Iron maiden was founded in 1975 by Steve Harris. The original singer, Paul Day, was fired because of his "lack of energy on stage." He was soon replaced by Dennis Wilcock.
Iron Maiden had two guitarists at this time, Dave Sullivan and Terry Rance. Dennis Wilcock invited one of his friends, Dave Murray, to join the band. Murray was also a guitarist. Also in the band was Ron Matthews, the drummer.
So the band line up currently stands as:
- Dennis Wilcock - singer
- Dave Sullivan - guitar
- Terry Rance - guitar
- Dave Murray - guitar
- Steve Harris - bass guitar
- Ron Matthews - drums
This annoyed Sullivan and Rance. For this reason, Harris split the band, just a year after it was formed. Luckily, the band was reformed, with Murray as the only guitarist.
In 1977, Iron maiden hired Bod Saywer: another guitarist. Sawyer caused tension between Wilcock and Murray, causing Steve Harris to fire the two guitarists. In the November that year, Iron Maiden performed a bad concert, with Tony Morre on keyboards, Terry Wapham on guitar, and Barry Prurkis on drums. The poor gig caused Harris to fire the whole band.
Dave Murray rejoined the band, and Doug Sampson was hired as drummer. Paul Di'Anno also joined the band, as singer. In 1979, Iron Maiden hired another guitarist, Paul Cairns.
Time for another line-up:
- Paul Di'Anno - singer
- Dave Murray - guitar
- Paul Cairns - guitar
- Steve Harris - bass guitar
- Doug Sampson - drummer
However, Paul Cairns left the band, shortly before they started recording songs. Dennis Stratton replaced him. Doug Sampson was also replaced, by Clive Burr. In 1980, Stratton was fired, and Adrian Smith was hired in his place.
The next year, Paul Di'Anno began taking drugs, causing his performances to suffer. He was fired, and replaced with Bruce Dickinson. Also, in December 1982, Clive Burr left Iron maiden. He was shortly replaced by Nicko McBrain.
So, at the start of 1983, Iron Maiden now looks like this:
- Bruce Dickinson - singer
- Dave Murray - guitar
- Adrian Smith - guitar
- Steve Harris - bass guitar
- Nicko McBrain - drums
The next change happened 7 years later, when Adrian Smith was replaced with Janick Gers. Then, after 3 years, Dickinson left Iron Maiden to pursue a solo career. So Maiden audition hundreds of potential singers, before finally settling on Blaze Bayley.
However, in 1999, Bayley left Maiden by mutual consent, and Harris announced that Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith would both be rejoining. This meant that Maiden now had 3 guitarists: Dave Murray, Janick Gers and Adrian Smith.
So the final line-up, the same as it is now (June 2008) is:
- Bruce Dickinson - singer
- Dave Murray - guitar
- Adrian Smith - guitar
- Janick Gers - guitar
- Steve Harris - bass guitar
- Nicko McBrian - drums
So as you can see, Maiden has had a lot of different people in the band. Overall, there have been 26 different members over 30 years.
