Eddie The Head’s secret life outside of Iron Maiden
“Tea?” Eddie The Head, mascot and, let’s be real here, frontman of Iron Maiden, asks as he strolls into the kitchen of his palatial Shrewsbury estate.
I dawdle with my answer, head still craning back to take in his hallway. I’m not quite sure what I expected; this isn’t exactly the fifth home of a zombie/rock icon/mythical being I’ve been in this week, but it certainly wasn’t this.
This is a man who’s been on record sleeves with a freshly murdered Margaret Thatcher at his feet (“Mum didn’t speak to me for a week”), as a lobotomised mental patient (“You wouldn’t get away with that today!”) and as the puppetmaster of Satan himself (“Nightmare to work with. That much sulfur, you can imagine the pong”). Yet there’s something surprisingly tasteful about his home decor.
The walls are a lush green, decorated with a subtle gold brocade. A tiled floor, polished mahogany steps up the main staircase and art covering the walls. Mostly originals, too, a Kent Monkman work overlooking the doorway to the front room. A lesser spotted Milton Avery halfway up the stairs. Nothing that depicts the man himself’s mind, until you zero in on an A3 canvas taking pride of place in the hall to the kitchen. The colours, the soft focus, no, that can’t be…
“Yup. Hockney’s just as much of a gent as they say,” Eddie says, “Though he nearly changed his mind when I said I’d quit fags 12 years ago.”
Clearly, the country life suits him, I remark as we take a seat on a sofa the size and presumed price of a large car. He shrugs his shoulders, through the black T-shirt clinging to his literally rail-thin frame, I can see the sinewy muscles slide over each other under his Pepperami coloured, vaguely translucent skin.
“The guys in Maiden are just the same. Everyone changes, and the whole rock star lifestyle gets a bit try-hard if you’re doing it past 40. Plus, I haven’t actually been on the road with them since the ’90s, even corpses gotta get hobbies!” he says with a low, grinding laugh
I seize the opportunity to segue into the main thrust of our interview, Eddie’s passions and pastimes, like I’m being a professional. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remember that he’s just as aware of what the interview is about as I am and wants to get it started as soon as possible. I’ve been played by a pro, and I love it.
What does Eddie from Iron Maiden do away from music?
“These days I do live somewhat separately from the band,” Eddie says, absent-mindedly picking at his left thumbnail. It comes away with a wet snap, and he rests it on his saucer. We both pretend it didn’t happen. “Of course, we all work out the aesthetic for the records together, then they get to work on the music and I get all my vision boards out, all that art school crap,” he says with a broad grin. His humble nature aside, he lives for this stuff. Well. Sort of. You get what I mean.
“I guess that’s what got me started on my journey to art,” he says thoughtfully. “The desire to… Not to be taken seriously, because I’m really proud of what I did with Iron Maiden.” He’s not kidding either. As he searches for the right words, his closed eyelids barely dimming the red glow of his eyes, I realise we’re sitting under an enormous canvas depicting the cover to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. “It’s more to be my own man. I mean, I work with Bruce Dickinson. You learn the value of doing your own thing pretty quick when you know a guy who wakes up one morning, goes ‘I’m going to be an airline pilot’, and fucking does it!”
We talk more as he gets up to show me the rest of the house. Standard rock star fare, pool, garage, a home theatre with an extensive collection of Blu-Rays (one can imagine there are few people in this world who value physical media quite like a man who made his name on album covers). I get the feeling that Eddie’s wanted to show all this to someone for a while, and I put it to him as we enter the room consisting entirely of George A Romero props and merchandise (“He just gets us, y’know?”)
“Nah, nah, people see it,” he says mildly, the Leyton accent the band originated with flitting into the conversation for the first time. “I don’t want that… Whasisface, Howard Hughes’ life, pissing in jars and never going outside. What I do want is… To create my own universes. To imagine something brilliant and bring it to life.”
I put it to him that Iron Maiden have been doing that for forty years now, creating universes and inviting their fans to live it with them, and Eddie The Head just smiles contentedly.
As if he knows that he’s the heart of what makes Iron Maiden so much more than just a metal band, but a genuine, worldwide phenomenon.