Iron Maiden’s career-spanning documentary plays the hits.
50 years, 17 albums, a freshly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, their own 737 – it must be about time Iron Maiden had a laudatory career retrospective documentary to go along with all the other richly deserved accoutrements of success.
And that’s exactly what Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition is. Directed by Malcolm Venville (44 Inch Chest, Henry’s Crime), the film takes us from their early days gigging around the traps in London’s East End in the mid 70s, where their attitude and aesthetic stood in stark contrast to the burgeoning punk scene; to their triumphant run in the 80s, with classic albums like The Number of the Beast, Powerslave, and Somewhere in Time; through the doldrums of the 90s, when the combo of grunge’s dominance and new lead singer Blaze Bailey replacing Bruce Dickinson saw Maiden briefly on the ropes; to their current status as stadium-filling elder statesmen of metal.
It’s pretty standard stuff. That doesn’t mean that it’s not fun, mind you; Iron Maiden have always been fun, with a keen sense of the ridiculous ever poised to puncture all the rock ‘n’ roll pomp and circumstance. But the arc of the band’s career, while unarguably impressive, isn’t particularly dramatic. We get line-up changes driven by tour burn out and ego, the odd creative clash (Burning Ambition underlines that bassist Steve Harris holds the reins), the inevitable health issues that come with age… and that’s kind of it. Little in the way of scandal or backstage excess, little in the way of drama.
Which is fine in the abstract, but “nice guys make great music for 50 years” isn’t much of a hook, and the points that the film does make – Harris calls the shots, Dickinson is the iconic front man, we love our fans – are well-trod ground. If you’re a fan, you’re across this stuff already – and Burning Ambition is very much for the fans.
To that end, we get a lot of talking head interviews with fans (and none with the band, who appear in voice-over and archival footage). Many are rank and file Maiden adherents, but a few are familiar, including Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, Chuck D of Public Enemy, and Metal Blade Records honcho Brian Slagel. The most enjoyable of these is Javier Bardem in full dad mode, who’s on hand simply to tell us how much he loves the band – and to note that rocking out to The Number of the Beast was pretty transgressive in conservative Catholic Spain.
There’s a lot of fun to be had here – it’s hard not to cackle at the boys spontaneously jamming at a Polish wedding, or drummer Nicko McBrain appearing on The Sooty Show, and the wealth of archival material is fascinating. But it’s shallow. We never get much below the surface. The band’s creative process is barely addressed.
Yes, yes, Harris is the taskmaster, we know that – but how did this guy from a hardscrabble, working class background, once an aspiring football player, wind up writing literary tunes like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”? That’s something I’d like to know, but Burning Ambition doesn’t touch upon such things. The film does take pains to put the and in their social and historical context, detailing their shows behind the Iron Curtain and their clashes with the religious right during the Satanic Panic, but personal context is largely absent.
Ultimately, Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition is hagiography, but it’s hugely enjoyable hagiography. It’s a celebration of Maiden, and they’re a band that deserve to be celebrated, but it’s hard not to wish we got a film that went a little deeper.
Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition is in cinemas from May 7.
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