The final Iron Maiden-related album to be released in the 1980s was Adrian Smith’s first solo venture. And boy was it different!
Silver And Gold
Produced by Stephen Stewart-Short
Released September 1989
Who’s that singer? It’s Adrian Smith, that’s who! We all knew he was one of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, but the fact that his voice was so good had only been hinted at with the Wasted Years single B-side Reach Out in 1986, where Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson was relegated to background vocals. There’s something of Bryan Adams and Bruce Springsteen about Smith’s guttural but tuneful singing, and it was time to let it loose.
Smith’s first solo album provides a bridge between Maiden in the 1980s, the era of hard rock and heavy metal that they ruled, and Maiden in the more challenging climate of the 1990s.
Iron Maiden had decided to take a year off in the wake of their hugely successful Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son album and tour in 1988, and Smith saw a window of opportunity to indulge a different side of his musicality. It was a watershed moment, and there would be no way back to the Maiden that fans knew and loved in the 1980s.
Click here to read about the end of Maiden’s classic era!
In part because of encouragement from the Maiden camp, Smith had started completing song ideas that he didn’t necessarily think would work for Maiden. Wasted Years on the Somewhere In Time album in 1986 showed the way, and in 1989 Smith decided to take things to their musical conclusion with the aid of old Urchin cohorts Andy Barnett and Dave Colwell. The Silver And Gold title track had started with the 1985 one-off side project The Entire Population Of Hackney, and it was now embellished and joined by a batch of new songs.
Adrian Smith fronts his ASAP, the solo project that was designed to allow him to get some of his more commercial songwriting out of his system while Iron Maiden were on hiatus.
The band was named ASAP (short for Adrian Smith And Project), after nearly ending up as the much more amusing Adrian’s Wall, and consisted of Barnett and Colwell on guitars alongside Smith, Urchin alumni Richard Young on keyboards, Robin Clayton on drums, and none other than Ringo‘s son Zak Starkey on drums.
In other words, a very good band.
The Lion is a fine opening track, albeit of a distinctly American type. Indeed, the whole ASAP enterprise sounds like a conscious effort to jive with the hard rock that was popular in America in the late 1980s. The competent production by Stephen Stewart-Short is reminiscent of the sound of bands like Whitesnake and Def Leppard at the time. It might not have been cynical – after all, Smith had long wanted to do something more commercially inclined than his Iron Maiden day job – but it certainly sounds cynical in retrospect.
The title track Silver And Gold glides along nicely, but the band soon runs out of steam. The songwriting is simply not up to the best standard of that day’s commercial hard rock, and many of the lyrics are cliché-ridden second rate examples of typical late 1980s sentiments, wallowing in the tough life “out in the jungle called the city” and encouraging you to “run with your dream right to the end, your spirit flies on eagle’s wings”.
Adrian Smith emerged as a bit of a solo force with Iron Maiden’s Somewhere In Time in 1986, even singing a single B-side, and that period of experimentation led inevitably to his first solo album in 1989.
The only other songs on the album to qualify are After The Storm and Blood On The Ocean, but none of the tracks mentioned are more than pretty good. At the same time there are truly terrible pop-rock tunes present, like Wishing Your Life Away and Kid Gone Astray. The latter certainly had a pertinent title…
Smith’s project is very sombre and serious, a clear attempt to impress critics and record buyers. And as such it is very much unlike his Maiden companion Bruce Dickinson’s debut solo album Tattooed Millionaire (1990), which was made at about the same time.
The performances are strong throughout Silver And Gold, and the real joy of the record is hearing Smith sing. The next time he produced what amounts to a solo album, Psycho Motel’s State Of Mind (1995), it would be with a different singer handling the vocals, and featuring hard rock of a very different style.
Ironically, Adrian Smith decided (or commercial circumstance forced him) not to tour with ASAP, and he headed back to Maiden at the start of 1990 for a new album and tour. He would be out of his regular band within a matter of weeks, but in the meantime ASAP was no more.
Despite the performances, the first ever Maiden solo project by someone still in the band is a letdown. In the shadow of Iron Maiden the album is very clearly inferior, but even when taken as an independent project with a completely different aim and aesthetic, ASAP is disappointing.
Christer’s verdict: 2/6
6/6 Masterpiece
5/6 Great
4/6 Good
3/6 OK
2/6 Disappointing
1/6 Crap
Maiden Revelations 
Silver and Gold way better then No Prayer , i love that album
For me its a 10 / 10 .
About time there was some real difference of opinion here! I have a feeling that’s gonna be a lot more common as we get into the 1990s. 😉
Would tend to agree with your review Christer. Bought it when it came out but it never got played all that much. Psycho Motel on the other hand…
I remember seeing the video for Silver And Gold and never bothering to buy it. At 12 years old, I was obviously not in the target audience. But even now, at 37, I have to honestly say that I don’t care for it, despite the obvious quality of the singing and playing. Love Adrian’s voice!
Alan, I wholeheartedly agree. I am a massive fan of Adrian Smith, but I think “Silver and gold” is, by far, his weakest effort.
Adrian had big ideas for this album, some of which we hear in the pre “Somewhere in Time” concert with Nicko and other friends , joining Bruce at the end of the show. But production is too commercial, and songs like “Silver and gold” , which “Live in London” sounds incredible , passes unnoticed .