What would be the ideal Iron Maiden song? In an appearance on the Scars and Guitars podcast, Iron Maiden founder and bassist Steve Harris considered this question.
Asked by the interviewer which song from his prolific career encapsulates his legacy as a musician, Harris was uncertain, noting that fans of his music would offer a better (yet divided) opinion (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):
“That’s an odd one because there’s so many songs I’ve written. I don’t know how many I’ve written, but it’s got to be more than 150 songs at least over the years. It’s a really tough one to say. I don’t know. I think it’s probably something you would probably ask the fans.”
“I think when you ask people — we’d never really do that — but if you did ask people, I think you’d probably get 10 or 12 people saying 10 to 12 different songs. It’s just such a personalized thing, so it’s very difficult.”
Further, the interviewer offered “Flight of Icarus” as his ideal Iron Maiden song and asked Harris if he could consider that song to be Maiden’s finest hour. The bassist disagreed, noting that the exemplar of Iron Maiden’s catalogue must be a song that encapsulates what Maiden is all about — teamwork. He said:
“Not really, because I think it would be better to choose a song that’s written by, say, three of us, or whatever because that song was written by Adrian and Bruce. It doesn’t really have the elements of my writing in there.”
“I would probably pick something like ‘The Evil That Men Do,’ which is written by all three of us. We’re the main songwriters. David does write, too, but he’s not very prolific. Nicko doesn’t write, Janick joined a lot later, but he’s become quite a prolific writer. I still probably say ‘The Evil That Men Do.'”