Reviewed: May, 2024
Released: 2017, Indie
Rating: 4/5
Reviewer: JP
About eight years ago my good friend, Evil Dave, bought me a unique birthday gift; a custom, individualized printing of Stjepan Juras’ book, SOMEWHERE IN TIME:AN IRON MAIDEN CLASSIC. You can read my September 2016 review of it here on Metal-Rules.com.
Juras is widely considered one of the world’s foremost Maiden scholars and founder of the Iron Maiden Croatia Fan club. Stjepan is extremely productive and over the last several years he was written over a dozen books about Iron Maiden, essentially one book per album. The Maiden Croatia website says…
“WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF THE MOST RESPECTED IRON MAIDEN RELATED BOOKS IN THE WORLD! THIS IS A COMPLETELY NEW WAY OF WRITING; TO THE FANS BY A FAN, JUST THE THING THE FANS DESERVE. AUTHOR STJEPAN JURAS (TOGETHER WITH HIS FRIENDS) HAS A VERY SPECIAL TREAT FOR ALL THE IRON MAIDEN FANS; BOOKS ABOUT THEIR MUSIC, MEMBERS, FANS, COLLECTIONS AND LEGACY. AVAILABLE NOWHERE ELSE, THESE MOSTLY HARDCOVER, NUMBERSED, PERSONALIZED AND SIGNED BOOKS ARE A TRULY COLLECTOR ITEMS AND A GREAT SOURCE OF KNOWLEDGE.”
Recently he was kind enough to make these books available as a free download! To pre-celebrate the impending 50th Anniversary Of Iron Maiden, 2024 will be the year I read and review these books, one by one, month by month with the review published on the first of each month.
The tentative 2024 review schedule will be…
Feb-Brave New World (Originally published July 2020) -Done
March-The X-Factor (Originally published July 2019) -Done
April-Fear Of The Dark (Originally published November 2017) – Done
May-No Prayer For The Dying (Originally published May 2017) -Done
June-Virtual XI (Originally published December 2023)
July-Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son (Originally published August 2016)
August-Powerslave (Originally published (January 2017)
September-Piece Of Mind (Originally published September 2018)
October-Number Of The Beast (Originally published March 2018)
November-Killers (Originally published May 2021)
December-Iron Maiden (Originally published September 2021)
Please feel free to read all the reviews in this extended long-term feature. I hope you will have as much fun following along each month as I have reading and reviewing this series of books.
As I mentioned in my introduction I’m reviewing digital copies. However, as an owner of a hard copy of SOMEWHERE IN TIME, I can assure you quality of these hardcover books are top-notch. The hard cover is the ‘Tailgunner’ edition and is 256 pages long.
This is the fourth in my series of reviews and it is certainly interesting to travel back in time through the Iron Maiden catalogue since 2000 as the band are getting more popular (in terms of critical acclaim) as we work backwards.
I think was the fourth book in the series by Juras and it was an interesting choice for him to write about an Iron Maiden album that some may not consider a classic. In fact, some have said that it might have been the beginning of the end for the iconic line-up. It certainly was a change in the look, tone, style of the band and that makes for a very interesting discussion of why and how did this happen.
The first and foremost event was the loss of Adrian Smith and perhaps even as important the eventual loss of Derek Riggs. Additionally, the fact that the band recorded the album ‘old-school’ with an antiquated mobile recording unit in a barn on Steve Harris property comes into play. Bruce Dickinson’s increasing dissatisfaction and his own emerging solo career helped cement Harris role as undisputed leader. New recruit Gers, while a decent choice was not going to challenge Harris role and accordingly, in conjunction with management, choices became increasingly ‘top-down’. While at the time the band went along with the experiment when it did not yield the potential dividends the band began to fracture. Juras describes all of this maneuvering in amazing detail, adding fact and his very plausible theories in equal measure.
By now, I’m fully on-board with Juras style and habit of providing an enormous amount of information about historical events which could have influenced the tone style of the band. There is an extended section about the song ‘Holy Smoke’ and there is a lot more to the song than just a wild kick at televangelists. I had no idea that American TV preacher Jimmy Swaggart had deliberately targeted Iron Maiden (and Steve Harris specifically) as one of the evils of rock and roll. Harris and gang hit back and Juras theory that maybe, just maybe the unidentified grave digger on the original cover art was a subtle jab at Swaggart. Makes sense to me! I had forgotten that the cover art was altered as I still hang onto my old cassette!
One section I found fascinating was Juras dissection of the chart positions of this album. It always struck me as slightly odd that a song like ‘Bring Your Daughter’ hit #1. I wrote it off as perhaps my taste is different than the fans in England at the time as I felt the song was good, but not great. Juras’ theory that the song was released at very specific point in time (with no other viable chart competition) to achieve the coveted #1 slot was deliberate is utterly convincing to me.
In fact, much of the book the author presents a very realistic and believable scenario that the band had tried something new, it didn’t work as well as they hoped and the management had to step in and create the illusion of continued success. It was a diminishing return, lower overall chart position, lower concert attendance, fewer shows, lower sales. That does not mean the album was weak but certainly an evolution away from the multi-platinum days of only a few years prior. It was the first minor mis-step in Camp Maiden in a pretty much unbroken upwards trajectory since 1975.
Juras amply covers tangential events like Smith’s solo album and Dickinson’s solo album and the Nightmare on Elm Street film tie-in. Again, like in the other books, there is an enormous amount of information and cool images of various Maiden promotion items. He said that one might think that because the album was not as well-received there would be less promo stuff but that was not the case. The band/management threw quite a bit of money into promotion and tie to the bands tenth anniversary. I still to this day kick myself for not buying the ‘The First Ten Years’ boxset when I saw it in Toronto when it came out! Juras scours his contacts to solicit photos of cool, rare, and never-before-seen items from private collections from across the globe.
There are many more highlights, keen observations about who writes more songs, when and where and who collaborates with who in a section about Smith vs. Gers. He also covers the ‘Inner City Express’ tour in which he reveals certain exaggerations about attendance based on research about the number of shows and the actual capacity of the venues the band played. I have always appreciated how the author loves the band but is not above calling the band and management out for when they again, ‘exaggerate’ certain facts to portray the band in a favourable light.
Once again, I am humbled by the depth of knowledge that Juras has about the band and its world. If you are a true fan, you will fully enjoy reading a book that is not just a pandering tribute to this transitional and interesting album.
www.maidencroatia.com/album08/
