For decades, heavy metal lore has held onto a romanticized origin story for Iron Maiden: that on Christmas Day, 1975, bassist Steve Harris officially formed the band that would go on to conquer the world. Today, as fans across the globe raise a glass to celebrate the band’s golden jubilee, Harris has stepped forward to correct the historical record—and to take a swipe at those who have tried to rewrite it for their own gain.
In a candid new feature with Classic Rock, the bassist clarified that while 1975 was indeed the year of the beast’s inception, the specific holiday date is apocryphal.
“It was a few months before Christmas,” Harris stated, dismantling the long-held belief that the band was a festive gift to the music world.
The misinformation surrounding the band’s embryonic days isn’t limited to calendars. Harris revealed his frustration with the rumors and false claimants that have cropped up over the last half-century. He specifically cited a bizarre incident involving a popular television program where history was blatantly fabricated.
“But there’s been all kinds of other rumours about the early days,” Harris explained. “One bloke claimed he was in the band, and was on Antiques Roadshow saying he was the first drummer in Maiden. Absolute rubbish! Then he said we were going to be called Mountain Ash, or something like that.”
While the exact date of formation may be fuzzy, the vision Harris had for the band was crystal clear from the outset. This clarity extended beyond the music to the band’s visual identity—a lesson he learned the hard way as a fan of progressive rock giants Genesis.
Harris recalled his devastation when Genesis abandoned their iconic logo from the Foxtrot era for the Selling England By The Pound album.
“I was mortified when they did Selling England By The Pound and changed the logo completely. And it was just a nothing logo. Really, as great as Selling England By The Pound was, the logo was awful,” Harris recalled. “I thought: ‘What are they doing?’ And I said to myself: ‘I’m never gonna let that happen. I’m gonna get a fantastic logo.'”
That determination birthed the jagged, angular Iron Maiden font that remains unchanged 50 years later. “Of course, over the years, we’ve been slagged off because the album artwork always has the same logo. But you know what? There’s a thread running right the way through it that is really powerful.”
Musically, Harris was equally uncompromising. He forged the band’s signature galloping sound by ignoring traditional rock tropes and refusing to learn standard scales, a method that confused incoming musicians. He cited “Phantom of the Opera” as the definitive moment where the Maiden style solidified.
“I think when I did Phantom it was obvious that the style of writing that I had was very different to what people were used to, certainly what guitarists were used to,” he noted. “I didn’t learn all the scales like they learned. I didn’t want to… Also the drum stuff that I wanted to have in those songs was quite unusual… When Clive [Burr] first joined… He was like: ‘Bl**dy hell! These songs are really unusual, really different!'”
Reflecting on the band’s first two albums, Iron Maiden (1980) and Killers (1981), Harris spoke with a mixture of pride and pragmatism regarding original vocalist Paul Di’Anno. He acknowledged the unique charisma Di’Anno brought to the fold, agreeing with the assessment that the singer possessed a “stable-boy charm.”
“He had a powerful voice, a strong stage presence and a real swagger about him. Paul was such a character,” Harris said.
However, the decision to fire Di’Anno remains one of the most pivotal and difficult gambles in the band’s history. By the time Killers was released, the band was still reinvesting every penny back into the touring machine, making the prospect of changing frontmen a terrifying financial risk.
“It was a tough one, really tough. To a certain degree it’s always been tough when it comes to that sort of thing. But having said that, he was given chances to put himself right,” Harris revealed.
Despite the uncertainty, Harris‘s “failure is not an option” mentality prevailed.
“I remember being in EMI, when we did the second album, and thinking: ‘Are we ever going to really make a career out of this where I can actually do it as a proper job?’… It’s like anything: if you invest in something for a long-term future, then you’ve just got to go for it. But there were no guarantees. We just had to hope for the best.”
