But before losing track of them, I found them. Back in 1984-85, I was in elementary school - 6th grade at Strindheim Barneskole. If memory serves me right, it has to have been one of the most important years of my life, as so much of who I was really was formed that school year and following summer. Looking at ripple effects again, this was the year everything really started changing. Three key friendships formed that year, and it all started with a fight.
When I started elementary school back in 1979, I was put in a class with about 30 kids - and they were mainly from my neighborhood with some from adjacent areas. One of the boys in my class, Arve, was one of my more peripheral friends until he moved away in third grade, I believe, following his parents' divorce. He only moved to the other side of town, but since he at that point probably was more of an acquaintance than a friend, he might has well have moved to the other side of the world. At that time, it was very much out of sight, out of mind. However, he came back to start sixth grade with us. I am still not sure exactly why we fought - I think he wanted to show how tough he was by taking on the biggest guy in class, maybe not realizing he also was taking on the biggest wuss - or at least one of them. This happened during the long midday recess, and it happened in the schoolyard, so it caught the attention of the teacher on outside patrol duty. The fight hadn't been vicious, it was much more of a brawl where I think he was trying to lift me off the ground, so no punches were thrown, and nobody was hurt, so the teacher was ingenious in her approach to conflict resolution: Why didn't the two of us go inside and talk it out. I cannot thank her enough for that. I don't remember what we talked about, but Arve and I really haven't stopped talking since. It's not that we talk often anymore - being on different continents kinda stops that - but when we talk, we still pick up where we left off, so it is a really good friendship to have carried along for now more than 30 years.
The second friendship formed was with Jan Are. This was a friendship that was formed over a shared love for music - or what passed as heavy metal back in the mid 80s (which is quite different than what people now consider heavy metal). The way I remember it, he came up to me asking me if I liked "heavy" - and when I confirmed this, he said that he did too, and we started talking. Very early on, he borrowed Deep Purple's Made in Europe from me, and I was introduced to Iron Maiden when I borrowed Powerslave from him. Throughout our teenage years, which were about to begin at this point, Jan Are introduced me to a slew of great music - without him and his brother, I would not have listened to Rush or Marillion, so I am not sure where I would have been when it comes to the progressive music that I love without them. Jan Are also introduced me to alternative and more extreme metal (for then) - such as Voi Vod, Slayer, Venom, and Celtic Frost. He was also the one who had lent me the two Whitesnake tapes (Love Hunter and Ready an' Willing, I believe) I had in my pocket when I made the third important friendship that year, at the end of the summer break before starting 7th grade at Rosenborg Ungdomsskole.
Looking back, it is really amazing how all of these events are connected. It was a chance encounter that led me to meet Jon Inge - an encounter that is better chronicled under Radio Days vol. 1 and Radio Days vol. 2. But what didn't strike me until I started writing it this time was that all of these friendships started within the span of one year, and in many ways, that year is the year that really shaped who I was to become, because the events of that year still reverberate.
Anyway, I did indeed find Iron Maiden through Jan Are that year, and I soon had taped copies (tape to tape copying has a lot of loss, but at least I did have the music to listen to) of most of their albums - and with Xeroxed cassette covers including lyrics as well (to all members of EMI and the Iron Maiden family: I have since purchased all of the albums on CD - and I had some of them on vinyl and some on tapes I also purchased as well - and I think this is well past the statute of limitations for these transgressions). And while I lost interest in new music from them for a while, I started finding my way back when they released the outstanding DVD, The History of Iron Maiden – Part 1: The Early Days in 2004. I had seen the album Dance of Death in the stores, but I wasn't really feeling the new releases yet. That started changing with both A Matter of Life and Death (2006) and The Final Frontier (2010), but as I was listening to The Book of Souls (2015), I found my jaw dropping more and more. I had planned on playing it in the background while doing some grading, but I found that the grading was pushed to the back burner and the music took center stage. I did not expect an Iron Maiden album to be found on my list of best releases of 2015, but it is definitely there, and the crowning achievement is the 18 minute epic, Empire of the Clouds. I have always liked Iron Maiden's long songs - such as To Tame a Land from Piece of Mind (2983) and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner from Powerslave (1984), and Empire of the Clouds, which is about R101, the British airship that was the worlds biggest aircraft in 1929 and crashed in France during its maiden voyage in 1930. Please enjoy!
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