Perhaps the biggest problem they faced was that Bruce Dickinson was facing a mini-crisis, or a slump. In both his own autobiography and in interviews about the album since, Bruce admitted that he had been completely burned out by the schedule the band had had over the recent years, and his ability to come up with material had been seriously compromised. The song ideas that he brought in for the new album had been based around acoustic instruments, as he felt at the time that the band had to make some changes to their sound if they were to remain relevant. The fact he came in with these radical ideas caught the band by surprise, and indeed Steve Harris was quoted in several interviews as saying they were ‘bollocks’. Steve admitted Bruce had suffered the most of their long touring schedule, but also rejected out of hand using any of the ideas Bruce had come in with. Bruce had even considered quitting at that point such was his reluctance to continue on.
Coming to the table as the saviour on the album was Adrian Smith. Adrian had often collaborated with Bruce and Steve on songs in the past, indeed some of Maiden’s best songs. With Bruce sidelined from the writing part, Adrian took on a much greater role, contributing three of the eight tracks on his own, and with Dave Murray helping out on one track as well, the album had its eight songs.
Though Bruce’s desire for change in the style of music the band produced was not carried forward, there was a significant change made by the band, as Dave and Adrian had been experimenting with guitar synthesisers during their down period, and for the first time on an Iron maiden album, they appeared heavily throughout the album that became Somewhere in Time.
It’s funny looking back on the kind of things some metal bands said they would ‘never do’ – Metallica would ‘never do a video for a single’, Iron Maiden would ‘never use keyboards’. Despite the fact they would do just that from their following album, the guitar synths here on Somewhere in Time added to the whole atmosphere of the album, and although the album was never meant to be a concept album, it is amazing how the songs seem to tie up to a slightly loose adaption of that. The opening track “Caught Somewhere in Time” does exactly that, and the mood set by the synths may well be different from barnstorming previous album openers like “Aces High” and “Where Eagles Dare” but it is no less effective in getting the album off on the right foot. Indeed, the opening of all of the tracks of the album is quite spectacular. The use of the synths mixes in perfectly with the guitars of both Adrian and Dave and gives these songs a unique sound in comparison to all the songs the bands had produced before this album, an even more melodic guitar sound than these two had achieved previously.
“Wasted Years” became the first single from the album, written by Adrian and becoming perhaps his best known and most recognisable Iron Maiden track. His intro riff to the song became the most played on guitar at our school during 1986 and 1987. Perhaps the best use of the guitar and guitar synth combination comes on his next song “Sea of Madness”, which switches easily between the two and also between the two moods of the song itself, in many ways giving the impression of the sea and the rolling swell such is the way the song also rises and falls in the same way. “Heaven Can Wait” is another of the best songs here, bursting with energy both musically and vocally with Bruce at the top of his form throughout, and with the crowd-inducing ‘whoa-oh-oh’ section in the middle that was perfect for when the song was played live and wanted to capture the crowd in the moment.
The second side opened with “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”, another of Steve’s songs based on films. The opening of the song finds Iron Maiden at their melodic best, just a beautiful serene way to open the track before blasting into the energetic dash for the line. This is followed by the second single from the album, Adrian’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”, brilliant in its simplicity yet technically terrific drumming and guitaring. “Deja-Vu” is the shortest song on the album and one that is often the most derided of the track on this album. In much the same way the “Quest for Fire” from the “Piece of Mind” album is often overlooked in any discussion on Iron Maiden songs, “Deja-Vu” sits apart from the discussion of the album in most conversations or interviews about the subject. It is not a bad song at all, but comparatively against some of the more brilliant tracks it seems a little out of its class.
Perhaps the piece de resistance is the closing track, “Alexander the Great”. Following on in the tradition of “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, “To Tame a Land” and “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Alexander the Great” loses nothing in comparison to those three masterpieces. Like those songs it is the longest on the album and is not only the perfectly majestic way to conclude the album, it creates such an atmosphere that it is difficult not to just flip the album over and start all over again.
All albums are new to you at some stage of your life, but this was the first Iron Maiden studio album that I got to experience from the actual time of its release rather than catching up on them all a year or more afterwards. It was towards the end of Year 11 for me in 1986, and this album eclipsed those final few months of the school year. Everything was about this album, every single nuance of every single song, knowing every single word within the first couple of days, burned into my brain. It was a life defining moment, in that everything I did during those months are all brought back to me whenever I listen to this album, and that listening to this album triggers those memories. I used to take my portable cassette player with me to school, and we would listen to the album during recess and lunch every day. I took it with me when we walked to our school sport, and we would all sing along for the whole walk there and the whole walk back. On one particular day the conversation came around to which song would you leave off if taping the album to a C90 cassette in order to keep it on one side, and in trying to explain that if you left off “Sea of Madness” that would achieve that, it instead became about me hating “Sea of Madness” and believing that initially it was the worst song on the album, before expanding that to becoming the worst song Iron Maiden had written, to being the worst song ever written period. An injustice that continues to be repeated to the present day.
So it is safe to say that this album had an amazing impact on me. The changes in using synths seemed to not go down well with some people, fearing the mid-80’s influence that was being used in popular music at the time would infiltrate the band’s music further down the track. Like all bands, Maiden’s sound did change over the years since in accordance with what music trends were appearing, but they have never lost that quintessential Maiden attributes, and that is also true here. While some experts were less enamoured by the changes after the previous three amazing albums, for me and those of us in our generation, the awesomeness of Somewhere in Time is never in question. The anthemic lyrics of “Wasted Years”, “Heaven Can Wait” and “Stranger in a Strange Land” equal the emotional payoff of “Caught Somewhere in Time” and “Sea of Madness” and “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner”. And when you have one of your best mates who gets stuck in an Ancient History exam, and to get out of it he simply expands on writing down the lyrics of “Alexander the Great”, and gets 3/10 for the essay, you know Iron Maiden are still being the most awesome band in the world.
Somewhere in Time is still a landmark in heavy metal music, because it showed that you could experiment with your sound without losing the essence of your music, and you could still produce a blockbuster album even without one of your main songwriters being able to contribute to it.
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