Blaze Bayley was born in Birmingham, England in 1963 and first achieved fame as the vocalist of Wolfsbane, band he fronted from 1984 to 1994 until he passed the audition and was invited to join Iron Maiden. He stayed in the band until Bruce Dickinson‘s return in 1999 and recorded 2 studio albums with the Heavy Metal group: “The X Factor” (1995) and “Virtual XI” (1998).
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In an interview with Scars and Guitars podcast (Transcribed by Ultimate Guitar), Maiden’s leader, bassist and main songwriter Steve Harris said that the band owes Bayley a lot. Because he was the one who kept the band alive in the 90s.
Steve Harris says Iron Maiden owes Blaze Bayley a lot
“Not really, no (We didn’t consider downtuning the songs for Bayley’s voice). Maybe on some things in retrospect, we could have done, but no we didn’t really think about it. It wasn’t really till we got out and played live that we realized it was a couple of things.”
“The weird thing is that he was really confident when we were rehearsing, and then a couple of times on a couple of songs, we got out live, and there was maybe an issue or two here and there. But in general, he just handled it really well. It is what it is, I suppose. In retrospect, you can do all kinds of things, but Blaze helped keep the band alive through that period, so we owe him a lot,” Steve Harris said.
How was Blaze Bayley’s audition to join Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden singer from 1994 to 1999, Blaze Bayley recalled in an interview with The ’80s Glam Metalcast his audition to join the band. Bayley recorded 2 studio albums with the Heavy Metal group: “The X Factor” (1995) and “Virtual XI” (1998).
Blaze recalled that some time before Bruce Dickinson left the group, Wolfsbane, Bayley’s band was Maiden’s opening act on tour and they had the CD of his group, which he thinks was a good point in his favor, since they already knew him. “I think what happened was, they held a lot of auditions, they had a lot of tapes in, they already had my CDs, so I asked for an audition, and I got it.”
“And I really thought they would be going for someone that sounded like Bruce, with a lot of great singers out there – Bruce Dickinson, incredibly influential in the world of metal, so a lot of people that sounded or were heavily influenced by Bruce.”
“But they went for something different. I don’t know why but I think they chose me because I was different, and that started something in the band, it was the beginning of the progressive era of Iron Maiden when we did [1995’s] ‘The X Factor.’
He continued:
“I was shocked. My voice was so different, I thought, ‘I’ll never get this spot, what am I going to do?’ It’s an audition of 10 songs that were all in the set like ‘Fear of the Dark,’ ‘The Trooper,’ ‘Hallowed be thy Name,’ ‘Wrathchild.’”
“And I thought, ‘You know what? For an hour, I’m in Iron Maiden. I’m the lead singer of Iron Maiden.’ And that’s how I approached the audition. I thought, ‘There’s nothing else I can do now. No more preparation, it’s over. If I mess up, that’s it, I mess up, there’s no way around it.’ So I thought, ‘You know what? I’m just going to be the singer of Iron Maiden for an hour, and no one can take that away from me.’”
“And I knew all the drum parts because I was a huge fan – and the guitar solos, and the arrangements – really really well, because I loved Iron Maiden. It was… I felt I did OK at the audition, and then there was a second audition where they record your voice to see how you’re going to be in the studio, which is very, very sensible.”
“I said to Steve Harris at the time, ‘Will I be able to get a tape of this, me singing with the backing track of the band?’ And he said, ‘Well if you don’t get it, we’ll send you a tape of the bloke that did,’, which I thought was very harsh. A few weeks later, out of the blue, I got a phone call, ‘You’re in, come to a meeting.’ And that was it.”
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