you think are not going to work. So he suggested to the guys, 'Why don't we have three guitars?' You can imagine what the room was like when he said that. Probably Dave and Janick looked at each other like ‘What? Lynyrd Maiden?’

"But I joined up, and we went up to Portugal to write some songs, and I had the song Wicker Man. I had the riff for that and someone said, ‘Does anyone have any new ideas?’ And so I started playing that, and away we went. And we never looked back, really."

For more Maiden goodness, check out our rundown of the Irons' 50 greatest songs.

The Jackson Guitars Custom Shop is hitting the big 4-0 in 2020, and to celebrate this four-decade anniversary the company unleashed some truly mind-blowing new models at this year’s NAMM.

In addition to exotic woods, wild body shapes and eye-popping graphics and finishes, there’s also a 27-fret Randy Rhoads, a multi-scale seven-string and bass, several one-off artist electric guitars and, particularly cool, an Jackson/Charvel double neck.

As the company puts it, “There is no build too big or too nuts for the guys at the Jackson Custom Shop.”

We agree. Just check out some of the insane new builds below.

Jackson Custom Shop J0001 40th Anniversary

The original J0001 was entered into the Jackson Custom Shop’s log book as belonging to ex-Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing, although Downing reportedly never received or played the guitar.

Custom Shop Master Builder Mike Shannon says he had Megadeth bassist Dave Ellefson “verify with Downing that he actually never had or played this guitar. How it got in the log books that way, I’m not sure. But the player, as far as I know who has it, is a guy named Jay Reynolds.” No word, however, if this is the same Jay Reynolds that played guitar for Malice and, for a brief time, Megadeth.

Specs on the J0001 include an alder body, quartersawn maple through-body neck, 12” radius rosewood fretboard, Seymour Duncan Custom Trembucker TB-5 humbucker in the bridge and Seymour Duncan ’59 humbucker in the neck and an iridescent Snow White Pearl finish.

Jackson Custom Shop Randy Rhoads

The Randy Rhoads boasts an alder body, quartersawn maple neck with a 12”-16” compound radius and a flame maple 22-fret fingerboard. Pickups are a Seymour Duncan TB-6 at the bridge and a Seymour Duncan SH1N at the neck, both with chrome covers. Other features include a White Sparkle finish with chrome hardware and pickguard, Floyd Rose Original tremolo system and Jackson-sealed die cast tuners.

Jackson/Charvel 40th Anniversary Double Neck Hot Rod Flame

This insane double-neck combines Jackson Soloist and Charvel San Dimas body styles. The Jackson half features a quartersawn maple neck-through-body design, 12”-16” compound radius ebony fingerboard with 24 jumbo frets and classic Jackson sharkfin inlays, There’s also a Seymour Duncan TB-4 at the bridge and SH-1 at the neck and a Floyd Rose Original tremolo system.

The Charvel half, meanwhile, features a bolt-on maple neck topped with a 12”-16” compound radius fingerboard and 22 jumbo frets, DiMarzio Super Distortion bridge pickup and a DiMarzio DP117 HS-3 neck pickup, Charvel brass tremolo and Gotoh tuners. It’s all topped by a custom Hot Rod Flames finish.

Jackson Custom Shop Limited Edition Signature Phil Collen PC1 Black Walnut

The PC1 sports a caramelized Dinky mahogany body capped with a 1/8” claro walnut top, a caramelized bolt-on maple neck and a 12”-16” compound radius 24-fret ebony fingerboard. Pickups are a DiMarzio Super 3 humbucker in the bridge, DiMarzio HS-2 single-coil in the middle and PC1 Sustainer Driver in the neck. Other features include a Floyd Rose Original double-locking tremolo system and Gotoh sealed die-cast tuners.

Jackson Custom Shop Limited Edition Signature Adrian Smith San Dimas

The limited edition Adrian Smith San Dimas features an alder body, bolt-on quartersawn maple neck and 12”-16” compound radius 22-fret fingerboard. There’s also a single DiMarzio DP100F Super Distortion pickup and a Floyd Rose Original bridge. The graphic, meanwhile, references Iron Maiden’s 1984 song, 2 Minute to Midnight. Said Smith about the model, “I call it my hooligan guitar because it is stripped down – no nonsense, one pickup. Sounds great, actually plays great. “I just love the guitar – apart from the fact that it looks really cool.”

Jackson Custom Shop Limited Edition Signature Mick Thomson Carbon Fiber Soloist

This limited edition Mick Thomson signature model recreates the carbon fiber finish of one of the Slipknot axman’s stage guitars. In addition to the finish, there’s a mahogany Soloist body, through-body maple neck and 12”-16” compound radius 24-fret ebony fingerboard with block side markers. Other features include Thomson’s signature Seymour Duncan EMTY Blackouts in the bridge and neck, a custom Jackson MTB HT6 bridge and a reverse pointed headstock.

Jackson Custom Shop Limited Edition Signature Misha Mansoor So-Cal HSS 2PT

Features on the Limited Edition Mansoor So-Cal include an ash body with a heavily relic’d Daphne Blue finish, caramelized flame maple bolt-on neck and 20” radius caramelized flame maple fingerboard with maple inlays outlined in ebony and 22 jumbo stainless steel frets.

There’s also a Bare Knuckle Ragnarock humbucker in the bridge and Misha Mansoor single-coils in the middle and neck, a Gotoh 510 2PT tremolo system, Luminlay side dots and white pickguard.

Jackson Custom Shop Limited Edition Signature Chris Broderick CB2 Diabolic

The Broderick CB2 Diabolic boasts a mahogany body with 1/8” flame maple cap in a Trans Black finish with flame maple binding and pinstripes. There’s also a quartersawn maple neck with a 12”-16” compound radius ebony fingerboard fitted with 24 jumbo stainless steel frets and boasting ziricote reverse sharkfin inlays.

Pickups are Broderick’s signature DiMarzio humbuckers, and there’s also a reverse Jackson AT1 headstock, seven-string Floyd Rose Pro tremolo system and D’Addario Planet Waves locking tuners.

Jackson Custom Shop RR27 HS FR Galaxy

This 27-fret behemoth boasts an alder Rhoads body with buckeye resin top, through-body quartersawn maple neck and 12”-16” compound radius ebony fingerboard. Pickups are a Bare Knuckle Aftermath humbucker in the bridge and Bare Knuckle Trilogy Suite single coil at the neck. There’s also a Floyd Rose Original bridge, Sperzel tuners and a magnetic truss rod cover to avoid the use of screws.

Jackson Custom Shop Warrior HT 7-String Multi-Scale

The seven-string Warrior Multi Scale HT sports an alder body, through-body quatersawn maple neck and 24-fret ebony fingerboard with pearl reverse sharkfin inlays. Oh yeah – it also comes in a retina-searing Neon Pink finish.

Other features include DiMarzio The Tone Zone 7 and DiMarzio Air Norton 7 pickups, Hipshot multi-scale fixed bridge, phenolic nut, Jackson sealed die-cast tuners, master volume and five-way toggle switching and reverse headstock.

Jackson Custom Shop Hellion Bass

The five-string, multi-scale Custom Shop Hellion boasts a reversed and elongated Demon shape and custom-carved ash body, through-body quartersawn maple neck and 16”-20” compound radius maple fingerboard with 24 jumbo stainless steel frets, classic black piranha teeth inlays and blue Luminlay side dots. Other features include a single Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Jazz Bass bridge pickup, Hipshot triple lock single saddle bridge and J Hipshot bass tuners. The bass comes in a Neon Yellow finish with reverse pointy headstock.

Jackson Custom Shop Soloist SL2 Exotic

The Custom Shop Soloist SL2 sports a cooked ash body with a ziricote top and titanium hardware. There’s also a flame maple set neck, ebony fretboard, Guitarmory Orion Pickups with curly maple bobbins and a Floyd Rose titanium bridge. Additional stylish touches include an inlaid maple Jackson logo on the headstock and ziricote reverse sharkin inlays on the fingerboard.

For more information, head to Jackson.

Four-plus decades - and 16 studio albums - since Iron Maiden first emerged from East London, the band has come to epitomize the New Wave of British Heavy Metal sound and its expansive possibilities. At this point the British crew has written so many iconic songs it’s hard to keep track. In the Eighties alone, they unleashed seven genre-defining records, from 1980’s Killers to 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

Central to their success is the inimitable classic guitar duo of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith, whose soaring tandem leads and galloping riffs are seared into the very fabric of heavy-metal history. Generations of guitarists worldwide have studied their approaches (as well as the work of songwriter and bass maniac Steve Harris) and genres of heavy music have been born out of their melodic, aggressive, adventurous playing.

Considering the impact of these game changers, choosing the single greatest Iron Maiden song is no easy task. Some fans swear by the band’s early, rawer expressions with original singer Paul Di’Anno like Iron Maiden and Wrathchild. While others hail the operatic grandeur of long-running frontman Bruce Dickinson as heard on behemoths like The Number of the Beast and Hallowed Be Thy Name.

We asked you to vote on what you thought were the best songs from the band's expansive catalogue spanning over four decades. Here's your list of the 50 greatest Iron Maiden songs of all time!

1-10

1. The Number of the Beast

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

“Woe to you, oh earth and sea.”

To a true Iron Maiden fan, the very mention of those seven words elicits a tremendously visceral response within us. The biblical-sounding phrase takes us back to our teenage bedrooms, where we would spend hours surrounded by nightmare-inducing album covers, crumpled piles of denim and leather, sharp objects, stereo gear from Emerson, Sanyo and Technics and more than likely a faint haze of smoke. 

Those words continually transport us to the cavernous halls of Madison Square Garden, the Philadelphia Spectrum or the Hollywood Sportatorium, where we would thrust our collective fists toward the rafters as soon as "Woe” - uttered in that distinct baritone voice - came blaring over the P.A. 

Those seven words mean everything to us, because they not only signify that something spectacular is about to happen every time we hear them, but because we identify them as being synonymous with Iron Maiden. We identify them as being synonymous with metal.

Those seven words, and the rest of the spoken intro that follows - which is a combination of passages from Revelation 12:12 and Revelation 13:18 - were provided by British actor Barry Clayton (who died in 2011) after famous horror movie legend Vincent Price turned down the band’s offer to handle the speaking role. 

And while it’s undeniably one of the most powerful song intros in rock history, it’s the track itself that stands tall as the quintessential Iron Maiden song - the one that has every right to be deemed the best of the best; or, in this case, the best of the beast.

Written by bassist Steve Harris, The Number of the Beast is the title track from Iron Maiden’s third album and first with vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who replaced original singer Paul Di’Anno in 1981. Harris claims to have been inspired to write the lyrics after watching the movie Damien: Omen II, which is certainly believable when you consider the song’s dark imagery and the repeated proclamation in the chorus that three sixes in a row are the mark of the devil. “666” will forever be linked to heavy metal thanks, in large part, to this song.

The Number of the Beast, which opens side two and was the second single from the album after Run to the Hills, is barely five minutes in length, but it’s everything contained within those five minutes - including one of the all-time great blood-curdling screams and a blistering solo section in the middle featuring the massive talents of guitarists Dave Murray and Adrian Smith - that make this song our top choice.

2. Hallowed Be Thy Name

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

While The Number of the Beast may have achieved greater notoriety thanks in part to its Satanic panic-baiting subject matter, Hallowed Be Thy Name, the fourth song on The Number of the Beast, is arguably the greatest summation of Iron Maiden’s mission statement.

Clocking in at seven-plus minutes, this behemoth is a master class in catchy NWOBHM riffs, ambitious song craft, compelling storytelling and iconic dual-guitar interplay.

Dickinson’s operatic vocals are the perfect instrument to give life to bassist/songwriter Steve Harris’ tale of a death-row prisoner reflecting on his life in the final hours. Fittingly, Hallowed Be Thy Name is ominous and vibey as hell from the jump: It begins with a foreboding tolling bell and a few clean guitar chord progressions, which erupt into a quintessential Iron Maiden gallop around the one-minute mark.

Guitarists Adrian Smith and Dave Murray lay down one of their most memorable tandem riffs, as Harris and his Fender P-bass keep pushing the infectious groove forward.

Dickinson leads us along the character’s increasingly frantic existential crisis while the band continues to evolve and build on the song’s main themes until the track’s mid-point - when they shift gears and kick Hallowed into maximum overdrive. Murray and Smith trade off on a series of fleet-fingered solos, which eventually coalesce into a harmonized restatement of the original melody. 

There’s a reason why Hallowed Be Thy Name has appeared in nearly every live show that Maiden have played since 1982. It’s not only a perennial favorite - it’s a bona fide epic that simultaneously epitomized Maiden’s evolution at the time while setting the stage for the ambitious, progressive heights they would reach in the albums to follow.

3. The Trooper

Album: Piece of Mind (1983)

The Trooper is an absolutely ripping call-to-arms - and another pitch-perfect example of Iron Maiden’s ability to brilliantly marry historical subject material and captivating musical expression.

Inspired by the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War of 1854 (during which the British cavalry boldly squared off against overwhelming Russian artillery), the second single from their 1983 album Piece of Mind starts like a gun-shot with what might be Smith and Murray’s most recognizable harmonized guitar riff. 

Songwriter Harris and drummer Nicko McBrain lock in with a vigorous galloping rhythm that keeps this whirlwind rushing forward. The band pauses only briefly for Dickinson to belt out the opening lyrics - “You’ll take my life but I’ll take yours too/You’ll fire a musket but I’ll run you through” - which set the tone for the rampaging battle to follow. 

Murray and Smith deliver a blistering performance, which includes a devastating explosive mid-song solo break. Throughout the carnage the return to the main harmonized riff acts as a beacon - centering the song and focusing the troops. The Trooper’s official video gives literal form to the subject matter by including footage from the 1936 film The Charge of the Light Brigade featuring soldiers on horseback heroically charging into battle. 

Even today, more than 35 years later, Iron Maiden’s live performances of The Trooper are a total spectacle. Dickinson dons a British military uniform and passionately waves the Union Jack flag between verses as Smith, Murray and Janick Gers melt faces and Harris deploys his rapid-fire bass attack. The Trooper will never not get a rise from the crowd - in fact the song is so iconic and celebrated that Maiden even released a signature beer bearing its name. Up the Irons…and bottoms up!

4. Wrathchild

Album: Killers (1981)

Iron Maiden’s second album, Killers, was released a mere 10 months after their debut, but in terms of sonics and sheer performance power it was light years ahead of that self-titled effort. And it’s evident from the get-go. 

After a short instrumental, The Ides of March, the album goes straight for the throat with Wrathchild, a song that dates back to 1979 but here takes the blueprint laid out on Iron Maiden and crystalizes it into a leaner, fiercer and overall more potent concoction. 

Steve Harris’ throttling, propulsive bass, Paul Di’Anno’s tough-as-nails street-rasp (My mother was a queen, my dad I’ve never seen, I was never meant to be) a scrambling, instantly catchy riff, alternately howling and moaning lead guitars and a quasi-proggy instrumental interlude are all jammed into a tight, sub-three-minute arrangement.

And it’s presented with a heretofore unachieved sonic clarity, courtesy of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath producer Martin Birch, who would go on to helm Maiden’s next seven studio albums.

Birch, of course, wasn’t the only new addition to the Maiden team to make a big impact on Killers. The album also saw the debut of guitarist Adrian Smith, who remains an indelible part of the Maiden sound to this day. As does Wrathchild, which, 38 years after its release, is still an almost-constant, and very welcome, presence in Maiden’s live sets, including on the world tour for their most recent studio album, 2015’s The Book of Souls.

5. 2 Minutes to Midnight

Album: Powerslave (1984)

In looking at the top 10 songs in our Iron Maiden best-of list, there isn’t much in the way of clean, chorus-driven, radio-friendly anthems - which is exactly what makes 2 Minutes to Midnight so special and so deserving of a top-10 spot: because it is all of those things and still among the band’s most classic and essential tracks.

Written by Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith, 2 Minutes to Midnight is a six-minute nod to the ever-present threat of nuclear war. The title is a specific reference to the Doomsday Clock, which has been maintained by the members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists since 1947 and represents how close we are to global catastrophe via either war or climate change, with midnight being Doomsday. 

Two minutes to midnight, in this context, means we are close, but not quite there yet. Lyrically, the song is chockful of colorful, violent imagery and contains more than a few legendary lines, chief among them: “As the reasons for the carnage cut their meat and lick the gravy/We oil the jaws of the war machine and feed it with our babies.”

Released as a Powerslave single in the summer of 1984, 2 Minutes to Midnight qualifies as a bona fide anthem thanks primarily to its fist-pumping chorus. Who among us doesn’t want to punch the clouds every time we hear, “Two! Minutes! To Miiiidniiiiiight!!”? 

In addition to that legendary hook, the song is fueled by an uplifting, some might even say happy, main riff and Dickinson alternating in his vocals between a high register and a more guttural snarl. 

The trade-off solos that enter at around the 2:45 mark each have their own distinct flavor, with Murray coming out of the gate blazing and Smith taking a more deliberate, melodic approach in the second passage. 

With so many unique and identifiable attributes, 2 Minutes to Midnight is a staple of the band’s live shows and absolutely belongs near the top of any Maiden mix tape (yes, we said mix tape: we’re talking classic Maiden here, so we’re kicking it old-school). Oh, and according to the 2019 Doomsday Clock, it is once again two minutes to midnight. “The hands that threaten doom…”

6. Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Album: Powerslave (1984)

Iron Maiden’s epic 13-plus minute Rime of the Ancient Mariner was inspired by an 18th-century poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge that tells the fantastic tale of a mariner’s long sea voyage that goes terribly wrong after he shoots an albatross. (Or, as Dickinson proclaimed during the song’s intro on Maiden’s 1985 Live After Death album: “This is what not to do when a bird shits on you.”) 

To support the lofty lyrical aspirations, Maiden construct a truly adventurous song - full of boisterous rhythms, headbanging riffs, theatrical interludes and stunning melodic lead work - that mirrors the swashbuckling subject matter. “That’s one to really sink your teeth into,” Murray told Guitar World in 2008. 

“For me, it kind of sums up what Maiden is all about. It’s a real heavy track, but there are a lot of tempo changes, and also a quiet moody part in the middle. It’s got a bit of everything - as it should, seeing as it clocks in at about 15 minutes! And as a guitarist it really keeps me on my toes, because there’s a lot of technical stuff going on. So it’s a real rewarding one to play.”

7. Murders in the Rue Morgue

Album: Killers (1981)

One of two songs composed by Harris specifically for the Killers album (the other being Prodigal Son), Murders in the Rue Morgue comes on with grand intentions - a title and theme lifted from the Edgar Allen Poe short story of the same name, a gentle intro replete with melodic bass and ringing, clean-toned guitars that builds to a pomp crescendo and some soaring, twin-guitar instrumental passages. 

But what truly makes the song great is none of these things - rather, it’s the breakneck pace of the verses, which race with a breathlessness and majesty that lives somewhere between melodic arena rock, frenzied boogie metal and street-urchin British punk. Songs about double murder should never be this fun. Someone call the Gendarmes.

8. Flight of Icarus

Album: Piece of Mind (1983)

It’s no secret that Bruce Dickinson loves to fly. He’s a licensed commercial pilot who’s logged hundreds of hours in the cockpit (including famously pulling double-duty singing onstage and piloting the band’s Ed Force One 757 airliner during Iron Maiden’s 2006 Somewhere Back in Time World Tour). 

References to aviation appear all throughout Maiden’s catalog, including the allegorical Flight of Icarus, from 1983’s Piece of Mind. Exemplifying Maiden’s singular ability to mix literature and transcendent metal, the song is an interpretation of the Greek myth of Icarus - the boy who disobeyed his father, Daedalus, during their attempted airborne escape from island captivity via wings made out of feathers and wax. 

Warned against flying too close to the sun, the boy’s hubris got the best of him and as he ascended his wax wings melted and he plunged to his death. But, unlike Icarus, Iron Maiden never flame out during this soaring number: The band keeps a measured pace throughout the mid-tempo heavy hitter, steadily gaining altitude through its massive chorus until Murray and Smith’s sky-high leads send the song flying into the horizon. 

While Piece of Mind cuts like The Trooper might be more high-impact, Flight of Icarus was ultimately selected as the album’s first U.S. single. It spent 12 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at Number 8, and became an undying fan-favorite among a generation of American heshers in the process.

9. Iron Maiden

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

Even as a young metal band, Iron Maiden understood the importance of beginning and ending each side of an album with the strongest song possible - and that is certainly true of Iron Maiden, the number that closes out side two of their 1980 debut album. 

The song actually made its first appearance - in a slightly slower, more restrained version than what’s heard on the album - alongside Prowler and Invasion on the group’s 1979 limited-run Soundhouse Tapes EP, which featured the three demo recordings and gained notoriety in England when a DJ began playing it regularly at a heavy metal club in North West London.

Iron Maiden is Iron Maiden at their punk-rock finest. It’s not a particularly sophisticated or complex song, but there’s firepower in its simplicity. The lyrics - which really only comprise one verse and a chorus, each repeated three times - are especially violent and stand right in line with other early Maiden songs in which predatory, murderous behavior is the norm (although in this case, the protagonist may very well be a woman seductively luring men into her lair to kill them). 

The harmony licks between Dave Murray and guitarist Dennis Stratton are raw and abrasive, and there’s nary a noteworthy guitar solo (save for maybe the outro histrionics) across the song’s three and a half minutes. It’s as simple as it gets and as rousing and effective an album-closer as all get-out. No wonder it’s the song the band has played live more than any other.

10. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

Album: Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988)

By the time 1988 came around, many longtime, hardcore Maiden fans were beginning to discover the harder music of the day: Metallica, Slayer and Megadeth, to name just a few, and their enthusiasm for the British rockers was waning. 

Making matters worse was the fact that Iron Maiden had veered off into a more prog-rock direction with 1986’s Somewhere in Time and even introduced guitar synthesizers on that album and keyboard synths - sacrilege! - on its successor, 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. 

But despite the band’s shift into more progressive territory during this period, they were still able to occasionally recapture the glorious metallic mayhem of their earlier days - and one instance is Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

A behemoth just shy of 10 minutes long, Seventh Son stands in good company with such other Maiden epics as Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Hallowed Be Thy Name, Empire of the Clouds and Alexander the Great, and is also one of the last great moments to feature guitarist Adrian Smith prior to his departure in 1990. 

The song starts out innocently enough, chugging along at an unhurried pace for about the first four minutes… and then things begin to change. A few minutes of hollow bass rumblings, some spoken word, some speedy hi-hat, some guitar scrapes - all setting up the listener for the devastation that begins at 6:52. 

From there until the end of the song nearly three minutes later, Seventh Son explodes in a relentless cacophony of hostile solos, harmony leads and driving bass and drums, and is quite possibly the three finest Iron Maiden minutes during the second half of the Eighties.

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11. Children of the Damned

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

The second song from The Number of the Beast starts off like a ballad and transforms into a total face-melter. Murray and Smith lure in the listener with clean-picked lines before ratcheting up the intensity with groove-heavy Sabbath-esque riffs. 

Dickinson soon gets whipped into a frenzy and the guitarists pull out the stops at the three-minute mark for a wild shred session full of classic harmonized action and Adrian Smith’s top-notch tapping solo.

12. Run to the Hills

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

One of Iron Maiden’s most beloved songs, 1983’s Run to the Hills explores the violence that surrounded the European settling of North America, from both the perspectives of the settlers and the Native Americans.

After laying the groundwork with a beginning upper-register bending lick and Thin Lizzy–style harmonies the guys transition into the song’s signature galloping rhythms, tireless bass lines, an exquisite operatic chorus and one whopper of a Dave Murray solo (with some choice whammy-bar action at the end).

13. Killers

Album: Killers (1981)

The title track to Maiden’s sophomore effort is the only song on the record to boast a co-writer alongside Steve Harris - specifically, Paul Di’Anno. The words, as the singer explained, are pretty dark - “It was about a psychotic killer, what he’s thinking about while he’s doing it,” he told the website Song Facts. 

The music, however, is multifaceted and gloriously all over the place - prowling bass lines, start-stop galloping rhythms, cascading harmonics and dual-guitar harmonies in the verses, and plenty of six-string trade-offs in the solo section. And then there’s Di’Anno’s positively Dickinson-esque yelps in the intro and outro, which, however coincidental, foreshadow the changing of the vocal guard that was soon to come.

14. Powerslave

Album: Powerslave (1984)

“Over-the-top, dramatic, bombastic,” is how Adrian Smith described the title track to Maiden’s 1984 album to Guitar World in 2008. And who are we to disagree?! Powerslave begins with a horror-movie-worthy groaning laugh and Dickinson continues the sinister vibes with his performance: snarling through the verses as the band lays down the main chugging riff. 

At seven minutes, it’s the album’s second-longest track, and the boys make good use of the running time: establishing the pace with a measured, galloping cadence before introducing the lyrical middle section out of which they solo like mad before bringing it all back home with the original rhythm line and refrain: “Slave to the power of death!”

15. Aces High

Album: Powerslave (1984)

Aces High is Maiden at their fastest and most ferocious. Guitars dart and scramble, the rhythm is set at a jet-like tempo and the arrangement continually twists and turns before soaring straight into the stratosphere with the title refrain. 

It is a song about military warfare aircraft racing through the sky, and literally sounds like it. Perhaps most impressively, Aces High manages to be at once nimble and impossibly heavy. 

It remains one of the band’s most beloved compositions and also, not surprisingly, a live favorite, where it’s often employed as the show opener (as on the 2019 Legacy of the Beast run), and preceded by Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.

16. The Wicker Man

Album: Brave New World (2000)

In 1999, Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson both returned to Iron Maiden after years away - the guitarist had left in 1990 and the singer in ’93. Expectations were high for the reunited band, and the first music that fans heard - The Wicker Man, which preceded the release of 2000’s Brave New World by several weeks - did not disappoint. 

Heralded by one of Maiden’s most straightforward, hard-rocking riffs and bolstered by a stadium-sized chorus, the song seemed tailor-made for riling up arenas full of fans. Which, in fact, it did, serving as the go-to opener on each night of the band’s massive Brave New World tour.

17. The Prisoner

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

Adrian Smith doesn’t have a lot of songwriting credits to his name, but the ones he does have are among Iron Maiden’s elite works, including 2 Minutes to Midnight, Flight of Icarus, and this masterful slab of headbangery, The Prisoner. 

There isn’t a rivethead alive today who doesn’t get chills just thinking about being a teenager in the mid Eighties, dropping the needle onto track three and hearing the song’s eerie spoken-word intro - taken from the British sci-fi show of the same name - and then, following the infamous line, "I am not a number, I am a free man!” and subsequent maniacal laugh, listening as Clive Burr’s powerhouse drums come thundering in. 

And while The Prisoner has absolute depth as a Maiden tune with all the key elements in place - deadly riffing, nasty vocals, battling guitar solos - the song belongs to Burr, as it’s a shining example of his genius, his creativity and his often-overlooked uniqueness behind the kit.

18. Remember Tomorrow

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

As the second song on their debut album, Remember Tomorrow gave early warning that Iron Maiden were about more than just galloping rhythms and twin-guitar harmonies. With its watery guitars, dark atmosphere, recurring instrumental themes and surprisingly smooth vocals, the song comes off as something like Black Sabbath in their lighter moments, but filtered through a distinctly Seventies prog-rock lens.

It’s a largely overlooked classic that is nonetheless heralded by hardcore fans - among them Metallica, who once called Remember Tomorrow the blueprint for tracks like Welcome Home (Sanitarium) and Fade to Black, and covered the song for 2008’s Maiden Heaven tribute CD.

19. Where Eagles Dare

Album: Piece of Mind (1983)

If you’re going to introduce fans to a new drummer after three spectacular albums, this is the way to do it. With Where Eagles Dare, the opening track on the group’s fourth album, 1983’s Piece of Mind, Iron Maiden put new drummer Nicko McBrain front and center, letting him lead the charge via the song’s pummeling drum-only intro and thunderous skin-pounding across all six-plus minutes. 

Aside from being a McBrain showpiece, Where Eagles Dare is quintessential Maiden and a headbanger’s dream as it boasts a driving, militaristic vibe - complete with machine-gun-sounds tucked underneath multiple guitar solos - lots of repetitive riffing and Dickinson’s ear-piercing wail. 

If anyone back then was questioning whether Iron Maiden could keep the momentum going after The Number of the Beast and following the departure of drummer Clive Burr, Where Eagles Dare shut them down hard and fast.

20. Running Free

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

The lead single from their 1980 self-titled debut introduced the world to the power of Iron Maiden. Penned by then-singer Paul Di’Anno and bassist Steve Harris, from the moment the opening drum beat and bass line kick in, the band’s strutting, youthful energy is undeniable. 

Di’Anno’s raw, punk-influenced delivery of the street-tough lyrics are perfectly matched with Murray and then-guitarist Dennis Stratton’s dirty riffs and stabbing harmonized solo lines.

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21. Fear of the Dark

Album: Fear of the Dark (1992)

Fear of the Dark was Maiden’s last hurrah before Bruce Dickinson’s extended leave of absence from the band, and by any account it’s not their finest work, save for, that is, the closing title track, which has since become a bona fide classic and fan favorite, as welcomed during a set list as any of their Eighties fare. 

And how could it not be? You could call the whoaohh section an example of audience participation, except for the fact that the Maiden faithful routinely sing so overwhelmingly loud, it’s as if they’ve replaced the band themselves. A truly special Maiden moment.

22. Invaders

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

In the hands of a lesser band, a tale of invading Norsemen could sound contrived and stale. But with Maiden, you can practically see the Viking hordes smashing Saxon skulls. 

Harris’ active bass lines are bouncing all over the place before joining Smith and Harris for the brilliant ascending and descending runs around Dickinson’s choruses: “Invaders… Fighting!” The track is an evocative burner - with aptly fiery solos - and a perfect kickoff to The Number of the Beast.

23. Stranger in a Strange Land

Album: Somewhere in Time (1986)

Maiden tried something different on this Adrian Smith–penned tune (as did Eddie, who appeared as a Clint Eastwood–type character on the cover art for the single), with the mid-tempo gait, guitar synths and washy chords combining for an unusually moody atmosphere. 

Of course, this being Maiden, it’s all also somehow fist-pumping-ly anthemic as well. While it was a fairly popular tune at the time, Stranger has sadly been absent from setlists for a good two decades now, making it something of a lost classic.

24. Revelations

Album: Piece of Mind (1983)

After the onslaught of Piece of Mind’s pummeling opening track Where Eagles Dare, Maiden play with open space and dynamics in Revelations. 

They leave room for the instruments to breathe in the opening verse before moving through legitimately touching melodic acoustic sections (with Dickinson’s heartfelt lines: “Just a babe in the black abyss/No reason for a place like this/The walls are cold and souls cry out in pain”), signature harmonized guitar work and resplendent Murray/Smith solo excursions.

25. To Tame a Land

Album: Piece of Mind (1983)

Songwriter Steve Harris draws from Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi masterpiece Dune for this stunner, which tells the story of the Kwisatz Haderach who rules the “sandworms and the Fremen” on the desert planet Arrakis.

Appropriately, this dramatic song begins with an evocative, exotic guitar line and cymbal swells upon which Maiden build an extravagant number - full of staccato riffs, stirring interludes, guitar-bass riff-offs and extended dual-guitar harmonies - that concludes stunningly where it began with a restatement of the original, cinematic riff.

26. Can I Play With Madness

Album: Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988)

This bright, bouncy pop-rocker (check those opening vocal harmonies and the jaunty, D-string pedal tone rhythm, juxtaposed by big open chord shapes, in the verses) exploded out of the gate as the first single on the otherwise proggy Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. 

On its surface it’s a straightforward singalong anthem, but there’s plenty of prog hidden within its deceptively simple framework, including the slight shift in tempo as the song heads into the chorus and a plunge into darker territory in the instrumental middle section.

27. Sanctuary

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

Yet another legendary Iron Maiden song about running from the law (a common theme on the first two albums). Sanctuary made its first appearance (in a cleaner, less gritty version) on a 1979 compilation album called Metal for Muthas, and later became the second single used to promote the band’s debut album. 

But in typical Maiden fashion, the song was left off the U.K. version of the album and later added to the U.S. release. Not all reissues of the debut album over the years have included Sanctuary, which is a shame seeing as it’s such an explosive track with a high-energy punk rock feel, and a staple of the band’s live show.

28. Caught Somewhere in Time

Album: Somewhere in time (1986)

If the future-shock cover art of Somewhere in Time wasn’t unusual enough, Caught Somewhere in Time kicks off the album with something that was wholly new in the world of Iron Maiden in 1986 - the sound of (gasp!) guitar synthesizers. 

But traditionalist fans needn’t have worried. The song itself is as classic Maiden as they come, replete with a harmonized guitar intro, a go-for-the-throat galloping rhythm that seems to pick up speed as the song progresses, a singer in full air-raid siren mode in the chorus and plenty of instrumental acrobatics in the middle section. And in retrospect, even those synths - forceful, ominous and heartily distorted - are pretty cool, too.

29. Wasted Years

Album: Somewhere in Time (1986)

The opening lick to Wasted Years, featuring Adrian Smith (also the song’s sole writer) performing a single-note pull-off pattern against a high E-string pedal tone, is among the most well-known guitar parts in any Iron Maiden song - if not heavy metal itself. 

On its own it would be enough to earn the track a high ranking on this or any Iron Maiden best of list. Add in the fact that it’s attached to one of the band’s most melodic and, yes, sentimental tunes, and you have a standout cut from Maiden’s golden years.

30. Be Quick or Be Dead

Album: Fear of the Dark (1992)

It’s safe to say that things went downhill quickly for Iron Maiden after 1992’s Fear of the Dark album and the departure of Bruce Dickinson the following year - so let’s acknowledge Be Quick or Be Dead and the album’s title track as the last of the great moments from the original Dickinson era. 

Be Quick or Be Dead, written by Dickinson and guitarist Janick Gers, opens the album in ferocious, snarling fashion, chugging along at a furious pace for all of its three minutes and 21 seconds, and reaching magnificent headbanging heights as Murray and Gers trade blazing solos at 2:29.

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31. Charlotte the Harlot

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

1980’s Charlotte the Harlot marks the first appearance of fabled sex worker Charlotte (a character the band would revisit on 22 Acacia Avenue from The Number of the Beast). 

Murray and then-guitarist Dennis Stratton’s biting guitar lines pair perfectly with Di’Anno’s gravelly verses. The crew then takes a mid-song detour into hoist-your-lighter-into-the-sky ballad territory, but before things get too sentimental the band returns heavier than ever to bash you over the head with thrashing rhythms and white-lightning soloing.

32. 22 Acacia Avenue

Album: The Number of the Beast (1982)

A somewhat schizophrenic tale, 22 Acacia Avenue both extols, exploits and attempts to reform the sex worker Charlotte (who fans were first introduced to on Charlotte the Harlot from 1980’s Iron Maiden). 

Dickinson’s vivid descriptions of the red light district in London’s East End are delivered in earnest as the band deploys the driving tandem guitar riffs and emotive melodic solos that elevate this stirring down-and-dirty song.

33. Innocent Exile

Album: Killers (1981)

Let’s face it, no one walks around singing Innocent Exile, the band never plays it live and it rarely gets mentioned when discussing the cream of the Maiden crop - but this often-overlooked gem that closes out side A of Killers is an absolute monster and deserves to be hailed among the great moments in the band’s deep catalog. 

In less than four minutes, Innocent Exile captures Iron Maiden at its most confident - this song struts, it’s sexy as hell and the dueling Murray/Smith solos that begin at 2:25 are positively gargantuan.

34. Phantom of the Opera

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

By the time you get through these seven glorious minutes that close out side one of the first Iron Maiden album, you’ll feel as though you’ve just listened to seven different songs. 

Consider Phantom of the Opera a precursor to such Maiden epics as Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son; it’s chockful of riffs, time changes, mood shifts and majestic “guitarmonies”, and often teeters on the brink of being out of control without ever losing focus.

35. Die with Your Boots On

Album: Piece of Mind (1983)

On the surface the Dickinson-Harris-Smith cut from Piece of Mind may seem like another entry in their battle-themed oeuvre (along with that album’s The Trooper and Where Eagles Dare). But it might as well be a metaphor for the crew’s tireless work ethic, which is on full display here. 

From the opening fluid dual-guitar riff and the call-and-response pre-chorus to Dickinson’s increasingly impassioned refrain, “If you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die!”, this fist-pumper is ready-made to psyche you up for whatever obstacle lays in your path: be it a military invasion or a shitty work shift.

36. Prowler

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

Unless you lived in England and were privy to the slower and more primitive demo version of this track that appeared on the Soundhouse Tapes EP in 1979, this version of Prowler which opened the group’s self-titled debut album in 1980 was your introduction to Iron Maiden - and more than likely, after these four minutes were up and you donned your denim jacket and studded wristband, your life was never the same. 

With its scraping guitar intro, secondary wah-wah lick that practically talks to you, Di’Anno’s gruff vocal delivery, predatory lyrics and barn-burning middle section featuring some soaring twin-guitar hysteria from Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton, Prowler will forever be known as one of the all-time great album kickoffs.

37. Tailgunner

Album: No Prayer for the Dying (1990)

The early nineties weren’t a particularly happy time for Iron Maiden. Kids who grew up listening to the band were now moving on to new forms of music - alt and grunge, in particular - and the group itself was having to contend with changes all around, including a shifting musical climate that frequently proclaimed heavy metal as “dead” and the departure of longtime guitarist Adrian Smith. 

But despite it being a tumultuous time for the band, you have to give them credit for entering 1990 with pure firepower thanks to Tailgunner, the first track from No Prayer for the Dying. The perfect sequel to Aces High, Tailgunner has everything you could want in a classic Maiden tune: a sense of thrash-metal mean-spiritedness, stripped-down production, militaristic lyrics and raspy Dickinson vocals reminiscent of his predecessor, Paul Di’Anno.

38. Flash of the Blade

Album: Powerslave (1984)

Smith and Murray take center stage on Dickinson’s rousing ode to swordplay (the singer is also an avid fencer), and from the moment you hear the pull-offs of the inciting opening riff you know you’re in for a treat. 

After Dickinson sets up the narrative, (“You die as you lived in the flash of the blade!”) around the two-minute mark, the guitarists start dueling and ignite some of their most exciting harmonized guitar solos - a truly impressive display of fretboard fireworks.

39. Twilight Zone

Album: Killers (1981)

Something of a bastard child in the Iron Maiden catalog, Twilight Zone was first issued as a single (on the same disc as Wrathchild) in early 1981, even though it was not included on the U.K. version of Killers. 

It was, however, featured on the U.S. version of the album, released in June of that year - and yet so many of the subsequent reissues of Killers throughout the years have not included the song. It might not be among Killers’ essential tracks, but its happy little riff, galloping rhythm and Di’Anno’s somewhat unintelligible punk-rock vocals make it feel right at home on the album in our estimation.

40. The Evil That Men Do

Album: Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988)

Though Seventh Son of a Seventh Son was an overly proggy album, it still left room for a few short, snappy rockers - see Number 26 on this list for one example. The Evil That Men Do can be filed neatly into this category as well. 

With its breakneck pace, galloping rhythm, history-laced lyrics, wailing vocals and, most importantly, top-notch riffs and lead guitar work, it’s more than just a killer track - it’s about as Maiden-y as Maiden gets.

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41. The Ides of March

Album: Killers (1981)

The Ides of March is Maiden’s shortest song, features no vocals and was only played onstage by the band once, in 1979. But with its opening chord crashes, militaristic drum salvo and moaning harmony guitars, it’s also a truly majestic composition, not to mention a, um, killer way to open Killers. 

The tune actually dates to the early Maiden days, and also resembles the song Thunderburst from fellow NWOBHM act Samson - whose drummer, Thunderstick, was a member of Maiden for a brief period in 1977, when Ides was written. Not long after Ides was released, another Samson member, singer Bruce Bruce, aka Bruce Dickinson, would join up with Maiden for a considerably longer tenure.

42. Heaven Can Wait

Album: Somewhere in Time (1986)

The synths come out in full force on this one, swirling around and through the chorus like some sort of bizarro-world Eighties new wave track. Not very Maiden-like, admittedly, but undeniably infectious. 

And then there’s the awesome mid-section gang-chant whoa-oh-oh’s, a crowd participation highlight that, intentionally or not, has been borrowed and used to equally great live effect by Coheed and Cambria in their own In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3.

It’s a moment that undoubtedly is the reason why, next to Wasted Years, Heaven Can Wait remains the most performed track off of Somewhere in Time.

43. Strange World

Album: Iron Maiden (1980)

The softer side of Iron Maiden - and it makes you wish they had dabbled more in this arena, as Strange World is about as good as it gets on the first Maiden album despite its lack of fury. 

At nearly six minutes long and awash in gorgeous, echoey guitar work, Strange World showcases Di’Anno’s versatility as not just a master screamer but a soulful singer, and Harris’ deliberate and restrained bass lines are a marvel. Everyone in the band does his job beautifully on this serene masterpiece.

44. Drifter

Album: Killers (1981)

Drifter is somewhat all over the place - punky one minute, Wishbone Ash-y in another - but it’s also tons of fun. The lyrics are some of the most earthy, feel-good and, um, goofy (“I’m gonna cuddle up with you tonight”) in all of Maiden’s catalog, and there’s a rare major-key wah solo to boot. 

Throw in a truly bonkers middle section and Di’Anno’s requests at the end to have the listener sing it along, and you’ve got a rare gem indeed.

45. Back in the Village

Album: Powerslave (1984)

Consider this one a bookend to the superior Number of the Beast track The Prisoner - given its multiple references to the weirdo Sixties British television programme of the same name - and even though at times it borders on filler, it’s still five minutes of furious fun with a frantic pace, a wickedly nimble main riff, some legendary Harris bass work and Dickinson’s hysterical vocal delivery. 

Not among the more important Powerslave tracks, but still explosive enough to warrant repeat listenings.

46. If Eternity Should Fail

Album: The Book of Souls (2015)

The opener from The Book of Souls is one of two tracks on the album written solely by Dickinson. And like the other one, the 18-minute closer Empire of the Clouds, it’s an intensely dramatic and epic cut - so much so that Dickinson, who originally planned to use a version of the song as the title track to an eventual solo album, has said that he still might do just that one day. For added cool factor, Eternity is also the first instance of Maiden playing a song in drop D tuning.

47. The Duellists

Album: Powerslave (1984)

The Crown Jewel of this six-minute-plus track is the massive mid-song guitar battle led by Dave Murray and Adrian Smith. Press play, sit back and take note on how to construct a dynamic, lyrical, tandem-guitar extravaganza.

48. Another Life

Album: Killers (1981)

Sure, the verse sounds perhaps a bit too much like Iron Maiden, but that song rocks, so who can blame ’em? What’s more, an argument can be made that the leads and harmony parts are sharper this time around, and the middle section is a total thrasher to boot. 

Unlike Iron Maiden, Another Life was more or less retired from live-action post- 1982, though it did reappear for a bit on 2005’s Eddie Rips Up the World tour. Here’s hoping Maiden resurrect it for, um, another life, again in the future.

49. Ghost of the Navigator

Album: Brave New World (2000)

The second song on 2000’s Brave New World, which saw the return of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith after their near-decade hiatuses, is a prime example of the group’s staying power. 

Dickinson’s voice sounds better than ever as he spins a tale of a traveler sailing west for his final journey. The dynamic number updates the classic Eighties Maiden lineup for the new millennium with the added heft of third guitarist Janick Gers (who replaced Smith in 1990), and the Murray/Smith/Gers six-string triumvirate lead the clearly reinvigorated band through this progressive towering workout.

50. Invasion

Album: The Soundhouse Tapes (1978)

Invasion was part of the first batch of songs ever written and recorded by Iron Maiden, and ultimately released on the three-song Soundhouse Tapes EP in November 1979. 

The track, which was also the B-side of the Women in Uniform single in October 1980, has that quick-paced, short-blast, punk-rock feel that permeates much of Maiden’s debut album, and features an abundance of searing lead work by Dave Murray and an uncredited/unconfirmed/mythical guitar ace named Paul Cairns, who by all reports was out of the band before the EP was issued.

Summer NAMM 2019: Jackson has announced new signature models for Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith, Periphery’s Misha Mansoor and Megadeth’s David Ellefson.

The USA Signature Adrian Smith San Dimas SDQM is now available in a new Transparent Green Burst finish, while the X Series Adrian Smith San Dimas SDXM is now offered with a Snow White finish and a white pickguard option.

Smith’s USA Signature SDQM features a lightweight alder body with a quilt maple top, a bolt-on quartersawn maple neck, a compound radius maple fingerboard, Seymour Duncan JB TB-4 and Samarium Cobalt Noiseless Single-Coil Strat pickups and a Floyd Rose Original double-locking tremolo.

The more affordable X Series Signature SDXM features a basswood San Dimas body, a bolt-on maple neck, a compound radius maple fingerboard, a Jackson high-output humbucker and single-coil pickups, plus a Floyd Rose Special double-locking tremolo.

Misha Mansoor’s line of Juggernaut guitars now includes the Pro Series Signature Misha Mansoor Juggernaut HT7P seven-string. The new model boasts a basswood body with a poplar burl top and a 26.5” scale length. There’s also a bolt-on caramelized maple neck and a 20” flat radius caramelized maple fingerboard with rolled edges, 24 jumbo frets and offset dot inlays. Pickups are a pair of direct-mount MM1 pickups, developed by Jackson in conjunction with Mansoor.

The guitar comes in a new Black Burst Burl finish with a matching Jackson 4x3 AT-1 headstock and black hardware.

Finally, David Ellefson’s signature Jackson line has been bolstered with the addition of the new four-string X Series Signature David Ellefson Concert Bass CBXM IV and five-string X Series Signature David Ellefson Concert Bass CBXM V.

Both models feature a poplar body, a graphite-reinforced bolt-on quartersawn maple neck and a 12”-16” compound radius maple fingerboard.

The two basses are loaded with active EMG J bridge and EMG P neck pickups. There’s also an active three-band EQ and blend knob. Other features include a Jackson HiMass bridge, an all-new Jackson paddle headstock and 34” (the CBXM IV) and 35” (the CBXM V) scale lengths.

For more information, head to Jackson Guitars.

The great thing about the whammy bar is that it’s not hard to use at all. Despite this, there are two very easy, yet effective things you can do with it that often get overlooked.

The first approach is to use the whammy bar for vibrato. Yep, that’s right. Not a dive bomb or some other outrageous display of string wrenching but plain old vibrato.

One player who’s notable for using the ‘bar in such a way is Iron Maiden's Adrian Smith, particularly from the band's Somewhere in Time album.

It’s so easy to implement, but it does require a floating tremolo. Just make sure that you’re applying pressure in both directions, instead of just pushing downwards or upwards. The idea is that you need to make the note both flat and sharp, so you can hear the original pitch in between oscillations.

The second easy yet brilliant trick is what I call the ‘wailing baby’ sound used by Jason Becker. Whilst Becker isn’t the only player to adopt this sound, he’s one of the most prolific in its use.

Keep your bar in its regular position, facing towards the headstock, and yank upwards slightly when you perform a pull-off to another note.

That’s it. There’s nothing else involved apart from the bar and your fretting hand.

You might think these techniques are obvious but you’d be surprised how many whammy bar users don’t use them.

They don’t require much skill, just a bit of time invested, and the result is some cool sounding tricks that you can add to your repertoire.

Ben Higgins started playing guitar at age 10. He’s released five solo albums and continues to teach guitarists from around the world. In 2012, he released the YouTube video “30 Shredders in One Solo,” in which he emulated the style of 30 of the world’s greatest guitarists. He topped this in 2017 with “101 Shredders in One Solo.” In 2016, Ben developed his “Badass…” online courses, which are aimed at improving people’s technique in picking, sweeping and hand synchronization.

To find out more about Ben and his courses, visit benhigginsofficial.com and keep up with him on Facebook

Iron Maiden have announced an extensive 2018 European tour.

The trek—dubbed the Legacy of the Beast tour—will begin in late May, and run through mid-August, taking the legends across the continent.

"As our fans know, we've been following a particular touring cycle ever since Bruce [Dickinson] and Adrian [Smith] rejoined Maiden at the start of the millennium, alternating new album tours with "History/Hits" tours," said the band's manager, Rod Smallwood, in a statement.

"For this History/Hits tour we decided to base the theme around the Legacy Of The Beast name, which suits our purposes perfectly by giving us scope to get creative and have some fun, especially with Eddie!"

You can see the full itinerary below.

For more on Iron Maiden, stop by ironmaiden.com.

Legacy of the Beast Tour Dates:

• May 26 - Tallinn, Estonia @ Saku Arena,Estonia
• May 28 - Helsinki, Finland @ Hartwall Arena
• Jun. 01 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Tele2 Arena
• Jun. 03 - Trondheim, Norway @ Rocks Dahls Arena
• Jun. 05 - Copenhagen, Denmark @ Royal Arena
• Jun. 07 - Sölvesborg, Sweden @ Sweden Rock Festival,
• Jun. 09 - Munich, Germany @ Rockavaria, Königsplatz
• Jun. 10 - Hannover, Germany @ Expo Plaza
• Jun. 13 - Berlin, Germany @ Waldbuhne
• Jun. 16 - Florence, Italy @ Firenze Rocks
• Jun. 17 - Nickelsdorf, Austria @ Novarock
• Jun. 20 - Prague, Czech Republic @ Letnany Airport
• Jun. 22 - Dessel, Belgium @ Graspop Metal Meeting
• Jun. 24 - Clisson, France @ Hellfest
• Jun. 26 - Geneva, Switzerland @ Arena
• Jun. 28 - Sopron, Hungary @ Volt Festival
• Jun. 30 - Freiburg, Germany @ Messegelaende
• Jul. 01 - Arnhem, Netherlands @ Gelredome
• Jul. 05 - Paris, France @ AccorsHotel Arena
• Jul. 09 - Milan, Italy @ San Siro Ippodromo
• Jul. 10 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Hallenstadion
• Jul. 13 - Lisbon, Portugal @ Altice Arena
• Jul. 14 - Madrid, Spain @ Wanda Metropolitano Stadium
• Jul. 17 - Trieste, Italy @ Piazza Della Unita D'Italia
• Jul. 20 - Athens, Greece @ Rockwave
• Jul. 22 - Plovdiv, Bulgaria @ Hills Of Rock
• Jul. 24 - Zagreb, Croatia @ Arena
• Jul. 27 - Krakow, Poland @ Tauron Arena
• Jul. 31 - Newcastle, UK @ Radio Arena
• Aug. 02 - Belfast, UK @ SSE Arena
• Aug. 04 - Aberdeen, UK @ Exhibition & Conference Centre
• Aug. 06 - Manchester, UK @ Arena
• Aug. 07 - Birmingham, UK @ Genting Arena
• Aug. 10 - London, UK @ O2 Arena

Iron Maiden have announced The Book of Souls: Live Chapter, a live album documenting their 2016/2017 Book of Souls world tour.

The album—which will be released physically in CD, deluxe CD and vinyl formats—contains 15 live recordings captured from shows throughout the lengthy tour, including six from the band's most recent album, TheBook of Souls.

"We spent a huge amount of time working on this as I wanted to get it as close to the Maiden live experience as I possibly could and to represent our fans from different parts of the world," said bassist Steve Harris, who produced the album.

“This meant listening to literally hours upon hours of tapes from every show, to select material and construct a sound that would run consistently across the whole album and capture the excitement of a new country like El Salvador alongside such regular favourites as Donington or Wacken."

The Book of Souls: Live Chapter is set for a November 17 release via BMG. It will be released in tandem with the premiere of a concert film of the same name, which will be live streamed for free on the band's website.

You can preorder the album here, and see the album's tracklist below.

The Book of Souls: Live Chaptertracklist

• 01. If Eternity Should Fail
• 02. Speed Of Light
• 03. Wrathchild
• 04. Children Of The Damned
• 05. Death Or Glory
• 06. The Red And The Black
• 07. The Trooper
• 08. Powerslave
• 09. The Great Unknown
• 10. The Book Of Souls
• 11. Fear Of The Dark
• 12. Iron Maiden
• 13. Number Of The Beast
• 14. Blood Brothers
• 15. Wasted Years

Primal Rock Rebellion -- the new project from Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith and Sikth vocalist Mikee Goodman -- have announced the release date for their debut album. Awoken Broken will be released in the U.S. on April 17 via Spinefarm Records.

Last week, the duo unveiled their first music video for a track called "No Place Like Home," which you can watch here.

"It was great working at my own pace and in my own studio with no time constraints," said Adrian Smith on his new project. "I think during the making of this album I went around the world twice with Maiden, working on the project in between. In the process, it allowed for a bit more of an experimental approach."

You can also still listen to "I See Lights" at this location.

Awoken Broken track listing:

01. No Friendly Neighbour
02. No Place Like Home
03. I See Lights
04. Bright As A Fire
05. Savage World
06. Tortured Tone
07. White Sheet Robes
08. As Tears Come Falling From The Sky
09. Awoken Broken
10. Search For Bliss
11. Snake Ladders
12. Mirror and the Moon