Director Julian Doyle also directed videos for Kate Bush but he may be best known for working as an editor on several Monty Python and Terry Gilliam films, including Life of Brian, Time Bandits, The Meaning of Life, Brazil, and Terry Jones’s Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
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Fear of the Dark, a song about a man who is scared of the dark, was based on the a very real fear that is held by Iron Maiden founder/bassist/songwriter Steve Harris. The song served as the title track for Iron Maiden’s ninth studio album and it’s gone on to become one of the band’s best known songs.
The video was directed by Samuel Bayer, who was another one of those music video directors who worked with everyone and who made a huge cultural impact even if most of the people who enjoyed his work never learned his name. Among the other videos that Bayer directed: Garbage’s Only Happy When It Rains, Melissa Etheridge’s Come To My Window, LL Cool J’s Father, and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.
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This song is off of Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album, 2021’s Senjutsu. Directed by Swedish animator Gustaf Holtenäs, the epic music video for Stratego imagines an battle in ancient Japan. Thematically and visually, it goes along with the cover of the album, which featured Eddie dressed as a samurai and holding a katana.
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According to Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson, this song and video are “all wrapped up in a lot of messages about greed and the destruction of the planet, with the top one-percenters sitting in their shiny castles, leaving everyone else outside to rot on a dying planet. It’s meant to be pretty on the nose about the current planetary situation”.
Taking place in a dystopian future in which the British slavishly follow behind the Americans while other world leaders ride atop nuclear missiles that are pulled by their slaves, it is fair to say that this video is “on the nose.” Fortunately, Eddie and the Four Bikers of the Apocalypse aren’t going to step to the side, especially not when there are people in ragged Iron Maiden shirts dying in the desert.
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When Iron Maiden released this song, they knew that their fans would try to find out who Benjamin Breeg was so they created a website about Breeg. According to the site, Breeg was a painter of disturbing images who later found work in a cemetery and then as a paranormal investigator. He disappeared in 1978. Of course, this was all fictional. There was no Benjamin Breeg. The “Breeg” painting that was displayed on the site was actually a painting of Eddie, the band’s mascot.
The video features footage of Iron Maiden performing mixed in with a montage of early band pictures.
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Today’s music video of the day is one of the three videos that were shot for Iron Maiden’s Man On the Edge. This was one of the first Iron Maiden songs on which Blaze Bayley sang and it was also one of the first that he wrote for the band. The lyrics were inspired by the film Falling Down. That’s the film in which Michael Douglas plays an engineer who snaps. Bayley felt that the film worked as a parable for the frustration that comes from losing a job and the lyrics reflect that.
This video was filmed on location at Masada, Israel. It was directed Simon Hilton, who also directed videos for Robert Plant, The Chemical Brothers, Coldplay, Depeche Mode, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, and a host of others. Hilton was one of those directors who everyone seems to have worked with at least once.
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In the year 2000, Iron Maiden proved that they still had it with a song based on the movie The Wicker Man. The song became one of their late career hits, earning the band another Grammy nomination. This was the first song that the band rehearsed after the return of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith. Dickinson later said the song was an attempt to capture the feeling of being on stage and watching the audience chant along to what you’re singing.
This video features the band performing the song live in 2012, in Santiago, Chile. An earlier video, which was released at the same time as the song and which was directed by Dean Karr, featured the band performing the song on a stage while a fire raged behind them.
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On August 1st, 1981, MTV premiered. Over the course of 24 hours, 166 unique music videos were played on MTV. Yes, there was a time when the M actually did stand for music.
The 35th video played on MTV was the video for Iron Maiden’s Wrathchild. Of course, the video that played right before this was for a Carly Simon song and the video that followed was from Blotto, a band that specialized in poking fun at itself. If nothing else, the selection on MTV’s first day was certainly eclectic.
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The First Videos Shown on MTV:
The 16th music video to be played on MTV on August 1st, 1980 was also the first heavy metal song to ever be played on the network. Appropriately enough, the song and the band performing it were both named Iron Maiden.
This is a performance clip, taken from Live At The Rainbow. It was not easy to find this video on YouTube. Doing a search for “Iron Maiden music video” returned a lot of results, none of which were this one. Finally, I had to go with “Iron Maiden 1980.” To the best of my knowledge, this is the video that was played on MTV.
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The First Videos Shown on MTV:
We all know the story of Icarus. Imprisoned on the island of Crete with his father Daedalus, Icarus fashioned artificial wings so he could fly to freedom. His father warned him not to fly too close to the sun but the cocky Icarus ignored his father. The sun melted his wings and Icarus plummeted to his death. Whenever someone allows their hubris and cockiness to defeat them or they get too ambitious for their own good, we compare them to Icarus.
Iron Maiden wrote a song about the Flight of Icarus, reimaging the story as being about a teenager rebelling against his father. That’s not surprising as every Greek myth inspired at least one heavy metal song. Flight of Icarus was Iron Maiden’s first single to be released in the United States. (At the time, Iron Maiden was better known in the UK than in the US.) It’s also one of their few singles to receive substantial radio airplay at the time that it was released.
The video was shot at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas. The Grim Reaper was played by drummer Nicko McBrain. As for director Jim Yukich, he was one another one of those music video directors who everyone seemed to work with in the 80s and 90s. He did videos with everyone from Iron Maiden to Genesis to Huey Lewis to Debbie Gibson and David Hasselhoff. That’s range!
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Through the Shattered Lens 