Have you ever seen your favorite band and thought: “I can do better than that setlist”? I usually trust my favorite bands with crafting a special setlist for either a new album or just a tour in between albums. This is for those special tours that reside only deep in the recesses of the crazy rock/metal/whatever genre fan’s mind. For some of the bands, I’ll have to do multiple, for this one we’ll start off simple. Iron Maiden. My favorite band, the greatest heavy metal band in all the land. If you want to know more about Iron Maiden, we have a treasure trove on the band here on That Hashtag Show. Last week they, and the rest of the world, celebrated their 40th anniversary of the first Iron Maiden album, Iron Maiden.

What Does Iron Maiden Mean To You?

For Iron Maiden, they usually go through several touring cycles. They follow the formula of: new album tour-greatest hits tour-new album tour- greatest hits tour, and so on. Everyone one of those greatest hits tours has followed a different period of the band. From the early days only, to the Powerslave-Somewhere in Time era, to only 2000’s on Iron Maiden. They don’t usually retread territory, and save only the most classic of classics for those tours. Although on the first leg of the Final Frontier World Tour, they even omitted classics like “The Trooper” and “Run To The Hills”. Iron Maiden has the fan equity to do things like this every once in awhile.

For this first exercise, we’ll go through their entire catalog. If Iron Maiden were to do a farewell tour, this is what I would want to see on the setlist.

Iron Maiden’s Fictional Farewell Setlist

Iron Maiden thankfully isn’t retiring anytime soon. They have too much fun on tour and playing for everyone out there. So the criteria for this farewell tour would have to be: keep it within the realm of possibility for amount of songs, and get at least one song from each Iron Maiden album. Iron Maiden aren’t Guns N’ Roses, they’re not going to play a 30+ song concert. In the past they’ve gone up into the 19-21 song range. Nowadays they normally fall in the 14-17 song range. For this setlist, because it would be a farewell tour, we’re going to extend that out to 20. Some of these songs are shorter and we’re not going to include any of the 10+ minute songs. Sorry fans of “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

The Actual List

Doctor Doctor (Tape)

No Iron Maiden show is complete without hearing UFO’s classic song from Strangers in the Night, “Doctor Doctor”. It’s a rite of passage when you see the band, and that tradition keeps on rolling here.

  1. Tailgunner
  2. The Trooper
  3. 2 Minutes to Midnight
  4. Blood Brothers
  5. Dance of Death
  6. Death or Glory
  7. The Number of the Beast
  8. The Talisman
  9. Man on the Edge
  10. Run to the Hills
  11. The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg
  12. Killers
  13. Heaven Can Wait
  14. The Evil That Men Do
  15. Fear of the Dark
  16. Iron Maiden
    • ENCORE (Churchill’s Speech Tape)
  17. Aces High
  18. Futureal
  19. Hallowed Be Thy Name
  20. Running Free

Creating This Was Harder Than You Think

Having to leave off songs and still fit into the one song per album criteria was incredibly difficult. Songs like “Phantom of the Opera”, “Wasted Years”, “Moonchild”, “Stranger in a Strange Land”, “Afraid to Shoot Strangers”, “The Clansman”, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, “Powerslave”, and more were impossible to fit. Even on this long setlist, you had to cut some classics out. For new people possibly seeing Iron Maiden for the first time, you have to put on “Number of the Beast”, “Run to the Hills”, “The Trooper”, and “Fear of the Dark”. It’s not an Iron Maiden farewell without those songs that brought them to the top of the heap.

As for some of the choices I made, the albums No Prayer For The Dying, Virtual XI, The X-Factor, Somewhere in Time, The Book of Souls, and Brave New World gave me fits. I wanted a bunch of songs from those albums. Opening with “Tailgunner” would be a treat for some fans of that album and it’s one that they’ve done before. What I was going for was sort of an every era of Maiden here. You start off with a lesser known song like that for superfans, but then hit the newer people with two right off the bat that they’ll know. I wanted to start with “Aces High” and the Churchill tape as well, but they’ve already done that on so many tours recently.

I feel like this is the right mix of slower, melodic songs, and the faster songs leading out of those to keep the crowd going. It’s an eclectic mix that I’m sure Iron Maiden would never do, but I can still see them doing a setlist similar to this one.

Did Your Favorite Song Not Make the Farewell Iron Maiden Setlist?

I know I didn’t include two of my favorite songs on this list. “Stranger In A Strange Land” was included on the Ed Hunter Tour in 1999, but was dropped after only a couple shows and has never been played since. “Moonchild” was a song that they included on the Somewhere Back In Time and Maiden England tours. So that one people and the band have seen. I really wanted to include songs that they haven’t played in awhile for this one while also including the classics.

What do you think of this setlist? Would you be happy with Iron Maiden playing this live? What does your fictional setlist look like? Let me know in the comments and on Facebook!

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