'Bring him back in five years time, and we'll probably have a body for him'. "A wife had a baby, but it was born with only a head and no body. According to guitarist Dave Murray the name was also inspired by an old joke: The band's bassist and founding member Steve Harris states that the name "Eddie" comes from the original mask being referred to as "The Head", which sounded like "Ead" in the band members' London accent. After this initial incarnation, Beazley constructed a larger mask out of fibreglass, equipped with flashing eyes and the ability to release red smoke from its mouth. At the end of their live set, during the "Iron Maiden" song, a fish tank pump was used to squirt fake blood out of the mask's mouth, which typically covered their then-drummer Doug Sampson. According to Beazley, the original mask was a papier-mâché mould of his own face, which was then used in the band's backdrop, consisting of lights and the band's logo. The first version of Eddie was a mask made by an art student who was friends with Dave "Lights" Beazley, then in charge of lighting, pyrotechnics and other effects for Iron Maiden's live show. Although he is occasionally described as "zombie-like" in the press, Eddie assumes a different guise relating to the themes of individual albums and their corresponding world tours, and has appeared as a cyborg, an Egyptian mummy and a lobotomised mental patient, amongst others. Originally a papier-mâché mask used in Iron Maiden's stage backdrop, the band transferred the name "Eddie" from the mask to an illustration by Derek Riggs, which was used as the band's debut album cover. On top of this, Eddie features in all of the band's concerts, as well as in the first-person shooter video game, Ed Hunter, the mobile game, Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast and a pinball game with the same name in 2018. He is a perennial fixture of the group's artwork, appearing in all of their album covers (as well as most of their singles) and in their merchandise, which includes T-shirts, posters and action figures. It was up to me to interpret it.Eddie (also known as Eddie the Head) is the mascot for the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. There were kabuki masks and tattoos, Japanese water dragon. Artist Mark Wilkinson told us that Steve Harris emailed him pages of imagery for reference: “There were samurai warriors and creatures from Japanese oni mythology - ogres with one or more horns growing out of their heads, plus an extra set of fangs. Maintaining the stark black backdrop from The Book Of Souls - with an expression and posture echoing Killers, where TBOS echoed the debut sleeve - our hero manifests in terrifying Samurai form, ready to captivate a new generation of wide-eyed youth. With an extra pair of fangs poking through bloody gums, battered metallic battledress, copious bloodstaining and an arsenal of weaponry at hand, Senjutsu is Eddie at his most flat-out bloodthirsty, shit-scary. No wonder the box set also included a seventeen-inch poster of the image. However, in the Senjutsu Super Deluxe edition, the Blu-Ray cover of the epic Writing On The Wall animated video adds a giant Samurai Eddie flashing his great big sword, as well as the rest of the Biker Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There are few more metal images than the Grim Reaper on a motorbike surrounded by flying eagles. Bursting through a copy of the Mirror carrying the tragic news of the R101 disaster (the subject of the song), Eddie reaches to grab the stricken airship out of the clouds, as the vast shadow of long-time Maiden sleeve art cameo the Grim Reaper surveys his grim handiwork. His mane of neon green fibre-optic hair is pretty fetching, too.Įddie’s first head-and-shoulders cover portrait since 1980, Mark Wilkinson’s Mayan Ed for The Book Of Souls is a focused triumph, our tribal-scarred hero peering out of a jet-black background, leaving behind the cluttered tableaux of recent years to reassert the snarling menace and attitude that first made us fall in love with the mad old bastard.įor a limited Record Store Day picture disc gatefold, Maiden turned to Hervé Monjeaud, the French artist who redesigned Derek Riggs’ Maiden England video sleeve for its 2013 DVD reissue, for the Empire Of The Clouds release. Being sucked into a computer universe seemingly works wonders on our hero’s teeth, displaying a straighter and whiter set of gnashers here than we've ever seen in Eddie's 'ead before. For Speed Of Light, the first single from Maiden's sixteenth studio album, Eddie was reimagined as a digi-hopping game invader, popping up in all manner of classic era video game archetypes as he battled his way through til the bitter end.
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