Fifty thousand people, 47,234 blackshirts. Why wait for the daylight to fade when a cyclops black spot obscures the Cabal’s vision? A tapestry of excitement ahead of the season schedule, an entire stadium to affirm that heavy metal is here and won’t be erased until a meteor hits the planet. It was 9:53 p.m. that Friday, the public address system played the welcome anthem, “Doctor, UFO Doctor,” and the crowd began to punish each other’s throats. Three minutes later, the senjutsu drums announced the start of the song and Bruce Dickinson, hair in a samurai bun, completely unlucky in his clothes, appeared in the frame deafening the stadium and gesticulating with his feet planted and his legs bent. The crowd responded by banging their fists in flatulence. Stratego and The Writing On The Wall have finished reviewing the next notebook of the clique to break the concert. The rest of the songs that made the history of the herd. Iron Maiden in fan-friendly mode. And boy did they!
Pérez Galdós, whose Iron Maiden sympathy is hardly suspected, defined them when he thought he was going to do it with Fortunata by saying “Coherent as a nail, they nail it there”. This nail was nailed in the period of 1980 and now, with forty years of history, it supports stadiums. There have been changes and some novelties, but since then, without the slightest trace of rust, it is always more resistant and true to its meaning. And he knows where he is, because Dickinson greeted him with a “Hello, Catalonia”, which he then completed with a nod to Barcelona during his only concert in Spain. Moreover, at 63, he sings like a kid, to the roar of a herd, sewn with virtuoso guitar solos, stitches that recall the rock of his life, the one that best shows his vitality and his ability to shelter heavy sites.
At 9:20 p.m., as the daylight suddenly recedes, I change my frame. The Japanese foundation that defines the three themes of senjutsu gave way to a Gothic cathedral interior with stained glass windows and lamps that simulated the quivering soul of a candle. Revelation had been playing since the early 80s and the famous started to taste what was on the menu, a revisit of a good part of the hits of the clique. Two side screens were limited to honoring the musicians with no other intention than to affix faces and gestures to them, and in charge of Blood Brothers, Dave Murray’s guitar once again emphasizing the theme, the frame was already wrapped in a canned darkness. Sing Of The Cross was the definitive flash in the 2000s, because by then the already wild gig sailed around the 80s and the notorious went crazy. The notorious bulge, one of the best in the music scene, knowledgeable, combative with standards, friendly and now beardless as before, yes, fashions change everything, they took the most gift tuna, the songs that keep the retentive the day before yesterday. , yesterday or , in the case of the older ones, when they wore their hair long because it represented membership in the association.
How tempting it was not to look at the painting and put the stars in that mass that made his arms look like an electrified cane field. With hardly any cell phones. And that there was pyrotechnics, a towering Icarus, a double flamethrower wielded by Dickinson with two hands, smoke obscuring London, fire on a grand staircase, costumes, a chirona in which Dickinson held the hair against the sailboat and with a white shirt, an inflatable Beelzebub, and a parade of images which, despite their dark appearance, demanded to be read with a smile. Heavy Paradise consumed stadium ladder, something the cabal had never completed in the past, and visited smaller venues.
Other hits were released: “The Number Of The Beast”, “Iron Maiden”, “The Trooper”, “Run To The Hill”, a super “Spitfire” and an obstruction “Aces High” prelude to the balance of Farewell “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life”, from Monthy Python to March Home smiling. The notorious was satisfied in the end, exhausted and undoubtedly hoarse, the romance was familiar to him and after the postponement due to the pandemic singing it had multiplied. In the end, the time had come and Iron Maiden did not fail. Heavy metal does not survive: it lives. The nail is still there.
You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on Facebook and Twitter or subscribe to our weekly newsletter here
What matters most is what happens next. Subscribe so you don’t miss a thing.
to subscribe to