For Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris, the band’s sold-out shows at The O2 last month represented an emotional homecoming in more ways than one.
Not only were the legendary east London band playing just five miles away from the Stratford pub which hosted their first ever gig, the Cart & Horses, but they were also hosting consecutive nights in front of 20,000 fans just across the River Thames from where Harris trained for his boyhood football club as a teenager.
West Ham United Claret and Blue runs deep in Harris’ veins, and his pre-gig visit to the Hammers’ Rush Green training ground brought back many happy memories of his own schoolboy football career at Chadwell Heath and Upton Park.
The devoted Hammers fan spent nine months in the Academy of Football before he found his calling in music, and Iron Maiden’s return to London gave Harris the opportunity to pull on his boots once more on the Club’s hallowed pitches.
Still buzzing around the pitch at 67, the Leytonstone-born rocker relishes the regular matches played by Maiden FC against local clubs as they tour the globe, so their contest with a Hammers staff XI was the perfect O2 warm-up, as he told broadcaster, music journalist and fellow Hammer Mark Webster…
“I’ve just walked in [to Rush Green] and seen the crest, which is good enough for me!” he beamed. “I was at West Ham for nine months when I was 14, which is scary really because that is 53 years ago.
“It’s mad, but I used to train at Chadwell Heath and in the winter they had no floodlighting back then, so we used to train on the forecourt of Upton Park and in the old wooden gym underneath as well, two-a-side, in there.
“Wally St Pier was actually the one who saw me, apparently. I used to play for a club called Beaumont Youth and we had a lot of good players. We had a lot of players on clubs’ books and I was told he had been watching and I just thought, ‘Wow!’."
Harris found music at 17 and within three years Iron Maiden had played that debut gig just a stone’s throw from the Hammers’ new home at London Stadium.
While the band’s success would soon take Harris to all corners of the globe, his love for the Hammers would never fade.
“It was always West Ham,” he continued. “The first game I went to [on 11 December 1965], I was nine, jumped on the bus with my mate and saw us beat Newcastle 4-3. That was it, I was hooked.
“I stay in touch which what’s going on and the only time I’ve not been able to watch the games in the last few years is when I’ve been on flights [or on stage].
“One of the games [I thought I would miss], I was on a flight from the Bahamas to America and lo and behold, there is a God, West Ham were on the telly on one of the sports channels! It was only a 40-minute flight, so I should have stayed on for the second half!
“I wasn’t able to be in Prague, but the weird thing was I was there the week before. Maiden had a game on the training pitch right next to the stadium.
“During the final I was on stage in Bergen in Norway. We went on at ten to nine and the game kicked-off at nine o’clock. I was trying to get it pushed forward so I could watch the end of the second half, but they couldn’t do it.
“I was being kept up to date from the wings. The drum tech is a Man City supporter and he told me it was 1-0. Then a punter in the first row says to me it has gone 1-1, but as I came off, they said we were 2-1 up and I’ve made a mad rush back to the hotel in the van.
“I thought it had gone to extra-time as it had gone on so long, but when I got back I got it up on my phone and they were all celebrating!”
In the 47 years since Iron Maiden’s formation on Christmas Day 1975, the band have played over 2,000 shows in 59 countries, but for Harris, few moments have topped the band’s tie-up with the Hammers for the iconic Iron Maiden x West Ham shirt, which launched in the Hammers’ Official Club Stores in 2019.
The shirt allows fans to show their love for both east London institutions and Harris is constantly blown away by the support he sees for the Club from fans of the band worldwide.
“At gigs I wear the West Ham wristbands and throw them out at the end,” he continued. “There’s also the West Ham crest on the bass, which I’ve had for quite a few years.
“It’s a dream come true to have the tie-up with West Ham for the Iron Maiden shirt.
“All around the world we get people in the audience with West Ham stuff, and from what I was told a lot of fans from overseas were going to the games and the club shop and saying they became West Ham fans through Maiden.
“So they realised the potential of having a tie-up and of course I was delighted!”
The Iron Maiden x West Ham United range, including the Home Shirt, Black Shirt and Band Jacket is available at officialwesthamstore.com here
