Iron Maiden – Intercity Express Tour – 1990

October 2nd 1990 – De Montfort Hall

Supported by Wolfsbane

This concert support band was the superb, Wolfsbane, led by the charismatic Blaze Bayley (who incidentally would go on to become lead sing of Iron Maiden for a while in the mid 90s)

I guess Blaze knew he was supporting the god of rock with Bruce Dickinson leading Maiden and basically….went for it!

Wolfsbane had a few great tracks, “Loco”, “I like it Hot” and “Steel” and were a reasonable band playing nice metal music which had a good tune behind it. What set them apart were the on-stage antics of Blaze. He enjoyed to get involved with the crowd, strut around the stage, throw a pose or two….and when he’d warmed up, things would get interesting!

Tonight, he would climb the stage scaffold, no mean feat, in fact he got a round about 8-10 feet high (if my memory is with me at time of writing in 2020) and then proceed to “fly” to the speaker stack which wobble a bit!! Real fun to watch and listen to.

Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden had just release “No Prayer for the Dying” album with the two stand-out tracks being “Holy Smoke” and “Bring Your Daughter…To The Slaughter”, the latter being banned by the prudish BBC, which probably led to it making No.1 between Christmas and New Year 1990!

I was quite slow off the mark liking Iron Maiden, but had seen and enjoyed them at Monsters of Rock in 1988, so this was a good time to see them again for me.

They were also a band a lot of my mates were into, so a group of us went to this gig and some had a good old pogo at the front……..a couple of the more sensible fellows watched from a more central position.

As you can see from the ticket, I was with the sensible ones on the balcony!! Although I infiltrate the standing area after about 5 songs as I wasn’t great at sitting still in those days!

Bruce was on top form leaping around the stage, Blaze Bayley must have been in awe of the legend! It was a classic line up of Bruce Dickinson – vocals, Dave Murray – guitar, Steve Harris – bass, Nicko McBrain – drums. Janick Gers had come in on guitar to replace Adrian Smith.

Nicko kept the crowd entertained with his goading of the crowd and Murray and Harris crashed out strong guitar pieces all night.

The obligatory mechanical “Eddie” prowled the back of the stage and the great hits were all ploughed out to the expectant masses and a few late on pyros to finish off a great night.

For a balcony ticket, I’d sweated quite hard through this one (truth be told I was back on the balcony for the last half hour or so ;-))

I found this full concert recording of the night on YouTube which gives an idea of how powerful the gig was…

Set List

• Intro – 633 Squadron Music
• Tailgunner
• Public Enema Number One
• Wrathchild
• Die With Your Boots On
• Hallowed Be Thy Name
• 22, Acacia Avenue
• Holy Smoke
• The Assassin
• No Prayer For The Dying
• Hooks In You
• The Clairvoyant
• 2 Minutes To Midnight
• The Trooper
• Heaven Can Wait
• Iron Maiden
• Encore: The Number Of The Beast, Bring Your Daughter…To The Slaughter, Run To The Hills, Sanctuary