“People on their mobiles, getting bombarded with this information –it’s kind of like brainwashing”: Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen are waging a two-man war on the modern world with Smith/Kotzen

Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen posing for a photograph.

When Richie Kotzen was 12 years old, he had two baseball T-shirts that he would wear to school. One was a Black Sabbath shirt with an image of the Grim Reaper holding a crystal ball and the number 666 on the front, the other was an Iron Maiden The Number Of The Beast shirt.

“I was a Maiden fanatic,” he says, some 43 years later. “When I’d wake up for school, I’d put that record on and get dressed. It would be [solemnly intoning the intro to TNOTB’s title track] ‘Woe to you, oh earth and sea…’ echoing around the house. Luckily my parents were cool with it. So this whole thing with Adrian, sometimes I gotta smack myself around the back of the head to realise I’m not dreaming.”