A song from Bruce Dickinson’s solo career (no, really, it is), “Fire Child” is one of those songs that speaks from the perspective of a Native American. Reminds me of all the other similar songs that I have on my iPod. Right now I can only think of “San Jacinto” by Peter Gabriel and “White Man” by Queen. And “Savage” by Judas Priest. And “Johnny Kick a Hole in the Sky” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Except Anthony Kiedis is part Mohican.
There are other songs like this, but I can’t think of them right now.
I don’t really have much to say about this song other than it uses the acoustic guitar to great rhythmic effect. And it was from Dickinson’s first solo album after leaving Iron Maiden in 1993. “Balls to Picasso” is the name. 1994 is the year.
The solo Dickinson albums from that year until he rejoined Maiden are better than the 2 Iron Maiden albums that were released in that same time period. Maiden was getting WAY formulaic by then, and the rest of the band weren’t really willing to shake things up musically like Dickinson wanted to.
So Maiden got some singer. From some band. God, the guy couldn’t fucking carry a tune for the life of him. He had a powerful voice though. To bad he couldn’t sing. That’s also when Maiden decided they were going to make some truly long and plodding, tedious songs. With their new singer repeating the same verses over and over again.
Now, Bruce Dickinson could carry that trick. He could sing something like “The Evil That Men Do” and not have it sound repetitive. Bruce Dickinson can sing.
The other singer…. his name escapes me… I keep wanting to call him Buckaroo or something like that…. He sounds like a tone-deaf dufus yelling “I CAN’T SING!!!!! I CAN’T SING!!!!!!!” repeatedly into the microphone. Buckaroo couldn’t sing.
The moral of the story is that they should have asked Paul Di’Anno to come back to the band. Fuck, that would have been incredible! Meh. Dickinson joined again and they put out some really fine albums with that 3-headed guitar-beast and the drumming and the pounding and the thunk-a-thunk-a-thunk and the screaming and the monkeys.
Mhwuy!
I saw a brief clip from a Simpsons Halloween special a while back. All the Springfield couples were dancing… and Frink was there with a metallic female robot. Props to Frink, man.