IRON MAIDEN announce a one off show at the Los Angeles Forum on Tuesday February 19th as part of the first leg of the 'SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME WORLD TOUR 2008'.
The band will fly in especially for this one show from Tokyo two days before and depart for Mexico the day after on a specially commissioned and customized Boeing 757, flown by Astraeus Airline Captain and Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson. The 757, decked out in Maiden and Eddie artwork, will carry the band, road crew and other personnel of around 70 people plus over 12 tons of equipment.
This first leg of the 'SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME WORLD TOUR' opens in Mumbai India on February 1st, and continues through Australia and Japan before arriving in LA.
The entourage then fly to Mexico and into Latin America for the band's first ever concerts in Costa Rica and Columbia, and on to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Puerto Rica and New York, before finishing in Toronto, Canada, on March 16th.
Over the 45 day period it is anticipated that Maiden will play to well over 400,000 fans in 21 cities in 10 countries, flying close to 50,000 miles in the specially refitted plane (full schedule below).
Comments Bruce Dickinson, "I have been flying commercial passenger jets for Astraeus Airlines for a few years now and we are commissioning an Astraeus Boeing 757. It will go in for overhaul, painting and conversion in November which will then give us time to ensure we have all the necessary safety documentation, especially with regard to fire safety. It also means it could possibly be flying commercial air routes decked out in Maiden colours for a couple of months before we start!
"Looking at the list of places we would like to play we have always had problems joining up the dots. With sea containers in various places it slows down the whole touring process, which is fine if you want a holiday but not if you want to play.
It's great to see places but we don't want to sit around for a week waiting for gear to get from, say Australia to South America, so this way we can get to more fans in more places en route in the same time period"
To tie in with forthcoming 2008 releases on DVD of the classic 'LIVE AFTER DEATH' concert video (full details coming soon) this tour, aptly entitled 'SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME', will revisit the band's history by focusing almost entirely on the 80's in both choice of songs played and the stage set, which will be based around the legendary Egyptian Production of the 1984-85 'Powerslave Tour'. This will arguably be the most elaborate and spectacular show the band have ever presented, and will include some key elements of their Somewhere In Time tour of 1986/7, such as the Cyborg Eddie.
Steve Harris comments; "The last time we played California was the Verizon last October and it was a fantastic gig, sold out well in advance so the fans were well up for it. It was as good a crowd reaction as we have ever had in LA. It was also our last show on that US Tour and really ended up a night to remember. It will certainly be the first time we have played LA by flying in, doing the show and flying straight out again - we usually like to hang around there for a few days!! We will have to make up for it next time!! "l always loved the Powerslave show which I think was arguably our most spectacular ever, so bringing it back to LA - where we originally filmed the show at Long Beach Arena for our 'Live After Death' video - has got to be special and we are very much looking forward to it".
The Iron Maiden fan club have arranged an exclusive first access pre-sale for members to buy Tickets to the show on Tuesday November 6th, before tickets go on sale to the public on 10th November.
To allow fans to be right up close to the band, the fan club will also be running a special draw whereby 60 winners and friend at each show will be given first access to the venue enabling them to be first to the stage barrier. Full details can be found on www.ironmaiden.com.
To further the anticipation for the pending performance, please log on to KNAC.com, and tune into 95.5 KLOS and KCAL 96.7 for the rare opportunity to enter exclusive competitions for your once in a lifetime opportunity to sing along with Iron Maiden live on stage at the L.A Forum to the classic song ‘'Heaven Can Wait’'.
The promotion is also open to all Iron Maiden fan club members !!!!
Live Nation, KNAC.com, 95.5 KLOS and KCAL 96.7 will all host their pre-sales from Thursday, November 8, 10 A.M. to Friday, November 9, 10 P.M.
General public on-sale is Saturday, November 10 at 10 A.M
Tickets will be available through Tickemaster outlets, Ticketmaster.com and also LiveNation.com.
Full schedule for the first leg of SOMEWHERE BACK IN TIME World Tour 08
February
Fri 1st Mumbai, India Bandra Kurla Complex
Mon 4th Perth, Australia Burswood Dome
Wed 6th Melbourne, Australia Rod Laver Arena
Thu 7th Melbourne, Australia Rod Laver Arena
Sat 9th Sydney, Australia Acer Arena
Sun 10th Sydney, Australia Acer Arena
Tue 12th Brisbane, Australia Entertainment Centre
Fri 15th Yokohama, Japan Pacifico Yokohama
Sat 16th Tokyo, Japan Messe
Tue 19th Los Angeles, USA The Forum
Thu 21st Guadalajara, Mexico Auditoria Telmex
Fri 22nd Monterrey, Mexico Monterrey Arena
Sun 24th Mexico City, Mexico Sports Palace
Tue 26th San Jose, Costa Rica Saprisa Stadium
Thu 28th Bogota, Columbia Simon Bolivar Park
March
Sun 2nd Sao Paulo, Brazil Skol Arena Anhembi
Wed 5th Porto Allegre, Brazil Gigantinho
Fri 7th Buenos Aires, Argentina Ferrofcarril Oeste Stadium
Sun 9th Santiago, Chile Pista Atletica
Wed 12th Puerto Rico San Juan Coliseo
Fri 14th New Jersey, USA Izod Center (formerly Continental Airlines Arena)
Sun 16th Toronto, Canada Air Canada Centre
The second leg of the Tour will take place mid May to mid June with further concerts in North America, followed by the third leg European Tour, extensively covering most of Europe in Stadiums and major Festivals.
In total the band are expected to play to well in excess of one and a half million fans during the entire tour.
HISTORY BEHIND THE POWERSLAVE TOUR AND LIVE AFTER DEATH VIDEO
The band recorded and released their first five studio albums (Iron Maiden, Killers,
The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind and Powerslave) one year after the next
(1980 - 1984) and toured the world extensively with each one.
The 'Powerslave' Tour of 1984-5 also included choice songs from the first four albums, and was actually titled the 'World Slavery Tour'. It opened in Warsaw on Aug 9 1984, marking the first time a major band from the West had played large arenas in Poland at a time when the country was still very much "Behind the Iron Curtain". On top of this Maiden took with them their full spectacular arena show, again a first as no one had ever done that before in Poland.
The tour continued through 193 concerts in 21 countries, including an incredible 112 arena shows in the USA and Canada, in both of which the album went Platinum, playing to over one and a quarter million fans in North America alone.
The tour finally came to a (weary!!) end on July 5 1985 at Irvine Meadows (now Verizon) Amphitheatre just South of Los Angeles, marking the longest and most gruelling tour the band have ever attempted. The band and the lavish Egyptian stage production generated stunning reviews and arenas around the planet were sold out.
March 14, 15, 16, 17 saw the band play 4 sold out consecutive nights at LA's 13,200 capacity Long Beach Arena. Tickets went on sale at 10 am on a Saturday morning with fans waiting overnight for the box office to open. When the first show sold out almost immediately and the second was being added some fans got rather restive as they felt they may not get tickets and this led to the LAPD being called in and LA press reporting riots! Tickets continued to sell and shows added until after about 10 days the band called a halt at a record breaking 4 sold out shows - a record which still stands to this day.
It was during the 2nd and 3rd nights here that the band recorded and filmed, in 35mm, what was to
become the legendary LIVE AFTER DEATH album and concert video, featuring tracks from their first five albums. This was one of the first ever full concert videos with a worldwide release and topped the new video charts everywhere.
It was these concerts that also inspired the idea for the birth of one of the first specialist Metal Radio Station in America, KNAC, and certainly the most successful. The originators could not believe that a band could sell over 50,000 tickets in LA with no radio support EVER in the marketplace and wisely reckoned that there must be a massive underground market for this band and this music and went on to start a unique station which has had great success ever since and became synonymous with Metal in the USA.
Says KNAC founder Long Paul ;
"The Iron Maiden shows were presented by KLOS FM, now a classic rock format, and they were not playing the band, nor was any commercial radio in the market at the time.
KNAC at that point was an alternative format radio station, the programmers looked at string of sold out dates at Long Beach and thus was the catalyst to make the decision to flip to rock/metal as Pure Rock 105.5 FM."
A review of the concert is reproduced below to give some idea of the show -
Heavy Rock Happenings
By Mark Hanser
Being both a headbanger and a history major, I must confess that any metal act that concern themselves with my two pet historical periods - Ancient Egypt and Medieval Europe - are bound to receive my rapt attention, particularly if they're any good. In Iron Maiden's case, the band's fantastic, even without their chronological fantasies. Mystical and magical, cerebral and sonic, Maiden's rivalled only by Judas priest as metal's greatest live act - something they proved a thousandfold at Long Beach's Arena for four ear-splitting nights, starting Thursday the fourteenth.
Iron Maiden, it must be mentioned, don't just put on a show - they stage a spectacular. And, good God, what a spectacular it was! Imagine, if you will, a stage lifted from the valleys of Luxor; with pylons like pyramids and funeral pyres, or lighting scaffolds covered with scarabs and runes, further arranged like a dragonfly's wings. Imagine, too, music so riff-laden and magnetic that each song erupts into an eargasm - and with lyrics both clever and literary, no less. Maiden, you see, dabble in mythology, not misogyny; so instead of hearing singer Bruce Dickinson scream Kiss retreads, the Arena's ears heard such stuff as "The Flight Of Icarus" (you recall, I trust, the tale of Icarus and Daedalus from your high-school primers) and "Rime of The Ancient Mariner" - bassist Steve Harris' masterful reworking of the Coleridge classic, and the piece de resistance of Powerslave (Capitol), their fifth and finest studio recording. Entertaining, melodic and enervating, Maiden's music is
like manna from Heaven in an age of Sammy Hagars.
Opening with "Aces High" - which segued into their anti-nuclear anthem, "Two Minutes to Midnight" - the Maidens set the stage afire with instrumental fury. The twinlead guitars of Dave Murray and Adrian Smith became, and remained so throughout the show, textbook examples of metallic transcendence; only Priest's Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing can match them in imagination, and not always as artfully. Rhythmically, bassist Harris and drums-basher Nicko McBrain are no less remarkable building aural tensions instead of aimless boogies. And singer Dickinson, what with his air-raid siren screams and cerebrally witty asides to the audience, is something else again. Surely Ronnie Dio never had a more attentive pupil.
Nor was Dickinson any slouch as a showman, either. During the song "Powerslave," he donned a fearsome, Horus-like falcon mask, and pranced before a suddenly-blazing pyre. It wasn't Cleopatra, perhaps (nor was Elizabeth Taylor in the front row this time for that matter), but it made for some wonderful rock theatre all the same. If the singer was upstaged by anybody, it was by Eddie the Ghoul, then band's nine foot (and mummified, this time) mascot, who dutifully appeared and danced before the knowing masses. As a whole, the band played loud and (not unpleasantly) long, with a (pleasant) minimum of soloing. They encored firstly with their medieval battle-merch, "Run To The Hills," and secondly with "Running Free," a relic from the now-ancient Killers. Then Dickinson, as is his wont, bade the audience a safe journey home. Such was the show, but such a show!
The Long Beach Union - March 25-31, 1985
Some recent background information :-
In the last year or so IRON MAIDEN have -
In September 2006 released A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH', their most recent and critically acclaimed 14th studio album.
* No 1 International Album in Billboard Magazine
* No 1 album in 10 countries. Top 10 album in 30 countries
* Top 10 in the USA, number 2 in Canada
* The highest placed rock album ever in India where it reached No. 2 , twice!
and played extensive shows around the World including being -
* The first metal band to put on a major concert in India playing to a sold out 25,000 fans in Bangalore, apparently the biggest rock show ever in India
* The first band to headline Download Festival in Donington UK for a record breaking fourth time to 70,000 fans
* The first band to sell out Desert Rock Festival in Dubai to 20,000 fans.
* Record breaking sell out of Ullevi Stadium in Gothenburg, Sweden - 57,000 tickets sold in two and a half hours over 9 months in advance of the date!
* 360,000 tickets sold across their 100% SOLD OUT European Tour in the Autumn of 2006 with 28 arena shows including 40,000 tickets sold in Stockholm over 3 nights, 30,000 in London, 25,000 in Milan and Helsinki and 19,000 in Barcelona.
* Three Canadian shows SOLD OUT to 40,000 fans and 16,000 tickets sell out weeks in advance of their Los Angeles Show in Oct 06.
* Played to 250,000 fans at their show in Rio. Brazil in 2001, plus 35,000 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and 25,000 in Santiago, Chile
* 0ver 40,000 tickets sold in the first hour when the Australian arena dates in Feb 08 went on sale recently, with Melbourne and Sydney shows sold out in just 15 and 25 minutes respectively, leading to second shows being added immediately in each city
For more information go to www.ironmaiden.com
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