 It’s the Phantom Flan Flingers fault. If it hadn’t been for him, I probably wouldn’t have been watching Tiswas that Saturday morning and would never have even heard of Iron Maiden or their music. Okay, so Sally James might also have had something to do with me tuning into ITV’s anarchic, anything goes answer to the BBC’s far more sedate and well-mannered Swap Shop as well, but that is almost certainly another conversation for another time. So, there I was, diligently watching all manner of foam flying around the Tiswas studio and in the direction of the various minor celebrities who had agreed to be caged and humiliated in order to shill their latest whatever it was they were selling that week when it appeared on the screen in all its unfettered glory; The Number of the Beast. It was a revelation; I’d never seen anything like it before. The haunting introductory narration that I, at the time, assumed was Vincent Price* who had become my favourite actor after I’d been allowed to watch Theatre of Blood and The Abominable Doctor Phibes which then fed into a devastatingly catchy riff and haunting vocals immediately dug their claws into my imagination and refused to let go. For four minutes and fifty something seconds I was transfixed and dumbfounded. Held in thrall by a group of musicians who were unlike anything I’d ever seen before who weren’t singing about being in love with the girl next door or being cast aside in favour of a much better looking chap whose financial future was guaranteed and having their hearts broken in the process. My journey to the dark side was completed in less time than it takes to prepare a half decent hard-boiled egg. Before that video began, ten year old me spent his time immersed in the adventures of the Hardy Boys and Alfred Hitchcock’s Three Investigators, reading 2000AD and whatever Marvel Comics he could get his hands on, reliving the plots of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back with his ever expanding collection of Kenner and Palitoy figures and watching Tom Baker and Peter Davison travelling through time and space, battling the monster of the week. I hadn’t give music much thought and apart from the odd Disco number, Boney M and the occasional two tone tune that popped up on the radio, music didn’t really play any part in my life. After it finished, my life was all about music; it became my everything. I can’t even pinpoint or single out what it was, and is, about The Number of the Beast that touched my soul so deeply and profoundly. Maybe it was because it was about the devil and I’d just finished reading the novelisation of The Omen and Satan and all of his deliciously evil plans, machinations and schemes were weighing heavily on my mind. Maybe it appealed to me as I was a small, ginger child with a funny accent who loved all of the things that normal kids hated and immediately realised that this was the music of ‘outsiders’, those “unfortunate” individuals who were either shunned by, or for some reason chose to live their lives on the fringes of, the mainstream and like always attracts, speaks to and reaches out for like. Or maybe it was just that ten year old me needed something to hold on to and Iron Maiden and heavy metal provided a tangible buoy that I could embrace and retreat to whenever I was being beaten like a garishly coloured piñata at a drunken student soiree for looking different, talking funny and not exactly being great at anything that involved physical activity. Whatever it was, that song and that moment changed my life forever. It set in motion the chain of events that have shaped my existence. It’s the reason that I started going to shows and gigs and was responsible for me failing my army physical***. It’s why I spent too many wasted years**** playing in bands that never really went anywhere or did anything***** and ultimately why I became a journalist and later, a writer. Everything that I became, and am, is due to The Number of the Beast and Iron Maiden. Blame Tiswas. I do. Tim Cundle *It isn’t Vincent Price. It’s a chap called Barry Clayton who was considerably cheaper, and asked for far less money, than Vincent Price. ** Boney M are vastly underrated. It’s true and I’ll argue that point with anyone who thinks otherwise. Because they’re wrong. *** I fractured my coccyx stage diving at a Napalm Death show when I was fifteen years old and as I was young, dumb and drunk at the time didn’t realise what had happened until the next day. Cue five months of agony and a relatively short lived love affair with opiates and painkillers. ****It’s an Iron Maiden in joke. If you know the band and their music, you’ll get it and if you don’t… Well, never mind. *****Mainly due to a lack of talent and the delusional belief that attitude and hard work were enough to “make it”. They weren’t, aren’t and never will be.  Tim Cundle is the editor of Mass Movement, a counter culture site dedicated to punk rock, Hardcore, comics, genre literature and film and professional wrestling. He also writes reviews and interviews writers, artists and interesting people for Tripwire and is the author of Compression and What Would Gary Gygax Do?   Comments are closed.
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