Certain things might suggest a No Prayer for the Dying/Fear of the Dark themed summer tour is in the works.
Apparently a new line of merchandise products has just been advertised in the US market via Hot Topic, including well known 90s motifs such as Hallowed Be Thy Name (Live), A Real Live One, Hooks in You and others. We know that prior to the Maiden England tour the same thing happened with a lot of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son related shirts being sold at the same site.
The band has been touring the world for the past couple of years with the Maiden England package, a concert presentation that revisited their classic Seventh Son of a Seventh Son era in a 1980s throwback. In a recent interview with Vorterix.com singer Bruce Dickinson was asked whether or not Maiden will do a similar thing with their 90s material in the future, and he got a little ambiguous.
– We haven’t got that far yet. Let’s finish this one first and see what happens next year. But yeah, I do not think Maiden fans are going to be too disappointed for too long.
We know that a re-release of Donington Live 1992, a somewhat controversial early 90s concert feature, is imminent and if the plan is to do a short summer tour next year, the simplistic nature of the early 90s might come in handy. Not a lot of theatrical elements, no pyro and the mechanics from The Final Frontier Big Eddie are modeled after the old Fear of the Dark Eddie.
Will we see this old fellow again next summer? Big Eddie making people fear the dark.
If you trade a few of the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son tunes from the recent tour with Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter, Tailgunner and Be Quick or Be Dead, throw in a few golden oldies not played in the Maiden England set, such as Wrathchild, Die With Your Boots On, Hallowed Be Thy Name and Sanctuary, you’re pretty much there.
New 90s rehashed motifs are currently being sold at the American retailer Hot Topic.
At this point all this is merely speculation, however if a 90s tour of the low key kind comes to fruition, it must be said that the wow-factor is slightly amiss. All the staples in the the No Prayer For the Dying and Fear of the Dark sets have been played in most of the tours post Dickinson and Smith‘s return and it’s highly doubtful that From Here to Eternity and Holy Smoke or Wasting Love are gems the casual Maiden fan is aching to relive. It would be odd for the band to recreate a period in time most people, some of the band members included, regard as a low point in Iron Maiden’s career.
We will of course come back with full fledged analyzes and what not when more info comes this way.
(Hardly Iron Maiden’s proudest moment: Below From Here to Eternity live 1992)
Maiden Revelations 
When the band is in the form of its life regarding new material, why waste time revisiting their nadir?!
Or, if the idea of a ’90s tour suits a short summer fling and sells a bit of back catalogue, let’s have some X Factor and Virtual 11 in there. Both better albums than NPTFD and FOD in my everso humble opinion.
i agree 100% they should do Man on the Edge and The Clansman rather then Be quick and tailgunner
I’d rather hear all four of those than The Trooper and 2 Minutes to Midnight for the 6 billionth time.
I totally agree. It already seems like they’re just gearing up to do another 2mins/trooper/rtth/notb/fotd/running free/aces high hits tour, with a couple lazy song choices thrown in so they can call it 90’s based. Give me Sign of the Cross, Man on the Edge, Futureal and The Clansman!!!
If it turns out that they will do a “90’s based” set, I think this setlist is a likely scenario:
1. Be Quick or Be Dead
2. The Number of the Beast
3. Wrathchild
4. Die With Your Boots On
5. Afraid to Shoot Strangers
6. 2 Minutes to Midnight
7. Tailgunner
8. From Here to Eternity
9. The Trooper
10. Run to the Hills
11. The Evil That Men Do
12. Fear of the Dark
13. Iron Maiden
14. Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter
15. Hallowed Be Thy Name
16. Sanctuary
Whatever they choose to focus on from the 90s will be a huge letdown for me, coming at the heels of Somewhere Back In Time and Maiden England. This is speculation at this point, but we’re very sure that Maiden will tour in summer of ’14, and what possible other concept can they tie it to than Donington Live 1992 and the early 90s…?
Surely someone can find a quote somewhere that says they’d alternate History tours with new stuff and so save us all from the gnawing fear that a ’90s tour will happen next year…?
There are plenty of those quotes. The problem now is the fact that there won’t be an album next year. So the situation is really kind of new.
They can always do something similar to the 2010 summer tour…
I mean revisiting the noughties. Much better than the 90s…
Personally, I like a lot of the NPFTD and FOTD material. I also like some of the Blaze-era stuff. I would like to see them do, say, 3 songs from each of those 4 albums, then 5-6 other tunes, including HBTN. Guess we’ll have to wait and see!
@Ghost: The 2010 tour was geared towards a new album. Even if it featured only one brand new song, most of the set consisted of material from their most recent records. That made sense as a lead-in to a new release. So next year really is a new kind of situation, with no new release coming.
Completely agree that 2000-10 kicks 90s ass!
I agree it is a new kind of situation, but from a marketing point of view a History tour based on the 90s is not going to sell as well as recent history tours, for the reasons we all know.
My guess is they might do a short summer tour with a loose concept, but not based on a particular era of the band’s history.
That would be pretty much like ’99 and ’03. More like ’99 since there wouldn’t even be one new song there. The difference from those occasions would be the very likely release of Donington Live 1992 to coincide with the tour.
The combination of that DVD with the new line of merchandise with early 90s designs give cause for speculation that they intend to use that era.
Then again, they covered Maiden England and the late 80s without playing Caught Somewhere In Time, Heaven Can Wait, Stranger In A Strange Land, Sea Of Madness, Infinite Dreams, Killers, Still Life, Die With Your Boots On… So in Maiden terms a focus on the early 90s could easily amount to Bring Your Daughter, Afraid To Shoot Strangers and Fear Of The Dark, I suppose.
Christer, ‘Killers’, ‘Still Life’, and ‘Die With Your Boots On’ were hardly staples of the “Seventh son of a seventh son” tour. They were only played in the UK leg, as a sort of a thank you to the British fans. The rest of the world got something much more similar to the 2012-2013 Maiden England setlist. 😉
I am not too sure Maiden would release the “Donington Live 1992” DVD next year. I think we would get a “Maiden England 2013” release first…
@Ghost: I know perfectly well that those songs were not staples, and you always bring that up, but you can’t change the fact that they are on Maiden England and the tour was called Maiden England, not Seventh Tour Of A Seventh Tour. 😉 Infinite Dreams and Heaven Can Wait where staples, by the way.
But you got my point, right? That they don’t have to include more than 3 or 4 tunes from the era to justify the concept to themselves?
It depends on your definition of what “era” means.
If by era you mean the old VHS releases they are basing the tour on, you got 9 songs off “Maiden England” in the last tour (Moonchild, The Evil That Men Do, The Prisoner, Can I Play with Madness, Wasted Years, The Clairvoyant, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, The Number of the Beast and Iron Maiden) and 10 songs off “Live after death” in the 2008 leg of the SBIT tour (Aces High, 2 minutes to midnight, The trooper, Revelations, Rime of the ancient mariner, Powerslave, The number of the beast, Hallowed be Thy name, Iron Maiden and Run to the hills). Numbers increase if we consider the “Maiden England ’88” DVD (you end up with 11 songs from that era being played in 2012-2013) and the “LIve after death” 2LP (you end up with 10 songs played in the 2008 leg of the SBIT tour and 12 in the 2009 leg of the SBIT tour – 13 if you include Sanctuary).
On the other hand, if by era you take the number of songs off the album that was being promoted in 1985 and in 1988, we got 4 songs off “Powerslave” in 2008-2009 and 5 songs off “Seventh son of a seventh son” in 2012-2013. 😉
You sure you don’t get dizzy when you do that? 😀
See, half of Donington Live 1992 was in the Maiden England set in 2012-13. So they only need to drop The Prisoner, Seventh Son and Phantom for Tailgunner, Bring Your Daughter and Be Quick. And voilà, you’ve got something they can sell as an early 90s tour. If you can sell that sort of thing at all.
Sometimes I wonder if these Maiden England themes are really just mechanisms to simplify the choice of stage production? They’re never going to please everyone with whatever they arrange on the set list, anyway. Personally, I’d be willing to wait to see them onstage again if it means they’re working in the studio.
…which they won’t be. *sigh*
i LEARNED TO KNOW MAIDEN EARLY IN THE 90’S I HOPE THEY COME NEXT YEAR WITH THOSE SONGS THERE ARE F*CKING 100% MAIDEN LIKE EVERY SONG THEY DO LIVE………………UP THE IRONS
They aren’t going to do something that no one will come to see, they aren’t crazy. A ’90s themed tour, even a short one, would follow the pattern already started with the Early Days, SBIT, and Maiden England tours. Were the ’90s the best period for the band? No. But it doesn’t mean that they should be ignored either. Nothing from No Prayer’s been played since ’92, and the only songs from Fear that they’ve played since ’93 are the title track and ATSS, and ATSS only came back into the live set last year. Revisit the ’90s next year, then start on the next record for 2014. I’d be plenty happy with that.
‘Bring your daughter…. to the slaughter’ was played in 2003 (and boy how it rocked!) 😉
Yeah, I never really cared for that song on the album but I’ve really enjoyed it whenever I’ve seen it live.
I forgot about that, that was in the set list for the shows they did prior to DoD being released. Saw the live show from Rock am Ring in Germany on YouTube awhile back, it was in that set list. Wildest Dreams was the only new song they were doing.
I’d welcome it, that is IF they do a UK tour, it’s been far too long, and by that I mean not playing festival dates only, or 02 arena dates only, do it properly or not at all for British fans who missed out on Maiden England and the SBIT tour, stop such a focus on the US, they have been spoilt the last several years.
I’d rather see them in home turf than anywhere else, but we should not forget that they did their most succesful UK tour ever (in terms of ticket sales) in 2011, so it has not been that long. 😉
True, and plenty of countries (even continents) did not get to see the Maiden England tour at all.
I have mixed feelings about both albums, but I’d love to hear some of the songs like Run Silent, Run Deep and Mother Russia to hear how they stand up live. I’d love to hear Virus too which, correct me if I’m wrong, has never been played live with Bruce?
That’s true. Actually none of the songs you mention have ever been played live. Which pretty much means they never will be, since Maiden have never brought in songs that weren’t played on the original album tour. Not even Alexander The Great, despite popular demand. 🙂
Well there’s a tour in itself. The ‘First Time Live’ tour. Set list chosen by fan vote.
@Ade: That’s a really cool idea! I’d love it, but I’m not sure it would sell tickets. Actually the band got close to a fan-voted setlist in 1999 when they based the set on the Ed Hunter soundtrack that the fans voted for.
I fear you’re right with the ticket issue. Maybe it’s an idea for a ‘one off’ show when the boys DO decide to call it a day. Not that I ever want that day to come!
What the hell is wrong with everyone, personally, I think that fear of the dark is one of maidens best and be quick or be dead is the song that made me fall in love with the band. I would be thrilled to see them perform their music from this era!
It’s just a fact that the 90s is easily Maiden’s most controversial decade, meaning that the music and performances from this era is what the fans seem to disagree the most about. Commercially speaking, the 90s was Maiden’s lowest point ever, which is why a lot of people question the wisdom of basing a tour on it.
In any case, you’ll get Fear Of The Dark no matter what the tour concept is, that’s for sure! 🙂
Unless it is an Early Days tour… :p
@Ghost: As you know, with the cries of outrage the band received at dropping FOTD from that tour, it would be in the set if they did it over. 😀 After that point it became a 1980s song for all intents and purposes.
I think it will be an album tour next, but either way I hope they edit all the awful black and white blury camera angles out of the DVD of Donnington 92 if they insist on re-releasing it, if not I’d rather it be buried in time forever.
@Ziggy: I share your frustration with the Donington 92 footage… Completely awful stuff… But there’s no album tour next, since the band is going to tour in 2014 and Bruce says they’re not doing an album until 2015.
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There were some cracking tunes put together by the band in that era but not enough to tour on. You’ll get a few belters mixed in with the safe stuff we here on all tours. I’m okay with that but calling it a 90’s themed tour could actually hurt ticket sales given how it was received and compared to the eras it’s sandwiched between…