A Real Live/Dead One

A Real Live Dead One is the 1998 re-released version of what was formerly two separate albums: A Real Live One and A Real Dead One. They are a collection of some of the best recordings from 17 separate concerts in the Fear Of The Dark Tour and Real Live Tour. The following introduction can be found in the original CD booklet for A Real Live One:

.I'm writing these notes having just finished selecting and mixing the best songs from some 12 shows that were recorded in Europe during the last tour. We all thought it was about time to release another live album as in the eight years since LIVE AFTER DEATH, there's been lots of new material and our shows have changed quite a bit since 1985.

This album contains what the Band and I consider to be our best live material since 1986 and the next volume A REAL DEAD ONE features our live favourites up to 1985. We thought carefully about the track selection for both albums and hope that you like them. Thanks to all the fans who participated at the shows, you know who you are!

By the time you read this we'll be about to start touring again, so thanks for all your support over the years and we'll see you soon.

Cheers!

Steve Harris, Christmas 1992

These recordings been much maligned for alleged bad sound quality and poor mastering, though in my opinion the sound quality is not as bad as some people claim. However, there are some significant differences between this and the legendary Live After Death.

Firstly, the guitars do seem a bit less crisp and distinct. On Live After Death, you can hear each guitar individually and distinctly, while on A Real Live Dead One the guitars seem a bit more muted and tend to merge together into the background. Simply saying it makes it seem worse than it really is, but still there is a noticeable difference from Live After Death. Secondly, the crowd noise seems to be mixed quite a bit louder than on Live After Death. This is however not really a problem, since it gives the album a good "live" feel. And thirdly, most of the songs on A Real Live Dead One were recorded at a different European venues, and although the crowd noise between songs is blended together, the album still seems to somewhat lack the continuity of a complete live concert.

In general, the songs are performed well. For me the highlights of this album are 'Prowler', 'Transylvania', and 'Where Eagles Dare', which were previously not available live except on a few bootlegs. And possibly the best track on the album is 'Fear Of The Dark', which is actually superior live as compared to its studio version.

Mick Wall's comments on A Real Live/Dead One

Singer Bruce Dickinson's decision to leave Iron Maiden and go solo had already been made public when both their stunning new live albums, A Real Live One and A Real Dead One, were originally released separately, but within weeks of each other in 1993.

While the former was clearly a celebratory romp through the highlights of the latest Maiden live show, with the emphasis squarely on more recent material like the then big hit single, 'Be Quick Or Be Dead', the latter was seen at the time as something of a farewell to the man who had fronted the band through some of its most memorable and successful tours and albums, the emphasis this time on older material like 'The Number Of The Beast' and 'Hallowed Be Thy Name'.

"It was just time for me to move on," says Bruce now. "I'd been with the band for over 10 years by then and I think we just all needed a change..."

Not that anybody not even Bruce, who did not make his decision until months later could have guessed that things would turn out that way when Maiden first set out on the Fear Of The Dark world tour, with sold-out shows in Germany, in April 1992. The tour had criss-crossed the continent that summer, climaxing in Maiden's second headline appearance at Castle Donington's fabled Monsters Of Rock festival, in August the biggest outdoor date in the European rock calendar.

Their first mainstream-release live recording since the mould-breaking Live After Death double-album eight years before, A Real Live One fittingly captures the last days of Bruce-era Maiden at their very best. 12 tracks recorded at nine different stop-overs on that blistering summer '92 tour, the material on A Real Live One is drawn entirely from Maiden's four preceding studio albums.

Five of the tracks 'Be Quick Or Be Dead', 'From Here To Eternity', 'Wasting Love', 'Afraid To Shoot Strangers' and the title track itself which closes the album with a scintillating performance from Helsinki, Finland are from the band's then latest album, Fear Of The Dark. Two the splenetic 'Tailgunner' and of course the never-to-be-forgotten No. 1 single, 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter' came from their 1990 No Prayer For The Dying album.

While three 'Can I Play With Madness', 'The Evil That Men Do' and 'The Clairvoyant' are also former Top 10 hits, but this time from Maiden's 1988 Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son album.

The only track from earlier than that is the now well-known show-stopper, 'Heaven Can Wait', which can be found in its original form on their 1986 Somewhere In Time album, but is faithfully reproduced here from Maiden's headline appearance in 1992 at the Italian Monsters Of Rock festival replete with the by now traditional rousing sing-along section with the crowd.

Apart from the material, of course, the most noticeable difference between A Real Live One and their earlier live masterpiece, Live After Death, is that the crowd noise is much more in evidence, making the album sound more like a real Maiden gig right there in your living room, and less like a series of dazzling snap-shots.

As Steve explains: "We all loved Live After Death and were very proud of it. But it had been eight years before and a lot of water had gone under the bridge, songs-wise, since then. Janick had joined and the set had changed quite a lot, so we thought the time was right.

"But apart from the new songs, we really wanted to make the fans feel more a part of it, too, this time. Which is why they sound so loud on the album! We wanted it that way because that's what it sounds like to us when we're on stage!"

It was for the same reason, Steve said, that Maiden chose to record so many different shows on the European tour in '92, rather than just concentrate on a couple of nights at a specific venue as they had done in 1985.

"Every track apart from the encores is taken from a different city on that tour. That way there's more chance of more Maiden fans actually being able to say, 'I was there!'"

Though ostensibly from the same tour, A Real Dead One, which followed hard on the heels of A Real Live One in the late summer of 1993, is bound to be viewed in a slightly different light. With eight of the 12 tracks from the original album being taken from shows on the band's resumed Fear Of The Dark world tour in the spring of 1993, in the aftermath of Bruce's announcement that he would be leaving at the end of the tour, these are very much the farewell performances of a band determined to close this particular chapter of their remarkable story in spectacular style.

This they managed to do, from the titanic album-opener, 'The Number Of The Beast' the title track of the first album Bruce would record with Maiden in 1982 to equally well-known Bruce-associated numbers like the rabble-rousing 'Run To The Hills', the steamy '2 Minutes To Midnight', and the soaring 'Where Eagles Dare' these weren't just any old performances of these songs, that much is plain from the almost palpable sense of emotion being generated on those far-flung stages. This was history being made.

Elsewhere on A Real Dead One, in seminal, pre-Bruce material like the sizzling 'Sanctuary' and no less than four tracks 'Prowler', 'Transylvania', 'Remember Tomorrow' and cue big, bad Eddie! 'Iron Maiden', from the very first Maiden album of the same name in 1980, it is almost as if Steve and the rest of the boys are reminding the world that there was a fantastic group called Iron Maiden roaming the globe and releasing huge hit records long before Bruce came along, and that there would be a fantastic group called Iron Maiden doing exactly the same thing long after Bruce had left, too!

Steve says I'm reading too much into it, but does agree on one point, "We wanted to have some of the oldest Maiden material on A Real Dead One simply because we'd never really covered that era before. Live After Death was really about that particular tour in 1985, and A Real Live One had done a good job of giving you an idea of what Maiden was like in 1992. These extra tracks on A Real Dead One were meant to be a little bit different. But then, that whole last leg of the tour was a little bit different to say the least!"

Steve says I'm reading too much into it, but does agree on one point, "We wanted to have some of the oldest Maiden material on A Real Dead One simply because we'd never really covered that era before. Live After Death was really about that particular tour in 1985, and A Real Live One had done a good job of giving you an idea of what Maiden was like in 1992. These extra tracks on A Real Dead One were meant to be a little bit different. But then, that whole last leg of the tour was a little bit different to say the least!"

Clearly, the Fear Of The Dark world tour of 199293 had been a fateful one for both Maiden and their fans. Long-time Maiden producer, Martin Birch, also chose this moment to retire, a decision he had taken before Bruce had made his own announcement.

"It was nothing against Maiden," the veteran producer says now. "None of us are getting any younger and it was just time for me to get off the treadmill. And Steve had become much more involved in the production side by then, he'd worked by my side for years on so many previous Maiden albums, I knew they'd be in safe hands."

Steve's first job was to produce all the tapes for both Maiden's live albums, a task he said he took to, "like a duck to water," seeing it as "a natural progression from the days I used to work with Martin. First I just used to watch him, but as the years went by I learned more and got more involved."

But if, artistically, A Real Live One and A Real Dead One represented two sides of the same coin, commercially both albums set parallel courses for the UK Top 10, before going on to perform similar feats around the rest of the world.

For the record, Bruce's last public performance with Maiden was at the televised Raising Hell show, shot live at Pinewood Studios, in England, in August 1993. But that was nearly two months after the Fear Of The Dark world tour had finally ended, and despite an energetic performance it was more like a brief one-off reunion before Bruce and the rest of Maiden finally went their separate ways, than a taste of the real, sweaty, on-tour thing.

The real end of the road for Bruce had come earlier, at those very shows the band recorded so faithfully for A Real Dead One. Another reason why, in so many ways the band could not have imagined when they first discussed the idea of releasing a brace of new live albums a year before, these last recordings with Bruce are even more special.

Thankfully, as history now records, Maiden would return two years later with singer Blaze Bayley, and the release of one of their strongest, most successful albums yet, The X Factor. Strangely, that fact does not make these live recordings any less special.

This was history as it was actually happening out there on the road. The memories would go on forever...

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