The Number Of The Beast
Woe to you, oh earth and sea, for the devil sends the beast with wrath… Has there ever been a more ominous introduction to a song than the spoken-word intonation that ushered in the title track of Iron Maiden’s classic 1982 album ‘The Number Of The Beast?’
Maiden had fired singer Paul Di’Anno in the summer of 1982. His replacement was ex-Samson frontman Bruce Dickinson, though he might have regretted his decision when it came to recording this Steve Harris-penned track, partly inspired by a nightmare the bassist had after watching horror movie ‘Damien: Omen II’. Producer Martin Birch insisted the singer perform take after take of the semi-whispered vocal intro until he got it right.
“I got pissed off to the extent that I was trashing the room,” recalled Dickinson. “When the tape was on, Martin asked me if I could do the scream at the end of the first verse. I was like, ‘Oh, willingly.’”
The band wanted horror icon Vincent Price to read the song’s intro speech, but he proved too costly — so they instead went for voice actor Barry Clayton. The song’s lyrics concern a man who stumbles across an occult ritual, only to be dragged into it. Famously, the titular number was 666 — the mark of the biblical Beast Of Revelation. At one point, the lyrics began to spill over into real life.
“On the Sunday we were working on the track The Number Of The Beast, it was a rainy night and I hit this van,” Martin Birch said. “I looked in the back of the van and it’s got about half a dozen nuns in the back. And then this guy starts praying to me. A couple of days later I took my Range Rover in to be repaired, and when they give me the bill it was 666 pounds.”
Predictably, America’s religious right didn’t see the funny side, assuming Maiden were Satanists, despite the song’s cautionary message.
“They completely got the wrong end of the stick,” said an exasperated Steve Harris. “They obviously hadn’t read the lyrics. They just wanted to believe all that rubbish about us being Satanists.”
The Bible bashers couldn’t prevent The Number Of The Beast becoming one of the songs on which Maiden’s legend is built on. When Maiden play it live, it only takes a couple of seconds of that ominous intro before the fans are bellowing with such enthusiasm that the rest of the speech disappears. Proof that the devil really does have all the best tunes...