That a band have been going for 50 years having maintained their popularity for the majority of that is quite some achievement and Burning Ambition celebrates Iron Maiden with a documentary that catalogues the entire history of the band. And though Bruce Dickinson has been the front man for the band for some decades its not afraid to recall the chequered history of the previous singers with archive footage of those now dead. What it does make clear is the engine room of the band is Steve Harris who, right from early days in the 1970’s, did not want to play anything but rock regardless of the money he was offered and wrote, and still writes, many of the bands songs though there’s no mention of how the royalties are divided up which is often the cause of friction in bands.
But what the documentary does make clear is that they have utterly devoted fans as well as widely admired by other rockers including Tom Morello, Lars Ulrich, Gene Simmons and perhaps most unexpectedly is Chuck D ( albeit Public Enemy collaborated with Anthrax for their ‘Bring the Noise’ mash up) The Cure’s Simon Gallup and actor Javier Bardem. But though those people willingly speak on camera it’s the band who don’t preferring to be interviewed as voice overs claiming that, for the same reason they don’t appear on the album covers, ‘they’re too ugly’ something that Motley Crue’s singer Vince Neil could take to heart with his photo being kept by parents on mantlepiece’s to keep their kids away from the fire.
Burning Ambition follows each incarnation of Iron Maiden the band and is never less than interesting most notably with those lead singers the unfairly maligned Blaze Bayley, the drink and drug addled and now dead Paul D’Anno as well as Dickinson the longest serving of the front men and something of a polymath in that not only is also a passenger aircraft pilot who flies than band around the world but also an Olympic level fencer although this is wholly ignored. Perhaps the other omission would be from a spokesman for Spandex trousers with the band cheerleaders for that most unforgiving of clothing that’s often so tight you can tell what religion they are. But it doesn’t shy away from Dickinson’s battle with throat cancer along with the acrimony between him and their now retired drummer Nicko McBrain.
That their music is increasingly being used in films is an indicator of filmmakers also finally acknowledging their popularity having recently used ‘Run to the Hills’ in ‘Get Away’ and ‘The Number of the Beast’ in ‘28 Years Later : The Bone Temple’
For the diehard fans there won’t be much here that they don’t already know and there are aspects of the bands history that are overlooked but for those with an interest in the history of a band so central to metal this is a fitting tribute.
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Here’s the trailer….
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