T here were bathtubs’ worth of caviar. Vodka that turned the world pink. Secret swastikas, impromptu wedding gigs and, everywhere they went, Maiden-mania.
When Iron Maiden became the first Western rock band to take a full production show behind the Iron Curtain on the 1984 World Slavery tour, they stepped into a world of hysteria, celebration and “eye-opening” poverty and oppression. Their mission? To rock away the hardship. “At the time, the Iron Curtain was down and the opportunity of going there, we might make a significant number of people really happy by doing this,” says singer Bruce Dickinson, reminiscing with The Independent about this pivotal tour, launched 40 years ago this week, which took a prop-laden spectacle featuring a 30-foot mummified Eddie mascot to six cities in Poland and Hungary to promote their 1984 Powerslave album.
“It wasn’t a political act at all. It was an act to go and entertain some fans. You can characterise it as a political act.
When I was an undergraduate, there was no such thing as a non-political act. The act of taking a piss could be construed as political, depending upon where you did it. [But] sometimes people just want to have fun.
They just want to rock. That’s what we were there for.” Iron Maiden’s incursion into Eastern Europe, though, symbolised a hopeful spark of unity and understanding between the divided cultures of East and West.
Despite being categorised as having “anti-Soviet lyrics” by Russian authorit.