Steve Harris is the backbone of Iron Maiden. All things in the band go through him, and it’s been that way since they were founded back in 1975. In the ’90s the band went through a period of turmoil that saw a new lead singer with Blaze Bayley replacing Bruce Dickinson, and a downturn in record sales and popularity. Bruce Dickinson has a one-of-a-kind vocal range, and all the Iron Maiden songs before were tuned to his voice. When Blaze Bayley came into the band, they didn’t tune the instruments down to fit Bayley’s vocal style. This is one of the reasons why people say that Blaze didn’t end up working in the band. He had to strain his voice to fit the tuning, and it cost them, forcing cancelations on tour.
In an appearance for Scars and Guitars podcast, Harris talked about why the band didn’t tune down their guitars for Blaze Bayley.
“Not really, no. Maybe on some things in retrospect, we could have done, but no we didn’t really think about it. It wasn’t really till we got out and played live that we realized it was a couple of things.
The weird thing is that he was really confident when we were rehearsing, and then a couple of times on a couple of songs, we got out live, and there was maybe an issue or two here and there. But in general, he just handled it really well.
It is what it is, I suppose. In retrospect, you can do all kinds of things, but Blaze helped keep the band alive through that period, so we owe him a lot.”
That somewhat answers the question, it just didn’t come up for the band. The most important thing about this quote however, is the final portion. Steve Harris recognizes that Blaze Bayley helped shepherd the band through one of the worst times in their history. It sounds like Harris has a high level of respect for Blaze and his work in Iron Maiden.
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Source: Scars and Guitars Podcast
