Maiden Central

Recently posted to YouTube:

This is beyond tentative, and a mere rumour based on a tip from a website, but Virtual Festival believes that Sonisphere – which returns to Knebworth next year – will be headlined by Iron Maiden and Guns N’ Roses.

In 2010 the festival will be in the UK on July 31 and August 1. Metallica headlined the second night of this year’s UK festival.

It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.

This is fantastic: a great collection of images featuring Maiden and Eddie, culled from Flickr.

Rock Radio reports that in the latest Maiden fanclub magazine, manager Rod Smallwood has stated the band will tour again in 2010, and will do so aboard their customised 757, Ed Force One.

Speaking in the Iron Maiden Fan Club magazine, the manager says: “It took a long time to set up the last tour because of the plane. It had never been done before and we didn’t know what we were letting ourselves in for. The idea came a couple of years before that and we got into it a year ahead of the game. “I’m starting to get my head round what we’re going to do next summer. It hasn’t been decided yet but we’ll do something, so I’ve got to speak to promoters and agents. “Now we know the plane works, by Christmas we’ll have the pattern set. We’ll probably be going for the plane and getting that held for us. “But at the moment, the album’s the key thing on the agenda. The guys will be getting together shortly and they’re probably starting to get their heads round new ideas for songs individually. Some of them may meet up before we formally get together. “We’ll spend a period writing, we’ll take Christmas off and then we’ll get into recording. We’ll finish the album in time for it to be out next year and I’m just getting my head round what we want to do touring-wise. “We’ll be doing some new places on the next tour. I won’t tell you where they are – they’re not finalised yet, but some work has been done. One place we can’t play that we’d like to is Bolivia – the altitude is just too high for the type of physical performance the guys do. It’s a shame.”

I don’t remember the first time I heard Iron Maiden’s self-titled debut. I know I already knew the songs, from devouring my brother’s double-cassette copy of Live After Death endlessly since the end of 1986. I had since bought Somewhere In Time, and again devoured it. I don’t know how I came to find out what the exact order of Maiden albums was, although I’m sure it was the copy of Heavy Metal Encyclopedia (or some such book) I’d bought with the express purpose of re-reading the 2-page entry on Maiden over, and over, and over.

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Here’s a clip from a Discovery show Bruce did about his other love: airplanes. This one covers the Airbus A320, and also shows he has a real talent for television work.

This site has probably been going for ages, but me being me, I’ve only just discovered it.

It’s fucking brilliant – IronMaidenWallpaper.com has high quality Maiden wallpapers featuring all your favourite Eddies. I have this one set as my desktop right now.

Adam Lambert, a runner-up on the last American Idol series, is apparently auctioning a jacket he wore on the Idols tour (cue the moistening of a million fangirls).

Anyway, not particularly interesting, but there is some news kicking around about it due to it having what looks like a couple of swastika designs. No real reason for us to care, except they’re drawn alongside what is most definitely a Somewhere-In-Time era Eddie, along with Derek Riggs’ famous signature.

From The Metal Underground:

Former Iron Maiden front man and solo artist Paul Di’Anno has announced that Thunderbolt will be supporting him in November and Cheeno will be supporting him during the German tour dates in December

See TMU for the full European dates.

From IronMaiden.com:

Yes, it’s almost that time of year again! As we’ve done in recent years, we’re throwing the design of the official Iron Maiden xmas card open to you guys. This is the card that gets sent to FC members and to friends of the band. Each year, the standard has been amazingly high and we’ve had a real challenge agreeing on a winner. This year, we’d like a card with a Flight 666 theme. We’ll leave it as vague as that – let your imagination run free! Send us your designs – conforming to the specifications below – and the winner will be picked by Rod, be printed and sent to thousands of people. The winner will get a credit on the card, an Iron Maiden football shirt signed by all the members of the band and some other goodies from the Official Iron Maiden Shop. We’ll also award prizes to any runners up we particularly like, and even if your card isn’t chosen to be printed we’ll be using our favourites on the homepage throughout December.

Read full details, and competition requirements, here.