IRON MAIDEN Guitarist ADRIAN SMITH Recalls His Return to IRON MAIDEN: “I Started Playing the Guitar Riff for ‘Wicker Man’ and Away We Went”

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Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith recently talked to Fozzy front-man Chris Jericho on the Talk Is Jericho podcast. Smith talked Maiden live shows from the props to the set list, shared the songs he enjoys playing most, the ones that are a bit challenging, and how Maiden adapted the music to fit their three-guitar approach when he and Bruce Dickinson rejoined the band in 1999. He also remembered the circumstances that brought both he and Dickinson back to Iron Maiden, the band’s reaction to Dickinson‘s cancer scare, what happened when Johnny Cash turned up at an Iron Maiden soundcheck, and how he and Dave Murray ended up playing with a bunch of other musicians in the Hear n’ Aid charity record recorded in 1986.

Recounting his return to Iron Maiden he remembers: Bruce approached me in the mid-’90s. He’d written some songs with Roy Z; around the “Accident Of Birth” album, at that time. So, I really liked what they were doing, and I just contributed a few songs and it went off from there for the next three-four-five years. Then they wanted Bruce to come back. Blaze Bayley was fired from the band, I was playing with Bruce, so there was something in the air about me coming back, and I thought ‘Maybe I’ll just do one tour or come home after set.[laughs]”

“If you would have asked me 10 years before, I’d say ‘No, I would probably never do it….’ but things change. As you get older, you get wiser. I thought it might be nice just to round it off. Again, Steve (Harris / bass) does come off with some wacky ideas that first you think are not going to work. So he suggested to the guys, ‘Why don’t we have three guitars?’ and you can imagine what the rumors were when he said that: LynyrdMaiden [laughs]. But I joined up and we went up to Portugal to write some songs, and I had the song ‘Wicker Man’ the riff and some ideas, and I started playing that, and away we went. And then we just never looked back, really.”

Head over this location to listen to the full podcast episode, and peek below to enjoy a collection of images we scored during last year’s North America run of The Legacy of the Beast Tour. Up the Irons!

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