Adrian Smith has written some of Iron Maiden’s greatest songs over the years - but when he first joined the band in 1980 he had to wait for his chance to prove himself as a writer.
As an instinctively melodic guitar player, Smith has composed various Maiden classics - some of them written alone, and others written with singer Bruce Dickinson, or bassist Steve Harris, or both.
Many of these songs were singles: Flight Of Icarus, 2 Minutes To Midnight, Wasted Years, Stranger In A Strange Land, Can I Play With Madness and The Evil That Men Do.
But when the band recorded their first album with Smith, there was no room for the new guy’s songs.
That album, Killers, was released in 1981, and was written almost entirely by Steve Harris, with only one song co-written with Paul Di’Anno, the singer who preceded Dickinson.
In an interview with Classic Rock magazine, Smith described the recording of Killers as a daunting experience - not least because the producer of that album was Martin Birch, famed for his work with Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath and more.
“I couldn't sleep for a week before we went in,” Smith said. “Martin had worked with [Ritchie] Blackmore. I mean, Jesus!
“But Martin was very good with me, although he could be a bit edgy. He was a karate black-belt and sometimes he’d be pulling moves, kicking and shadow-boxing, and then he’d go, ‘Can you do that overdub?’”
It was on the following album, The Number Of The Beast, released in 1982, that Adrian Smith first asserted himself as a songwriter within the band.
He co-wrote three tracks for that album: The Prisoner and 22 Acacia Avenue, both written with Steve Harris, and Gangland, written with drummer Clive Burr.
22 Acacia Avenue was the first song that Smith worked on with Harris.
And as Smith tells MusicRadar, this was a song that he had written when he was still a schoolboy.
“That song was one of the first things I ever wrote,” Smith says. “And it was inspired, loosely, by that Queen track, Now I'm Here. You know, the chugging guitar, the stabs.”
In the late '70s, Smith had performed an embryonic version of 22 Acacia Avenue with his previous band, Urchin.
“It was a cornerstone of the live set,” he says. “Very dramatic. And Steve [Harris] remembered it from when he used to come to see Urchin play live.
“I remember being in Battery Studios [where The Number Of The Beast was recorded] and Steve said to me, ‘What's that song you did with Urchin? That one about a road…’
Smith recalls: “Steve added a few bits and I also had this other riff that I’d play at soundchecks, so we stuck that on the end - another time change.
“And that’s how it happened. That’s how that song I wrote when I was 16 ended up on an Iron Maiden album!”
