Original Text by Olaf, Iron Maiden Heaven.
Way before the first Eddie appeared on a Maiden sleeve, Steve and his fellows
were already experimenting with their stage act, after Dennis Wilcock (a
former vocalist) left Maiden, Dave Beasly took over arranging the stage act.
He soon earned the nickname Dave Lights because of his improvising skills
in making a stage act using simple stuff like gun powder, flower pots,
vacuum cleaner parts and lights. He soon came up with a mask which he obtained
at an art academy, he used an aquarium air-pump to pump blood through the
mouth of this head during the song Iron Maiden. At that time a stupid joke
was circulating which goes something like this:
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A woman had given birth to just a head, the doctor told her she needn't worry since he would come
up with a suitable body for good 'ole Eddie within a year or five. So five years later Eddie's father entered the room on Eddie's birthday and said: "well today's your birthday, and boy do we have a surprise for you!" after which Eddie replied: "Oh no!, not another bloody hat!". |
The group decided to keep Eddie's appearance as a secret until the first album, therefore the Eddie which appears on the Running Free sleeve, is standing in the shadows.
The first album indeed featured the face of Eddie, it was still a 'weird' Eddie and Derek soon changed his face. It wouldn't take long before Eddie appeared in the British newspapers and caused his first controversy, this was due to the Sanctuary sleeve on which Eddie stabbed Margaret Thatcher to death because she had torn an Iron Maiden poster off the wall. The later releases of the Sanctuary sleeve had to be censored, therefore a black bar was drawn over her eyes, this bar only appeared on the British releases though, the continental European releases didn't have this black bar.
Maggie's revenge was swift though, judging from the Women In Uniform sleeve, on which she's waiting in an ambush to shoot Eddie with a machine gun. This sleeve caused a second minor controversy because a handful of outraged feminists accused Maiden of sexism since Eddie was walking arm in arm with a nurse and a schoolgirl, no one really took this protest very serious though.
The final major controversy Eddie caused was when he had bitten off Ozzy Osbourne's head as a joke after Ozzy bit off the head of a bat on stage once, the Ozzy Osbourne camp couldn't appreciate the joke very much so Maiden had to withdraw that drawing.
Over the years to come Eddie changed a lot, the stage-Eddies became a few meters tall(!) and Eddie himself changed as well. Especially around the Somewhere In Time era Eddie started to change heavily, in the SIT era he looked more or less like a 'terminator'. These transformations were topped two years later during the Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son era, where only the upper part of Eddie's body remained.
For some reason the drawings began to deteriorate ever since that era, the
No Prayer For The Dying sleeve featured a complete Eddie again (i.e.
not just a head), but Eddie wasn't drawn as beautifully as Derek used to
draw him. The only really good (Riggs) Eddie drawing since 1990 was the
Bring Your Daughter... ...To The Slaughter drawing.
It seems as if Maiden was getting dissapointed with the Eddies the way Derek
started to draw them, for the sleeve of Fear Of The Dark was drawn by a
different artist (Melvyn Grant) and the ones which were drawn by Derek were
rather ugly.
Things didn't exactly improve when The X Factor was released, for the recent releases all feature a computer-drawn Eddie (by Hugh Syme), IMO this just isn't Eddie any more and I guess I speak on behalf of the majority of the Maiden fans when I say that I long for the great drawings Derek used to make during the eighties...
The Best Of The Beast art was done by Derek Riggs but still lacks the quality of the glory day's illustrations such as PowerSlave, Somewhere In Time or Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son... It is still to be determined if Derek Riggs will work on the new Maiden Album...
Somewhere Up The Irons, Kheldan