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Piece of Mind was released on May 16th, 1983 and is the fourth studio album by British heavy metal band Iron Maiden. Piece of Mind was also the first Iron Maiden album not to be titled after a track on the album.

Piece of Mind was the first album to feature ex-Pat Travers drummer Nicko McBrain, who had recently left the Paris-based band Trust. In fact each Iron Maiden album had seen an original member leave (in this case drummer Clive Burr) but this last change was the last until 1990 and widely regarded as *the* classic Iron Maiden lineup.

Even with all the changes in personnel, all the trademark Iron Maiden elements are there – Derek Riggs “Eddie the Head” artwork, galloping bass-lines, soaring vocals and the twin attack of harmonized guitars. However producer Martin Birch had polished the sound a little, making it more accessible and for the first time it featured meaningful songwriting contributions from members other than bassist Steve Harris.

One of the most notable of these was the Bruce Dickinson/Adrian Smith composition “The Flight of Icarus”, a metal classic retelling the tale of the man who flew too close to the sun.

However another Steve Harris composition in the shape of “The Trooper” remains as one of the most popular songs in the band’s history, included in the set list of every tour since the album’s release. It is based on Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” thrusting the listener right into the middle of a battlefield during the Crimean war.

The last track “To Tame a Land” was originally entitled “Dune” but Dune’s author, Frank Herbert, refused Iron Maiden’s request to name the song after his book, so it became “To Tame a Land”. This is a 7 minute epic closing Piece of Mind in a fantastically over the top barrage of intricate guitars, booming bass and vocals.

Most of the rest of the album is also of a high standard, however Piece of Mind was the first Iron Maiden album to include tracks that I actively skip (“Sun and Steel” being the most skipped), but it is still an undisputed metal classic and many feel this is the quintessential Iron Maiden album.

Iron Maiden

• Bruce Dickinson – vocals
• Dave Murray – guitar
• Adrian Smith – guitar, backing vocals
• Steve Harris – bass guitar, backing vocals
• Nicko McBrain – drums

Production

• Martin Birch – Producer, Engineer, Mixer
• Frank Gibson – Asst Engineer
• Denis Haliburton – Asst Engineer

Track listing

1. “Where Eagles Dare” (Steve Harris) – 6:10
2. “Revelations” (Bruce Dickinson) – 6:48
3. “Flight of Icarus” (Bruce Dickinson, Adrian Smith) – 3:51
4. “Die With Your Boots On” (Bruce Dickinson, Adrian Smith, Steve Harris) – 5:28
5. “The Trooper” (Steve Harris) – 4:15
6. “Still Life” (Dave Murray, Steve Harris) – 4:53
7. “Quest for Fire” (Steve Harris) – 3:41
8. “Sun and Steel” (Bruce Dickinson, Adrian Smith) – 3:26
9. “To Tame a Land” (Steve Harris) – 7:27

1995 reissue bonus CD

1. “I Got the Fire” (Montrose cover)
2. “Cross-Eyed Mary” (Jethro Tull cover)

Trivia

At the beginning of the sixth track, Still Life, the band included a hidden message which could only be understood by playing the album backwards. This was a joke and an intended swing back at the right wing Christian groups who had accused Iron Maiden of being satanic and corrupting the nation’s youth.

In reality the backwards-message features Nicko McBrain mimicking Idi Amin…or at least mimicking a mimic, mimicking Idi Amin!

The version of Eddie the Head on the cover of Piece of Mind is the version of Eddie used in the video game Ed Hunter

Release Information

Piece of Mind was originally released in 1983 on Capitol Recordsin the US and on EMI Records in the UK; it was reissued later on Sanctuary/Columbia Records.

Paul Bruce Dickinson is born in Worksop, UK

Paul Bruce Dickinson, the Author, DJ and Iron Maiden singer was born on August 7, 1958, in the Nottinghamshire mining town of Worksop. Although Bruce Dickinson’s real first name is Paul, he was known as “Bruce” to all his friends, only his parents and grandparents would call him “Paul”.

Bruce Dickinson’s Parents

Bruce Dickinson’s father was also called Bruce and served in the army at the time his son was born. His mother worked part-time in a shoe store, both were teenagers. “I was a bit of an accident”, confesses Bruce, “Mum was sixteen or seventeen when she became pregnant and my dad was seventeen or eighteen.” They were also unmarried and in 1950s Britain this meant a hastily arranged marriage. As was also often the case in the 1950s, children were often raised by their grandparents until their parents were able to raise them themselves and this was the case with the young Bruce Dickinson.

Bruce Dickinson’s Early Life

Bruce seemed to have a good relationship with his grandfather, a coal miner, describing him as, “the closest thing I had to a dad. He was great.” but his relationship with his grandmother was less good, saying that she felt he was, “the little bastard that had taken her daughter away from her.”

By the time Bruce was approaching school age his parents had moved from Worksop to Sheffield as jobs were easier to find there. They had found jobs and were also making money by buying a house, renovating it, then selling it on and moving into their next “project”. This meant Bruce spent much of his childhood living on a building site.

Eventually they bought a boarding house his dad was selling second-hand cars off the forecourt. It was unconventional back then, but his parents had got to the stage where they were actually making money. So Bruce moved up to Sheffield to live with them and go to school.

Bruce Dickinson’s Early School Years

Initially he went to a notoriously tough school, but after 6 months his parents realized this was not good as Bruce was getting bullied so he was sent to a private school called Sharrow Vale Junior. Bruce never felt much of a connection with his parents, “I think it was because I hadn’t built any real attachment to them when I was very, very young.” he said. He also found their lifestyle alien to him, “They never listened to music, they would be totally focused on making money.”

However the money his parents were now making allowed them to give him the things they never had, including a private education. So at the age of 13, Bruce was sent off to Oundle School in Shropshire. To many thirteen year olds, leaving your parents would be daunting, but for Bruce it was less of an issue, “I didn’t particularly enjoy being with my parents, so I saw it as an escape.”

Bruce Dickinson’s Private School Years

When he got to Oundle School he found that he did not fit in and was bullied and found himself very much an outsider. After initially finding it tough he came to terms with it by embracing his outsider status. He started deliberately doing odd things, like taking charge of the universally hated school army-cadet course adn using it to get back at his tormentors. Bruce described how they would do things like, “Setting little booby traps for people. Not to hurt them, just to scare them.”

Bruce had also discovered a love of the limelight after joining the school’s amateur dramatic society, as he recalled, “The first time I stepped on a stage, I loved it.”

Bruce Dickinson’s Introduction to Music

One area of his school life he enjoyed was the musical element. The pupils were restricted to almost no TV, but could play music in their rooms. This meant there was a healthy supply of music from around the school with people swapping and selling each other records. “You’d go down the corridor and there’d be music coming out of every single study.” he remembered. This was also where he discovered his love of hard rock, “I was 13 when I first heard Deep Purple’s ‘In Rock’ album, and it just blew me away!” He added, “The first album I ever bought was Deep Purple’s In Rock, all scratched to fuck, but I thought it was great.”

He also got to see his first live band while at Oundle at an end of term gig, “The first gig I ever saw in my life was a band called Wild Turkey. They were great and I tried to climb inside the bass bins, took most of my clothes off and went into a mad Fanta-inspired frenzy. It was great and my ears were ringing for the next three days.”

Bruce Dickinson’s Expulsion from School

However he was expelled from Oundle for the very rock n’ roll offense of urinating in his headmasters food! Upon returning to Sheffield in 1976, he entered the local Catholic Comprehensive school, which Bruce thought was, “Brilliant! Everybody was, like, ‘normal’ and there were girls there – which freaked me out at first.”

Bruce Dickinson’s First Band

In the summer 1976 Bruce Dickinson joined his first band and with that bought his first microphone. The band was originally called “Paradox” but, upon Bruce’s suggestion, changed the name to “Styx”, totally unaware of the American act with the same name. After rehearsing in the drummer’s garage, they played their first gig at “The Broad Fall Tavern” in Sheffield, it did not go according to plan – “We got into the headlines in the local newspaper when we got attacked on stage by this shift-working steelworker we’d woken up. He bottled the guitarist and chucked the drums off-stage”

Soon after the band split, but by now Bruce had the bug and a mike and an amplifier of his own. He was soon to be heading for the bright lights of London to start studying at university, although this would simply be an excuse to be in London while he tried to find a band, although he was still many years from finding fame as Iron Maiden’s singer.

References

• Bruce Dickinson: Flashing Metal with Maiden and Flying Solo