Having been formed in 1975, it took over three years and numerous band member changes for Iron Maiden to get to a position that they decided to record their first demo. Four guitarists, three lead vocalists, two drummers and a keyboardist had all walked through the band before they got to December 1978. Steve Harris had of course remained the mainstay, alongside guitarist Dave Murray, who had also had his own short vacation from the band before a change of mind brought him back into the fray. All of these changes are discussed at length in the excellent band documentary “The History of Iron Maiden, Part 1” released in 2005. By the time the band reached the winter of 1978, Harris and Murray were joined as members in Iron Maiden by lead vocalist Paul Di’Anno, drummer Doug Sampson and guitarist Paul Cairns, also known as Mad Mac. According to Sampson, Cairns did not fit in the band properly and left after three months. Cairns himself stated that the band dismissed him as they did not like his stage performance. It is interesting that Cairns is generally uncredited as having appeared on the recording of “The Soundhouse Tapes”, with interviews on the History DVD cutting out any reference to him. Despite this, it is acknowledged that Cairns did indeed play on the demo, though given he had left the band some time before it was released as “The Soundhouse Tapes” there is some understanding as to why his name does not appear on a release promoting the band as they approached their first record contract.
Harris had decided the band needed a demo tape in order to distribute to venues in order to gain gigs, but given that most of the band members also worked day jobs, and that they little money in order to fund the project, they would have to find a way to do it, but without sacrificing quality for cheapness. The band decided to record at Spaceward Studios, Cambridge after hearing a demo tape recorded there by former vocalist Dennis Wilcock's band, V1. In the History doco, Harris says “The only way we could afford it at the time was to go on New Year’s Eve, because no one else wanted to then. We were gonna kip in the back of the van [but], because it was snowing, it was so bloody cold. We were in this pub and Paul pulled this young nurse. She invited us all back to kip on her floor. She only had a bedsit, but we were very grateful.”
The two day session cost the band £200, but when they asked for the master tape, they were told they would have to part with another £50 to do so, which they didn’t have. They instead took the tape that had been recorded for them, but when Steve came back the following week with the £50 required, they found that the master had been wiped. Thus, as they were unable to create the editing and embellishing they had been hoping to do, they instead had to settle for what they had done on those two days.
The band recorded four songs during those sessions - "Prowler", "Invasion", "Strange World" and "Iron Maiden". In Mick Wall’s excellent and contemporaneous biography of the band “Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills”, Harris is quoted, "We didn't know what to expect, going into the studio for the first time. We just hoped the engineer was gonna be good enough to record us, and that was it, really. We just went in there with a naïve attitude and, as it happens, it was pretty good. The songs were very together already. We didn't have to arrange much. They were very tight, 'cause we were doing them live all the time. We knew exactly what we needed to do. It was just a question of whether we could record it all in time. But we went in and the tracks went down really quick. I think we did most of them in the first take."
The most famous story of this demo tape is when it came to Neal Kay who was the main man at the Bandwagon Soundhouse in Kingsbury who, after almost blowing it with Steve Harris (a great story retold on the History doco) began playing the tape heavily, which led to the song “Prowler” topping his Soundhouse charts, which then was being published in Sounds magazine. This helped lead to the band being found by manager Rod Smallwood, and through him their first record deal with EMI in December 1979, a year after those recording sessions.
Between this time however, while waiting to sign their EMI contract, the band decided to self-release their demo, for a not unobvious reason. As Harris said, “because everywhere we'd go we'd do really well at the gigs, and then afterwards there'd be, like, all these fans asking where they could buy one of our records and when we told 'em there wasn't any yet they couldn't believe it. They'd seen the charts in Sounds and a lot of 'em just assumed we must already have a record deal of some kind, but we didn't. Not then. So then, they'd be, like, 'Well, where can we get a copy of the tape?' And I think that's when we really got the idea of putting the Spaceward demo out as an actual record."
Though the demo tape contained four songs, the band decided to only release three, with “Iron Maiden” being the Side A of the EP, and “Invasion” and “Prowler” on the B Side. “Strange World”, which along with the eponymous track and “Prowler” would eventually end up the debut album, was considered ‘not up to quality’ in its current recorded version, and was left off as a result.
When you listen to these three tracks compared to the versions that came later on, there are some noticeable differences. Which of course in the long run makes this EP worthy of owning or at least listening to. They are rawer in both music and vocals, with a different timing throughout. Doug Sampson’s drumming gives them that slightly different feel from the versions that would appear later, but are no less impressive or enjoyable. Di’Anno’s vocals, even though they had been performing all of these songs for some time at their live gigs, are still developing into what they would become. And, when you listen to it, for a demo tape, you have to say that it is amazingly impressive. Think about the demo tapes you have made with your first band. You couldn’t possibly have released it in this format. Iron Maiden, or course, were a different breed even then.
The band decided to press 5000 copies of “The Soundhouse Tapes”, and had them for sales through mail order and their fan club. The demand was outrageous, and retail chains tried to order quantities of up to 20,000 each. However, the band and management refused to budge. As Smallwood said "we could have really cashed in at that point. It was our record, not EMI's, and we could have made enough to clear our debts, if we'd wanted to, maybe got it in the charts, even. But there was just no way. It really was something special for the true die-hard Maiden fans, and we'd already made that quite clear. If we'd changed our minds, just to get our hands on a bit of cash, it would have been selling out the kids who'd gone to all the trouble to send in for one of the original 5,000 copies. We thought, 'No, we'll wait until we can do it properly with EMI.'
I suppose what I would like to say now is that, yes, I own a copy of the original “The Soundhouse Tapes” EP on vinyl. As I’m sure you are aware, I do not. I have a copy of it digitally, which I have burned to a CD and keep in my collection that way. I have often trawled through Discogs, and found copies for sale for about £1900, which is about A$3300... and that’s when I stop dreaming.
If you are a Maiden fan, you have heard this EP at least once. You may not be as obsessive about it as others, and that’s okay. Because being a fan isn’t about owning the most stuff from that band, or listening to the most stuff released by that band, or collecting the most memorabilia or bootlegs of that band. You don’t even have to know the history of the band. It’s about loving the music.
However!...I love this kind of stuff, the history and the releases and all of those things. I don’t always enjoy them, but this has always been a really interesting period of history of the band that intrigues me thoroughly. The changes to the band. The travelling around together in the Green Goddess. Those early gigs. All leading up to the recording of this demo and then to this EP. It’s all fascinating, the time of the band when they were still poor and working gig to gig, hoping to pull off something special and maybe get a recording contract, and then maybe get a few more fans. Looking back from this point in time, it's still hard to believe that they could have been that small, just beginning to explode.
So here it is, “The Soundhouse Tapes”. Yes, it’s worth a listen. And yes, it is interesting to hear Paul Cairns on guitar even though it is never mentioned anyway. And hear Doug Sampson on drums before he was forced to give the role away. And hear Paul Di’Anno before he truly commanded his own personality. It’s worth a listen, and to think about its place in history. Because without it, Iron Maiden may never have traversed to the peaks they now reside at.
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