Adrian Smith recalls pushback he received when making Iron Maiden bandmates use drop D tuning: “I’m the only one in the band who would do it”
Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith has spoken about being the sole member of the band to make use of Drop D tuning – a move he claims was met with some resistance from his bandmates.
In a recent conversation with Ola Englund, Smith shares how he began experimenting with his playing after rejoining Maiden in 1999. The guitarist credits producer and Bruce Dickinson collaborator Roy Z, whom he worked with for “a couple of years”, with introducing him to Drop D tuning, something Smith says helped push his playing into new territory.
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“Roy showed me all this business,” Smith recalls [via Ultimate Guitar]. “I was like, ‘Whoa, what is that?’ Now everyone’s doing it. So, I brought a little bit of that into Maiden.”
He continues: “When I rejoined the band, I thought I’d try something a little bit different, because Jan [Janick Gers] was just playing the same as I used to play. So, I’m playing a lot of stuff differently than I used to.”
Drop D stuck – but not for everyone in the band: “We do songs like Run to the Hills, The Clairvoyant, it’s Drop D. I’m the only one in the band who would do it. ‘Come on! Let’s drop the D, move with the times!’ They’re like, ‘Nah.’”
Even so, Smith concedes that the effect is subtle unless the bass joins in: “I think unless the bass does it, it doesn’t really get the full effect. But it’s a little bit of a different texture,” he says.
The Maiden guitarist also previously credited Roy Z with shifting his approach to practice altogether.
“I never knew you had to practice… I just used to write songs, play them, sing, and do gigs,” Smith admitted on the Scars and Guitar podcast.
“I never used to sit down for hours and practice, but Roy showed me stuff, and I thought, ‘Hey, he’s technically miles better than I am, and I’m playing in a band with him, and I’ve got to go on stage with him. I better get my shit together.’”
Elsewhere in Maiden lore, longtime manager Rod Smallwood recently reflected on the band’s early shows in Japan and a particularly odd audience experience.
“One of the weirdest things for us was how the audiences were all seated. If a fan got too excited and stood up, a security guy would bang them on the head with rolled up newspapers,” he said. “So the fan would sit down, but then another would stand up somewhere else, and then – bang! – they’d sit down. It was like Whac-A-Mole. Quite extraordinary.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
