Hot Leg, Newcastle

It is now two minutes to three on Monday, 9th March (end of final draft - five minutes past two on Wednesday, 25th March) and I get the feeling this gig log is going to be hard. So I’ll just get straight on with the damn thing before I go off to work early and do the time I lost last Friday.

OK, so I woke up to Chickens and felt my usual nervous butterflies. However, I am getting used to them now, so I got up in pretty good time and got ready. I’d planned my clothes, of course, to save time later – I wore coloured/grey stripy socks, matching black (slightly slutty, but I’d liked the bra) underwear, my Criminal Damage jeans with the stars, my Trooper shirt and eventually my AC/DC denim jacket. I hadn’t planned on that, but it was too warm for a bigger one and too cold for none at all. I had £50.02 in cash in one of the little button-up pockets so that I didn’t forget to bring money that night.

Amy and I listened to Stone Gods for a bit, as Hot Leg had been in my alarm clock. Until, of course, we decided that that was silly, and I brought Red Light Fever downstairs. We listened to it about two and a half times before she, and I, set off to school. Nana told us to have a nice night – Cocktails had been on Scuzz the night before and we’d told her we were going to see the band who were playing it. She told me I had to ‘scream and shout’. Good advice indeed!

I put on my boxing boots and set off. It was a fresh, sunny day – proper spring weather – when I started walking to school, making sure I had a bit of a listen to hot Leg on the way. But it was weird. I met Beth and Grace as usual, then we walked on to Laura’s and nothing felt different. I did talk a bit about the show to remind them I was going, though that was about it.

The excitement built a bit when Steph arrived at Laura’s. This would be the first show I went to with friends, and not just family (although, of course, Amy was going too).

I ticked off my last day of the Hot Leg countdown in my academic diary in form. Grace told me how many days it was until John Barrowman – she’s extremely excited.

First lesson was French. We talked a bit about football and French footballers before we very briefly started on music. Mrs Kiernan set us some vocab, and when I got out my diary to write it in Laura saw what was written there.

“Oh, is Hot Leg tonight?” she asked me. Or something like that, anyway. Of course, I responded in the affirmative.

Next came Media, the lesson I share with Steph. We got a bit of a chance to talk gig excitement, but most of the lesson was taken up with watching the last part of the last episode of Life on Mars. Even though the ending sort of breaks the golden rule of English: ‘Never end by saying “I woke up and it was all a dream”’, I still thought it was pretty clever. I want to watch more of it now. I especially like the cool 70s soundtrack!

At break, we went to meet everyone else. I’d seen Ellan briefly earlier, but only to wave stupidly at. Her, Steph and I had a bit of a hyper discussion. We sorted the details of what would be happening later, i.e. Dad would pick them up at around six-ish. I told them to bring as little stuff as possible, and a jacket they could easily wrap around their waists. Of course, we’d be standing – my first time! I’d been to Richmond Live where I stood, but outside. But it was going to be Ellan and Steph’s first Academy gig altogether – and their first real gig that they were both actually counting (Ellan had seen Busted, and Steph Christina Aguilera. I think they were both pretty embarrassed…)

During break, Tom asked me if I’d help him with the underskirt of the wedding dress he was making. Steph and I had a free next, so we both went to meet him at the Textiles room. On the way there I passed Matt, who asked me if I could make it to his gig. Even though I still wasn’t sure, I felt so rock ‘n’ roll! (Note – his gig was last Saturday (14th March) and I didn’t go. I had nobody to go with!)

Helping Tom involved holding a huge circle of netting for about half an hour while he pinned it. I would never have the patience. He is amazing. However, Steph and I did get rather bored. I took a few pictures of Tom and his work, then we listened to some tunes on my phone. The latter died down quickly, though, because Tom and I hardly have the same taste.

The dummy he was working on was insanely skinny. This led to a big thing about proper measurements, and we all ended up measuring ourselves. Tom and Steph have the same sized waist. Mine is the widest. Wow.

Eventually, we left him to get on with his dress alone, and we went to Becky’s where she was watching Torchwood with Beth and Chloë. Bleurgh – Torchwood. I’d brought my mp3 player and my speakers in case I got chance to force Hot Leg upon everyone, but no such luck. Torchwood continued on into lunchtime. Grace and Becky even tried to name all of the episodes without looking. Losers.

I always have two frees on Fridays due to a clash in my timetable. I spent the second free on a computer upstairs in the Resource Centre. I listened to quite a lot of Samson while I did some Ethics work (comparing Jeremy Bentham with John Stuart Mill) and English work (a speech opposing reality TV).

I actually had English last. It wasn’t a coursework lesson, though. In fact, it was just a daft, and extremely easy, one. Sarah and I had to make a poster about demonstrative pronouns. These are pronouns such as ‘this’ or ‘those’ which determine something already known by the speaker and listener(s). Erm. Yeah. I did tell Sarah about the gig, briefly. And she told me to have a good time as we left.

So that was college. Off to do an hour and a half of work!

I arrived just after half three (so, in the signing-in book, half three) and got straight on with my jobs (I usually eat, go to the toilet, do whatever, to kill time). It’s incredible what a bit of pressure can do. I managed to finish everything, except for a couple of sets of desks, that I would usually do in two hours and a half. I left before Ralph even arrived. So it surprised me when he drove up behind me on Helmsley Way to ask what I had and hadn’t done! He sounded as surprised as I had been when I said I’d managed to do almost everything.

Finally, home time. The excitement was really starting to build up. I ran to my room and stuck my phone on charge to give it a bit of extra juice, then changed into my black and purple Raven vest top.

Amy and I ate tea together; chicken, chips and beans. Quick, easy food that I really enjoyed as I hadn’t had it for absolutely ages. However, I couldn’t finish it. Damn nervous butterflies! I’m so stupid. I always get them, even though there’s nothing to be nervous about. I’m not the one performing!

Dad was all dressed up smart because while we were at the show he and Charlotte were going to find somewhere nice to eat. I did a last quick freshen up – this involved wetting my hair and blow drying it as big and curly as it would go, brushing my teeth, applying deodorant and covering myself in Anna Sui’s Dolly Girl Bonjour L’Amour perfume. I love perfume. It smells good.

At about five to six I put on my Iron Maiden Vans and we set off, tickets in hand. Well – as soon as I got in the car, I put them in one of the side pockets. I brought my water bottle again, but I had an extra one as Dad had brought another one each for me and Amy. I got drinking straight away – I didn’t want to risk being dehydrated! The last thing I wanted to do was get in there and pass out.

First, we picked Charlotte up. Dad went in the house to get her while Amy and I waited, slightly impatiently. She wasn’t long, though, and we drove the two long minutes to Ellan’s house, where she was watching for us out of her window. She had her hair down and she was wearing her leather jacket, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen her so excited. I noticed she was wearing perfume, something I wouldn’t have expected of her, but decided not to mention it in case I was wrong.

We set off back to our side of town so we could grab Steph and get going. On the way there, Charlotte and Ellan said hi and got a bit better acquainted, as they’d never met before.

Because I couldn’t stop smelling perfume, I eventually asked Ellan what it was when we were almost at Steph’s. I think she said it was Fantasy by Britney Spears. I’m no Britney fan, but her perfumes are gorgeous.

I had to run into Steph’s house to get her. She was still in the bathroom – according to her mum, she’d been debating what to wear all night. So I yelled down the hall: “It’s not a beauty pageant!” She emerged in the end, and we went back to the car. She, like me, had a very noticeable camera-shaped bulge in one of her pockets, but I told her not to worry about it.

Back in the car, Amy had found a tin of beans that Dad had forgotten to bring inside for tea a couple of days ago. These beans provided a running joke for the whole journey.

We were well and truly on our way! Whoop! No denying the excitement now. As soon as we hit the main road, Amy made Charlotte put Red Light Fever on. We didn’t turn it up to eleven, though, because we were all talking so much. About really random, daft stuff – strange things that had happened at the Hugh Cornwell show Dad and Charlotte had seen the night before, like Dad standing up at the end when hardly anyone else would. Charlotte also told us about her niece’s ‘Hacca Macca’ (High School Musical) obsession. A lot of the time, Steph and Ellan couldn’t stop laughing, which was a nice way to break the ice.

Because Red Light Fever is quite a short album, we played it through once and a bit. I think we arrived in Newcastle at about twenty past seven. It was obviously dark, and we could see the lights of the city.

Dad was a bit wary of parking in the college car park – there was someone in there, and he looked quite official. We decided against it in the end, just in case we weren’t meant to park there. Instead, Charlotte showed Dad the side road where she parked for Kylie, and we went down there.

It was quite chilly outside. I temporarily forgot that my sister was in the back, and had to go and let her out. Once I had done this, we set off walking. It really was cold, adding to my amounting nerves. Why do I always get nervous? It gets kind of annoying!

We talked Hot Leg all the way there – of course. It was only around a ten minute walk, but it felt way longer. I was so cold and excited that I just wanted to arrive.

And arrive we did! To a quiet, empty road. I’d been expecting quite a long queue, or at least a few people waiting around outside, but there were only security dudes. The reason for this will become obvious in a minute, but back then, I couldn’t figure it out.

After a few words of warning, Dad and Charlotte let us go. We went to the dude outside, who directed us to the dude in the foyer, who took our tickets (he actually ripped off the rippy bits this time!) and directed us upstairs. I guess I didn’t really realise what he meant just then – I was more psyched that we’d successfully sneaked Amy into a gig – but as we went up the stairs, it all started to add up. The lack of people, the going up – we weren’t going to the Academy. We were going to Academy 2.

When I did realise, my excitement just about doubled. I’d never been in there before, but I knew it was considerably smaller, meaning a much more intimate show. What an awesome added bonus.

The t-shirt stall was just outside the final staircase up to the stage. Because we’d arrived about half an hour after doors, The Crave were already on, and we could hear them really clearly. I desperately wanted to go in. However, Amy and Steph both went to the toilet, so we had to wait. Ellan and I examined the shirts, deciding which ones we were going to get. I wanted one with the tour dates on it, but the only one of these had long sleeves. Plus, I noticed a misprint – instead of ‘March 4th’ it said ‘March 4nd’. Which was quiet cool, but that’s the kind of thing that would really start to annoy me after a while.

When Amy and Steph emerged, we all bought t-shirts so we could be sure we’d get the ones we wanted, and we’d avoid any rush after the show. I wanted a black one with the Hot Leg logo in orange, but they were sold out in my size, so I got a similar one with the logo as a white outline. Amy and Steph both got the yellow shirt with an orange logo, and Ellan got the grey one with the band carved into Mount Rushmore.

Finally, time to go in! One last flight of stairs and that was it. We were met by the venue and it was awesome. It was basically a club, with the stage at the other end. There was a bar on one side and a small balcony with a few stools on the other. I did a bit of research later and found out the capacity of the place is four hundred. Sure beats the two thousand we’d expected. No matter where we were, the sound and view were both really good … except for tall people! Honestly, why are rockers so tall? I thought I was until I went there. The majority of people towered above me.

The Crave were in full flow. Steph, I think, took a liking to them immediately – two of them had dreadlocks. However, I didn’t want to settle for a view from the back, so we began the quest to move forward, sneaking into whatever gaps we could. It wasn’t easy with four of us, especially through all the tall people, but eventually, thanks to Steph’s brainwave of following a rather large woman with beer, we arrived as far forward as we were ever going to get – the second row. We’d never get on the barrier, but we’d still done pretty well. And just in time to catch the end of the last song! Steph, the smallest of us, remarked that at least she saw them a bit.

When The Crave left the stage, we took a look at our surroundings. Steph was wedged between the people on the barrier and a little staircase, with Ellan next to her, and Amy and I were right at the foot of the stairs. Awkward positioning, awesome view. Totally worth it. I took my jacket off and tied it round my waist, then stuffed my new shirt up my top, out the way. You’d think it would be really hot in there with all those people, but the air conditioning was immense.

The music playing was annoying. It didn’t sound rocky in any way, shape or form, and I didn’t know any of it so I couldn’t sing along happily. It did make me want Hot Leg to come on even more, though.

A few dudes came on to do various sound checky bits and pieces, provoking rowdy chants of “Hot Leg! Hot Leg!” from us every now and then. This went on for a few songs.

Then, this one song came on that was considerably louder than the rest. I still didn’t know it but, like the Rolling Stones guy in Twickenham, I could feel it in my ribs. Surely, they had to be on soon.

Indeed they did. At the end of the song, the lights went down, and we all started yelling. That was it! I’d been counting down the days since mid-January and it was finally here.

The band came on. From the right-hand side as we were looking at them; all of them had their quirks, but Justin Hawkins! Wow. I could hardly believe that we were seeing him so close up. He was wearing black and green zebra striped trousers and a black jacket over a blue vest. His Hot Leg hair is well better than his old hair – shorter and bleached blonde. It suits his face more. He still looks ugly, but not as ugly. He was wearing tons of dark eye make-up, too. And black nail varnish.

They launched straight into Ashamed. I had expected them to open with Chickens, because it’s the first one on the album, but I didn’t mind because I love both songs equally. I got out my camera and took loads of pictures and a video. This was my first show with a working, non-phone camera so I went slightly insane.

The song was good, despite the lack of Beverlei Brown who features on the album. That’s probably a good thing, though – her voice kinds of drives me crazy. And Justin is perfectly capable of hitting immensely high notes by himself. It was amazing. He clearly has no balls. Maybe.

I think Justin said something here, but nothing major, otherwise I would’ve remembered it. The next song was introduced (and, apparently, played for us): I’ve Met Jesus. I guess they were playing it near the start to get it out the way, as it’s one of the ones that everyone knows really well, and would sort the posers from the real fans!

During this song, someone threw a beer on-stage. At the end, Justin addressed him: “Whoever threw that beer, you’ve ruined his best shirt now!” (The stuff went all over the drum kit and the drummer). He then proceeded to call the guy the ‘c word’. I managed to video this, and it’s up on YouTube. Just search something like ‘Hot Leg I’ve Met Jesus live Newcastle’ and it’ll come up.

Right, this is where it gets difficult, because try as I might I can neither remember nor find the set list. So instead, the next load of stuff will just be whatever I’m thinking about, probably in no particular order. Set-wise, all I can remember is that they played the album, plus other songs from the next album, apparently. See, I told you it was going to be hard!

They played a few songs that we knew all together first. Actually, I think it was the best part of Red Light Fever, almost all of it, before they started with new album stuff. It went something like Prima Donna, Whichever Way You Wanna Give It, Gay in the 80s, Trojan Guitar, Chickens, You Can’t Hurt Me Any More, ballady type songs including Kissing in the Wind, some other songs, Cocktails, and the encore, which was made entirely of new album stuff. I thought that was a shame – I mean, it was interesting to hear what might be coming from the band, but you couldn’t really get involved like you could with the others.

Justin dedicated a few of the songs to various people, too. One guy at the other side of the crowd yelled “I love you!” loud enough for pretty much everyone to hear and Justin said “I love you too – who are you?” To which the guy gave his name, and he repeated “I love you too, tell you what, this one’s for you,” and they played another new song.

There were two women right behind us who got a song dedicated in this way as well. They were stood on the stairs – one of the official women had moved them off earlier but they’d sneaked their way back on again. They were so annoying … clearly more Justin Hawkins’ groupies than Hot Leg fans, always shrieking and yelling annoying things. At one point Justin talked about the end of the ‘erection section’ (a little bit of the concert dedicated to ballads) and they were shouting “eROCKtion!” He said “What?” And they did it again, to which he replied, “Oh, erocktion¸ I see what you’ve done, you’ve taken the vowel and changed it …” I managed to get this on video, too, and because they were behind me Justin’s looking right in my direction, “You’re two big Leg fans over there, tell you what, this one’s for you!” The women whooped irritatingly as the band started up their song.

The final dedicated song was to a seven-year-old boy whose birthday it was. Justin got us all singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him, and said what he’d most like for his birthday was to see us all jumping up and down to the next song. We obliged happily. In my case it wasn’t easy, because whenever I jumped up I smacked my knee into the banister, but it was still fun. We could feel the floor moving beneath our feet.

One of the new songs had a bit of audience participation in it. The words? Woah … huh! Justin sang them to us, and we sang them back. Only it turned out we were supposed to sing with him, not after him. We only caught on after he explained it to us, and even then loads of people continued to do it wrong. On purpose, I think, after a while. It went on for absolutely ages. It was funny, though.

Costumeness next! During the main set, Justin took his jacket off, leaving him in the blue vest. It’s loads like one Amy has, actually. For the encore, he got changed into a white football strip, exposing most of his tattoos. The shorts were extremely short! He kept putting his leg up on the monitors or the barrier, to much stroking. I didn’t get to touch him, unfortunately. There were opportunities aplenty, but I was often inches away due to the stupid barrier people. He stripped his shirt off, too, revealing an arm tattoo continuing onto his chest, and one on his stomach that carried on below his shorts. I kind of wanted to see what it was, but I didn’t want to see what else was under there …

I took tons of pictures and quite a few videos. Our view enabled awesome pictures, especially when the band members came right up to us. Justin did this a couple of times on my videos, which was lucky. Even though I have some really incredible photos, they still don’t do justice to the position we had. Almost everything about it was amazing, better than any show I’d ever been to.

I think that’s everything about the show that I can remember right now. Which sucks, but I can’t do anything about that. All I can say is it was a brilliant concert. The only thing I could fault about the show itself was the fact that they played tons of new stuff. It’s not as good when you can’t get properly involved. Oh well. I thoroughly enjoyed myself anyway. The closeness, the fun-ness, the music … it was all fantastic. I think Justin actually talked to my sister and me when we made mosh hands at him. I love intimate gigs!

It’s always a bummer when the band go off for real after the encore and the lights come on. We had a shouty discussion over the ringing in our ears and the music – it seemed everyone else had loved it too, which was good. I know Steph really likes stuff like this, but you can hardly tell because she’s pretty quiet and doesn’t get hugely involved. It was nice to see she’d had a good time, as had Amy and Ellan.

And now to get four hundred people down one little staircase … always fun. We hung around at the back of the crowd for a bit, not overly keen on the prospect of being crushed. Then the people hanging around (including us) got yelled at to move, when we couldn’t, because the exit was basically a giant scrum. Eventually, though, we got through, and arrived back down at the t-shirt stall, where we decided to buy some more stuff. Ellan and Steph had both really liked The Crave, so they bought their album. I’d thought they were all right, but a bit soft for my taste, so I didn’t bother. I did buy Hot Leg’s I’ve Met Jesus single on vinyl, because it was signed and £2. Also, I love LPs and EPs. Steph, however, is in love with them. She bought the single and Red Light Fever on red vinyl.

Slowly, we moved along. The Crave were standing and signing their album. We tried to get Steph to go up to them but she wouldn’t, so I approached one of the dreadlock guys and said “Excuse me, my friends are losers and won’t come and see you themselves, will you please sign their albums?” Before I’d finished my sentence they went up – I don’t know if they were saving themselves, or me, from embarrassment. Probably me…

Steph and Ellan’s albums found their way around the band. Steph told me later that Ellan had said to her “You don’t look very excited,” and she’d replied “I’m inwardly excited,” and one of the guys had said “Cool.” She was really pleased.

One of the yellow official guys told Amy and me to get moving if we weren’t doing anything, so we told him we were waiting for our friends, and when they were finished, we went downstairs and outside. The last ones out! Dad and Charlotte were waiting for us at the other side of the road. We crossed over to them and launched into excited chatter about the concert. This continued all the way to the car – every single detail, all the highlights, everything. Charlotte said she’d seen a bloke with a drumstick come out, and she bet that we’d almost got it. Sure enough, we had been this close – I’d felt it against my hand, but another bloke behind me had caught it. Unlucky.

As soon as we hit the road I drank some more water, and realised just how tired I was. Talking became much more of an effort. Instead, I listened – Dad and Charlotte had eaten at an Italian restaurant and their service had been unusually fast. Later on down the road, Charlotte told us (in great detail) about the time when Jessie had done a two tone turd when she was looking after her. I think Ellan was mildly revolted – Steph was laughing her head off.

Just when I was getting warm and comfortable, we pulled off the main road and started our way back to Steph’s house. I gave everyone their tickets.

At Steph’s I had to get out to let her out. It was awful – I was so warm and tired that the cold air was a shock to my system. I couldn’t wait to get back in.

After we’d said goodbye to Steph it was on to Ellan’s house. We dropped her off, watched her into the house, then went to Charlotte’s. Dad took her inside while Amy and I waited in the car for a couple of minutes. I was dreading the cold air again.

Eventually, though, we had to face it. We pulled up home, I got all my stuff together and got out. It was freezing, my lips were dry and sore, my mouth was thirsty, my head was fuzzy, my ears were ringing and I was shattered. But these were all signs of a fantastic night.

I was so proud of my pictures that I put my memory card in the digital photo frame to have a look at for a bit; tired as I was, I didn’t want to let the day slip away. Not just yet. I had a drink, ate a biscuit, and sat up with Amy for a few minutes. We’d got in on the stroke of midnight so there was no more Friday Rock Show to listen to.

When I gave in to tiredness, we both went upstairs to bed, where my ears really started to ring. I laid my shirt out for the next morning, changed into my pyjamas, and got into bed. All I could hear was ringing. I don’t know how you spell the noise that makes.

Before I could actually go to sleep, though, I had to write in my diary:

‘Hot Leg were immense¸ I kind of hadn’t registered that on the ticket it said ‘Academy 2’ so I was expecting to see them at the main stage. We had better luck – Academy 2 is basically a club. I was this close to touching Justin Hawkins on several occasions! I would’ve been able to if it wasn’t for those complete losers on the barrier who barely moved throughout. Poos. It was a good show though, we managed to push our way to the second row which wasn’t bad at all. It was a pretty normal day, so I’ll continue with more Hot Leg-ness. We got Amy in no problem so I relaxed a bit then. Only complaints I have are 1. annoying crowd and 2. too much ‘next album’ stuff!’

Finally – sleep! I was very happy though.

I needed loads of sleep. I only got about eight hours, probably just under, where I’d been hoping for about ten because on the Saturday night I was going to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire, then sleeping at Beth’s, for her birthday party. Naturally I wore my Hot Leg shirt. I printed out some of my best pictures, put them in my album, and brought them with me. Steph, Ellan and I were in Hot Leg mode all night. It was awesome. And the legacy continued – I blew up my two favourite pictures of Justin in Boots on the Sunday, then printed off copies for all four of us. On the Tuesday, Ellan, Steph and I all wore our shirts to college.

Big things do come in small packages. Hot Leg’s show was more than proof.


Notes

- I don’t think I mentioned that Justin came in the crowd. Well, he did – and I discovered my camera had no space left on the memory card. I therefore ended up with two rubbish pictures on my phone.

- I rang Rich during I’ve Met Jesus. He was very jealous I got to go.

- As you might have guessed from the diary entry, the tickets did say Academy 2, so not noticing was my own fault.

- At Beth’s house, Steph told me that on the back of The Crave’s album, they thanked Bruce Dickinson.

Best Live Band

UP THE FUCKING IRONS!

Just shows that we Maiden fans are an army when we put our minds to it. I bet 'fans' of the other bands presumed their favourite acts would win, and so didn't try to help them at all. Maiden well and truly derserved that award. I know most people (generally those who favour the crappy famous-for-five-minutes music scene) weren't exepcting it, but I know that we voted long and hard. I did, anyway! It was fantastic to see the boys get some recognition for once.

Shame Acca Dacca lost to Kings of Leon. TWICE. Oh well. KoL will be nowhere in another few years, where AC/DC will continue to rock hard.

BRIT AWARDS

Well, I'm sure you all know that the mighty Maiden are up for 'Best Live Band'. Unfortunately voting has now closed in that category, but I voted for them. After all, who would rather go and see crap like Coldplay when you could get blown away by the air raid siren vocals of Mr Dickinson?

If you type in 'vote for the brits' to Google, Maiden are the first specified band that come up in the results. Doesn't that say something?

However, even though the Irons have been nominated, they are not featured on the Brits 09 album. And AC/DC are up for two awards ... are they on there, then? Oh, come on, surely? No.

Clearly the music world is not good enough for these legendary giants of classic rock.

Airbourne, Newcastle Carling Academy

Airbourne

It’s Tuesday, 18th November (second draft: Monday, 2nd February). I’ve snatched a few precious minutes before work because my teacher is ill again and I didn’t technically have last lesson. It would probably be much more constructive for me to have stayed in college to do Media work, but oh well. This is important, in my opinion.

Yesterday was a strange day. I woke up at 6:20 to the sound of Airbourne. Nothing really unusual about that. I had the normal feeling of not wanting to get up so I listened to the whole album before I did.

Then I got up. Feeling tired and slightly nauseous – a sensation I recognised strongly from July 5th. But I felt better as I got ready and set off for college.

My first show on a schoolnight. It was weird. When I was thinking about it, I was pretty excited – but, most of the time I was doing ordinary school stuff, so I wasn’t.

I attempted vocab learning for French in tutorial. First lesson was Media. Steph and I couldn’t get into the editing room, so we went to B13 to catch up with our tasks instead, including watching the preliminary exercise video. Of course, I soon got bored and messed around on the Internet instead, eventually arriving at the Carling Academy website where Airbourne topped their list of featured shows.

Next came French, where I did a bit of cheating on my vocab but I always think that helps in the long run. I got out my diary, where I had ‘Airbourne – RUNNIN’ WILD AND FREE!’ written. I had been counting down for thirty days. I showed Laura, who said ‘I bet you’re excited right now then, aren’t you?’ Of course I was!

It was a very cold morning. I was wearing my big black boots, black skinny jeans, Jack Daniels shirt and black blazer jacket. So I wasn’t particularly warm. Luckily, we went into the corridor we usually stand in when it’s cold.

I was free after break, and so was Steph, so we both went to the resource centre as we had work to do. We sat at our usual balcony desk and I re-drafted my twelve mar sexual ethics essay whilst listening to Airbourne in my CD player. It’s quite a short album, though, and I finished it within the hour. I got to listen to Stone Gods for a bit as well before it was lunchtime, and we went to Becky’s.

It was quite an ordinary lunchtime as well. All I rally remember is that we started re-watching Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in order to laugh at the bad acting and squeaky voices. It was hilarious.

After Lunch, I had Philosophy and Ethics. With one minor difference: my teacher wasn’t there. Which was a shame, as I’d been wondering whether he’d be interested in what I was getting up to, but you can’t have everything. I instead spent the lesson doing work on the Four Working Principles of Situation Ethics in the resource centre. I also coloured in the A4 sheet I printed off in green and orange TicTac style. It looked rather funky.

Then came English, Eleanor and I arrived first, and in hope that our teacher would think we weren’t there, we sat in the dark for a while. However, the rest of the class soon joined us, and our teacher came to teach.

It was an extremely boring lesson. Sarah and Wannabe Ste were both absent, so I basically spent the hour writing part of my Electric Eel story in my paper folder. Kyle telling Kayleigh he was gay was far more interesting than language and power.

English was my last lesson, so I set off for work once I was done with it. Work was really strange as well. Because I had to leave an hour earlier, at five past five, I did all my main jobs really fast. Somehow too fast. This resulted in me having about fifteen minutes left – not enough time to really do the big jobs, but too much to be filled by the little ones. Rachael asked me where I was going. I told her the Carling Academy in Newcastle (after I accidentally told her City Hall...) and she told me she’d seen the Plain White T’s there. She’d been up on the balcony, but because the venue’s only quite small she felt really close to the band. The PWTs are hardly my cup of tea, but this still made me feel even more excited: wherever we were, we’d be near the stage.

So, at five past five, I set off home.

By the time I got there, I felt really sleepy and I had a stomach ache, but I just suspected pre-gig nerves, because I was hungry still. As soon as I got in, I ate my tea, which was mince and vegetables. I felt strange at that point. It was dark, I had just got back from work and I was tired, yet soon I’d be driving (well – being a passenger) to Newcastle to see a concert.

After I’d finished eating, I had to get ready, and quickly. I changed my Jack Daniels shirt to my Punky Fish one – the same shirt I’d worn to Twickenham. I brushed my teeth and gave my face a quick wash before putting on my black eyeliner and some Ralph Lauren Cool to help to cover up any potential sweaty stink. I’d decided to wear my AC/DC patch covered denim jacket, so I’d hidden a twenty pound note inside one of the little button-up pockets earlier to ensure I didn’t forget any money for a t-shirt. I also gathered up a whole lot of stuff for the car – Silver Spoons and Broken Bones, Runnin’ Wild, my portable CD player, my little speakers and Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel. Our car CD player wasn’t working, so our driving enjoyment depended entirely on this.

We set off at around quarter to six. I set the speakers off with Amy’s mp3 player playing some Airbourne, but as she’d imported the songs weirdly I had to find the next one myself once one had finished, so I gave up and put Runnin’ Wild in the CD palyer instead.

Disaster! The batteries died! We faced a quiet journey.

Dad told us he’d brought lots of sweets and bottles of water .Indeed, the back of the car was full of them. I had my own water bottle so I generally drank from that until I got sick of old water and wanted some fresh new cold stuff.

The first sweets we ate were those really sour fizzy cola things, and they tasted rank because my mouth was still minty from toothpaste so I didn’t eat any more sweets on the way there.

We stopped at a garage on the main road. We stopped at a similar one on the way home from Maiden, so they remind me of concerts now.

One thing I remember a lot about the journey came when we were approaching Newcastle. It was obviously dark, and we could see the lights of the city. Town. Whatever. I said how cool they looked and Dad said something like ‘this’ll all be part of the experience, you’ll remember this later’. I said I didn’t want to think about later. I wanted to see the show first. We also talked about his shows, when he was about my age. He said they always tended to be around ‘this time of year’ as well, when the nights were getting darker. I think darkness makes anything more exciting, except maybe sunbathing.

In Newcastle, the Academy was on the other side of the river, so we got to go over a bridge. I love doing that because you can see a lot from where you are. It looked especially pretty in the dark.

We parked up in our college car park near the Metro Radio Arena, the car park we used to use for Disney on Ice performances. It was really chilly, and I was starting to feel nervous, an irritating habit I have about stuff like this. These combined make my jaw ache (don’t ask me why, it’s weird). I warmed up when we got walking, though. It was about a ten minute walk to the Academy; we saw a few rockers getting out of a car near us, but no more until we were on the next street from the venue. One guy commented on my AC/DC jacket, making me laugh.

It was an absolute beast when we got to the venue. We just suddenly saw it, and it’s one of those that literally has a lit up white board above the door, with black stripes and the name of the band on it in red. AIRBOURNE. And the queue was immense – it stretched right around the building and it was full of rockers in various awesome t-shirts. It’s times like this when I don’t feel ‘different’… haha.

It was probably about ten or quarter past seven by that point, just after doors time, so Dad didn’t want to join the queue yet. We waited on the other side of the street for a bit, and when we did join, we ended up round the back of the building. It was a fast-moving queue, though. When we were nearing the doors Dad thought he saw someone he recognised from home. (It turned out later that he actually worked in the Tesco near Dad’s work that he often goes to during lunch).

Our tickets were checked, but the security guys didn’t rip off the rippy bits, they just let us in. The inside was quite posh and red, with posh and red lighting. We went in and the first thing I heard was 22 Acacia Avenue playing over the sound system – a sure sign, if I needed one, that it was going to be a good night. We went up a couple of flights of stairs and waited while Amy went to the loo. I saw a couple of Twickenham event shirts in the bar area.

You weren’t given a seat on the balcony like I’d thought. We could just sit anywhere. We sat to the left (right from the stage), three rows back (the nearest we could get to the front). Once we were seated Dad went to the loo as well. It was ages – we were getting quite worried, but he returned after a while. As always, he’d got talking to someone, this time apparently a few young dudes about Airbourne. He said he’d found the t-shirt stall, too, so he gave Amy and I instructions on how to get there. We had to take our tickets pretty much everywhere we went so we could get back through the doors onto the balcony.

We couldn’t find the shirts anywhere, though. We searched for a while but eventually gave up and returned to Dad, asking him exactly where we were meant to be going. He obviously couldn’t show us or we’d lose our seats, so Dad took Amy and I waited for them.

Whilst they were gone, all the lights went down. A big ‘wooooaaaarrrr’-y noise filled the room. I was shitting myself – I hadn’t been ready, I’d completely forgotten that the first support band were due on, and I was still sat on my own.

Sound and Fury came on, relaxing me a bit once I knew what was going on.

As this was my first indoor gig, the power of the sound blew me away. It was good to get used to, though, considering there’d be two more bands.

Dad and Amy came back during the show. We watched it together for a bit, but I didn’t really like Sound and Fury much. It was hard to get into them because I didn’t know their songs, but it was mainly because the singer annoyed me, posing about at the front of the stage. One of the guitarists reminded me of Slash – he had a similar Les Paul and a lot of dark, curly hair.

I soon got bored, though, so Amy and I went to get my t-shirt. We had to go downstairs and get through some more doors. The guy who checked our tickets told us to go upstairs, thinking we were looking for our seats, but another one noticed and told him it was OK to let us in. I bought the Airbourne tour shirt.

We watched the rest of Sound and Fury. Dad and Amy both really enjoyed them, unlike me, and they went to get Amy’s shirt. Once they came back, none of us would move again until after the show.

Next came Stone Gods! I loved how their bass drum had the band name on it, I always think that’s so cool. There was a bit of intro music before they actually came on, then they opened with Burn the Witch, the first song on their album. It was getting me all excited – owning the album meant I knew their songs, and could get into them easily. The next song they played was You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight, one of my favourites.

I’m annoyed with myself, though. I can’t remember all of the songs Stone Gods played, or the order in which they played them, or what happened when. I just remember a load of random bits and pieces, which I will detail now.

I only remember five other songs for certain: Start of Something, I’m With the Band, Defend or Die, Knight of the Living Dead and, of course, Don’t Drink the Water. If I’d got the album more than five days before the show I’d probably have known and remembered the set better.

However, I will work with what I have.

One of my best friends has a massive thing for Dan Hawkins, so I made sure I had a few pictures and videos of him especially for her. Personally I think he’s ugly, but a great guitarist who played well with his crowd and not at them. I often saw the standing people gathering to mosh around him when he got up on the monitors.

I thought the singer/guitarist, Richie Edwards, was really cool. He was a good frontman who worked us, the crowd, like he was headlining and not just support. I’m sure at one point he acknowledged me and my sister – everyone on the balcony apart from us was being pretty boring and quiet.

Richie asked us who owned the album. We yelled and waved. Apparently though, the album was being sold at the venue for a credit crunch beating price of seven pounds, and not enough of us had it already.

It was fun swearing, both verbally and with our fingers, during You Brought a Knife to a Gun Fight. But I think the song I enjoyed the most was actually Don’t Drink the Water. There was a little tutorial on how to sing along – there’s a few ‘oi’s at the end of lines that we had to yell. And on the funky dancey bit, Richie got the whole floor dancing. It looked absolutely mint.

They didn’t play the whole album, though, so it was soon over. It had been an amazing set, almost as though they were joint headliners with Airbourne because everyone had been really involved. My voice was almost completely gone, and my throat was sore, worrying me a bit. I wanted some voice left for Airbourne: however, I’m weird, so I also wanted to lose my voice for the next day. It gradually came back, though. wanted a drink but none of us had one and I couldn’t be bothered to move.

There were a few songs played over the sound system whilst the stage was being set for the headliners. The played Wasted Years – me and Amy were singing and headbanging like we were actually watching Iron Maiden play it live. It almost made up for the fact that I didn’t know the song as well at Twickenham.

After that, they played Overkill by Motörhead. It was amazing. The bass was so immensely loud that it sounded like thunder. Or like the venue was falling down. Luckily it wasn’t, but the illusion was pretty cool.

I can’t remember any more of the songs that played, only the three I mentioned. All I know is that after Overkill there weren’t many songs left.

The stage was all set like the video for Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast. Right before they were due to come on, we could see them from the angle we were at, just behind the amps. We watched them getting ready excitedly.

Then the lights went down.

Airbourne had a bit of intro music like Stone Gods. It was weird, because it sounded like them, but it was pre-recorded. Because I was ready, I managed to get a (crappy) video of the start on my phone. It’s on YouTube!

The lights came on to reveal the four of them, and we went mental. As on the album, they started with Stand Up For Rock ‘N’ Roll, a song made to open with. Just the intro gets you so worked up you want to run around like a crazy fool. Building up to when the song gets going, all I wanted to do was jump to my feet: but there was a yellow-vested security guard watching over us, and I knew that if we tried any such thing we’d be yelled at. So instead of standing up for rock ‘n’ roll, I stretched my arms up as far as I could and screamed along.

I rang my friend Rich during this song, as I’d promised by text earlier. He texted me saying it sounded good, and to enjoy the rest of the concert.

After the first song, we gave the guys an immense cheer. The volume was through the roof, even louder than the two supports. There was a ringing in my ears even during the noise, it was just that loud.

I know Joel yelled stuff at us at this point. But he often yelled stuff at us, he was a very friendly man. So I’m not sure exactly what he yelled when. I do know that he drank a lot, though – and chucked a lot of booze out as well.

The next song they played was Hellfire. Strange, as it’s the last one on the album, but fine in the show. I think it was after this that Joel cracked open his first can and said ‘Cheers, Newcastle!’ Every time he addressed us he literally screamed. It was so funny. We couldn’t understand him half the time.

Fat City came next. This was fun – I love how it’s called that because it makes me think of a city full of fat people.

After that was their third single from the album, Diamond in the Rough. Proper solid rock ‘n’ roll, good for shouting the extremely singable chorus. My voice was back especially for the set, and now I was glad.

The tempo slowed, but the solid rock remained for What’s Eatin’ you, a song I knew but not as well as the others. There’s always a song like that – one that, for some reason, just doesn’t stick in my head, no matter how much I listen to it.

Girls in Black was the song I’d dressed for, and it came next. I’m pretty sure Joel was shirtless by this point, but he probably had been for a while. Amy and me were almost dancing along to this, two girls in black. Of course, we couldn’t stand. All the fist pumping was making my arms ache, but oh well. You only get out what you put in.

They really slowed down Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women. It sounded strange – good, though. Another fantastic chorus to yell to. I particularly loved the line ‘she loved me tender, and she f*cked me sweet’, one that Joel changed, and sang, with relish. There was also the classic bit towards the end: ‘Women come and go…’ which he sort of spoke matter-of-factly. It was funny, it sounded like he was speaking from experience. Which, being a rock star, he probably was.

I don’t have a particular favourite Airbourne song, but if I did, it would have to be Heartbreaker. I think there’s something about the vocals – they sound a bit sad, but awesome at the same time. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is about this song, though. Maybe it’s to do with the melody itself, it really gets to me.

Possibly their most famous song drew a massive roar from the crowd. The song the stage was set up for. Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast. I was thinking about the video during the live performance. I tend to get psyched knowing the band from the video and the band in front of me are exactly the same. They really recreated the video, too, Roadsy and Streety doing the dual-headswirling thing. Mind you, all three of them did that a lot. Joel even got up on one of the big blocky things … erm, yeah, he did that a few times and all. I remember during the first bit of the first chorus, at the line ‘I’ll sit and spin for a little while’, he twirled his finger. I don’t know why that’s important. It’s just something I remember. I rang my friend Beth during this song, too – she bought me the album for my birthday.

After that song, though, came the end of the show. We cheered for a bit, Joel said thank you, and they went off. Luckily, as us Airbourne fans are not stupid, we knew they still had to play two more songs, so we didn’t give up, chanting and screaming for more.

And they returned! One by one.

First Ryan, on the drums, tapping out the rhythm for Runnin’ Wild. Then Streety, slamming on the bass. This went on for a while, until the guitars joined in, eventually becoming the intro and receiving a wild reaction from us. If Airbourne have ever recorded ‘genuine fist-pumping, sweat-soaked rock ‘n’ roll’, this is it. Full of energy.

But that just left one song. Another energetic number, Blackjack, maybe to tire us out. It’s a fun song, though. And even though I was pretty much worn out in the arm area, I didn’t put them down.

And that really was the end. They went off, and the house lights came on, and we knew they wouldn’t be coming back again. I wasn’t too sad, though. It had been a hell of a night.

I know that was basically just a detailed setlist, making the show sound boring. It was anything but that. I know it’s now become a cliché to mention this band when talking about Airbourne, but it reminded me of an early AC/DC show. Joel came into the crowd a couple of times, like Angus used to. Only Joel pulled a pint and soloed at the same time as well. He was absolutely crazy! It’s the only word for it.

There was quite a lot of booze in the show, actually. Joel drank a lot, sent a lot spinning out into the crowd, and poured a lot on his head. I liked it when he did this – he then swirled his head around so his hair flew all over the place and sprayed beer everywhere. It looked really cool.

Near the end of the show, Joel talked about real rock ‘n’ roll, and how we all believed in it. He yelled for quite a while – I didn’t catch half of it, but I got the gist, and that was enough.

I rang home during the show as well. As no one was in, the messages Amy and I left are still on the phone. There’s Diamond in the Rough, Cheap Wine and Cheaper Women and Heartbreaker (twice – one message entirely solo and the other the chorus).

And that’s all I can think about now, so I’ll leave the show there. It was brilliant.

We walked back to the car. Newcastle was full of young adults out drinking, but waves of rockers soon dispersed and evened out the chavs. The air outside was warmer than we’d expected of a late November night (Dad and Amy had had a mini-argument about jackets earlier).

I sent this message to a few of my friends:

Walking back to the car, airbourne rocked my socks and bed! I’m of course joking, but that Joel is pretty awesome! Going to a few people xxx Laura was the only one who replied, but between then and now I accidentally deleted her message.

I can’t remember much about the journey home. My ears were ringing but my throat wasn’t at all sore or dry. Amy fell asleep in the car so I just talked to Dad.

So we got home. I had a drink, and went to bed. I was sort of glad we didn’t have a(nother) hellishly long, depressing journey home, but the car had been nice and warm. Plus, although I didn’t know it then, that was the last journey I ever made in our Vauxhall Vectra (Dad bought a Land Rover Discovery the next day).

I wrote in my two diaries:

AIRBOURNE! What a strange day. I got up, went to college and went to work as usual, but then I came home from work early and went to Newcastle to see Airbourne at Carling Academy – awesome venue and the band were brilliant, really enjoyed myself. Stone Gods good too.

And:

AIRYBOURNE … put on a genuinely awesome rock ‘n’ roll show, shame we couldn’t stand but I’m pretty sure Joel saw us anyway.

This last entry also contained a ‘0’. 0 days until Airbourne.

And that’s it. I wore my shirt the next day, along with a headache and sore eyes. It was totally worth it. Go and see Airbourne live if you love proper rock!

NOTES

*When Joel pulled the pint, we stood up and were allowed to for a while ... until the yellow man eventually gave up and sat us down.

*We managed to give them a standing ovation at the end, though

* I started this on Thursday, 18th November. It is now Sunday, 1st February (Tuesday, 10th second draft). The other one only took just over a week because I had a lot of free time in Seahouses.

*Therefore, only one draft of this took about 66 days compared to about 10 for three drafts of Maiden...

*Finally my friend Laurence, who helped me with my last gig account, attended this same show but at London Astoria. Because it was Airbourne's last UK show, Dan Hawkins came on at the end and played guitar with them, leaving Joel to just sing. They played Whole Lotta Rosie. I am jealous.

AC/DC

Who else has got their 'Black Ice' tour tickets?

I HAVE!

Unfortunately, the plural of 'tickets' here means 'two', the limit per person. However, I require three - my Dad, my sister, and myself.

How crappy that the limit was set so low. I know it's to try to prevent people buying them, jacking up the price and selling them on eBay, etc, but it's hardly worked ... get on their yourself if you don't believe me.

I was in college when they went on sale at ten this morning, desperately waiting to hear from either my Dad or my cousin, both of who were on the phone trying to book tickets for the Manchester MEN show. It was my cousin who was successful - Dad tried for three hours and couldn't get through to the ticket lines; he was also on the net and everything he looked at was sold out.

Still, two tickets are better than none, right? But it's so unfair. My Dad hasn't seen them since 1980 - my sister and I haven't seen them before at all. And the band mean so much to me in loads of ways - not only are they my favourite band, they also got me into both rock and music in general in a big way. I've been waiting for this for years now. I almost feel like I've followed them since they started, and I know more about them than quite a few older people I know who actually have.

So why the hell the ridiculous limit? Raise it by one ticket and I'd have been fine. But no. Put my AC/DC-obsessed family in this position, hoping against hope something will come along. Maybe we'll have to rely on, on the night itself ... touters. Eurgh.

Thank you to my wonderful cousin, and my Dad who gave up three solid hours and a whole lot of the phone bill.

Wizard Rock

Oh My God

I know that's an overrated expression to use on the Internet, making you sound like some angsty ZOMG!!!11eleven!!-style teenager, but when I say the three words, I mean them.

Is there a more nerdy, pathetic genre out there?

I've been watching random videos on YouTube to try to find out more about the world of Wizard Rock, or 'Wrock' as it is affectionately known by its fans. And I have one question. Which is also indeed one word.

WHY?

Why do they have to take over everything I love? Sure, I've read all of the books, I got the last three the day they came out and finished them in ridiculously short amounts of time (but I didn't go at midnight, the saddest thing you can possibly do). However, I also got 'Chemical Wedding' before it was published. And I will not tell you how extreme my methods were when I got 'The Missionary Position'. Rock and roll is unconventional, alternative, a different way of life for us awesome people who say 'NO!' to the normal. Now it's in the process of being taken over by geeks. What will they do next? They already have seven epic books, five films so far, two accompaniment books and another on the way, about a million unofficial ones, about half the net devoted to fandom, fanfiction, fanart, etc ... what more do they want?

It would be OK if the new bands were talented. They, sadly, are not. Nearly every band are terrible. I'm not just saying that because I don't like the idea, I'm saying it as a musician and a rock fan. The singers can't sing, and the musicians often have no previous experience, they just feel they can play because they are spreading the Harry Potter word. Hasn't it been spread enough already? The books are the most famous ones in the world, for crying out loud!

OK - there is the point that Led Zeppelin drew inspiration from Lord Of The Rings. Yes indeed they did. However, their name is not 'Frodo and the Hobbits'. And they did not write every song - sorry, did I say write? I meant 'rip every song off from' - the books.

'Wrock' is unimaginative, uncreative, and just plain wrong. Come on, nerds - read Harry Potter and leave rock music alone. You know nothing about it.

Iron Maiden play Twickenham Stadium

IRON MAIDEN

London Twickenham Stadium
Saturday 5th July 2008

Saturday, 5th July, in the competition for best day of my life, is definitely in the top ten. Five. Three. Hell, maybe even one.

The only thing is, the letdown afterwards means I am suffering from terrible post-Maiden depression. I want it to be like the film ‘Groundhog Day’ so I wake up every morning to my Dad coming into my room at five o’ clock.

That was the only time I ever felt properly nervous that day. I woke up, wanting to go back to sleep, then realised exactly why I was awake so early. And then, for about five minutes, I sort of wished I wasn’t going. I felt tired and quite nauseous. By the time I got up, washed and dressed, though, I felt quite a bit better.

My lovely ‘Number Of The Beast’ t-shirt hadn’t arrived, which was a shame. Instead, I wore my black Punky Fish t-shirt with all the safety pins, sticking my Iron Maiden badge in with them. I also wore my new (very short) denim shorts, my boxing boots, purple stripy Fat Face socks, a necklace I recently found that could be hematite or plastic, my pink glow in the dark bracelets, my small leather studded wristband, my big leather studded wristband, padded by my pink sweatband because my arms are so skinny. I wore Anna Sui ‘Dolly Girl Bonjour L’Amour!’ perfume, New York Colour ‘Skintight Denim’ nail varnish and black eyeliner. It was warm most of the time but when it wasn’t I wore my leather jacket.

It may also interest you to know that I wore matching underwear. I think that says something about me and my priorities – I wear posh, matching black and red underwear to an Iron Maiden concert, yet not to my prom. Hm.

I gave Splodge, who was awake, a load of grass and a carrot, and Dad and I set off to Middlesbrough at about quarter to six. We had the second disc of ‘A Real Live Dead One’ on in the car, because Dad had been doing some cramming of the last three tracks (‘Heaven Can Wait’, ‘The Clairvoyant’ and ‘Fear Of The Dark’). I discovered I’d forgotten a ring I was planning on wearing – purple and flashing.

It was nice to get to Middlesbrough in just twenty two minutes (probably the third most appropriate number of minutes the journey could have taken, after two and six hundred and sixty six). We parked in a car park quite near to our usual one, because it looked a bit safer, and we’d be leaving the car there for about a day. Pretty much twenty four hours, in fact.

We walked to the bus station (right opposite a closed Kindamagic, which was a shame, as I quite fancied buying those leather studded fingerless gloves like Bruce has in the video for ‘Run To The Hills’.)

The departure lounge was upstairs. We knew we’d come to the right place when we saw several men in Iron Maiden and other band shirts sitting around. There were a few young metalheads, and some older guys who’d probably grown up with the band. I was the only girl, until the last two people arrived – one a young woman in a Mighty Boosh t-shirt with red hair.

The coach pulled up outside shortly after. A couple of people got off and waited for a bit outside, smoking. A woman opened the door and came in to say something like ‘are you getting on, then?’

Yes, indeed. In about a minute’s time we were. Dad and I sat near the back behind one of the younger dudes. He had his lip pierced about three times, a fluffy beard and moustache and really long dark brown hair that was frizzy and greasy at the same time. It was so nice I wanted to brush it.

When we set off, the driver introduced himself, and the woman as his wife. He asked who hadn’t seen Iron Maiden before and I think three people put their hands up – me, Dad and the other woman. The driver then told us a little story about how he’d dragged someone (I think it was a daughter but I wouldn’t bet on it) to see them, and they’d grudgingly admitted afterwards that it was the best concert they’d ever been to. That made me feel better about my situation – not that I felt bad. In fact, it was actually only starting to feel real now that I was on my way with a ton of Maiden fans.

There had been three albums in the window of the coach – ‘Live After Death’, ‘Best Of The Beast’ and ‘Dance Of Death’. The driver said that by the time we got back, we’d be sick of the sight and sound of Iron Maiden. Fat chance. I don’t think there’s such thing.

We started with ‘Live After Death’. Awesome choice, as the tour, ‘Somewhere Back In Time’, was based around that album among others. It had the same opener – Churchill’s speech followed by ‘Aces High’ – that was on the setlist.

I found the ring I thought I’d left. It was in a pocket inside my backpack of sweets, my handbag and other bits and pieces. I remembered that the night before, I’d packed it, knowing I’d probably forget it. I put it on straight away.

There was another stop at Leeds, which filled the coach. I read a few chapters of Slash’s autobiography, but I was getting more interested in the view out of the window, and the fact that I was in the back of a coach on a motorway and not feeling sick.

I can’t remember anything interesting that happened before the service station. The full coach now consisted of mostly men, but a few more women, too – still very much in the minority, though, and I was still the youngest of anyone.

By the time we arrived at the stop in Leicester, we’d finished ‘Live After Death’, the second disc of ‘A Real Live Dead One’ and quite a bit of ‘Best Of The Beast’. There was a big truck when we pulled up with the name ‘John Dickinson’ on the front and a tank on the back. Some of the guys at the back of the coach were saying it was an Iron Maiden truck. At the side of another one was a guy in a Maiden shirt.

It was so funny going into the service station. It was raining, so I held my jacket over my head, only adding to the amusement of a bunch of ordinary, boring businessy people confronted by a big group of metallers. We got stared at a lot and I really felt the part with my hair looking a lot like early 80s Bruce.

Dad bought me the paper and he had a cup of coffee in the café. The service station went across both sides of the motorway, so we crossed to the other side but it came straight out into WH Smith and it looked kind of like we’d stolen the paper.

I got a couple of texts then. Amy (my sister) said; ‘Hiya! How are you and where ru? Ru wetting yourself? Hehe yell hi 2 Nicko! And dad! Luv Mynti! xxx’, and Charlton (my friend) said; ‘Hi sarah how are you doing? Are you having a good time at iron maidon? Hope you having a awsome time and when you see bruce tell him that i am a assasin and that he will be beaten by the charles! :) bye for now’. (He texted me again later confirming that Bruce would be killed by spoon. All spelling mistakes in both messages are deliberate).

Back on the coach, the CDs were switched for DVDs with a mixture of concert footage and extra stuff. I read the paper – yesterday, the Friday, the show had been under ‘Hot Gigs’, but there was no mention. Losers.

The DVDs were great. I even saw the infamous ‘you can’t play heavy metal with synthesisers’ clip. And watching the live stuff ruled. I kept thinking ‘I’ll be watching this for real tonight’.

I ate a sausage sandwich and drank some water, but I only did it because my stomach was hungry. The anticipation was killing my will to eat, really. I was even avoiding the jelly beans, rainbow belts, teeth and lips and two packets of midget gems we’d bought.

The guy in front, who had been joined by a friend, had a really high, funny singing voice. I liked listening to him and his friends messing about. When one of the women from the front came to use the toilet, the recently moved friend shouted ‘are you going for a sh*t? Everybody, she’s going for a sh*t!’ The whole group even invited a lot of the coach to join in their card game, which made me laugh, despite no one actually joining in.

I remember when we were getting nearer, we watched a Monsters of Rock performance – the one where Bruce is wearing three quarter lengths, a string vest and a leather jacket – and I pointed out Nicko to Dad. Bruce did a ‘scream for me’ and one of the guys at the back said ‘we will be later, son!’

They also enjoyed singing along really loudly to ‘The Trooper’ and having a conversation about how watching the DVDs was actually the gig we’d paid to see, only we didn’t know it yet.

It started to get busier the nearer we got, and the DVDs ran out and changed back to an album – I think it was ‘Dance Of Death’, the title track of which I’d only heard twice before. I think it’s so funny. I listened to the words and the part where Bruce said he danced and pranced and sang made me giggle.

London was so different to any places I’m used to. We could see the top of Wembley Stadium for a bit, but it soon vanished behind buildings. We came out of London and into Twickenham, where a yellow sign informed us that there was a risk of congestion on Saturday, 5th July. I wonder why …?

Planes were flying over very frequently. As they were either talking off or landing they were pretty low – we could see all the detail on them. Most of them were BA, but one of the back guys said something like ‘it’s Bruce!’ Someone else had no idea what they were talking about, and so an explanation of ‘Bruce Air’ began. It kind of amazed me that someone on their way to see Iron Maiden didn’t know how they relate to planes.

The stadium approached as we started to see the odd Maiden shirt-clad fan down a road of houses. When we started to see the top, someone said ‘oooh, that place looks good, let’s go there!’

Needless to say, we went there.

The majority of people milling around now were in Maiden shirts. And once we got round the corner, the stadium appeared in full along with crowds of fans and a couple of t-shirt stalls. It was the first time I’d seen so many rockers in one place. Obviously there’d be a lot more inside the stadium by quarter past eight.

The coach dropped us off outside North car park, having been told it couldn’t park inside it due to not having pre-booked. It was half one – six hours and three quarters until Maiden were due on. I crammed my phone, my purse and as many sweets as I could into my pockets, and we set off. Dad asked a parking dude where there was to eat, and we got told there were quite a few places including pubs, Tesco’s café and a Wetherspoons. Ah, well – we had a lot of time to kill.

We set off into Twickenham. I think I was a bit scared then – being from a medium sized, pretty rural town means I’m not used to walking around somewhere like Twickenham. Dad said, when we crossed the first road, ‘keep close to me. We’re not at home any more’.

It was when I was waiting to use the pedestrian crossing that I saw my first – and only – ‘Bruce Air’ t-shirts. Two of them crossed at the same time, from the other side of the road. Another pair of interesting ones I saw quite early on in the day had the classic ‘No! We are not an English rock band! We are albatross salesmen from Montana!’

The parking dude’s mention of Wetherspoons had appealed to Dad, because he knew it well and it had really good value food. We tried to find it, but ended up at a pub (The Barmy Arms, I think?) by the river. We’d passed tons and tons of Maiden fans on the way, including a carful of ‘Wayne’s World’ parodying teenagers headbanging to ‘The Trooper’. The pub was no different, full to the brim of people in their masses obviously having a pre-concert drink. We did the same, looking out at the river. Some canoes went by. Finishing the last few drops at the barbecue, ‘Kashmir’ came on the sound system, making me very happy indeed.

It was so busy we decided to continue our quest for Wetherspoons. We’d already asked one woman, and Dad asked a guy whilst I browsed through a free magazine to see if it mentioned the gig. Being a month out of date, it did not. And being a friendly man, Dad got talking to the other man, who was also friendly. He’d guessed where we were going from my wristband (it was so hot that by this time my jacket was around my waist. Not easy with leather). We got talking about my exams, my birthday, and The Rolling Stones. He’d seen them at Twickenham and his one complaint was that the bass had got to his ribs a lot: a problem solved, he said, by earplugs, as his friend had advised. Eventually, we left with a road name.

This road contained no Wetherspoons that we could find.

(Note: this part of the Wetherspoons hunt could have happened before the drink, but I’m not entirely sure. My memory’s clear for most of the day, just not when it comes to the order in which things happened.)

We ended up with lunch at a café called ‘Le Bon Café’. There’d been a lot more wandering around that it looks like written down, and it was hardly lunchtime any more, so we were desperate to eat or we’d be starving later, and stadium prices are ridiculous. The café was small and sweet, pretty quiet and the one place I’d been in with a serious lack of Iron Maiden fans. Until we found seats around the corner, and there were two at a table there.

Dad ordered an all day breakfast and either tea or coffee, but I just had a cheese and ham Panini.

This is very important. I must say that that Panini was the best Panini I’ve ever had in my entire life. I’m not joking. It was beautiful. I couldn’t eat it all – a mixture of my killed appetite and being generally bad at eating large quantities of sandwich-like foods due to becoming bored wit the samey taste – but I assure you, it was beautiful. Le Bon Café. Remember that name next time you’re in Twickenham.

Why is it that when you buy clothes, they fit you until you go out in them in public? My shorts were slightly too wide, not helped by the leather jacket with full pockets tied around my waist. I should apologise to the residents of Twickenham for showing my knickers a lot.

As far as I can remember, we went to get my t-shirt next. On the way down there, we walked with a crowd and someone was playing ‘Run To The Hills’ on their phone. It was one of the weirdest but best feelings, someone playing a song on their phone that was hardly mainstream or currently in the top ten, but you and everyone else around you, even the strangers, loved it.

We also heard a conversation between a young boy and his parents about a t-shirt he liked depicting Eddie ripping the heart out of the TARDIS. I’d seen people wearing that one and liked it, too, but I never saw it on sale.

Nearer the stadium, other people besides t-shirt sellers had spotted business opportunities. Dad had had to explain to me on arrival that they were trying to make money, not get into the concert. But why the hell would they want money for a ticket when they could just go into the stadium and watch the funking band.

Losers.

There were also the ones handing out leaflets. I’d kept a Duellist business card, and a rock club type one was forced into my hand by a man who gave me the impression that he was bored with his job. Quite a young, posh voice behind me said ‘cool, free stuff!’

There was a t-shirt stall right outside the stadium, which you had to be inside to get to, so we went to the exact same one that was over the road. I was surprised at the variety – I’d expected to see one tour t-shirt as opposed to about three, amongst other non-toury ones. Dad had promised to buy me one when my ‘Number Of The Beast’ shirt didn’t arrive. I chose the tour one with the ‘Somewhere Back In Time’ art on the front, and the ‘Live After Death’ cover on the back between ‘Somewhere Back In Time World Tour 08’ and all of the countries on the tour. It was either that or the event shirt, that had a picture of a person covered in blood and bandages with the words ‘I tried to tackle Eddie at Twickenham’ on it. This stall had sold out of programs. I hate paying so much for stuff (£20 for my shirt, £10 for a program) but I wanted these so badly. After all, I needed as much memorabilia from my first concert as possible.

As it was warm, and I wasn’t about to change shirts right outside Twickenham stadium, my shirt became a scarf.

According to our tickets, we had to enter through Gate B. We found this gate at the other side of the stadium, then found our pick-up point from there. It was straightforward enough. I really wanted to go into the stadium to see what it was like, but there was no re-admission allowed and it was still a while until Maiden. We’d be bored.

Dad then suggested we have another drink. We asked another official looking guy in a fluorescent vest where the nearest pub was. The ones he mentioned were ones in town we already knew about, we were just coming at them from a different direction. We said thank you and he told us to enjoy ourselves. He laughed when Dad returned this, saying he had four more hours of standing monitoring parking. I think that’s what he was doing.

This different direction involved a footbridge, from which I got a good picture of the top of the stadium. We also passed a rugby game – Harlequins vs. St Helen’s. I nearly wondered why they weren’t at Twickenham. (This is a joke. I know they wouldn’t be anyway, it’s the wrong sort of rugby.)

Tried one pub but it was stuffed to bursting point with Maiden fans. We went to one over the road instead, which was less busy. I got a bottle of water, because I was really thirsty and it was from the fridge. I’d bring it into the stadium. Dad had a pint. There were a couple of men next to us talking about Iron Maiden and t-shirts. It was kind of dark and squashed near the bar, and I couldn’t wait to get out because we had nothing left to do except go to the stadium. But Dad’s pint seemed to be taking him forever.

When we did finally set off, we passed a guy on a bike singing ‘Highway To Hell’. Dad joined in. Loudly.

I got my third and final three leaflet (‘What is cherry hardcore?’) and ushered across several roads as it was getting very busy. I think that was a first – having my pedestrian crossings controlled by traffic wardens.

We sat outside for a while as it was still nice and sunny. We could hear music and deduced, from the voice, that Within Temptation were on. We’d missed Lauren Harris – not that I was bothered.

It was about quarter to six when we went in. Our seats were on the lower tier – block L7, row 38, seats 313 and 314. They were a lot higher up than we’d expected. Kind of annoying, as we’d upgraded from standing and it looked more fun on the pitch.

Anyway, the stadium from the inside was impressive. It wasn’t really full, but there were still a hell of a lot of people. When we’d passed an entrance on arrival, the pitch had still be grass – now it was board. Three seating tiers all round, the third one really high up. A floor half-full of metallers and it was only the second support band.

Overall – the scale of the whole thing was HUGE.

Within Temptation impressed me. I’m not really a fan of theirs, but because they’re not really my thing as opposed to I think they’re no good. The singer has a nice voice that she can pull off live as well, and she was good at working what crowd had arrived and were really into them.

When they’d finished, Dad had the idea of trying to get onto the pitch. The basis for his idea was ‘once you’re in, you’re in’, so we made our way down and out to find pitch access.

I got my program from a stall on the way out. Right now, I still owe my Dad the £10. (That was the first draft. I don’t any more).

The guy on duty at the side of the pitch was busy. I remember waiting around for a bit while ‘Ace Of Spades’ was on the sound system. And, after that, ‘Runnin’ Wild’. I love both of those songs.

Alas, we were not allowed on the pitch. And we were also not allowed wristbands, the ultimate concert souvenir. I was devastated, but it was worth a try, and the guy was really nice about it.

We went back to our tier, not yet ready to go to our seats because they were pretty restricting. We stood at the bottom at the front, with only a small wall separating us from the pitch.

Pretty soon, we heard the buzz of a monitor, and Avenged Sevenfold were on, accompanied by a huge cheer. I’m not a fan of them either, but this time I genuinely wasn’t impressed. Their singer was too shouty – it was quite funny, me and Dad both jumped when he started. There were quite a few fans, though – one in the stand behind us going insane to every song, headbanging in an Avenged Sevenfold t-shirt and holding up their phone constantly. This was also funny because they were surrounded by seated, pretty much motionless people. Despite all this, I do quite like ‘Beast And The Harlot’.

At the end of the (shortened) set, the singer yelled ‘Iron Maiden are on next!’ and it started to sink in – I was going to see Iron Maiden!

We decided to chance it at the front for a bit longer, until an attendant told us we had to go back to our seats. So we’d be watching Maiden from further away than we’d watched Avenged Sevenfold. Hardly fair – ah well, the view wasn’t bad.

I’d expected to be dead nervous by this point. I always get nervous about stupid things, but then I was just plain excited. A few more songs on the sound system then the headliners would be playing to God knows how many thousands of people.

Stuff was happening on-stage. The monitors and things were replaced with yellow ones, and different lighting effects were tested.

The empty seat next to my Dad was filled by a man who was also a Maiden virgin. Of course, Dad had to explain that I was the massive fan, and he was only there because it was a long way for me to come alone. He was however, looking forward to it then.

‘Breaking The Law’ came on. I usually hate that song but I was so happy that I sang along. To the chorus, anyway. It’s the only part I know. Even so, it was fun.

A big cheer erupted and I realised there’d been a sort of buzzing – it sounded musicish. Everyone was on their feet chanting: ‘Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!’

Of course, we’d know when Maiden would be coming on. We had to wait for ‘Doctor Doctor’. The atmosphere was electric – and then ‘Doctor Doctor’ came on. And played. And ended.

The first thing I heard was the sound of an engine as the lights went down, although it was too bright still for real darkness. My stuff – program, water bottle and shirt – was safe on the floor, and I made sure my jacket was the same on my seat. I wasn’t particularly warm yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

The big screens either side of the stage came on and showed a video montage to ‘Transylvania’. The video was all about Ed Force One, with footage of the band, the crew, and the world’s most rocking pilot. It was interesting – but all I could think of was, over and over again,; ‘they’re coming on in a bit!’

When the video was over, it went as dark as it’s possible to go at quarter past eight in an open air stadium in July. Another engine noise – this time, for real, that Rolls-Royce engine that begins Churchill’s speech.

We didn’t need to be told to scream.

The speech went on to the big-screen video accompaniment, and it had never sounded so inspiring … yet so long …

“We shall never surrender!”

The riff started. More screaming … nobody was on-stage but Nicko, who can’t exactly rush on with his drum kit whenever he feels like it. This didn’t last long though – a smash of the drums, a load of fireworks, and a change in tempo, and the guys ran on. Steve, Dave, Adrian, Janick, then Bruce, in his flappy trousers, khaki shirt and – argh! – that beanie hat! He had a rugby ball (though rumour has it it was an inflated condom) that I think he threw out. He ran up to one of the monitors, leapt off it with what was almost the splits mid-air, and burst into ‘Aces High’.

Before I saw this song live, I’d always thought of it as the perfect opener. Once I’d seen it live, I thought of it as the perfect opener. I’d been a bit worried about Bruce’s vocal range at the chorus – I mean, he’s not twenty six or seven any more – but he left me wondering: ‘is that bloke really fifty next month?’

Fantastic scream to end the song, then little room for chit-chat as the band ploughed pretty much straight on into ‘2 Minutes To Midnight’. You could tell that this song was known to more people – cough, posers, cough – but I wasn’t really that bothered. It was so much fun, probably more so when all those ‘posers’ plus the ones who knew the words to every part of every song thrust two fingers in the air (not that way round) and sang the chorus as one. This song, too, was extremely well done.

When it comes to in-betweeny bits involving Bruce talking, I’m a bit rusty on the order. I remember quite a lot of what he actually said, just not where it came in relation to the setlist.

This is the same with the backdrop changes. The stage set in general was ‘Powerslave’ all over, but the backdrop changed frequently, and there were several: the Eddie with the crystal ball (‘Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son’), The Trooper and, of course, the ‘Powerslave’ kind of thing. I’m pretty sure I mean the album cover here.

There were sweat patches on Bruce’s shirt. He talked to us then, too – general ‘how are you doing, Twickenham?’ sort of stuff that lead, somehow, into a quip about something being a ‘Revelation’. I was actually a little bit slow as to what he meant. Don’t worry – I’m ashamed of myself.

I was surprised, then not surprised, to see that Bruce wasn’t playing guitar in this song. Now Maiden have Janick, he’s not really needed on guitar. And he might risk splitting his head open again, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Poor Bruce.

At the breaks before the music sped up, when Bruce would have thrust his guitar in the air, we got to yell anyway, so it was all good. It was one of the numbers in the show I’d consider ‘nice’ – you know, it’s quite a nice song. And it was great to see live, as it rarely happens compared to regulars such as ‘2 Minutes To Midnight’. Mind you, I could say that for a lot of the setlist.

During solos, Bruce seemed to disappear a lot. This always lead me to wondering where he had gone, what he was doing, and when he would be back, kind of distracting me a bit. Oh well, that’s not a band issue – that’s more of an obsessive Bruce fan issue.

‘The Trooper’ came next. And Bruce, being a real trooper, put on his red jacket and flew the Union Flag. Is ‘oooooooooooooooooooooooooh’ the best lyric ever written? If it gets the entire crowd singing as one it is. Iron Maiden know this better than most other bands. There’s probably at least one big ‘woah’ part per album.

I think there must have been more than one flag, because towards the end of the song Bruce chucked the one he was holding away and picked up another one.

There was a bit of talking after this song. Apparently, so far on the tour, this was the most people Iron Maiden had played to. Bruce acknowledged everyone at the back, which is always nice, because they can often feel left out. The usual ‘Maiden are bigger now than they ever have been’ thing came up, too, with the added ‘even tough we’ve never been on reality TV’. I cheered. Bruce is so right, and I’ll always be behind him on the ‘Sharon Osbourne thing’.

It’s a crazy world – but the last twenty five years were definitely not ‘Wasted Years’.

This was the song I knew least. ‘Somewhere In Time’ is the only ‘80s-Bruce’ album I don’t yet own. I do have ‘Somewhere Back In Time’, but as that was their most recent release I’d only had it about a month. I knew every song on the setlist except that one before I’d bought that album, so it was always going to be the one I was least familiar with despite getting to know it pretty well. I did enjoy it being played, and for once, I believed in it, if you understand me. After all – any year in which I see Maiden live is a golden year.

The next song introduced itself.

‘Woe to you, O Earth and sea…’

The crowd went crazy. A setlist essential like this always prompts such a reaction – but this intro is hardly your average intro, and everyone ended up chanting along. Including – and especially – me.

The riff started, and everyone knew the words, because ‘The Number Of The Beast’ is one of those songs you can’t go to see Iron Maiden without knowing by heart. No worries for me, then, it being the first Maiden album I ever bought.

I’m going to end up writing similar things for every song if I’m not careful. It was done brilliantly, I was really pleased with my favourite part, the scream, and I enjoyed the whole thing overall as a song. It’s such a crowd-pleaser that it built up an amazing atmosphere, even in our seated area. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of yelling ‘six six six’ with thousands of other people.

There then followed one of their most famous songs, also from that album. Dad had said beforehand that he’d been looking forward to this song. Out of all the material I’d given him to listen to in the car, he’d singled this out as his favourite, saying ‘I think it’s brilliant’. He liked how it starts, then how it gets going properly. He admitted that he’d heard the song a million times, yet had never really listened to it, and never realised just how brilliant it was.

It had been a slight worry for me, because of the extremely high-pitched chorus. However, that worry was blown away when the mighty Mr Dickinson shrieked out the first ‘run for your lives’ of the song. That man is amazing. How on Earth can he hit notes at forty nine that he couldn’t twenty three years previously?

Of course, everyone got involved in this song as well, keeping that amazing atmosphere alive. It was even better remembering that this was the first Maiden song I ever listened to properly (as in, on purpose instead of just catching it on Kerrang!) and it’ll always be a special one for me. Back then, I would never have imagined that I’d be seeing this new band live in the fairly near future. (I’m still a relatively new fan compared to most people).

Bruce spoke for quite a while next. He mentioned the famous Longbeach Arena gigs, and asked who had been there. Quite a few people cheered and raised their arms, to which Bruce replied, ‘you’re all a bunch of lying b*st*rds!’

He also talked about bats. I’m not quite sure why, as I didn’t hear how it started, but he then moved on to albatrosses (is that the plural of albatross? I think so). He asked us; ‘when was the last time you saw an albatross in West London?’. A dude near me yelled ‘yesterday!’ and inspired me to yell something similar. I’d only been in Twickenham for the one day, so I shouted ‘this morning!’ and got a few laughs. They didn’t have to know I’d arrived at half one in the afternoon …

Someone got sick of Bruce’s speech. I don’t know how that’s possible, as Bruce is a funny and interesting person, but I heard a ‘get on with the song!’ from somewhere to my right.

Bruce moved on to talk about Samuel Taylor Coleridge (‘Go Sam!’ someone whooped) and how he’d written the song they were about to play. ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ apparently has this moral: if you d*ck around with nature, nature will d*ck around with you. That is not, according to Bruce, what he said back at Longbeach. I’m sure on the ‘Live After Death’ DVD he talked a lot about hemp, but he seemed to think otherwise, because what he said he said was ‘this is what not to do if a bird sh*ts on you’.

What a song ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’ is. It should be up there with ‘Stairway To Heaven’ and ‘Free Bird’ – any band who can keep a live audience interested in the same song for nearly fifteen minutes can be nothing short of legendary. Bruce disappeared at the beginning of the song and returned in a big, black, swishy cloak as the Mariner.

The slow part – oooh, I got cold shiver. The stage went mostly dark with a bit of spooky lighting, and it filled with dry ice as the sound effects of the ship creaking and the poem were played. If only it had been later at night, and the whole stadium could’ve gone really dark and added to it enormously.

For such a long song, it went pretty quickly. Not to worry: the next one was one of my personal favourites.

Again, needing no introduction, sound effects played building up to that creepy, low laugh. Nicko came in first, and ‘Powerslave’ started. Bruce came back on in a big, feathery mask (not the same one from the shop of ‘homoerotic paraphernalia’!)

It was really heavy compared to the album version, making that Egyptian feel it has much more intense.

I remember during that first guitar break before the chorus, Bruce did the infamous ‘scream for me, Twickenham … SCREAM FOR ME TWICKENHAM!’. It was neither his first or his last; unfortunately, I can’t remember when any of the other ones were right now, which is a shame because there were a whole load, and every single one made me so happy. Actually screaming for Bruce instead of feeling jealous of the people on the album has to be one of the best feelings in the world.

The pyrotechnics at the chorus were incredible. You could even feel the heat off them all the way back where we were.

I’d thought to myself beforehand that I might do an Egyptian dance during this song, but I knew then I would have felt stupid. If my sister had been there I might’ve considered it.

I think it was during this song that Bruce did this call-and-response ‘hey hey hey hey!’ thing, but I’m remembering the concert as a whole generally so it could have been somewhere else.

I’m pretty sure I gave this song one of my loudest cheers, though.

Another song with no introduction – and one I had mixed feelings about. A few weeks previously, I’d told one of my friends that this was the reason I wanted to see Maiden live, but as the concert had drawn closer I’d started to worry about two things. The first: getting over-emotional and crying at the big ‘woah’ part. The second: feeling jealous of the lucky people who got to be on-stage at the big ‘woah’ part. When the song started, growing gradually louder, I knew neither of these things would happen. I was just enjoying myself too much.

‘Heaven Can Wait’ was immense. It was awkward when it came to the chorus – used to Bruce kind of just singing ‘Heaven can …?’, I sort of did that instead of singing it properly, but in the end I gave up and just went ‘waa-aa-ait!’

The ‘woah’ part only got me with its awesomeness. I was a tiny bit annoyed at how quite a few of the on-stage fans looked like they didn’t belong there at all, but I hardly cared. Did it really matter? I was seeing Iron Maiden. Nothing mattered except that!

Again, this song had that atmosphere to it that you just can’t experience on a live album.

‘Can I Play With Madness?’ came next. It’s not one of my favourites – it’s a bit too much of a ‘single’ really. You could argue that ‘Run To The Hills’ is the same, but that song is a masterpiece.

Anyway, being a ‘single’ has its advantages: everyone knew it really well. And I loved the start. Bruce counted it in, and I knew it was coming because he does the same on ‘A Real Live Dead One’. Only this time, he messed the count-in up somehow, and started it again. He’s a silly sausage.

‘Fear Of The Dark’ is similar to ‘Heaven Can Wait’ in some ways; if you’ve seen them both live you’ll know what I mean. Singing along to the guitars with ‘woah’s always gives me a powerful sensation, but live, with the entire stadium? WOW. Had I cried at any point during the concert, it probably would have been then.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t yet dark. Ah, well. The red stage lighting looked pretty damn good.

I did feel a little bit sad when the next song began. The typical finisher – ‘Iron Maiden’. I knew, though, that they wouldn’t leave without an encore. This relaxed me enough to properly enjoy the only Di’Anno song of the setlist.

When Bruce said he wanted us to sing two words for him, I said ‘Iron Maiden’ under my breath. And you know what? I was right!

Out of the whole night, this was the only song that disappointed me. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the song itself, it was brilliantly done. The thing that annoyed me was the most famous ‘scream for me’. It simply wasn’t there where it should have been.

Eddie reduced my disappointment massively, though. The stage backdrop behind Nicko opened, and out sprung the gigantic, mummy Eddie. Dude, that thing is scary in the best way possible. I mean, if he’d fallen … man. I was awed.

At the end, though, Bruce said goodnight. Nicko chucked out drumsticks; wristbands and a Frisbee went out too. And they left.

I was shocked to see some people actually leave as well. Dude! Of course they were coming back on! There’d been no ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ yet! Nicko had even been quoted in the program: ‘if there’s no Hallowed then there’s no Nicko!’. And there had been Nicko …

Sure enough, after several minutes of ‘Maiden! Maiden! Maiden!’ they returned.

Bruce looked so pleased with himself that I actually laughed. He stood for a bit listening to everyone with this massive grin on his face like a cat that had got the cream. He made a huge speech, too, that went sort of like this.

Standing there made him want to be a rugby player … no, he’d rather be in Iron Maiden (how lucky is that?). What an amazing place, and what an amazing gig. It had been one of the best he’d ever done in his life, in fact. That got us all going again.

He didn’t know what he was going to do with us, but he expected we’d want a bit more music (of course!). He hoped we didn’t have any plans, because they weren’t going anywhere soon.

He announced that a new album and tour were in the pipeline! I’m not a massive fan of Maiden’s newer work, but it does grow on me so that I don’t dislike it, and I screamed with everyone else. However, Bruce and the boys needed to finish this one first, with our kind permission.

Recently, when he had been asked why Maiden are as big, or bigger, than ever, Bruce had been stuck for words (doesn’t happen very often, does it??). But he did tell those who asked him to “Come to f*cking Twickenham and take a look around you!”

*Cue for Twickenham to go crazy*

Of course, we are the reason Maiden rule – they can rule alone, but they need us, their loyal fans. And I honestly thought, during that speech, that Bruce was trying not to cry. I don’t know if he was or not, it just seemed like it. A bit.

Carrying on …

The residents of Twickenham would probably like to get to sleep – ‘F*CK ‘EM! BOOO! SCREW ‘EM! BOOO!’

It was OK – Bruce knew that we didn’t want sleep. The only crucial thing was that they finished when the pubs were still open – the most important song of the night.

Then came the routine introduction: Janick, Steve, Adrian, Dave and “every home should have one, the lunatic in the corner who gets paid for hitting things, Mr Nicko McBrain!”. Of course, Nicko got the loudest cheer.

They thought they’d do something off an album called ‘Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son’.

Bruce went over to Dave, who had strapped on an acoustic guitar, and they, painfully slowly to annoy us on purpose I think, began ‘Moonchild’.

I don’t know why, but I always think this song’s a strange live number. It’s not that I dislike it in any way – I think it’s amazing how the intro gradually builds up and sounds almost magical. And live, the amazingness was still there.

The highlight of the song, however, is one that is still fixed very firmly in my head. Right at the end, there is a scream followed by manic laughter. Bruce just concentrated on the scream, and what a scream. I can still see his face like it’s a photo, all contorted, eyes shut, mouth wide open, giving him an almost insane look. Funking wicked.

I knew what song was next. I know it’s a crime to ask someone what their favourite Maiden song is, but if someone held a gun to my head and said ‘give me your favourite Iron Maiden song or you die!’ I’d have to say this one.

‘The Clairvoyant’ actually contains my favourite line of any song in the world. ‘Is it me or is it shadows that are dancing on the walls?’. The combination of everything in that line – the tune, the music and, of course, the words themselves – sends a shiver down my spine. Every time. I rang home at this point, hoping to catch it on the answer phone. Sadly, it didn’t come on quickly enough and all I got was ‘normality I see before my eyes’. That message is still on my answer phone. I rang my sister’s mobile for ‘but I’m scared I won’t be able to control it any more’.

Eddie number two came on here. Twice as tall as anyone in the band, if I’d been on-stage I would’ve wet myself. As usual, the band fought him, despite the fact that it was the ‘Somewhere In Time’ Eddie – with a GUN. Easily as awesome, if not more so, than Eddie number one.

The song’s too short. I sang along so loudly my throat hurt, then it was finished.

I knew the next song really would be the last. It was ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’. I thought beforehand that I’d end up crying at this song. But when I heard the intro, I just got excited again. It may have been the last song of the night, but it wasn’t over yet, and it’s a brilliant song no matter where it comes in the set. I forgot all about the fact that as soon as the song finished, my night would be over.

Epic. Awesome. Just two of the words I could use to describe ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’. It’s a little bit sad to hear Bruce singing about how he’s waiting to die, but so atmospheric to sing along with him and everyone else. The solo of this song was probably one of my favourites of the night. Bruce was doing some crowd working so that I didn’t notice it approaching the end. But end it did, and we finally made it to:

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah
Hallowed be thy name,
Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Hallowed be thy name.
Ooooooooooooh …’

The ending was extended. But when Nicko smashed his drums twice in quick succession, I heard the last notes, and I knew the concert was finished.

I wasn’t even sad. I was ecstatic. I watched the band have their photo taken, throw out some more bits and pieces, then leave. Nicko returned briefly, but when he vanished again that was it. I sort of hoped they’d come back even though I knew they wouldn’t. I was right – the lights all came back on and over the sound system ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’ played. Even though everyone was leaving, they all whistled along. I would’ve done too if my whistling had been up to scratch.

I really was surprised that my throat didn’t hurt. After all the singing, screaming for Bruce and battling it out for volume against the other side of the stadium I’d done, my voice wasn’t even hoarse.

What I did have were a few pictures taken during ‘The Trooper’, ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’, ‘Iron Maiden’ and ‘The Clairvoyant’, and video clips from ‘The Trooper’, ‘The Number Of The Beast’, ‘Powerslave’ and ‘Run To The Hills’. None of them were good quality, as I was too far away and missing my broken camera.

People were talking about how great a time they’d had (“That mummy and that cyborg were mental!” was one I overheard). I saw another funky t-shirt – a Nicko-esque ‘Iron What?’.

In all the rush, Dad said to me: ‘this is Bruce’s life’. That got me thinking: what a life.

We managed to get to the other side of the stadium before we realised we’d gone way past the coach pick-up point. We’d tested the route from the entrance before we’d actually gone in, so we’d got messed up. But once we’d got on our way, it was so busy we ended up on the road, beside a line of red London buses. I heard a drunk dude singing ‘Infinite Dreams’ and saw several other guys selling shirts for a tenner.

We made it to the coach, where someone had nicked our seats. Taking our stuff, we moved to the front. The coach was the quietest place I’d been yet, and my ears were barely ringing. Yet another thing that amazed me.

We had to move whilst waiting for a couple of stragglers. I found out a week and a day later that the driver had to park so far away that he’d missed the concert. I felt so awful, but it was too late to do anything by then really.

The stragglers eventually arrived, and we set off. Away from the metallers, into the traffic. It was quite a while, though, before the Maiden shirts vanished altogether.

There were no CDs or DVDs on now. It stayed quiet so people could go to sleep.

Dad and I didn’t talk to each other much at first. I was thinking and texting people I said I’d text. My sister, for example, got sent: ‘Just got on the coach and getting ready to set off home, maiden were EFFING FANTASTIC! Only problem was boring crowd. Oh, and I got called a lying beep. Oh well.’ I saw Dad’s screen too – whoever he was texting, he’d written ‘bloody good concert’. That made me smile.

We talked about how much we’d enjoyed ourselves and what we’d thought more when the coach got going properly. He’d been impressed by Bruce, the guitarists (I could see Janick in my head jumping up and down, swirling his guitar around his neck and throwing it in the air during ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’). Actually, he said, they were all good.

Course they were. The whole concert had been as perfect as a concert can possibly be – because a concert that’s perfect is called an album. Or a miming prat. Which Bruce certainly is not. One thing that had caught my eye – or ear – about his performance was a line he didn’t quite reach in the last song, but that could just as easily have been a problem with the audio, it was hard to tell.

There was another thing I’d noticed about Bruce’s singing. It wasn’t a problem or mistake at all, it just made me laugh a bit. One line of a song, I can’t remember which, he’d obviously decided was going to be too high for him. He lowered it an octave instead of foolishly attempting it anyway – good man. But then it went too low, and he had to bring it all the way back up again.

Another thing that came up (thanks to me) was the fact that Bruce was so little. I knew he was, but you could really tell when you saw him on-stage. My RE teacher was right – for such a small guy he was a hell of a showman with a GIGANTIC voice.

We also talked about Bruce’s costume changes. And that’s about all I can remember.

I was sort of tired, yet trying not to go to sleep in case it erased my memories faster. Most others, though, had not thought of this, and were out of it.

I had a mixture of two songs in my head. ‘Die With Your Boots On’ and the slow part of ‘Rime Of The Ancient Mariner’, the latter being so clear I could have had headphones in.

Then I fell asleep. And woke up. This happened a few times, because I tried to stop myself. The feeling of waking up on a motorway is not pleasant. During this stage, I half-though, half-dreamt a storyline about a rock star, inspired by what the stadium might look like empty, which I decided to start writing as soon as I had time.

I accidentally fell asleep for real, and for a while, until just before we arrived at Leicester. And the weirdest thing happened. The two songs I’d had in my head had vanished, and had been replaced with ‘Afraid To Shoot Strangers’. Not a really familiar song for me at the time – I knew it a bit, and it had been played on the coach on the way there, but the one part in my head was the two title lines just before the fast part, on repeat.

I hadn’t been sad at all until that point. But then, it was Sunday early morning, I was sleepy, wandering round a near-empty, oddly quiet service station, a long way from both home and Twickenham, with a miserable song in my head, just beginning to miss Iron Maiden.

The song’s not miserable. It’s beautiful. It was more that association with the exciting journey there that was now over, made worse when I found an issue of Kerrang! Magazine in WH Smith with Steve on the front. ‘Iron Maiden play Twickenham Stadium on Saturday, 5th July’ the article inside informed me.

We crossed over to the other side – the side we’d arrived at on the way down. I felt worse still.

I fell asleep again until Leeds, then again until we got back To Middlesbrough. As we pulled into the bus station, another really weird thing happened. I’d never understood how peoples’ whole lives ‘flashed before their eyes’ before, until a really fast video montage sped through my head. From arriving at the bus station on foot to the journey, the day in Twickenham, the concert, al the way to the ride home and that present moment. It was strange – and incredibly depressing.

We got off the coach, said goodbye to the driver, and walked in the cold morning air to the car. My mouth tasted of old, sticky sweets, having eaten quite a few in my waking moments. It was disgusting. I was tired and sad and it was so quiet, combining to make an indescribable feeling. The car journey was the same. I didn’t say much. Dad stopped at a garage for petrol and I turned on the CD player to listen to the live version of ‘Afraid To Shoot Strangers’. I’d forgotten what most of the song sounded like. Hearing it made me feel weirder. I can’t tell even now if I felt better or worse for hearing it.

We got home at about twenty five to seven, and the best twenty four hours (pretty much) of my life were over.

I said goodnight to Dad and went to bed. I wrote in both of my diaries:

Iron Maiden play Twickenham! Fantastic show, fantastic Bruce, best f*cking day of my entire life.

And:

IRON MAIDEN! WHOO! Twickenham was lovely and sunny and the stadium was huge and the gig was awesome. Absolute beast of a day.

I didn’t think I’d sleep.

The next thing I knew, Dad was waking me up. But it wasn’t like ‘Groundhog Day’. It wasn’t Saturday, 5th July. It was half past nine on Sunday, 6th July, and in an hour my friend was picking me up to go on holiday.

That’s right. No time to mourn my loss, no time to miss Maiden.

I did feel rather upset saying bye to Dad, and the first time I was on my own on the holiday (when I went for a shower) I looked at my sad face in the mirror, got Avril Lavigne’s ‘When You’re Gone’ in my head (I don’t like it, just so you know!), and just wanted to cry. Generally, though, I was too busy. And no one I was on holiday with really cared about Iron Maiden.

Now it’s a week and three days (second draft a week and four days, third draft a week and five days) since the gig and I still miss it badly. In fact, I actually did cry about it a couple of days ago, so I should be feeling better soon now that it’s out of my system. Yeah – I’m a loser. I cried about a band. But you’ve got to understand this feeling. It’s like ‘post-Potter depression’ (I used to get that bad when I was a nerd) only worse, because Iron Maiden are real, dude,

And despite all this post-concert depression, I’ve come to terms with ‘Afraid To Shoot Strangers’. I still put my arms in the air whenever I hear a rockin’ tune.

And Iron Maiden rocked Twickenham.

Hell – Iron Maiden rock.

Notes

1) I tried to remember as much of this day as possible on my own, so some details may be incorrect.

2) I didn't originally write this intending for it to go on the Internet, so if it's a bit weird it's because I wrote it for myself.

3) I used YouTube as a memory aid every now and again ...

4) My friend, who knows who he is, helped me to recover Bruce's encore speech. Cheers!