Like almost all Iron Maiden songs, “Run to The Hills” was also written by the band’s founder, leader and bassist Steve Harris. The track was featured on “Number of The Beast” (1982), their third album, which also was the first one with Bruce Dickinson on vocals.
It became one of their signature songs and one of the most famous ones with Bruce as the vocalist. But what inspired Harris to write “Run To The Hills”?
What inspired “Run To The Hills” according to Steve Harris
The bass player and songwriter explained in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine back in 2019 that the Western books and movies were the main inspiration behind that song.
“We’ve always been fascinated with Western movies and books. I was interested in a lot of things. But I had never been to America at that point. So I just used to read a lot of books by an author (of Western novels) called Louis L’Amour and I got inspired.”
“The first few lines of the song were definitely inspired by reading those types of books. Back then, you’d get what you could from movies, and I ended up realizing later what I thought was America was really just Arizona: people with cacti and dry areas and stuff like that (laughs).”
He continued:
“(…) I grew up loving history. It was one of my favorite subjects at school. So a lot of it stems from that, it’s just a fascination with the awful things people are capable of doing to each other and the positions normal everyday people get put in that they wouldn’t normally have to deal with. Also I have respect for anybody that has to go and do whatever they have to do to protect their country,” Steve Harris said.
Besides “Run to The Hills”, the album also had other famous songs like “Number of The Beast”, “Children of the Damned”,”The Prisoner” and “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. At the time the band was formed by Steve Harris (Bass), Bruce Dickinson (Vocals), Adrian Smith (Guitar), Dave Murray (Guitar) and Clive Burr (Drums).
It was a number 1 hit on the United Kingdom albums chart but peaked at number 33 on the United States Billboard 200.