During my puberty around 1980 and 1982, I looked for alternatives to my parents and I found them in numerous Heavy Metal bands, or rather in their lyrics. "Make it real" by the Scorpions, "Antisocial" and "Préfabriqué" by Trust, "Confessions" by Trance and "Live to win" by Motörhead guided me until today and will do it until the end of my life.
My secret wishes were expressed not only by "Rock'n Roll Outlaw" by Rose Tattoo, but also by the song "Running free" by Iron Maiden. Paul Di'Anno's youthful and at the same time aggressive voice was the ideal and also the antithesis of my middle-class origins. Alongside "Ace of Spades", "Running free" makes me feel 14 or 15 again when I listen to it.
Paul Di'Anno now died due to his numerous illnesses. I met him once at the End of Dayz festival at the Z7 in Pratteln in 2006 where he gave me an autograph (picture below). He played there with his European Iron Maiden cover band and his voice and his punk attitude simply remained in 1981.
Over the years, I have been asked by my pupils, my children's friends and also people in my age with which album to get into Heavy Metal. I always answered "Killers" by Iron Maiden because it is a coherent work. The brutal cover, the dark production, the fantastic guitars, the various musical directions of Metal that Iron Maiden hinted at in this album and of course Paul Di'Anno's voice; young, aggressive, streetbound, honest, always with the right dose of FOAD in the horror and scary lyrics.
I love both Iron Maidens, the theatrical and opera version from 1982 onwards and the gutter version up until 1981. The gutter version is closer to the origins of Heavy Metal, a music for the working class, the opera version is what you can make of a music for the working class.
Thank you Paul,
you´ve done a fantastic job for Heavy Metal and for my life.
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