In January 1984, when Iron Maiden arrived at Le Chalet Hotel in Jersey, in the Channel Islands to begin writing material for their next album, they were five men on a mission. The previous 12 months had seen them accomplish a successful career transition from standard bearers for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal into internationally recognised rock stars with their first headline tour of America, including prestige shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’s Long Beach Arena – and their first US Top 20 album with Piece Of Mind. Now it was time to bring the hammer down.
“For me, Piece Of Mind was the best album we’d done up to that point,” Maiden bassist and founder Steve Harris told me. “People still talked about [previous Maiden album] The Number Of The Beast, because of the title track and Run To The Hills, which were both big hits, and because it was Bruce’s [Dickinson, singer] first album [with Maiden]. But Piece Of Mind was the one for me.”
