Location: Beogradski sajam / Belgrade / Serbia
Concert date: 13.03.2007
Attendance: 12000
Ticket price: 3000 Din – 5000 Din
Iron Maiden. Lately everybody’s been talking and writing about them non-stop. The world is clearly starving for a big name on the metal throne, especially after Metallica’s sorry (self-)toppling from the top! Luckily, Iron Maiden is a name that undoubtedly deserves the title of ruler. They cling to the rules the greats laid down like a drunk clinging to a fence. English tradition.
As luck would have it, one of the few March concert dates in Europe in 2007 landed in Belgrade, which is within easy reach for a true Iron Maiden fan from Slovenia. The hot, unpredictable Balkans are always a tempting destination for a trip, and so there we were at the border, where the Serbian customs officer spotted us right away: “Are you journalists?!?!” Apparently it was written all over our faces. He didn’t hesitate over his routine duties, just handed our documents back with a friendly smile and sent us off with an incredibly hospitable line that gave us wings: “Eee, pa onda se lepo provedite!” (Well then, have a great time!)
Even at the rest stops, the parking lots outside the roadside inns and the gas stations themselves were boiling over. Hordes of metal fanatics were huddling together, raising proper holiday hell and cheerfully giving themselves over to intoxicating sounds and alcoholic derivatives of various origins. A real metal feast was in the making. Iron Maiden back in Serbia after 25 years!
Same outside the hall. Unbelievable! Tight columns with no visible beginning or end looked like a gluttonous giant caterpillar that would devour even its own shadow if it could. Where on earth were all these blissfully happy “poor souls” going to squeeze in?
And as always with the unpredictable Balkans, this time too there were moments of real shock, which all of us invited photographers felt at the Beogradski sajam that day. The organizers had set the safety barrier so close to the main stage that the gap between them wasn’t even 1.5 meters! So, after an official notice citing safety reasons, all of us photographers present were relocated to a shooting spot more than 50 meters away, far, far from any position that would allow a photographer/journalist to work optimally and deliver results of the desired and required quality. Damn it all.
How could they not have seen this coming? It’s well known that at Iron Maiden shows the security drags the passed-out fans out of the wild front rows and douses them with water! It’s become a tradition at Iron Maiden concerts, going all the way back to Dickinson’s return to the band in 1999. We went in a little before 8 PM! The hall was packed down to the last available micrometer, the air thoroughly used up, dry and hot. How would people survive this long night?
Right at 8 PM the opening act took the stage. Here again was Steve Harris’s naughty little girl, daughter Lauren Harris, who clearly didn’t inherit any of her dad’s lofty musical gifts. Her band’s lineup has stayed unchanged since December 2006, and the foursome warmed up the crowd for exactly half an hour. A timeline clocked to the dot. Third-rate glam rock certainly didn’t belong in front of Iron Maiden, but it’s interesting what it means when you carry the surname of Iron Maiden’s bassist and boss. It’s enough that people obey and follow your orders. So little Lauren, utterly insignificant on the world rock map, got the entire hall on its feet as if for a joke, singing the standard football stadium anthems in unison.
9 PM! An intro that instantly conjured the atmosphere of war, total blackout, silhouettes of ruins, barricades, a battlefield strewn with corpses… and then Different World jolts us awake. The stage ignites, people go nuts, infernal flames engulf the hall and the sextet strikes with all the artillery at their disposal. Iron Maiden devoted the opening stretch to presenting their current studio album “A Matter Of Life And Death” (2006). A well-oiled machine started grinding. Fans were losing their sanity, and when you looked down from the balcony where we stood at the far end toward the stage, the hall looked like a cauldron of water boiling at 100 degrees!
Dickinson first addressed the audience after the third song, and in his typical rabble-rousing style he instantly won the crowd over. In his greeting he thanked the fans who had come from the countries of southern Europe, and of course he didn’t forget to mention Slovenia, though Bruce slipped up a bit when he called Belgrade the capital of Serbia and Montenegro. The hall forgave him, and to be fair, that country changes its name as often as a tree changes its leaves, so the average European can barely keep up.
Wrathchild (“Killers”, 1981) and The Trooper (“Piece Of Mind”, 1983) followed, with Dickinson again going theatrically wild with the English flag, left and right, up and down. The man is quick and nimble like an arrogant ape, loaded with so much energy that no tungsten filament could handle it. Flying Bruce!
Then the pace cools off with a return to “A Matter Of Life And Death”! How harsh the conditions in the hall were that night is shown by what Bruce Dickinson did during The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg: he left the stage, grabbed a glass of water backstage, carefully wrapped a towel around his neck so it wouldn’t cool down, then picked up a long glass tube and took in some fresh air, filling his body with oxygen. Obviously a well-rehearsed routine based on the singer’s experience from past tours. “Ovo je pravi pakao!” (This is real hell!) was no idle remark from one of the fans present. And just like that, we’re halfway through the show.
And here comes the “number of the beast”! A tune that put the crowd back on its feet. The mood kept building through Fear Of The Dark, and the peak was captured in Run To The Hills, where the hall exploded as one beyond all empirical dimensions and all you could see below you was a churning sea of bodies… Heads, arms and legs flew through the air… as if the devil were stirring a boiling soup with a giant ladle, that’s how the bodies of the poor fans spun and tossed about! It was like a battlefield! The crowd sang the verses as if in a trance, Dickinson fired up the audience with his trademark “Scream for me Belgrade!!!!”, and the song Iron Maiden announced the end of the regular set. The highlight, of course, was once again Eddie. This time a tank rose above the drums. The hatch opens, and out peer the evil little eyes of an evil monster, looking through binoculars to see whether all the shells hit their sacrificial target. Smoke was actually pouring out of the tank’s barrel!
For the encore the boys sawed through Two Minutes To Midnight (“Powerslave”, 1984) and The Evil That Man Do (“Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son”, 1988) in their usual manner, and closed the show with the song they probably play best of all: Hallowed Be Thy Name (“Number Of The Beast”, 1982). And that was the end.
A concert lasting just an hour and a half. People robbed of minutes. A disgrace. On top of that, the sound in the hall was bad, something Iron Maiden shouldn’t be able to get away with after all these years, not even in their dreams. People robbed of decent sound! The sad fact is that over the years they simply forget about the fans. They keep raising their prices and offering less and less. So the setlist was absolutely too short, not to mention worn out and predictable. What’s going on in your heads, Iron Maiden? Did you forget how to play your rich repertoire? Where’s the “Somewhere in Time” album? Where’s any other song from “Powerslave” besides the faded Two Minutes To Midnight?
Pure routine. They came, gave their bare minimum, took the money and “ciao comrades”! Rational. As long as the folks go crazy, everything’s fine. And truly, the folks do go crazy at an Iron Maiden show. And Iron Maiden are a corporate monster that just keeps growing and growing. So Iron Maiden haven’t burned out, but they did set the Beogradski sajam on fire, like distinguished English gentlemen who accidentally dropped the match while lighting a cigar. In other words, without any strain or an atom of surplus energy. Just the essence. An essence that is great and, after all these years, venerable, but not eternal! Let them bring back at least a pinch of the spontaneity and wit of the eighties when they visit the Bežigrad stadium in June, though demanding that from “metal moguls” is madness, or, to put it mildly, a utopia.
Setlist
1. Different World
2. These Colours Don’t Run
3. Brighter Than A Thousand Suns
4. Wrathchild
5. The Trooper
6. The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg
7. For The Greater Good Of God
8. The Number Of The Beast
9. Fear Of The Dark
10. Run The Hills
11. Iron Maiden
—encore—
12. Two Minutes To Midnight
13. The Evil That Man Do
14. Hallowed Be Thy Name
