What is the story behind Iron Maiden’s Eddie mascot?
He’s popular music’s most recognised mascot, having adorned virtually all of the new wave of British heavy metal giants Iron Maiden‘s album covers, live stage shows, and seas of official merch.
Having morphed into a myriad of differing incarnations across the band’s nearly 50-year tenure, the ghoulish Eddie has hopped between dark alley killer, straight-jacketed loon, evil pharaoh, vengeful cyborg, and a malevolent dark cloud overlooking London with sinister glee. With such endless guises, Eddie looks set to stand as Iron Maiden’s ‘seventh’ member as long as they’re still cutting records.
Eddie’s history can be traced back to before Iron Maiden even had a single out. Initially made as a papier-mâché head used for a horror background prop that would spit blood as they played their eponymous track, pyrotechnics man Dave Beazley crafted a revised fibre-glass version boasting flashing eyes and the ability to breathe red smoke. With the team sporting thick east London accents, band and crew members requesting the head would often be heard calling out “‘ead”, triggering the memory of a morbid joke guitarist Dave Murray had known years back.
“A wife had a baby, but it was born with only a head and no body,” Murray said. “‘Don’t worry,’ says the doctor. ‘Bring him back in five years’ time, and we’ll probably have a body for him.’ So five years go by, and there’s Eddie the ‘Ead, as his parents have called him, sitting on the mantelpiece, when in walks his dad. ‘Son,’ he says, ‘today’s a very special day. It’s your fifth birthday, and we’ve got a very special surprise for you.’ ‘Oh no,’ says Eddie. ‘Not another fucking hat!'”
Thus, a legend was born. Signing with EMI, manager Rod Smallwood insisted on Eddie forming an essential feature of Iron Maiden’s visual identity from the word go. Impressed by his artwork for jazz pianist Max Middleton, Smallwood arranged a meeting with illustrator Derek Riggs and spotted an image in his portfolio of an embalmed entity sporting a mohawk for a mooted punk record. Adding more hair, the undead punk became Eddie the metalhead. Saving the gripping EC Comics style image for 1980’s debut Iron Maiden, Smallwood sought to drum up intrigue by depicting Eddie obscured by shadows for the cover of the preceding ‘Running Free’ single.
Before long, the character would lumber onto the stage, first played by Smallwood in a mask and leather jacket. From 1982’s The Beast on the Road tour, the elaborate ‘walk on’ Eddie began to invade the show, consisting of a performer on stilts and dressed according to Eddie’s conceptual fancy of the era. Bigger budgets brought in a massive 30-ft backdrop that would elevate into view from behind the band, emitting all manner of dry ice and sparking effects.
In a bizarre turn of events, Eddie found himself a prominent fixture of a certain facet of the British socio-political landscape, his scabrous grimace sharing an affectionate proximity with the poppy and St George’s flag in the nation’s cartoonish patriotic excesses. While he was charging the Light Brigade on 1983’s ‘The Trooper’ cover, he was also gleefully murdering Margaret Thatcher three years earlier for ‘Sanctuary’ and cooly observing all nations’ equal deserve of nuclear destruction on 1984’s ‘2 Minutes to Midnight’, sat cynically ontop a tank and pointing directly at the viewer.
While Eddie’s known for his bloodthirst, over the years, Iron Maiden have deployed their violent mascot as a bizarre agent of righteous justice. From a dark figure unveiling political failure to a vanquisher of greed, Eddie has throttled corrupt media mogul Robert Maxwell—father of Ghislaine—and sought to knock the Iraq War on the head by killing Al Gore and George W Bush in backing animated projects for their 2003 tour.
No one could have predicted Eddie’s success story. Marketing their upcoming Run For Your Lives World Tour with a stormy shot of him leathered up and brandishing an axe, it looks like Iron Maiden’s live revisit of their first nine albums will see Eddie return to his prior foundations as a sadistic slasher.
