Film: Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition

I'm not a fan as such, but the beloved is, which is how I've ended up seeing them live a couple of times and, on this occasion, catching this documentary ahead of the Michael Jackson film I actually wanted to see.

With a limited release and running at 1h 46m, the whole thing is constructed from archive interview footage. I don’t think the band appear in person at all, just their voices.

The revelation for me was learning that the band themselves have never appeared on their own album covers, leaving the animated character Eddie as the sole face of Iron Maiden for over four decades. Someone had quite the imagination when they commissioned that character. Eddie frightened me as a child, and it was only seeing him on stage that made me realise how vulnerable he was beneath it all.

And because it was before the internet, I had no recollection of them playing behind the Iron Curtain in Poland, which must have felt like such a huge cultural moment at the time.

Enjoyable enough, even from the outside looking in

7/10