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| The cover of the album Source |
I've known the bandname 'Iron Maiden' for as long as I can remember, but I've discovered their music last year, through Guitar Hero, with their song 2 Minutes To Midnight. And only about three weeks ago was when I looked some of their other songs up on YouTube, which resulted in buying two of their CD's last Saturday: Somewhere Back In Time: The Best of 1980-1989 and The Number of The Beast. I think Iron Maiden is really, really awesome and The Number Of The Beast is the song that I've liked the most so far.
I found some background information about The Number Of The Beast on Wikipedia:
According to the song's writer, bassist and band-founder Steve Harris, [The Number Of The Beast] was inspired by a nightmare he had after watching the film Damien: Omen II, in addition to the poem Tam o' Shanter by Robert Burns.
The song opens with a spoken word passage, read by English actor Barry Clayton, which quotes directly from the Book of Revelation. According to lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, the band originally asked Vincent Price to read the intro, but decided to hire Clayton after Price refused to do it for anything less than £25,000.
The track is known for its very long, high-pitched and guttural wail at the end of the intro, which Allmusic describes as "the most blood-curdling Dickinson scream on record". In the Classic Albums documentary based on The Number of the Beast album, Dickinson states that it came about through frustration with producer Martin Birch, who forced him to sing the introduction repeatedly for hours on end.
And, according to the website songfacts.com, Steve Harris has also said that 'Basically, this song is about a dream. It's not about devil worship.'
Personally, the thought of the song being about devil worship never crossed my mind, but well, so, just in case you were wondering, it's not. Don't worry.
If you are interested in the lyrics to The Number Of The Beast, you can find them here
I hope you like the song as much as I do. See you next time!
xoxo
Gasoline Diamond
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