When Iron Maiden had to mime on live TV

When Iron Maiden had to mime on live TV, they sure took the piss out of it. Like most bands, Iron Maiden hated to mime their music on live TV. Iron Maiden refused to lip-sync their single Running Free on Top Of The Pops, and said ‘No live, no Maiden.’ Even though the last live performance on Top Of The Pops was by the Who in 1974.

Iron Maiden founder/songwriter/bassist/keyboardist Steve Harris says “I had a bit of an anti Top Of The Pops thing,” He adds “They never had anyone decent on, and I was really adamant that I wasn’t going to do it if they made us mime to a playback. I just thought ‘Bollocks to them. What have they ever done for me?’”

Years later on a German TV show P.I.T. invited Maiden to perform their song Wasted Years (from their album Somewhere In Time) Strangely Iron Maiden agreed to mime their performance. And by the look of their “mime” it seems the German TV show would regret their invite.

It’s very obvious from the start of the clip that Iron Maiden are not taking the mime seriously. Steve Harris is miming guitar not bass, Dave Murray has Harris’ bass around his neck. A bit later Harris swaps lead vocals with Bruce Dickinson. Nicko McBrain walks around, Harris sits on his the drum still and it gets pretty funny. It looks like the guys are having a fun time taking the piss and it’s hard not to smile at it.

Iron Maiden Mime on Live TV

In recent Iron Maiden news Bruce Dickinson confirmed that the band have planned to play their recent album Senjutsu in full for shows. Dickinson spoke to Chris Jericho on Talk Is Jericho Podcast “The plan we’ve got — it’s not really a secret; I think everybody else has chatted about it — we will, I hope, we’ve talked about doing the entire album start to finish, but not this time around. And we all appreciate that that is something that really diehard fans will probably love and other people will go, ‘Hmmm, I’m not gonna go see that.’ So the answer is you play smaller venues so that they sell out with just your diehard fans. ‘Cause it’s a musical thing to do — it’s a musical thing.”

Bruce Dickinson has hinted before that Maiden will play a full tour of their latest album. “Every song is Maiden at the top of our game. Every song could be a live favourite. We haven’t played a Maiden album from start to finish since [2006’s] A Matter Of Life And Death, but this album is so good that it could warrant being played in its entirety. Obviously, we haven’t finished the Legacy [Of The Beast] tour yet, but the thought of taking this album on the road is exciting to all of us.”