{"id":223625,"date":"2026-05-07T18:40:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/223625\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T18:40:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:40:21","slug":"the-time-queen-thought-iron-maiden-their-support-act-had-upstaged-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/223625\/","title":{"rendered":"The time Queen thought Iron Maiden \u2013 their support act \u2013 had upstaged them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nowadays, they\u2019re one of the biggest metal bands \u2013 nay, artists \u2013 in the world. But Iron Maiden<\/a> are where they are after 50 years plus of hard graft, which has included supporting some of the biggest names on the planet.<\/p>\n

And in a new interview with Classic Rock<\/a>, founder and bandleader Steve Harris comments on the unspoken and somewhat healthy rivalry that often occurs between headliners and support acts.<\/p>\n

Over their multi-decade career, Iron Maiden have supported a who\u2019s who of rock and roll\u2019s elite, including Kiss<\/a>, Judas Priest<\/a> and Queen<\/a>. And the biggest lesson Harris learned from supporting the former two? \u201cBe nice to people,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not naming names,\u201d he says. \u201cBut there [were] a lot of things going around, with headline bands worrying you were going to go down better than them. I\u2019ve always felt you should give up if you\u2019re worried about support bands.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues: \u201cAny band supporting us, their job is to go out there, push us hard and try and take our audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harris recalls an interaction at the inaugural edition of Rock in Rio in 1985, which found Iron Maiden supporting headliners Queen. As he remembers, following their set, guitarist Brian May tracked him down before Queen\u2019s set.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrian said we\u2019d frightened the life out of them. I thought: \u2018Good, we\u2019ve done our job.\u2019 Of course it didn\u2019t make any difference to Queen, they still went down amazing. But it\u2019s good to ruffle feathers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden\u2019s members are now all in their late 60s and early 70s, but there remains a strong sense of physicality to their live shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the early days when we had frontmen that didn\u2019t move so much, I had to cover the stage more. It was my job,\u201d says Steve Harris. \u201cAfter Bruce arrived, I didn\u2019t need to be in the middle of the stage \u2013 despite what he says!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I always wanted to keep moving. These days it takes more effort to get across the stage, without slipping over in my own sweat. I\u2019ve always done a lot of sports, though. I still do a lot of running and I just played tennis this morning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden have a string of tour dates planned for the remainder of 2026. For a full list of shows, head to their official website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Sam is the Associate News Editor for Guitar.com and MusicTech. Thoroughly immersed in music culture for the majority of his life, Sam has played guitar for 20 years, studied music technology and production at university, and also written for the likes of Guitar World, Total Guitar, Metal Hammer and MusicRadar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nowadays, they\u2019re one of the biggest metal bands \u2013 nay, artists \u2013 in the world. But Iron Maiden…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223626,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[45548,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-223625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-artist","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}