The only really good (Riggs) Eddie drawing since 1990 was the 'Bring Your Daughter. not just a head), but Eddie wasn't drawn as beautifully as Derek used to draw him. These transformations were topped two years later during the Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son era, where only the upper part of Eddie's body remained.įor some reason the drawings began to deteriorate ever since that era, the No Prayer For The Dying sleeve featured a complete Eddie again (i.e. Especially around the Somewhere In Time era Eddie started to change heavily, he looked more or less like a 'terminator'. Over the years to come Eddie changed a lot, the stage-Eddies became a few meters tall(!) and Eddie himself changed as well. Eddie loses an eye in the war (Aces High), an eye bionic is implanted (Somewhere In Time), he fights with the demon and it dominates him (Run To The Hill and The Number Of The Beast), it is locked into a sanatorium without his brain (Piece Of Mind), it is buried in a great pyramid (Powerslave) and he resurrects (Live After Death), besides other important sleeves. The sleeves in good part of the albums and singles, have a sequence. In a tombstone of its grave it was written, together with a text of H. Other great curiosity in the history of Eddie is that only in double live album 'Live After Death' the full name of the mascot was revealed.

The final major controversy Eddie caused was when he had bitten off Ozzy Osbourne's head as a joke after Ozzy bit off the head of a bat on stage once, the Ozzy Osbourne camp couldn't appreciate the joke very much so Maiden had to withdraw that drawing. This sleeve caused a second minor controversy because a handful of outraged feminists accused Maiden of sexism since Eddie was walking arm in arm with a nurse and a schoolgirl, no one really took this protest very serious though. Maggie's revenge was swift though, judging from the 'Women In Uniform' sleeve (right photo), on which she's waiting in an ambush to shoot Eddie with a machine gun.

The later releases of the Sanctuary sleeve had to be censored, therefore a black bar was drawn over her eyes, this bar only appeared on the British releases. It wouldn't take long before Eddie appeared in the British newspapers and caused his first controversy, this was due to the 'Sanctuary' sleeve (left photo) on which Eddie stabbed Margaret Thatcher, British first-minister, to death because she had torn an Iron Maiden poster off the wall. The first album indeed featured the face of Eddie, it was still a 'weird' Eddie and Derek soon changed his face. The band decided to keep the 'new' Eddie's appearance as a secret for everybody until the first album, therefore the Eddie which appears on the Running Free sleeve, is standing in the shadows.

The photo that supposedly inspired artist Derek Riggs for the creation of Eddie the HeadĮddie became the registered mark of the band but he was still only that head on the stage and nothing more, that is until the band hired Derek Riggs, through their manager Rod Smallwood, to designed the long awaited body for Eddie. So five years later Eddie'sįather entered the room on Eddie's birthday and said: Needn't worry since he would come up with a suitable body for The fans gave to the puppet the name of Eddie The Head, based on a well-known plenty joke at that time which goes something like this:Ī woman had given birth to just a head, the doctor told her she Once he it placed in the fund of the stage, beside the logotype of the band, a great mask that had acquired in an art academy and he used an aquarium air-pump to pump artificial blood through the mouth during the song Iron Maiden. After Dennis Wilcock (a former vocalist) left the band a guy named Dave Beasly took over the whole stage act thing, and he soon got the nickname Dave Lights because of his almost insane ideas to improve the stage show with things like gunpowder, flower pots, lights and even vacuum cleaner parts. Steve and the band were trying out different things to incorporate in their stage shows a long time before the first Eddie appeared on an album cover.

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