HISTORY OF IRON MAIDEN: FUTURE OF THE PAST (2023 - 2024)

2023–2024: Future of the Past

At the beginning of October 2022, the band's management revealed plans for another tour. "The Future Past Tour 2023/24" was planned as the next stage of promotion for the Senjutsu album and a return to material from the iconic Somewhere in Time album from 1986. According to Steve Harris: After the release of our latest album, Senjutsu, we slightly updated the current tour “Legacy of the Beast”, opening the concerts with the first three songs in the setting of the Japanese Palace.
Since it doesn't make much sense to repeat this for the Senjutsu album tour, we thought of other options and decided to go back to the Somewhere in Time days since that tour didn't feature in the various historical retrospective tours we've done. These were based on our concert videos from the 80's and unfortunately we didn't film this tour (blame the manager!).

We've had a lot of fan requests for a lot of songs over the years, so now we're going to play them, plus of course a few others that we know you'll like! It will also be especially satisfying to finally play some of the more epic songs from Senjutsu. According to the band's manager, Rod Smallwood: Combining two albums, we think is very exciting. We know fans are eager to hear these epic 'Senjutsu' tracks live for the first time, and we think pairing them with an iconic album like 'Somewhere in Time' will create another truly special tour for fans old and new! Of course, for the new album tour in Europe and the UK we will return largely to the relative intimacy of concert arenas and we know that the fans will be very happy with that too! At the same time, the group's manager confirmed that the tour would be extended for another year - 2024.

 

As announced, Iron Maiden have started the process of announcing further dates planned for 2023. These include, among others: concerts in Great Britain, Germany, Poland (June 13 and 14 at Tauron Arena Kraków), Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium. Festival performances were also announced, including headliner Sweden Rock Festival, Wacken Open Air (for the fourth time in their career), Hellfest (for the third time) and Return of the Gods in Italy.
Tickets for Wacken were sold in a record time of five hours, tickets for Hellfest also disappeared almost immediately, and concerts in sports arenas were sold out at the pre-sale stage.

All 33 concerts of the European leg were completely sold out. Taking advantage of the break between tours, Bruce Dickinson announced the next installment of  "An Evening with Bruce Dickinson" in selected European cities in January 2023. On November 18, 2022, a special three-disc edition of the album The Number of the Beast was released, containing concert material known from the album Beast Over Hammersmith recorded in 1982.
The release was piloted by a single with the song "Total Eclipse" available on streaming platforms. The publication was associated with the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the market premiere of the band's third studio album.

 

At the beginning of January 2023, the British Royal Mail honored Iron Maiden with a special series of stamps and postcards as an expression of commemoration of the band's role in shaping British rock music and distinguished the figure of Eddie as widely recognizable beyond the borders of the heavy metal genre. Previously, similar collections commemorated the most famous artists, such as The Beatles, David Bowie, Queen, Elton John, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and Cliff Richard. 

 

Iron Maiden were the first heavy metal artists to receive this honor, and they were the fifth British band honored by the Royal Mail.
On February 1, the band received its second nomination for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame which was met with an enthusiastic response from the management of this institution, while the musicians and the group's management once again did not react to the nomination, publicly boycotting the possibility of appearing among the distinguished artists.

Iron Maiden were among the six headliners of the Power Trip 2023 Festival, an equivalent of the classic rock Desert Trip Festival, also organized on the grounds of the Empire Polo Club in the Californian city of Indio. For the first time in the history of heavy rock, during one weekend on October 6-8, 2023, six of the greatest artists in the entire industry were to perform full-scale concerts: AC/DC (live return after seven years of absence), Metallica, Iron Maiden, Guns' N Roses, Judas Priest and the progressive visionaries from Tool. The invited artists represented almost the full stylistic cross-section of the mainstream of heavy music.

 

On May 28, with a concert in Ljubljana (Slovenia), the band started their 25th world tour "The Future Past Tour". For the first time in history, the repertoire of performances included the song "Alexander the Great" that had been expected for 37 years. Unlike the previous tour, the musicians performed hit compositions less often, with an emphasis on epic songs with a progressive bent, intended for declared fans. As announced by Bruce Dickinson, the tour had a more exclusive character, including almost exclusively performances in the indoor sports arenas with a capacity of up to 20,000 seats. Compared to several previous tours, the number of special effects and props was limited too, and the concept of the show was to focus the audience on the music itself. The visual setting of the stage referred to the cyberpunk style associated with the classic SF film "Blade Runner". 

 

The overall design brought to mind a dystopian city of the future, topped with ramps of lights arranged in the shape of a pyramid. Both the upper level of the stage and the lighting set were surrounded by LED light hoses, changing color depending on the atmosphere of the composition. Traditionally, there were telescreens on the wings of the stage, and for the first time the band decided to use additional screens placed symmetrically deep inside the stage. During the concerts, visualizations and music videos were displayed on them, deepening the three-dimensional effect. All 33 concerts of the European stage were commercial and artistic successes. 

The events attracted record numbers of spectators, and according to critics, the band showed its best form in years. In July 2023, it was announced that the sales certificates for audio-visual albums received by musicians in Great Britain amounted to over 5 million copies, which was a record for a heavy metal artist. On August 1, 2023, Iron Maiden were included into the Olympiapark München Walk of Fame. The European section of the tour ended with the group's performance at the Wacken Open Air festival, which they headlined for the fourth time in their career. Band's legendary drummer Nicko McBrain, participated in the tour after suffering a stroke in January 2023. The musician informed fans about the illness and his recovery in a special message, published only after the end of the series of regular shows. 

On October 6, the band performed as one of the stars of the American Power Trip Festival. The sextet's concert in Indio was attended by up to 100,000 people, which turned out to be the group's largest performance as a festival headliner in the United States. It was also the last concert the musicians gave in 2023. 37 concerts played during the first stage of "The Future Past Tour" attracted over a million fans. According to many observers "The Future Past Tour 2023" was a kind of complement to the "Legacy of the Beast Tour". In the years 2018 - 2023 (excluding the pandemic period), the band gave 177 concerts for a total of 5.2 million people, which was a record in the history of the band.

In mid-October, the further concerts of the tour were announced. In September 2024, the band was to visit Oceania and Japan; the last time when the musicians performed in this region was in 2016. Subsequently, 24 concerts in North America were announced, as well as the fifth show in the group's history at the Estadio Nacional de Chile. Due to the ever-growing demand, a second gig at the National Stadium in Santiago was added at the pre-sale stage. In a short period of time, over 100,000 tickets were sold for both concerts combined, it was a record achievement in the whole history of the band. The classic composition "Phantom of the Opera", known from the band's debut album (Iron Maiden, 1980), interpreted by the Swedish group Ghost, was nominated for a Grammy Award. 

The first show in Bogota in 13 years, booked at the El Campin Stadium was already sold out at the pre-sale stage. Iron Maiden broke all previous records of ticket sales for Colombian concerts, set by a foreign artist, such as The Rolling Stones, Madonna, The Weekend, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay. The show at the Allianz Parque Stadium in Sao Paulo (60,000) was sold out within just two minutes (!) on the first day of pre-sale. The management added a second gig organized a day later, it was supposed to be the fifth performance in the history of the group at this venue, previously known as Estádio Palestra Itália. In just three hours, over 50,000 tickets were sold for a stadium show in Buenos Aires. There was never before when all tickets for the band's concerts in Argentina being sold out so quickly, and finally the date in the country's capital was doubled too. 

 

Nicko McBrain has been invited to join the prestigious The Massed Bands of His Majesty's Royal Marines during the 52nd Mountbatten Festival of Music (MFM) concerts scheduled for March 8 and 9, 2024 at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The Iron Maiden drummer, together with an orchestra created by one hundred selected musicians from the Royal Marines bands (members of the Corps of Drums), were to present British music standards, military marches and Iron Maiden all time classics. The honorary guests of the cyclical event are the representatives of the British Royal Family, and participation in the project has been perceived as a highly prestigious event for many years. Proceeds from the concerts go to the accounts of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Charities and the Young Lives vs Cancer Charity. On March 24, Bruce Dickinson received the official title of Honorary Citizen of the City of Curitiba, due to his contributions to the development of the region and musical culture as the lead singer of Iron Maiden.

The 45 sold-out concerts of "The Future Past Tour 2024" attracted about one million viewers in countries in Asia, Oceania and both Americas. All 82 concerts of the tour presented in 2023 - 2024, were seen by a total of circa 2 million fans on five continents of the world. Compositions from the album Senjutsu were presented during two tours ("Legacy of the Beast Tour" and "The Future Past Tour") played in 2022 - 2024, during 140 concerts in 38 countries, for a total audience of 4 million people, which translated into an average of 29 thousand fans. This was a record audience to promote a new studio album in the history of the group so far. 

 

The shows played on December 6 and 7, 2024 at Allianz Parque in Sao Paulo turned out to be the last performances of the band with drummer Nicko McBrain. After 42 years of intensive cooperation, the musician decided to give up participating in concert tours. Ultimately, the group performed for 120,000 fans gathered during two Brazilian concerts combined. On December 8, 2024, the band's official website announced that Simon Dawson, known for many side projects and performances in the band British Lion, led by Steve Harris, had been appointed as the legendary drummer's successor for the duration of the concerts. In December 2024, the closure of the "Legacy of the Beast" project was announced, after more than eight years the game was withdrawn from the offer, eventually used by 6.5 million users, which made it the most popular game created by a rock band and the largest such venture of a metal band. In the years 2016 - 2024, when the "Legacy of the Beast" project was developed and intensively promoted, Iron Maiden played three worldwide tours, during which they gave 339 concerts, which attracted about 9.5 million people. It was the largest venture related to the promotion of a game branded by a major artist.