Iron Maiden concluded their 2023 tour with a visit to the Power Trip festival-event. Relive their memorable concert, mixing classics, rarities and recent pieces.
And here we are, in the heart of this Eden reimagined for hard-rockers: on this Friday, October 6, the muffled noise of tens of thousands of excited festival-goers is stirring the earth much more than the hooves of… wild mustangs for forty years. On this nickel lawn, the public is compartmentalized, according to its purchasing power: the placement of the ‘Trip is similar to a graph, a pyramid of socio-professional categories in America. A pit right in front of the gigantic stage, a vague VIP experience but standing, at $3,000 per ticket (without the required fees and other ancillary costs of the stay!), followed by a whole variation of seated plots, i.e. between $599 for the furthest away, and $1,399 for the proximity of the side stands.
Everyone has not yet returned to their seats or finished downing their $15 (+ tax!) can of Corona when the sun sets behind the golden mountains: Iron Maiden is about to take the stage, inaugurating without a preposterous first part this exceptional edition. British heavy is in the spotlight, reminding us that in these lands, in the years 1981-1983, it was the starting point of a real new British Invasion which allowed metal to be the most popular genre of the country, the time of a very flamboyant decade.
“Somewhere in Time”! These are indeed four extracts from this album of the same name, from 1986 precisely, that Bruce Dickinson and his troopers perform – however only half-drawing out the nostalgia game: too many exhausting pieces from the last Senjutsu come to weigh down a very classic, where the duettists Dave Murray and Adrian Smith display their game and sober class, relegating the third thief Janick Gers to the rank of useless dancers in Spandex. What a shame that, for an American public fond of hits, Iron Maiden did not dare to reserve an exclusive setlist or its armada of “Run to the Hills” or “The Number of the Beast” in place of things more boring — even a “Fear of the Dark” struggles here to match the fervor of usual audiences.
Setlist:
- Caught Somewhere in Time
- Stranger in a Strange Land
- The Writing on the Wall
- Days of Future Past
- The Time Machine
- The Prisoner
- Death of the Celts
- Can I Play With Madness
- Heaven Can Wait
- Alexander the Great
- Fear of the Dark
- Iron Maiden
- Hell on Earth
- The Trooper
- Wasted Years
Find the live report of the Power Trip festival in full in our issue 158, available via our online store. Also find our extensive interview with the singer in our issue 160. Order it now with the cover you prefer. Choose between Eric Clapton and Bruce Dickinson.
