It was a heart-stopping moment, and Donington’s collective jaw dropped. Grown men fought back tears. It was a Griffon-engine Spitfire, which has a di… - Bruce Dickinson

"We wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus'. It's a Fable... It's about this bloke named Icarus, right, and one day he goes "'Ello, I think I'm gonna fly about!", so he builds some wings out of wax and feathers, right, and he goes flying about like a cunt through the air, right, and he goes up to this ball of fire called 'the sun' that hides obscured by the clouds over the UK, right... So he goes up to the ball of fire and the wings melt, 'cause they're made out of wax, right, so he goes plummetin', plummetin' down to the earth, and he fuckin' dies, right... alright, so we wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus', right, and it's basically sayin' "Hey man, wake up! Don't go flyin' about near the sun unless you're in an airplane," right, 'cause the wings are metal, right, and they won't melt, right... So, here's a song that's workin' on two different levels at once, right... 'cause the wings of the plane are made out of metal, right... and we play Metal music, right... two dimensional, see? So Maiden's always thinking... Always thinking."

Eddie is Iron Maiden's mascot, monster, alter ego - call it what you will. Part supernatural, part primal, part aggressive adolescent, Eddie is a super anti-hero with no backstory. Eddie doesn't give a fuck. He just is.

Eddie also gets us off the hook as individuals. Eddie is far bigger and more outrageous than any badly behaved superstar. Eddie makes rock stars obsolete. This comes in handy when you get to your late fifties and rather fancy a quiet night in after playing to 25,000 screaming metal fans.

started to read the excellent biography of Blake by Peter Ackroyd. I think it is one of the best of his books, the other being London: The Biography. I got the feeling that Ackroyd was almost channelling the spirit of Blake to rise from the pages and speak directly to the reader.