Iron Maiden “Eddie” The popular Band Mascot”

Metal bands have their own style and when it comes to their band mascots some of them are household names lets explore Iron Maiden’s “Eddie”.

Eddie, whose full name is Eddie the ‘Ead or Edward the Head also known as Edward the Great (see below), is the mascot for the British heavy metal band, Iron Maiden. He is a perennial fixture in the often violent album cover art, as well as ever present in their live shows. Eddie also featured in a first-person shooter video game, Ed Hunter. The entire bio of Eddie can be found here on Wikipedia.

History

Eddie was designed by “Derek Riggs” this is what he has to say in his own words;

Riggs: Well years and years and years ago, in fact two years before I ever met the band (Iron Maiden), and before they had a recording contract..erm…I was sitting alone in my shed trying to get my painting together..I was doing a lot of work on Symbolism. Reading a lot of books (about Symbolism), trying to..erm…work out what it was all about…reading a lot of horror books too, because I’m sick and twisted inside…(both laugh) There was an idea that H.P. Lovecraft came up with that you can make things more horrible by putting them up in your own environment, rather than sticking it out in Transylvania, or somewhere. It was in the late 1970’s and punk was big, There was this ‘wasted youth’ concept going around…you know…we’ve all been thrown on the dustbin…help, we’re dying now…(both laugh) …So I designed this character with punky hair, and I thought I’ll put a corpse in a T-shirt, because I had a picture from the 1960’s of this dead American’s head stuck on a Vietnamese tank…that’s what they said it was…but it may not be true…anyway, I painted this head with punk hair on…and stuck it up where I used to live. I used to walk a lot at night and I came upon this wall which was all yellow because it had street lights above it, and the moon was out too… which was kind of blueish looking. It was quite a stunning contrast…So used it ! So, I finished this picture and gave it to an agent who kept it for a few weeks and then gave it me back telling me ‘it wasn’t very commercial’… (both laugh) You get a feeling when something is right. I knew Eddie was right. He just had that look. He wasn’t called Eddie then in fact, he was called Electric Matthew. It was called ‘Electric Matthew Says Hello’. I used give my pictures stupid names. If you went round to Sci-Fi conventions you would see pictures called, ‘The Last Of The Few’ and ‘The Few Of The Many’. Silly titles…you know…

The various incarnations of Eddie can be seen below save them if you like it.