History of the Soundhouse Tapes

In the book RUNNING FREE Gary Bushell writes:

(page 18)

Recording their own demo tape was one sure way to blag gigs outside the East End, and as Steve Harris was impressed by a demo Den Wilcock and Terry Wapram's new band V1 had recorded at the Spacewod Studios in Cambridge, Maiden decided to follow suit. It was dearer than a lot of local studios, but Harry realised that recording on the cheap was false economy. Old Year's night 1978 was the only time they could get booked, so they took it even though they had nowhere up there to stay. Thankfully Di'Anno's romantic charms (it sez here) won the day when he pulled a young nurse in the boozer and this selfless Florence Nightingale solved the problem by inviting the whole motley crew back to a New Year's knees-up where, several sherberts later, they merrily crashed out. That first two day session set them back £200. They managed to record four Steve Harris compositions, Iron Maiden, Invasion, Prowler and Strange World and left with the intention of going back a couple of weeks later when they had more cash to flash, to polish them off, re-do the odd bum note, do a spot of remixing and so forth. However they didn't have enough readies at the time to buy the master tape, so when they did get back there they found the studio had wiped the master clean! So the demo tape which eventually made it onto vinyl was exactly the way it was recorded that 'taters New Year's Eve - and a fine testimony to Maiden's early ability that it still sounded, and indeed still sounds, so raw, cocksure and barbed wire catchy.

Soon after they took it to Neal kay, the DJ/HM Godfather who ruled the rowdy roost at the Heavy Metal Soundhouse in Kingsburym and a whole new chapter in their carrieer opened.

(page 23)

Neal Kay recalls very well the afternoon Dave Murray brought him in a copy of the demo, that was soon to become known as The Soundhouse Tapes, to try and blag a gig. "I said 'Oh yeah'," Kay laughs, "'You and five million others.' I told him to leave it and maybe I'd get a chance to hear it a couple of weeks later. I really hate myself on that!"

But when he did play it, Kay immediately appreciated the power and the potential of the band. "I almost fell over," he grins. "I was running and screaming round the lounge like a lunatic. I just couldn't stop playing it. The next day I phoned Steve Harris at work and said to him 'You've got something here that could make you a lot of money'. And he laughed at me. He thought I was kidding!"

It was obvious to Kay that Maiden had something money couldn't buy - poverty. No, really he was impressed by a combination of things. "For a start it was a pretty together demo", he remebers. "There were a few bum notes, but Steve and co had realised that you need to use a decent studio. They hadn't wasted time, they had gone in and worked hard. And the whole package was put together amazingly well. They'd obviously thought it out to the best of their ability at the time. And musically it was staggering. It was the melody plus power that impressed me. Aggressive bands have been a dime a dozen since. But no one since has had the tunes too. The combination of power, speed, the key changes, the melody, and Dave Murray's melody lines bowled me over, It was very unique and very impressive. Definitely the most impressive demo I'd ever had delivered to me."

Maybe it was the way Harry wrote the songs that gave them their distinct flavour. All the demo songs were written on the bass rather than the guitar which obviously gives them a different feel and they were composed in pieces and then put together in the manner of most Maiden material. But whatever the band's 'X' factor [sic! //toka] was, it spelt excitement and exhilaration for everyone who saw or heard of them. Kay began playing the band's demo immediately, and no one was more surprised than Maiden when Prowler turned up in the Sounds HM chart supplied by the Soundhouse at no 20 in the 17 February '79 issue. (Kay had been sending in a weekly chart since '78 and like everything he did to do with metal, he took it very seriously, basing it strictly on requests from the kids who regularly attended the Soundhouse).

(page 34)

On 9 November, because of mounting interest among Britain's mayhem merchants,Maiden decided to release three unremixed tracks from the Soundhouse Tapes - Prowler, Invasion and Iron maiden - as an EP on their own label, Rock Hard Records, pressing just 5000 copies. They used one of Loonhouse's shots on the front and cheekily used Chris Harler's contacts on the back (no, Rod never paid him) along with some suitably messianic sleevenotes from the Prophet Kay. He wrote:

"Every so often, one special band emerges from the mass of untried and unknown hopefuls which fill the streets of the Rock World. Iron Maiden is just one such band, bringing with their emergence a style of rock music so hard, gritty and honest in its delivery that only success can justify their hard toil! The tracks on this E.P. were the first ever recorded by the band and are the authentic unremixed cuts taken from the demo tape recorded at Spacewood [sic //toka] studios in Cambridge on December 30th 1978, and subsequently presented to the Soundhouse a week later. After one hearing it was obvious that Iron Maiden would become one of the leaders of present day heavy metal, combining the sort of talent and hard drive that the music world must not ever ignore."

Blimey! It still brings a tear to the eye to this very day (if you happen to be peeling an onion at the time...)

Steve Harris actually hand-drew all the rest, including the label. The Soundhouse Tapes, as the EP was christened, never went on retail sale, but was distributed by Keith Wilfort and his mum from their house in Beaconsfield Rd, East Ham. They shifted 3000 copies in the first week alone which gives you some idea of the demand. If fact Rod got calls from major retail chains like HMV and Virgin trying to order vast quantities, 20000 got ordered by the chains in one week, and although the resulting cash would have come in very nicely, Rod refused to supply the records because the band wanted to keep the ep as something special, for the hardest of the hardcore fans only.

All these excerpts were shamelessly lifted without permission. In return, here's a shameless plug: this book is a good read. Buy or steal one if you can. In Iron Maiden - Traveling In Time (a one-off fan magazine), Garry Bushell has the following to say about this book:

Pick up the the Maiden bible Running Free; in my guaranteed non-biased opinion the finest book ever written by anyone, ever, honest!

Iron Maiden
Running Free
The Official Story Of Iron Maiden
By Garry Bushell and Ross Halfin Zomba Books
ISBN 0 946391 50 5

Bob McGrath wrote about the birth of this EP in Record Collector #98:

(Reprinted without permission)
[...]
A turning point in their fortunes came with the opening of Neal Kay's Soundhouse Club in London which specialised in HM. Kay organised a concert at the Music Machine in May 1979 to showcase some of the best of the new U.K. outfits and Iron Maiden were put on a bill which also featured Samson and Angel Witch. Among the songs performed that night were "Invasion", "Iron Maiden" and "Prowler". These three songs had actually been recorded on New Year's Eve 1978 at Spaceward Studios, Cambridge as a demo, and the tape soon became a favourite at the Soundhouse. At the time, the line-up had settled with bassist Steve harris, Dave Murray on guitar, Doug Samson (drums) and vocalist Paul Di'anno.

Sadly, when the tape appeared as an EP towards the end of 1979, it suffered slightly from muddy sound quality. The reason for this was that the group couldn't afford to buy the master tape in time before the studio engineer scrubbed it. As a result, the record had to pressed from a cassette copy. Issued on the group's own Rock hard label, "The Soundhouse Tapes" EP was distributed by mail order and at gigs. Although the group boasted at the time of sales of 15000, this was just an P.R. exercise; in fact they could only afford to press 5000 and consequently copies now [1987] change hands for £40.

In Record Collector #203 Matthias Mader mentions The Soundhouse Tapes in his article about NWoBHM collectables:

(Reprinted without permission)
[...]
The band refused to kowtow to industry demands, however, preferring to stick to their original run of 5000 copies, thus gifting their most loyal fans with a disc that very quickly became the first NWoBHM collectable. (In fact, imported coloured counterfeits were pressed a couple of years later to satisfy the demand, followed by a pressing best identified by its glossier, lighter-shade-of-red sleeve.)

In the same article, there is a listing of "The top 50 NWoBHM rarities, Part I: The Classics". In that listing, the current [1996] value estimate for a mint copy of The Soundhouse Tapes is £70.

Go back to the Soundhouse Tapes page.