Ready for take off

Sitting outside the boozer on April 21st, reading my book, chugging a few Guinnesses, the sun was shining and I was in high spirits. For April 21st is National Maiden Day. And alas, me and the chaps had tickets to the flight of the century; Flight 666. Not just tickets; Shithouse had booked premier seats (essentially more arse room and a bit of space to stretch out and do double pedal on the floor).

Shithouse and Bandy turned up at the end of pint two, so we had time for another quick 150% of pintage before heading in for a £35 hot dog. The day was going shaggingly well. We also bumped into my mate Jawsome who had made a 10-mile journey on his own for the screening. All four of us were wearing different Eddie colours, along with the other 50 metallers in the vicinity. The look on the faces of the punters who had come for a quiet "rom com" with their partners was rather entertaining.

If you don't know or have been living in an arsehole for the last six months, the film is a rockumentary about the first leg of Maiden's "Somewhere Back In Time" tour - that's the one I went to at Twickenham and you didn't. In your face. Sorry. As you'd expect, it opens with Churchill's speech and quickly into "Aces High", filmed in Mumbai. Seeing tens of thousands of Indians going ballistic to Maiden is, to be honest, a sight to behold. We follow Pilot Bruce and the cartel aboard their Boeing 757 and hitting venues such as Costa Rica (affectionately referred to by one fan as "the ass of the world") and Argentina and at every show, they play with the ferocity and sheer bloody tightness of a band half their age. Nicko McBrain has the most insane ability to gallop a single pedal and Harris's bass strum sounds as natural as a heartbeat (I left that analogy in as it's literally the gayest, most rubbish thing I have ever written).

I'm not going to go into too much detail about this film as, if you're any kind of metal fan, you'd have heard about 20 reviews so far anyway. Quite simply, go and watch the fucking film. Buy it on DVD. And Blu-Ray. And VHS, Betamax, cassette, CD, 12-inch and minidisc. Watching this is like being at a Maiden show (without the flying bottles of piss and crying teenagers trying to escape the pit) but despite having been there, seeing them do this shit in the flesh, it still doesn't prepare you for the way the South Americans, Indians, etc. respond when the boys take the stage. I've never seen a band command pure adoration from a literally global audience.

Get this film. Then go and see Maiden anywhere you can because believe you me possums, you need them in your life.