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Behind the recordThe story behind Iron Maiden's Live After Death
A backstage lighting feud at Hammersmith Odeon decided which city's shows would fill most of this double LP - and it wasn't the one the band preferred.
The World Slavery Tour
Live After Death captures Iron Maiden at the end of their World Slavery Tour, which began in Warsaw in August 1984 and ran for 331 days across 187 shows. Built around the Powerslave album, the tour's Egyptian-themed stage - sarcophagi, hieroglyphs, mummified Eddies and heavy pyrotechnics - made it one of the band's most celebrated productions, and the natural backdrop for their first live double album.
Two cities on one record
The double LP mostly came from four nights at Long Beach Arena in March 1985, filling sides one to three. Side four was recorded earlier, at London's Hammersmith Odeon in October 1984. Bassist Steve Harris has said the band deliberately avoided studio overdubs, wanting the record to be totally live.
Why London lost out
Bruce Dickinson later said the whole concert video and album should have come from Hammersmith, since those performances were stronger than Los Angeles. But a clash between lighting engineer Dave Lights and the video crew meant the Hammersmith footage came out too dark to use. The audio was fine, but the concert footage wasn't, pushing Long Beach to the front of the record.
Eddie's graveyard cover
Derek Riggs' cover shows Eddie rising from a grave, his tombstone bearing a misquoted line from H. P. Lovecraft's The Nameless City. Nearby headstones nod to Riggs himself, to Faust, to the Grateful Dead, and to "Live With Pride" - a line added at the band's request to show their opposition to lip-synched shows. Eddie's design also carries over details from earlier album covers, including his Piece of Mind lobotomy screw and Powerslave-era cuffs.
A live album for the ages
Since its release, Live After Death has drawn steady praise, with critics such as Kerrang! and Sputnikmusic calling it among the greatest live albums ever made. For Iron Maiden, it also bought valuable time, letting them delay their next studio album and recover from the gruelling World Slavery Tour schedule.
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