Gig #2 - 16/06/00: Metal 2000 at Earls Court

The year 2000 is a perfect storm. We have survived the millenium bug, and in this brand new century myself and my friends are 18 years old, finishing school, leaving home and moving to the city. We have our first proper girlfriends, we're having all sorts of new experiences, the world is opening up and life is a great big party. Unlikely as it feels, somehow we are technically grown-ups, and the feeling of freedom is amazing.

Appropriately, Iron Maiden have apparently got the message, and, determined to live up to their unknown role as my very own musical avatar, have thrown themselves headfirst into this climate of change, optimism and exciting new beginnings. Things have changed since our trip to the Barrowlands a couple of years ago; in February 1999, singer Blaze Bayley is unceremoniously given his marching orders from the band and his illustrious predecessor, a certain Bruce Dickinson, returns to the fold, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, whose departure in 1988 had heralded an undeniable decline in the quality of the band's output. We feel bad for Blaze, but there's no doubt that Maiden has got its real voice back, and this new triple-guitar attack promises great things. After a short 'greatest hits' trek in the U.S. and Europe (noticeably avoiding a gig in the United Kingdom), nominally in support of mediocre computer game Ed Hunter, the band hit the studio in Paris to record what they keep on telling everyone is absolutely definitely not a reunion album.

We wait impatiently, spending weeks on Rass's fancy new dial-up internet downloading dodgy-quality live recordings of Bruce singing The Clansman. It sounds ace. With bulletin boards and online fan groups in their infancy, rumours swirl online. The new album will be called Majesty of Gaia! The first single is to be Heaven's Gate!  Needless to say, this turns out to be utter bollocks. By March 2000, genuine details of the new album start appearing through official sources. It is actually going to be called Brave New World. There's a new producer, Kevin Shirley. They have recorded mostly live in the studio, a new way of doing things. There are to be ten songs on the album, including some with orchestrations by a guy called Jeff Bova. Derek Riggs has done the cover. The lead single is to be The Wicker Man and will be released at the start of May! As you can imagine, this is all very exciting. The song debuts on The Radio One Rock Show, and is followed by special guest Kerrang! editor Phil Alexander tearing apart presenter Mary Ann Hobbes' assertion that the reunion is entirely nostalgia-based. Far away, in a bedroom in Auchenblae, myself, Erskine and our new friend Mac are joyously taking in every note. The soaring vocals - Bruce is back; he's really back! And the solo! How damn good is it to have Adrian Smith back in the band?! I am of course taping the show, and in the coming weeks I listen to the song a million times, dissecting every part of it, learning every word and every note, assessing how it fits into the gigantic pantheon that is Iron Maiden's back catalogue.

Brave New World is significant in another way; it is the first album I can recall leaking online prior to release. Yes, with the brand new internet, every song makes its way on to a thing called Napster weeks before it comes out! And with Rass's insanely fast dial-up connection, it only takes several days to download a single song in absolutely terrible quality! As such, over the next few weeks we manage to download a few entire songs and several other short snippets. The title track blows my mind. So does Fallen Angel, which seems like an awesome cross between Somewhere in Time and Piece of Mind in flavour, and contains a Janick solo so good that some people aren't quite convinced it's actually him. However, one of the drawbacks of living just on the cusp of the digital revolution is that no-one actually has an MP3 player yet, nor even a CD burner. As such, we hook the computer up to a tape-deck and record these low-quality files onto cassette, which, as you can imagine, really does wonders for the already severely compromised sound quality. Still, alongside the Wicker Man single it tides us over until the actual album release date a couple of weeks later.

Conveniently, release day falls during a period of study leave, so myself, Erskine, Rass, Len and Mac travel up to Aberdeen and stay with my brother so we can get the album as soon as the shops open at 9AM on Monday morning. Having picked it up (CD and double picture discs all round, naturally), we head straight back to my bro's and give the whole thing a joyous listen through. Everyone has different opinions and favourites. Erskine loves Blood Brothers. I go crazy for The Thin Line Between Love and Hate. The production is bright and fresh compared to the garbled low-bitrate napster mp3s we have been listening to up until now. Earnest discussions are had as we listen through the album a second time. Do some of these songs sound like they could have been written with Blaze in mind? Who plays all those solos in Thin Line? Are they actually all Dave?! All in all, it is an extremely successful trip, apart from the bit where an over-excited Erskine manages to tip over the massive sideboard in my brother's living room causing minor devastation which fortunately doesn't result in a single fatality.

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A few days later, we leave home. Our final exams are finished and school is officially out forever. No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers, dirty looks. "Don't worry," my dad had said to me a few months previously. "When you finish school, I won't be kicking you out straight away. You'll have a few weeks to get your stuff together." He was half-joking, but in the event I leave just days after my last exam. Erskine comes round to my house in Auchenblae, and we cram as much of my stuff as possible into his blue Citroen ZX and drive up to the flat Mac has secured for us in Aberdeen. At one time it had probably been a really nice family flat, but by the time we move in it is in what might optimistically be termed "a state of disrepair". We aren't allowed to open any of the windows because the hinges are all broken so they would fall out. This isn't actually overly problematic because the the heating doesn't actually work, plus the pilot light in the boiler goes out constantly so if you want hot water for any reason you have to climb up a ladder into the attic and relight it, then hope it remains lit for long enough to carry out whatever hot water-related activity you may be interested in, which  certainly isn't ever doing the washing up. This is somewhat inconvenient, particularly for myself, as the hatch to the attic is located in the cupboard in my bedroom, and at this particular juncture I happen to be spending a disproportionate amount of time naked.

The flat is owned by a guy called Lenny. Lenny is quite high up in the Celtic Supporters' Club. Mac says he probably has links to the IRA, and we are under strict instructions never to mention Mac's Rangers leanings in case there are "consequences". Lenny turns up at random intervals and demands the rent, which we pay in cash, while being sure to absolutely never complain about any of the things in the flat that don't work. At first it is just Mac, Erskine and myself living there. We are joined a few weeks later by a friend of Mac's who is just back from Thailand, but he unexpectedly brings a permanent and non-rent paying mate with him, and their erratic amphetamine-addled behaviour leads to them quickly becoming deeply unpopular with the rest of us; it is a mercy when they move out a couple of months later and Rass replaces them. The flat is to be the scene of a nine-month-long party which, for a while, we simply call "life". We eat a lot of metre-square PHD 'Gatecrasher' pizzas, and drink and smoke, and boost Aberdeen's economy significantly with our nightly mass purchases of chocolate milk, biscuits, ice-cream and assorted confectionery from the nearby 24-hour shop. We sleep late and party all night. We invent a culinary delight known as 'biscuity ice cream' - I don't now remember what it contained. Friends and girlfriends stay often. There are a lot of musicians around. We jam a lot, and write a lot of good songs, and probably some bad ones; the practice studios are just down the road, and we play a lot of gigs at this point. To be frank, I am high for the entire time we live there; the air is constantly filled with heavy metal, the fug of smoke and Jack Daniels fumes. The woman downstairs is consistently unimpressed, particularly when I begin routing my stereo through a 100 watt Marshall amp and serenading her with Master of Puppets. I mean, talk about ungrateful!

Upon moving in, I reassemble the Iron Maiden museum known colloquially as "my bedroom" in our new surroundings. I have the largest room in the flat; it's even bigger than my old room at home, which means I can fit in even more Iron Maiden posters and picture discs. My bed is a double mattress on the floor beneath the window, and I have a massive grey leather sofa; the ceiling is covered in poster flags. Wherever you look, Eddie is leering back at you, which leads to one of our number having a particularly bad paranoid experience after returning home via a psychedelic street one night.

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Just a week and a half after we move in, Mac, Erskine, Len and myself take the train to London. We are free, the world is our oyster and we can go where we want, when we want! But this isn't just some random jaunt. Our destination is Earls Court. We have tickets for Metal 2000. We are going to see Iron Maiden's first gig back in the UK since Bruce and Adrian's return to the band, in the very futuristic vision of London depicted on the Brave New World cover!

The excitement has been building for what feels like an age. The date had been announced months beforehand. Rass told us about it at school - with his fancy internet he was always first with this kind of news.

"Maiden are playing in London," he had said. "With Slayer. And some band called En-Tom-Bed."

"Yeah, I think that's pronounced "En-toomed..." I pointed out, before mercilessly taking the piss for the next few years.

Erskine's mum had ordered the tickets for us when they went on sale. I'm not convinced I have actually ever given her back the ticket money. I couldn't actually believe this was really going to happen; I had spent years thinking I would never get the chance to see Maiden with Bruce, and now he was coming back and we had tickets to see their triumphant homecoming gig at the massively famous Earls Court arena in their home city! This would be a world away from seeing them in the Barrowlands with Blaze. While they hadn't even been able to fill the Barras with its relatively small capacity when we saw them in 1998 on the Virtual XI tour, the tickets for the classic line-up at Earls Court had sold out months before the gig, despite the fact that it holds 20,000 people. Of course, this is a lot to do with the re-unification of the classic line-up, but something else has changed in that time. Metal is, out of nowhere and for the first time in about a decade, suddenly popular again.

One of the first signs of the pendulum swinging back in metal's direction comes a couple of months into the new millennium when Slipknot play live on TFI Friday. TFI Friday is a brash, colourful entertainment show that in the second half of the 1990s likes to think of itself as being at the tip of the cultural zeitgeist. It is presented by ginger-haired bespectacled motor-mouth Chris Evans, and is a mix of music, 'outrageous' interviews with stars of the day and the kind of laddish 'banter' manifested in the wider media through the likes of FHM and Loaded magazine. Usually the music on TFI Friday is of the bland Ocean Colour Scene sort of ilk; when they put the likes of Reef on they think they are getting seriously heavy. But in March 2000 they book Slipknot to perform their single Wait and Bleed live in the studio. The place is a massive moshpit and in the space of three minutes, two of the studio cameras recording it go down, lost in the chaos. We watch it live at my house, and while it is made out to be something of a novelty, it is clear that it is genuinely a sign of a cultural shift taking place in the UK. By the time we leave home just three months later, the signs of Nu-Metal are all over the place. The city is full of young guys walking around wearing baggy jeans covered in chains, black t-shirts, goattee beards, red-tipped spiky hair and baseball caps, and bare-midriffed girls with black eyeliner, dreadlocks, chokers and facial piercings. The last representatives of the preceding Britpop age look on in uncomprehending horror.

The whole thing is to peak a few months later when Limp Bizkit hit the #1 spot in the UK singles chart with their single Rollin'. At this time, the singles chart is still seen as massively important, a cultural pillar which has stood for decades, and chart-topping metal singles are few and far between to say the least. Maiden themselves had hit the top spot a decade earlier at the end of 1990 with Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter, but had really only managed this by releasing the song in the slowest sales week of the year, the week following the rush to be the Christmas number one, and relied on the fact that their legion of hardcore fans would all buy the single multiple times on the array of different formats they produced. In the intervening years, chart-bothering metal songs had been pretty much non-existent. Whatever you thought of Slipknot and Limp Bizkit's actual music (and to be honest I didn't like it much), the proponents of this Nu-Metal revolution were all giving interviews about how much they loved the old metal bands. As such, the new sub-genre's sudden and unanticipated rise turns the lights back on for the entire metal genre, a type of music which the press have long derided as dead and buried. All the old-school Iron Maiden fans who had jumped ship or gone to ground during the Blaze years all come crawling out of the woodwork, and are joined by a whole host of kids just discovering the band for the first time. Metal is massive again, the scene is on fire and this time it isn't going away - a Brave New World indeed, and Maiden's decision to name the first leg of their tour 'Metal 2000' reflects the genre's futuristic rebirth at the beginning of a new millenium. As such, tickets for their only UK show sell out in just a few weeks, and we are going to be there!

Despite our newly-claimed personal freedom, we aren't living 100% independently during our trip south. We are staying with Erskine's auntie Cath at her house in Hampton Hill in a leafy part of West London, which is convenient for us because it is free, and convenient for Erskine's Ma because she can spy on us vicariously and make sure that we aren't behaving too dreadfully and that Ersk is wearing clean socks there's a good lad. It is a traditional, two-storey house of brown brick, opposite a tree-lined train track and pleasingly near a large park and a Chinese takeaway. Erskine's aunt pretty much leaves us to our own devices, but her presence does ensure that we don't get too riotous. Mind you, every time she leaves the house, I pop behind the garden shed and plough through as many comical cigarettes as possible (this is something of a theme throughout this phase of life - I'm not going to pretend it's big or clever, and I writing 20 years later I'm sure I certainly wouldn't be able to keep pace nowadays, but we were young and it was certainly fun at the time). Other members of the party who aren't so inclined instead drink indecent amounts of tea.

We have travelled down a couple of days before the gig, so we have a day to spare. The weather is dull and overcast, but London in June is warm, certainly much warmer than we are used to at home. It is uncomfortably humid. We head for the famous Covent Garden market to see what it has to offer, and each come away with a brand new probably bootleg but who cares Iron Maiden shirt. Then we get on the tube and head for East Ham to visit the Ruskin Arms, a pub where Maiden had had a residency in the early days before they got massive.

'No Smoking', the sign said, somewhat optimistically

The Ruskin is quite famous amongst Maiden fans, and with it being the day before the band are playing at Earls Court, one might reasonably have expected a few more people to have made the pilgrimage. However, we arrive to find that we were pretty much the only people in there. Maybe we're too early. The pub itself is pretty old-fashioned and quite dark and dingy inside; it evidently hasn't changed very much since Maiden themselves were playing here a quarter of a century previously. This impression isn't really helped by the decision to paint the walls brown, trimmed by a different shade of brown. The pub doesn't seem to shout too loudly about the fact that it is a seminal venue in the history of one of rock music's biggest bands, although its metal credentials are somewhat reinforced by the life-size (presumably) model skeleton in a leather jacket and helmet crashing half a motorbike through a fence suspended above the pub's main bar. The stage is in the back room, which is closed with the lights off, but we pop in quickly and have a look at it on the way to the toilet. It's a pretty standard pub function room, no different to half the venues we play in Aberdeen on a regular basis, but it's nice to know that magic had once happened here, and funny to think that tomorrow we will be seeing Iron Maiden, who started off playing gigs on this tiny stage in this small room, as they lay waste to one of the country's biggest arenas on a stage that's probably bigger than this entire building.

They have a pool table, and Mac loves a game of pool, so we put Iron Maiden on the jukebox, have a couple of games and a couple of pints and hang around for an hour or so before heading off.

Back at base a few hours later, we decide some food is in order. We have a look at the menu for the Chinese down the road and make our selections. There is loads of rice in the kitchen, so we decide it will be easy enough to cook that on our own and just get the main courses from the restaurant. However when Mac phones the takeaway, this proves difficult to grasp for the extremely Chinese gentleman on the other end of the line.

"Can we have two lemon chickens, one shredded chilli beef and one sweet and sour pork please. To collect."

"And how many rice?"

"No, we don't need rice thanks."

"No rice?"

"No."

"...You no want rice?"

"No, we're fine for rice, thanks."

Silence for a moment, as the man considers the ramifications of what he has just been told. And then, suspiciously:

"...Funny order."

He really does sound extremely suspicious. And extremely Chinese. We fall about laughing. "Funny order" becomes the catchphrase for the rest of the trip.

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Finally the day has come. We rise early and have breakfast. The gig doors are scheduled to open at 5pm, and we definitely don't want to miss the start of Maiden, so I pre-roll some preparations and we grab our tickets and leg it to the tube, which pulls in to Earls Court station just in the nick of time.

"Phew, we made it," I exclaim, looking at my watch. "And with only 6 hours to spare until they open the doors!"

Yes, it's 11am. Our early arrival is entirely on purpose; we want a decent view, and that isn't going to happen if we turn up after the other 19,996 ticket-holders. Besides, given that we have travelled the length of the nation to come to this gig, we might as well spend as much time at it as possible. We emerge from the tube station and blink in the light. The weather has brightened up, there's even some blue sky visible between the clouds and here is Earls Court, right in front of us, towering up into the heavens. If the sheer size of the building's iconic art deco frontage hasn't already given away its identity, the fact that it has 'EARLS' written on one of the flanking towers and 'COURT' written on the other one does a degree of the work for us. Another clue is the pair of absolutely gigantic Brave New World posters plastered on the front.

"I wonder what they'll do with those after the gig," I say. "They'd look great plastered on the outside wall of our flat."

"I'm sure Lenny would love that," Erskine replies.

Hmm. Good point.

We may have arrived early, but we are far from the first people here. There is already a healthy-sized group of fans sitting around in clusters outside the venue, organised into a loose queue. One group are cooking lunch on a disposable barbecue. Some of them have apparently camped out all night. Someone has brought a stereo, which is, of course, blasting out a selection of Iron Maiden's greatest hits. We take up a position near the front of what would later on become the queue proper and settle in for the long haul, sitting down on the flagstones. We talk a bit with the bloke next to us, whose name was Michael and who has travelled down from Stoke for the show. We speculate about what songs they might play. Will it be mainly new stuff? Stuffed with old classics? Women in Uniform and Quest For Fire repeated over and over again until we all wanted to die? I also kill a lot of time ploughing my way through the mountain of pre-rolled 'refreshments' which I had spent so long assembling before leaving the house.

People arrive steadily over the next few hours. One of the eternal games played when whiling away a long wait in a heavy metal gig queue is trying to spot the coolest t-shirt; aside from a few 1980s tour shirts that probably ought to be in a museum somewhere, I am particularly impressed by a brand new black long-sleeve with the Eddie's head from the Wicker Man video on the front; it's super cool and modern and kind of different from any Maiden shirt I have seen before, deviating from the standard template of album/single cover underneath the band logo which has in recent years become something of a heavy metal trope. A few months later I get my hands on one, and in time it will become the only t-shirt that I have ever owned that has literally disintegrated from being worn so much. Some time around 3pm the queue tightens up considerably, and we are all jammed together. It's a good job I'm with my best friends; if I'm going to have an elbow thrust in my ear then I'm glad it's Len's, whose cleanliness I can vouch for. People are streaming to the venue now. It turns out that 20,000 Iron Maiden fans is quite a lot when they're all trying to get into a gig at the same time. As it gets closer and closer to doors opening, the sense of anticipation grows. I have that same feeling of nerves in the pit of my stomach that I usually only get before going on stage; I still can't really believe that I am about to see Bruce Dickinson in Iron Maiden. People start chanting sporadically. "Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!" As chants go, it's not one of the more imaginative, but having spent the best part of a decade listening religiously to Live After Death and the band's other live offerings, this is a crucial part of the ritual, and as the whole queue begin chanting it only serves to kick the excitement up a notch. As 5pm approaches the crowd get progressively more pushy and squashy as more and more people join it, and the tension is almost at breaking point.

5pm comes and goes, and still they don't open the doors. Those around us near the front of the queue are really getting grouchy now. Is something wrong? I anxiously check my ticket again. It definitely says 5pm. Why aren't they letting us in? Maybe Maiden haven't turned up and the whole thing is going to be cancelled! There will be a riot. An eternity later, at 5.30pm, they finally open the barriers and we all surge forward. Our tickets are checked and then we are inside, ushered through a semi-circular entrance hall with colourful stripey pillars, past the merch stands and then we are are running free into the arena itself! There, at the far end of this cavernous room, the stage looms. "DON'T RUN," various stern-looking security staff shout at us as we completely ignore them and absolutely pelt past them to get to the front of the venue. In the years since, I have learned that it is one of the unalterable laws of physics that security people at gigs everywhere will tell people not to run and threaten to throw people out and everyone will run anyway and no-one will ever be thrown out. Back in 2000 we didn't know this for sure but we were willing to take a gamble; thankfully we are correct, and moments later the four of us reach the stage, the hallowed spot which we have waited many months, years even, and travelled hundreds of miles to occupy, to see our heavy metal heroes first hand, up close and personal, in their home city, for the triumphant return of their legendary lead singer. We take up residence on the left-hand side. Dave Murray always stands on the left, and Dave Murray is a fucking legend. We want to see Dave Murray. Fuck knows where Adrian is going to go now that Janick is firmly ensconsed over on the right. Hopefully he'll be over here too. Adrian Smith is also a fucking legend. We are not quite right on the barrier, but we are damn close. There are only one or two people in front of us. This is going to be fucking epic.

Swept by a wave of relief that we have got a premium spot at the front of the hall, I am finally able to take stock of our surroundings. I turn around and have a proper look at Earls Court. The place is massive. In fact it is quite probably the biggest room I have ever been in. I had seen AC/DC at the Exhibition Centre in Aberdeen but this place is twice as big, probably even bigger; in fact, looking up, it's probably three or four times higher. There are no floor level seats; ridiculously long black curtains line the sides of the space, and high above us, along the sides and back of the venue is the seated section. At this stage they are still mostly empty. Actually, looking at it, aside from the thousand or so mental people like us packed at the front of the stage, so is the floor at this point. To be fair, there is about an hour to wait until anything happens.

Things get steadily busier as it gets towards time for the first band. Then at 6.30pm, the lights go down, and a slightly muted roar goes up as Swedish death metallers Entombed take to the stage. Ok, they aren't what we are here to see (in fact I know the precise sum of fuck all about them, other than how to pronounce their name), but hey, after an hour of standing and impatiently looking at an empty stage at least something is happening. "Make some noise Earl's Court!," the singer commands. "Funny order," Len replies. As they kick into their peculiar brand of rock 'n' roll-tinged death metal, it quickly becomes clear that their sound man is deaf, or at least has absolutely no idea how to handle doing the sound for a big venue such as this. All that can be heard is drums and muffled shouting, rendering the songs completely interchangeable. Not being a fan of death metal vocals anyway, their performance leaves me considerably less than whelmed. Not that they aren't trying; they certainly give what might patronisingly be described as a "spirited" display, despite the fact that any nuances or subtleties to their sound are completely swallowed up by Earls Court's cavernous mass. The stage just seems too big for them somehow, and 40 minutes or so later, they troop offstage, in all probability having won over very few of the crowd who don't already know who they are.

"Shark sandwich," declares Mac by way of review, and if you know your way around the movie This is Spinal Tap you'll understand what he meant.

At least that was one of the support bands out of the way. Really the majority of people are, like us, here for Maiden and Maiden alone and would have really been happier not to have to bother with support bands at all. Still, next up are Slayer. We are all slightly apprehensive; at the slightly naive age of eighteen, I am pretty much convinced that Slayer are the heaviest, most terrifying band that music has to offer. This impression isn't tempered by taking a cross-section of the Slayer fans I know, the vast majority of whom are, not to put too fine a point on it, completely fucking mental. (Looking back from the perspective of someone who nowadays absolutely loves thrash metal, I find my youthful terror of them quite hilarious. As a teenager, I thought the heaviest music was really, really fast. It was only later that I realised that a lot of fast music is really, really fun, and that the heaviest music of all is actually really, really, really sloooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwww). I had attempted to get into Slayer while still at school, shortly after discovering that I really liked Metallica's ...And Justice For All album and having been told that Slayer was up the same street. I asked Rass to get me a Slayer album for my birthday, and he duly obliged, picking me up a copy of their seminal double live offering Decade of Aggression, a disc light on production and heavy on all the songs being joined together in a totally-impenetrable-for-a-newcomer sort of way. Needless to say, it took almost another decade of non-aggression on my part before I actually truly started to appreciate them for the brilliant and ridiculous riff-masters that they actually are.

Anyway, at the time of Metal 2000 none of the four of us are particularly looking forward to being right in the centre of a Slayer moshpit getting pulped by 20,000 people. However, if we are going to see Iron Maiden from the front then we are just going to have to endure the situation. As the lights go down Len and I look at each other apprehensively. "See you on the other side..." he says. The next hour is, as predicted, an aural and physical assault. Not being hugely familiar with their back catalogue at the time, and the venue's high ceiling and echoey acoustics not being particularly conducive to being able to pick out the intricacies of music played at approximately 1 million Beats Per Minute, particularly when you are also being simultaneously being squished into mince by a sea of hairy sweaty people, I am unable to accurately assess their musical performance. It is certainly immediately obvious that they are far happier on a huge stage than Entombed had been, and that the sound man has evidently been allowed to turn up the volume considerably from the opening act. Guitarist Kerry King, a bald-headed goatee-bearded beady-eyed tattooed Rottweiler of a man, prowls the stage with his trademark grimace, thrashing his flying V to within an inch of its existence, one arm adorned with some ridiculous spiked cuff thing, relentlessly headbanging to the point where it seems like his neck might actually disintegrate mid-song. Jeff Hannemann, in complete contrast, is just a shock of blond hair in a vest and knee-high space boots. Singer/bassist Tom Araya, still in his clean-shaven days at this point, simply looks extremely comfortable as he roars and screams the lyrics to delicate musical poems with titles such as Mandatory Suicide, War Ensemble and Hell Awaits. With my sadly limited knowledge of Slayer, the only songs I recognise are South of Heaven, which is a staple cover in the set of Aberdeen thrash legends Risactonia, a band with whom we often share a stage, and set-closer Angel of Death, which is a metal classic containing both one of metal's finest screams and also, in the middle section, one of its finest riffs. As they turn up the lights mid-song, I twist my neck around and take in the seething mass of humanity packing this enormous space. So many people. So many faces. So much hair and sweat. This is crazy.

As they finish their set and we breathe a sigh of relief at having somehow miraculously survived, I am looking forward to the crowd unsqueezing a little and getting a bit of space to breathe and my face being out of some stranger's armpit (reader, I am short, something of a curse in these situations). Alas, I am naive, and have underestimated the rampant dedication of Iron Maiden fans. Indeed, rather than easing off, the crush gets more and more intense as time ticks on towards the main event, and the reason we're all here. Still, at least there's something to watch to distract us; the stage is a hive of activity as a team of roadies and crew swarm all over it moving things about, messing with backdrops and testing out the monitors and instruments one by one. Eventually they seem satisfied and depart, and we are left waiting, jammed together, agonisingly close to the momentous event, checking our watches every two minutes, not that we actually know what stage-time is. Optimistic latecomers try and shove their way through the seething mass of humanity. Most are unsuccessful; there is barely room to breathe this close to the barrier. Every few minutes the chant goes up, and we all join in. "Maiden! Maiden!" As time goes on, there is less and less time between each serenade.

Suddenly the strains of the metal compilation that has been playing quietly over the PA stop abruptly, and are replaced by the opening bars of Doctor Doctor by UFO. There is a huge roar. We all know what this means. Doctor Doctor has been played immediately prior to Maiden taking the stage since time immemorial. I have no idea when this tradition started, presumably at some point during the medieval period, but as an Iron Maiden veteran, I cannot now hear the song without feeling a shiver of excitement. As the song kicks in properly, everyone is jumping in time and screaming the melody and words. Fuck. I am knackered already. As the song dies away and the crowd roars, the house lights cut out and suddenly we are in darkness. Here it is lads. Here we go.

The intro music starts, a tense, choral piece that builds sort of like Carmina Burrana. On stage, a backdrop is visible through the dim blue light, a huge extended version of the album cover - Eddie's face in the clouds looming over London. It seems to be flanked by some kind of futuristic scaffolding stage set. There are sporadic flashes of incredibly bright light, like lightning. I am so tense; I feel I could burst at any moment. We can see movement behind the drum kit as Nicko gets into position. Then boom, the music reaches a crescendo, dies away, 20,000 people roar, and...

...and there is Adrian Smith, six feet in front of us, lit by a single spotlight, and he's pounding out the opening riff to The Wicker Man at a billion decibels. YEEEESSSSSS! As the wave of excitement hits me I can feel the surge of the crowd behind us. Just when I thought things couldn't get any more squashed, they somehow have. But I don't care. It's Adrian Smith. I look at Mac to my left. "It's Adrian Smith!!" I twist my neck back towards Len on the other side. We are pressed together like Siamese twins. "ADRIAN FUCKING SMITH!!" And to Erskine, who, contrary to the laws of physics, seems to be occupying the exact same point in space as I am: "ADRIAN!". Having let everyone know that it definitely is Adrian Smith, attention is diverted by an enormous explosion accompanying the main body of the song kicking in. James 'Hardcore' Erskine, Auchenblae's former resident pyromaniac, grins at me. No pyro, no party! The stage lights are up and the rest of the band are suddenly right there, guitarist Dave Murray smiling as he dances out to the front of the stage next to Adrian. Janick Gers is stomping around in front of the drum kit in a pair of ridiculous black and white zebra-esque jeans. And founder member Steve Harris, the band's general and unofficial leader, wearing a white and maroon Iron Maiden football shirt, is over on the right with his foot on the monitor, looking out at the crowd, his fingers a blur across the strings of his custom West Ham bass guitar. And then, out of nowhere, Bruce Dickinson himself barrels into the middle of the stage, mic in hand, a ball of energy, skipping left then right and never standing still. Hand of fate is moving and the finger points to you. His trousers are inexplicably adorned with the remnants of a thousand shredded black binbags. This is magnificent. Iron Maiden wouldn't be Iron Maiden without a plethora of extraordinary legwear. We all jump in time, bouncing as the chorus hits. Your time will come. It damn well has. Your time will come. Steve Harris, on our side of the stage now, mouths every word with conviction as he looks us in the eye. Right back at you, Steve. Your time will come. Bruce has one hand in the air, gesturing everyone to join in, and we oblige. Your time will come. The lights are cycling between blue, orange and yellow. I am giddy with excitement, going with the flow. Everyone is jammed together, all helpless components in this tsunami of bodies. But I find that once I am used to it it's fine. Somehow the four of us are still together, and ignoring our constantly shifting position, I marvel at being able to watch Adrian's fingers from just a few metres away as he launches into a typically classy guitar solo.

As the song comes to an end and the ethereal opening chords of Ghost of the Navigator ring out, the crowd settles for a moment and we all take the chance to breathe as Bruce welcomes us and introduces the song. Then, as the drums build and the song kicks in, faster than the album version, we're off again in this eternal battle, everyone pushing against the people around them to try and see, to breathe, to remain upright as the waves of movement caused by the pressure of the thousands of people behind us take us helplessly back and forth and left and right. Take my heart and set it free. Carried forward by the waves. Fighting this current is quite a test of endurance. For a split second I am tempted to float backwards and watch things from a safer vantage point. But quickly the thought is banished. Erskine, Mac and Len are all here. Drop anchor; I'm not going anywhere. We came a long way for this. Chasing rainbows all my days.

Brave New World itself is next, in the kind of 'new material 1-2-3' move that Iron Maiden have unashamedly subscribed to for their entire career, pissing off the oldies who just want to see them play Run to the Hills over and over again. Not a problem for me, I'd rather see them play new material they care about rather than ancient hits that they're sick of. In a brave new world. The sublime melodies wash over us, and after one of Janick's better guitar solos, then an even better one by Dave Murray, whose improvised legato interspersed with bluesy bends just looks so easy for him, the crowd come together to sing the melody in the night's first proper set of guitar harmonies, the kind which are a true trademark of the band's sound. Then it's finally time to appease the veterans as the band pull out 1981's Wrathchild followed by 2 Minutes to Midnight from their mid-80s heyday, Powerslave. "Scream for me Earl's Court," Bruce commands, finally wheeling out his signature catchphrase. Resisting the urge to shout "funny order", we do. This causes a renewed surge in the crowd, and once again we are pressed forward as all the older fans who don't like any music written after 1988 try to get forward for a piece of the action. Let's face it, everyone loves 2 Minutes to Midnight, a classic penned by Bruce and Adrian, and with both freshly returned to the band's ranks and Adrian both reclaiming his original solo from his replacement Janick and providing the band with decent backing vocals for the first time since he left (sorry Steve), it has never sounded so good. Midnight. Midnight. Is all night. As the crowd lose their collective minds at the song's climax, beer showers the stage as a result of exuberant celebration, and when it's over a roadie, for some reason introduced by Bruce as "The Ulrika Jonsson of towelling" hurries on to the stage to clean up.

Once he's gone, and Bruce has asked us to keep our beer off the stage "because we don't want to go arse over tit and kill ourselves", he asks for the house lights to be turned on so the band can have a proper look at the crowd. They duly come on, and once more  craning my head around, the sheer number of people in the place is awe-inspiring. It is packed. Miles away, up in the gods, we can see thousands of tiny faces taking everything in. "Now I ask you, how is that for a band like us, who have been written off for so many centuries by the popular music press, by magazines, how come there's 20,000 fucking people in Earl's Court, the place was sold out months ago... and all you hear on the radio is a bunch of wankers and big-arsed fucking boilers who can't sing or play for their fucking lives?" Bruce is a bit peeved, and my mind instantly goes back to Mary Ann Hobbes on Radio One wanking on about how the reunion is all about nostalgia, as if we weren't all here today to see the band play a set supremely focused on brand new material. "So nothing has really changed," he goes on. "This is a song off the new album, it's about fathers and sons and comradeship and sticking together, and all that bullshit that people think is out of date and old fashioned. Well fuck them; this is called Blood Brothers." I catch Erskine's eye - I know this is his favourite from the album. Here we are; me and my oldest friend, hundreds of miles from home, fulfilling the childhood dream we have had since we were 10 years old, to see Iron Maiden with Bruce Dickinson. He smiles. We're Blood Brothers. We're Blood Brothers. My heart wants to burst.

What comes next turns out to be my personal highlight of the night. Blaze Bayley's spell in the band may not have been popular with many fans, but when it came out I personally really loved The X-Factor. It had a darkness and a misery to it that was uncommon for Iron Maiden but was absolutely perfect for a 14-year-old suffering from mood swings and all that other teenage stuff. However, it was not a critical success, and I didn't really expect any of those songs to see the light of day again now Bruce and Adrian were back, so when the familiar eerie low-pitched noise of a gang of Gregorian monks can be heard emanating from the PA I am extremely surprised. I look round at Len; he loves The X-Factor even more than me. Surely it can't be Sign of the Cross? Please fucking let it be Sign of the Cross! The prospect of seeing the new line-up smash out this 11-minute epic was surely too much to hope for. Yet somehow apparently it was not too much, and as the monks give way to the song's ponderous opening riff, I shout in Len's ear "I wonder how Bruce will cope with this?". Blaze has a naturally deeper voice than Bruce, which is tested to its extreme at the start of the song; this might not suit Bruce too well. Then unseen, Bruce begins to sing. Eleven saintly shrouded men / Silhouttes stand against the sky / One in front with a cross held high / Come to wash my sins away. Fuck! I take it all back. Blaze can't get low enough for the last bit and usually whispers it. Bruce is actually singing it properly, his voice rich and low. Blaze who?! And then we see him. Behind the drum riser, bathed in red light, a huge cross adorned with massive ornate wings is rising, and on it, messiah-like, is Bruce. As a connoisseur of musical theatre, Len 'J. C.' Wiltshire is grinning. This is simply magnificent. As the song weaves its way through its maze of time changes and transitions through the quiet middle section with some more monks into a massive epic slab-like riff with some whacked out time-signature shifts, white beams of light circle around the stage. Then we're into the amazing melodic fast riff, a couple of beasting solos and then another time change and we're into the best riff of all, uplifting yet somehow sombre, Janick busting it out like a pro. And then, on the final chorus, some more pyro as flames suddenly burst from the cross. A fire in the sky. The sign of the cross. A short outro and the song is done. Fuck. That was absolutely ace.

The Mercenary, which is next up, seems somewhat inconsequential by comparison. Adrian's solo is a beast though, of course, leading to big grins from Mac, but when fan-favourite The Trooper kicks in afterwards to the sound of the biggest cheer of the night everything goes mad down at the front and we endure another massive squash. You'd better stand, there's no turning back. Bruce is waving a Union Jack and the guitarists and Steve are all lined up in front of us at the front of the stage. Janick and Adrian double up on the second guitar solo, surely rendering it a guitar duo, and Bruce has a go on a custom deathslide at the side of the stage, going right out to the side and gesturing to the audience to whip them up into even more of a frenzy, if that's even possible, then running all the way to the other side of the gigantic stage to do the same thing again. It is a joy to be with so many other rabid Iron Maiden fans, to find that there are so many others who feel the same way about the band as I do; I have never experienced this before. I'm determined that I will again.

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Following a minute or two of rest, during which we all chant again, the band kick into another pair of 9-minute epics, first up Dream of Mirrors, the final new track of the night which features Janick Gers playing an acoustic guitar on a stick as the song builds gracefully before kicking off for an up-tempo second half. The dream is true. The dream is true. Then it's Steve's turn to have a bass on a stick (might it be the same stick? An optical assessment leaves us unsure) as they go straight into The Clansman. "Anybody from Scotland out there tonight?" Bruce asks. "Yes! Yes Bruce! Yes! Down here!" We are cheering. "A song about William Wallace! Which for an Englishman is a very difficult thing to do. But nevertheless..." During the intro, Nicko stands up and gives us his approximation of a Highland Fling. The song kicking in gives us another burst of energy. It really wouldn't do to be getting tired during a song for Scotland. Freedom, we sing. Freedom! And that's what we have, the four of us, 18 and loose in London. Freedom! The guitars sing the melody in unison, and so do we.

No Iron Maiden set would be complete without the appearance of Eddie, the band's undead zombie mascot, who traditionally enters the stage at some point during proceedings to lumber around harassing everyone. He duly turns up in the middle of The Evil That Men Do, ten foot tall and grumpy as ever, eliciting a huge cheer from the crowd and bothering Janick Gers, who kicks him in the balls, runs circles around him, and runs through his legs, while Eddie tries to swipe his guitar and give us all the wanker sign. To be honest, it isn't a vintage Eddie, but we can't really complain too much. You can't really be too upset when a wicker-bodied giant with glowing orange eyes and flailing arms turns up to your party, even if he does look a bit like he's been assembled from the leftovers of a very large bowl of Shreddies.

Fear of the Dark follows, and the whole arena joins in the iconic singalong in the intro made famous on a live recording from 1992. Lighters are held aloft. Erskine, Mac, Len and I are somehow still together, and we add our voices to the choir. I am the man who walks alone, and when I'm walking a dark road... Bruce leaves the second "Fear of the Dark" blank for us to sing, as has become tradition. We bounce during the chorus, and sing along after the time change in the middle of the song. Like so many aspects of an Iron Maiden concert these things are all now ritual, fans of all generations aware of their cues and unwritten instructions. Then as sure as night follows day, Bruce asks us to scream for him again and Iron Maiden follows Fear of the Dark to end the main body of the set, and as is also set in stone, it includes Eddie's second appearance, this time as a massive on-stage Wicker Man prop with a compartment at the bottom containing three or four "virgins" in white robes and garlands. Bruce taunts them with a big stick, then halfway through the song the trapdoor closes and the virgins are stuck inside; the pyro goes up, the girls start screaming and they are toast. It's heavy metal pantomime of the highest order, and we are all loving it. To top it all off, the wicker head splits in two, revealing Eddie's familiar gurning face with two burning red eyes, which then turns from left to right, glaring out at us all. "Iron Maiden's gonna get... ALL OF YOU!" Bruce shouts, and the crash ending begins. We cheer. We know it's the end of the set. Not really, there will be an encore; they always do an encore, and there are songs we haven't heard yet that we know they will play. "Good night from Iron Maiden... from Eddie... and from the boys..." These might as well be actual song lyrics, we know them so well. The ending goes on and on, Janick swings his guitar around and around his head then throws it high in the air, Dave scrapes his against the monitors, Adrian maintains his cool and Steve hammers away at his bass then "shoots" us with it at the end. Then the band throw out wristbands and plectrums, shout their thanks and troop offstage. The stagelights, brighter than a  thousand suns, remain lit. The house lights remain off. Of course they're coming back. We chant again, tired but eager for the big hitters at the end of the set.

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Sure enough, a couple of minutes later the backdrop changes to the iconic artwork from The Number of the Beast and the spoken intro to the album's title track comes over the P.A., and we raise our hoarse voices and shout along. Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the Devil sends the beast with wrath, because he knows the time is short. Let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number. Its number is six hundred and sixty six. In quick succession we get Beast, Hallowed Be Thy Name and then the night is rounded off with Sanctuary, a song the band have been playing since their days across town at the Ruskin Arms in the late 1970s. All three are proper Maiden vintage, especially Hallowed, which may just be the finest song in all of heavy metal. Bruce predictably shines during the intro, showing off his vocal mastery while all 20,000 of us sing and clap along. The sands of time for me are running low... We are tired, but exalted. The crush is still fierce, those who have spent their time drinking beer at the back now trying to get forward to get involved for the classics. We know the gig is nearly over, but still we are reveling in the experience. Is this the end of some crazy dream? And then we're into Sanctuary, the set closer - not, in truth, one of the greatest Iron Maiden songs, I'd probably rather have had Running Free or Run to the Hills, but still. In the gap in the middle, the song stops for a moment and Bruce speaks. "It's been a while since we've been back in here in London... well we will be back here before Christmas to see you fuckers, alright?!" Wahey! This is great news. I can't wait to do it all again. The song plays out, the stage lights are up again, so bright they illuminate the whole arena. We look around as everyone in the building applaud and cheer their thanks, from the front to the back to the people in the seats high above and far behind. "London, Earl's Court," Bruce shouts, "From Iron Maiden, good night to you all! You are the brave new world, whether you like it or not...and to celebrate that fact, we're going to have a mug shot of every one of you. So we're all gonna turn our arses towards you and on the count of three, we'd like you to look as ugly as you want to be!" We stand on our tiptoes and crane our necks to try and get in the shot. Erskine in particular looks very ugly indeed. When it appears in Kerrang! a few weeks later I can't find us. But I know we're in there somewhere, me and my friends, Mac, Erskine and Len; in a brave new world.

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The next day we get the train home. Waiting in the station, we spy a photo booth, the sort you go to to get passport photos.

"Shall we get a photo?" asks Mac. "Something to remember the trip by?"

"Let's," I say.

We all cram into the booth, to the evident disapproval of passing Londoners.

*Click*

Perfect.

Preserved in time for all to see.

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