Speed Down The Road UK 7” 45 Samson Iron Maiden NWOBHM
£
100
$
133
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Description
SPEED- Down the Road, b/w Man in the Street 7? (Speed Records, UK, 1980)
8
Another scorcher from the NWOBHM. Before the glorious days of internet, SPEED were one of the most obscure outfits you could think of, with this 7? being so incredibly hard to find, not even the singer knew of its existence.
And the singer was, as you mst likely will know, Bruce Dickinson, former singer of the highly entertaining SAMSON. After Paul Di’Anno was sacked from IRON MAIDEN, Bruce Dickinson took over his job.
So how come this 7? is (or was) so obscure? In 1997, Bruce explained the background of these takes in an interview:
“That’s [the SPEED songs, Admin] a studio recording from when I was still at college. The original SPEED had already formally disbanded by that time, but Noddy White asked me whether or not I’d come back and sing on this number, which he intended to record with a couple of his mates. So I agreed to help him out, and we even got as far as laying down a second track, a boogie number, the title of which I’ve forgotten [he means "down the Road", Admin]. SPEED were, even back then, a kind of NWOBHM outfit, we played PRIEST and STRANGLERS songs alongside our own material and toured in and around London in the late 70s.”
And the PUNK thing you can definitely hear on “Man on the Street”, a smoking hot Metalpunkpopsmasher of the master league. The boogie number “Down the Road” reveals a lot of Pub Rock charme once it’s halfway through. Road and Street – sounds like this was some sort of a concept mini album about ways and stuff.
It’s unclear how many copies were made of this 7?, but the recording date was 1978 and not 1979 and it was released in 1980, when the whole NWOBHM went off like a pissbag under a bulldozer. Quantities must have been fairly low however. This 7? was impossible to find, one of the unholiest grails of NWOBH
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