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| 1. | A band is sort of like a star. It reaches a peak and burns out. To have five guys working in perfect harmony longer than a couple years is difficult. |
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| 2. | A lot of people sort of regard me as a melodic guitar player amongst the fury. |
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| 3. | After a really great gig at Fiddlers Green in Denver on Tuesday we travelled the next day to Los Angeles for a two day break before the show at the Greek Theatre. |
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| 4. | As a musician it's very easy to get influenced by other people and say, 'God, that sounds really cool, let's do something like that.' We managed to resist that. |
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| 5. | As far as the crowd goes, we were expecting a fairly laid back LA attitude, but were nicely surprised by the tremendous reaction. They were with us right from start to finish. |
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| 6. | Blaze was leaving Maiden and it seemed like the right timing for Bruce and I. It all just came together. |
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| 7. | Bruce lets us get on with playing. But at concerts we all connect really. |
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| 8. | But the next album probably would have sold nothing. Fans would have known it's just another bank job. |
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| 9. | Coming back to the band I approach songs I used to play 10 years ago quite differently now. That's added a different dimension to the band. |
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| 10. | Dickinson really knows how to connect with an audience. You can have the best band musically in the world, but you need someone who also can breach the gap between the audience and the band. He does it very well. |
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| 11. | I appreciate now stepping out on stage in front of Maiden's audience. You've just got to throw yourself into the whole thing. |
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| 12. | I did need to do some other things. If I hadn't I wouldn't be back in the band today, and I wouldn't be as happy as I am now. |
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| 13. | I enjoyed being able to share with student leaders how I try to apply God's principles with my service in the Nebraska Legislature. What an experience to make new friends, learn about politics, and develop your skills as a leader! |
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| 14. | I guess the word must be getting around that we're back with a vengeance. |
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| 15. | I spent the down time with my family and also managed to get in a bit of bonus for me. I love playing the shows, but it's really nice to get some time to ourselves. |
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| 16. | I think a lot of people are going to want to see it, simply because I've been out on the road with Bruce for the last couple of years, and from what I have gathered on the road, people will be very interested to hear it. |
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| 17. | I think it will sound amazing as we all play slightly differently. In a concert situation it will be interesting as well, because it keeps changing the focal point which makes it interesting from an audience perspective. |
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| 18. | I think it's going to be really cool, because of the atmosphere between us. There's a good feeling about this tour and you can sense the anticipation and the buzz about it. |
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| 19. | I think they think we are a heavy metal band. But there's a lot more to the band, more progressive elements and subtle elements. |
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| 20. | I've seen everyone individually over the years, but it's the first time we've all been together in a working situation for a long time - it must be almost 8 years in times of the band. We built up our own language over a period of time. We fell back into that straight away. |
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| 21. | If ever there was a band where three guitars could compliment the music, it was Maiden. There are a lot of guitar harmonies and guitar parts. |
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| 22. | It feels great. It feels better than ever being back. |
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| 23. | It just felt like it was the right time, sort of a new beginning with the year 2000 and new blood in the band. |
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| 24. | It's great to be playing back with the guys again. Everyone's relaxed and happy about it and we're looking forward to playing all the classic Maiden songs on this tour. It's kind of uncanny. |
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| 25. | It's like a crowd cheering for their favorite soccer team. They are willing you on. You feel all this great energy coming from them. |
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| 26. | It's pretty heavy stuff, modern hard rock I call it. |
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| 27. | Like the album, we try to take all the ingredients from the best shows we've done in the past 15 odd years. We've gone back to doing a real spectacular show. |
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| 28. | More importantly, it was a chance for us all to meet up and hang out for a couple of hours and we started to scratch the surface talking about the musical side of things. I think you need the chemistry as the band is made up of such personalities and that makes it what it is. |
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| 29. | Our goal is to make a great album for the fans and ourselves no matter who wrote the songs. It's a sort of 'Check your ego at the door kind of thing.' I think we managed to do that. |
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| 30. | That means everyone only presents their best work. None of us gets complacent. We've got to have a bit of friction in the band. It's all about chemistry. |
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| 31. | That's why the situation in Maiden is so great now. We went out and expressed ourselves (musically) in other ways and have come back looking from a different perspective at the band. We're able to transfer some fresh energy. |
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| 32. | The band has always stayed close to its fans and not sold out. That's a very rare thing. I can see how rare that is having been outside of the band for eight years. Maiden has integrity. I think people appreciate that. |
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| 33. | The most important thing is we have never sounded like anybody. It's a very different sound. |
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| 34. | The only bad part of the show was when Davey fell and injured his little finger of his left hand during the encores. He is having the injury looked at by a doctor and hopefully it's not too serious. |
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| 35. | The photo session went really well, apart from the fact I had flu. It went very well. |
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| 36. | The show itself generally went really well for us with the onstage sound being good. |
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| 37. | The songs are long and I think there's a lot of space there for three guitar players. It will compliment the music and it's never really been done before in the rock and metal field - obviously Skynyrd, but I don't think in the metal field it's been done, which gives it an exciting dimension. |
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| 38. | There's a lot of interesting stuff we can work with - but I don't think it means we're going to have 98 guitar solos in each song, I think it'll be more of a textural thing. |
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| 39. | We also heard that we broke the record for merchandise sales at the venue. That makes it two in a row 'cos the same thing happened at Denver! |
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| 40. | We are one of the last heavy metal bands. Iron Maiden has always been unique. |
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| 41. | We came pretty close. You set high standards for yourself. We're pretty proud of it. |
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| 42. | We do get a lot of feed back from the Internet and there have been constant rumours for the last couple of years of a reformation of the 80's line up. |
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| 43. | We tried to take all the good things about Maiden over the last 15 to 20 years and distill it into one record. |
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| 44. | We try and stay out of the corporate side of it. The band has never compromised. At some point in our career we could have made a certain type of record and sold millions of units, as they are called. |
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| 45. | We wanted to take the progressive elements, the melodic side of it and the anthem kind of songs, and the heavy element, and get a great producer and put it down on record. |
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| 46. | We've got five guys in the band writing songs. The competition is fierce. At the same time, I wouldn't step back into a situation if I thought I'd be frustrated. |
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| 47. | You've got to look toward the whole rather than just your own situation. We all have our own ideas. Sometimes there's a bit of a conflict, but that's good. |
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