After already catching Iron Maiden's 1982 Beast On The Road Tour, where they opened for Judas Priest, and then their 1983 World Piece Tour, where they first became legitimate arena headliners, I then had to pass on the next tour, their legend-making World Slavery Tour of 2004-2005, thanks to being shipped off to Navy boot camp right before I had the chance.
Iron Maiden are one of those rare bands that I have actually grown to like more and more with each passing year and album. They are still making some of the best new music of their career, and as this new DVD will attest, they are still performing better than ever. I can list on one hand other bands that have been around as long as Maiden, where that same sentiment applies.
Flight 666 is a fascinating two-hour documentary that takes you behind the scenes of Iron Maiden's globetrotting Somewhere Back In Time World Tour of 2008. This was not just your average tour, in more ways than one. For starters, Iron Maiden frontman/airline pilot, Bruce Dickinson, came up with the idea of using a customized jumbo jet to carry the band, crew, and equipment to all of the stops on the tour. Oh, and he also piloted the damn thing - a massive Boeing 757 that was appropriately christened "Ed Force One," after their endearing mascot.
What a site that must have been to see this plane, with a huge Iron Maiden logo and pictures of Eddie emblazoned all over the place, touchdown at your airport.The luxury of having your own singer fly you and your entire crew and stage show around, is that it allowed them to play more remote places, such as India, Costa Rica, and Chile, that are usually deemed too costly to play. Dickinson basically told the tour manager to string together all of the countries that accountants say "you can't go there, it cost too much." During the six-week, first-leg, of the tour, from which this film was recorded, the band would play an amazing 21 cities, in 12 countries, on 4 continents.
Article comments
1 - Triniman
Great review, Paul. This is an essential purchase for all Maiden fans and it proves to me why they are the finest band in all of metal. Few bands in any genre can last this long and still produce top notch new material, like their last studio album, 2006's A Matter of Life and Death.
2 - Paul Roy
Thanks Triniman. It's great to see old dinosaurs like Maiden remain relevant after all these years.