HISTORY OF IRON MAIDEN: LEGACY OF THE BEAST I (2018 - 2020)

2018–2022: Legacy of a Legend 

On November 13, 2017, the dates of European concerts, as a part of the "Legacy of the Beast World Tour 2018/19", were announced. The European leg of the tour was scheduled to begin on May 26 in Tallinn, Estonia, and end at London's O2 Arena on August 10. Among the 34 revealed dates there was also a place for another visit in Poland, the first of two consecutive shows was booked for July 27, 2018 at Tauron Arena. The idea for the tour was inspired by the mobile game and comic book of the same name. The set design contained many different but interconnected "worlds", and the repertoire included material from the 1980s, with a few surprises from later albums. The route was the first in the history of music, completely based on the plot and characters known from the RPG game. Tickets for the band's first concert at the Tauron Arena in Krakow sold out in hours, so in a relatively short time it was decided to announce another performance, which took place on July 28, 2018.

The special guest during the Polish concerts was the band Tremonti, which joined Iron Maiden also in France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain and Croatia. With the announcement of the second concert in Kraków, the "Legacy Of The Beast Tour" tour schedule for 2018 has been closed. Manager Rod Smallwood stated: Our fans know that we have a very specific tour schedule, because since Bruce and Adrian returned to Iron Maiden in the early 2000s, we have alternated tours dedicated to new albums with tours full of history and hits.

We love working this way for many reasons, not least because it gives the band the opportunity to play both new material and old, beloved songs that fans want to hear. This keeps the routes fresh, not only for the fans, but also for us. We decided to build the image of this tour full of history/hits around the Legacy of the Beast slogan, which gave us the opportunity to creatively use new ideas and have fun, especially with Eddie! I don't want to reveal too much at this point, but in the tradition of Iron Maiden, we are working on a lot of different scenes and we hope that it will give our fans an unforgettable experience when they see this very special show. 

 

The band combined the promotion of the album The Book of Souls (2015) with a simultaneous, synchronous frontal marketing campaign, covering the game Legacy of the Beast, and finally the film The Book of Souls: Live Chapter (2017). The announcement of the tour correlated with the celebration of the 40th anniversary of activity, which can be counted and interpreted in several different ways: 2015 is the 40th anniversary of the band's existence since its foundation on December 25, 1975, 2016 is 40 years of stage activity - the first concert took place May 1, 1976, 2017: 40 years of stage image (Prowler'77 - proto Eddie), 2018 marks 40 years of studio activity (1978/79 Spaceword Studios session), in 2019 the band celebrated its 40th anniversary of publishing: November 1979 – contract with EMI Rec, after all, in April 2020 it will be exactly 40 years since the market premiere of Iron Maiden a debut studio album. 

 

"The Book of Souls World Tour 2016/17" and the next one: "Legacy of the Beast World Tour" complemented each other, but in the context of several years of promotion of the mentioned game and the multi-stage celebration of the 40th anniversary of Iron Maiden.
The concerts of both tours were treated collectively, as an integral part of the marketing plan, which also included the promotion of the above-mentioned concert film on YouTube (each of the 15 songs was converted into a separate promotional clip just two days after the premiere).

 

The selection of individual places and venues that coincided with the European tour of 2016 also turned out to be not accidental. The sextet was to play again in Berlin at the Waldbühne, in Munich as the headliner of the RockAvaria festival, for the first time since 1984, another tour of the largest tours was booked after only a year. Sports arenas in the UK, in addition to Genting Arena in Birmingham, SSE in Belfast - concerts in Manchester, London, Aberdeen and Newcastle were booked in exactly the same venues. They were to play at London's O2 Arena for the eighth time in their career in front of a full capacity crowd. Once again they were headliners at Volt Festival, Graspop (for the ninth time), Hellfest, once again GelreDome (for the third time) in Arnhem, and Arena de Unita in Trieste.
In Spain, only one concert was planned at Wanda Metropolitano Stadium (the first rock concert at the new facility), new performances were at Trondheim Rocks, Firenze Rocks, Sweden Rock and Bulgarian Hills of Rock in the urban areas of Rowing Canal Plovdiv. The venues where they were to perform individual performances for the first time included Letňany Airport in Prague, Tauron Arena in Krakow, Dalhs Arena in Norway, Royal Arena in Copenhagen, Tele2 Arena in Sweden, Saku Arena in Estonia (return after 18 years), AccorHotels Arena in Paris (formerly Bercy), Geneva Arena, San Siro Hippodrome, Freiburg Messegelande and Hannover Messe Plaza in Germany. In many cases, the group performed at much larger venues than two years ago. They gave concerts on the Old Continent for the third year in a row, giving a total of 89 performances for approximately 2.7 million people.

 

On November 24, 2017, tickets for the European leg of the tour went on sale. After just a few minutes, individual dates in Paris, London and Helsinki were doubled. According to the distributors, admission cards were sold very quickly literally everywhere, e.g. to the Tele2 Arena stadium in Stockholm, and after just a few hours the main number of tickets for Sweden Rock Festival and Hellfest 2018 ran out. Ticket sales were excellent in Madrid, where after a few days 45,000 of them were sold - for 60 thousand available tix. There was also a great interest in the sale of tickets to festivals, including Trondheim Rocks 2018 and the record-breaking Graspop Metal Meeting 2018.

The tour was hailed by both journalists and fans as the most theatrical, spectacular and visually refined in the group's history so far. The editors of "Berliner B. Z Newspaper" described the band's performances as: A perfectly directed and staged heavy metal opera. The British "Metal Hammer" reported on the concert at Tele2 Arena in Stockholm with a telling title: The Greatest Show on Earth. The first 26 concerts of the European leg of the tour attracted at least 750,000 people, and all 38 performances played in 2018 attracted approximately 1.2 million fans, the tour was completely sold out, and all festival concerts with the British musicians as the headliner scored a record level of interest. In the fall, it was announced that the group, for the fourth time in history, would be one of the headliners of the world's largest music festival, Rock In Rio Festival 2019, taking place in their home city in Brazil.

 

On October 12, 2018, Parlaphone Records / BMG began promoting a collection of reissues of the band's 16 studio albums, intended for publication between November 16, 2018 and June 2019. The albums are scheduled for release in batches consisting of four consecutive discographic titles. The sound was recreated from the original master tapes, and the printing of individual discs was based on graphic solutions known from the original British editions of the albums. All titles were published in the form of digipaks, and the selected album from each batch was released in a collector's version, containing a figurine of the group's mascot, referring to the album cover illustration, and a unique patch. Individual titles have also been made available in lossless digital versions. The band had been considering the possibility of publishing a series of remastered albums on CD for several years, but only the latest technology, which was used to refresh the sound of the entire back-catalogue in 2015 (Abbey Road Studios, London), allowed for achieving the optimal effect, significantly exceeding the quality of commonly available reissues from 1998. The collection was published with the younger generation of recipients in mind who were just getting to know the band's music.

 

In the first half of November, a series of 36 concerts in North America was announced. For the first time in the group's history, ticket sales for venues with an average capacity of around 20,000 seats, started more than eight months before the start of the route on July 18, 2019 in Florida.
The tour, covering 33 cities in the United States and Canada, turned out to be the group's greatest commercial success in the region, grossing approximately 34 million USD. Iron Maiden played for several hundred thousand fans, earning over a million dollars from each concert. The group achieved further success in Latin America, where concerts in six cities in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile were seen by over half a million people! The concert as the headliner of the Rock In Rio 2019 festival was sold out in record time, attracting a record audience of over one hundred thousand people. In the capital of Chile, Santiago, Iron Maiden performed for almost 100,000 people at the Estadio Nacional de Chile and Arena Movistar combined.

 

The 44 concerts they played in 2019 attracted approximately 1.1 million fans in the Americas. The band was included in the Santiago MA Walk of Stars, where the musicians were honored with a dedicated star symbol. According to independent journalists, music critics and the group's agents, Iron Maiden gave 494 concerts between 2008 and 2019 as part of five world tours, which attracted a total of approximately 14.6 million fans. 2019 marked 20 years since the English team returned with six players. In the years 1999–2019, the band gave 840 concerts for approximately 25 million fans, which translated into an average of over 29,000 fans on every evening. In the fall, a referendum was conducted among the American public, the results of which indicated Iron Maiden as one of the most welcomed artists in the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame".

 

Ultimately, 82 concerts of the "Legacy of the Beast World Tour 2018/2019" were watched by over 2.3 million fans in Europe and both Americas. In the face of commercial and artistic success, the band's management decided to extend the tour for another, third year in a row. In addition to Europe, where Iron Maiden were to play for the seventh time in Donington, as the headliner of the Download Festival, the band planned to visit Asia and Oceania, which was to happen for the first time in the context of retrospective tours. On November 7, 2019, 33 concerts constituting the last stage of the tour were announced. Stadiums were rented in Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic (the former Synot Tip Aréna for the fourth time), Spain, Portugal, Sweden (Ullevi Stadium was rented for the fifth time), Italy, Austria, Germany, France and the Netherlands. The  tour was also to include selected festivals headlined by the British band. They were to appear for the tenth (!) time at the Graspop Festival in Dessel, Belgium. Iron Maiden decided to visit the Philippines, after four years to return to Japan and Oceania, and after a quarter of a century to visit Israel to play with the original lineup at Bloomfield Stadium. Although concerts were planned on the old continent in many cities that were not included in the European tour in 2018, in a number of cases the sextet intended to play in the same cities and venues as two years ago. 

 

The vast majority of shows scheduled for 2020 were sold out months before the tour was scheduled to drop. Over a million people were interested in participating in all 35 concerts of the tour, which accurately showed the scale of the entire undertaking. The team's plans were thwarted by events related to the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Performances in Australia and New Zealand were initially postponed, and organizers decided to cancel the Download Festival in Donington and other festivals. This was only the beginning of changes forced on the entertainment industry by the global situation, as a result of which subsequent events were canceled. Management started the procedure of moving individual concerts to 2021. Ultimately, several of the largest stadium concerts in selected European countries remained from the original tour schedule, which were postponed to June - July 2021.

 

To meet fans' expectations, it was decided to participate in the virtual edition of Download Festival 2020, broadcast by Download TV. According to the original event schedule, the seventh Iron Maiden concert as the festival's headliner was announced for June 13, 2020. This performance was watched by 400,000 people on several platforms. As part of the three-day series "Wacken World Wide - Live Stream", a broadcast of an archive concert at the Wacken Open Air Festival 2016 was also broadcast. 

According to reports from Pollstar, the project received over 11 million views, and over time, further broadcasts of concerts appeared, which the band played as the headliner of various festivals.
The British sextet, together with The Rolling Stones, Muse, Paul McCartney and Coldplay, joined the group of 1,500 artists who sent a special letter - a manifesto to the British Ministry of Culture, in which they appealed for support for owners of music venues, managers and artists during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The premiere of the next, thirteenth live album in the group's history was announced for November 20, 2020. The two-disc set Nights of the Dead, Legacy of the Beast: Live in Mexico City brought over one hundred minutes of music recorded during three sold-out stadium concerts in Mexico (September 27, 29, 30, 2019 - Palacio de los Deportes) for a total audience estimated for approximately 78,000 fans. The set was a collector's souvenir from the "Legacy of the Beast World Tour 2018/19/20", a kind of substitute for participation in the performances of its third stage in 2020, which was ultimately canceled during the escalation of the coronavirus pandemic.
 

The group's original idea was to record audio and visual material during one of the stadium concerts that were to take place in the summer of 2020 in Europe. Fans were to receive high-quality recordings documenting the spectacular tournee. Events related to the coronavirus pandemic disrupted musicians' plans, forcing them to cancel and postpone some concerts for the next year. The band only had raw recordings from the mixing desk (soundboard recordings), so it was out of the question to release a visual recording. In May 2020, it was decided to review the preserved audio material. According to Steve Harris: When the last leg of our Legacy tour was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, everyone in the band was very disappointed and depressed, as were our fans. We really hoped to reach other countries with these performances, and although we managed to set new dates for most European concerts for 2021, we thought we would listen to the recordings of the previous shows to see if we can prepare some concert souvenir that everyone will enjoy, they could rejoice. 

 

The concert album, published on November 20, 2020, turned out to be a collector's item, the publication of which was prompted by the need to provide a publication that would summarize the tour, especially since the fate of further concerts was in question. Logistical complications related to the distribution of the album were a significant obstacle in the era of lockdowns announced in many places around the world. The 13th live album of the British was a product of the times in which it was created. The market premiere of the album was not accompanied by traditionally understood promotional activities (music videos, interviews, advertising campaigns), yet the album intended for the most devoted fans - collectors, took one of the highest positions on the bestseller lists among all Iron Maideni concert albums.

 

In the fall of 2020, another four European stadium performances were announced in Basel, Zagreb, Budapest and Frankfurt, thus closing the schedule of the third installment of the "Legacy of the Beast World Tour", theoretically scheduled for summer 2021. The band's return to Brazil was also announced as the headliner of the Rock in Rio 2021 festival. It was intended to be the band's fifth concert at the world's largest music festival. In January 2021, The Times published an open letter signed by over a hundred of the most famous British artists representing almost all types of music, protesting against unfavorable legal regulations resulting from the adopted Brexit agreement. The musicians protested against the emergence of a legal loophole, as a result of which musicians from Great Britain would be forced to pay additional fees related to the organization of concerts in European Union countries. On February 10, the group received an official nomination for the "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame", but this decision was met with indifference from the musicians and management. The band took part in Stagehand's #ILoveLive campaign, the aim of which was to raise funds to support British technical workers in the music sector who were professionally inactive during the pandemic.

 

On March 1, 2021, the group's performance as the headliner of the Download Festival in Donington was announced, on June 11, 2022. Due to the applicable restrictions and restrictions regarding the organization of mass events, the third stage of the route planned for 2021 has been postponed to the next year. The new tour schedule was largely a reconstruction of the series of concerts originally planned for 2020. In April 2021, former band members Paul Di'Anno, Blaze Bayley, and legendary cover artist Derek Riggs were nominated and ultimately inducted into the prestigious Metal Hall of Fame in Anaheim. Efforts have been initiated to honor all members of the group in the near future . According to many sources, all of Iron Maiden's audio-visual releases have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, including regular albums, singles, VHS tapes, DVDs, promotional releases and compilations of all kinds.