“He said, ‘I’ve never seen so many women in my life. We just get men at our gigs”: The night Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris joined Def Leppard to cover Creedence Clearwater Revival

A composite photograph of Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris and Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott.

Iron Maiden and Def Leppard were the two biggest bands to come out of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, but they took very different career paths.

While Maiden found their sound earlier and spent years building on it, becoming one of the most venerated metal bands of the last 45 years, Def Leppard soon shook off their NWOBHM roots, with radio-friendly albums such as 1983’s multi-million selling Pyromania and 1987’s equally huge Hysteria turning them into superstars in the US. Amusingly, Leppard frontman Joe Elliott has spent much of the last 45 years distancing himself from the NWOBHM movement and heavy metal in general, calling it “a silly, silly term.”