When Bruce Dickinson left Iron Maiden in 1993 people wondered what would become of the band. It happened amid several similar cases of lead vocalists leaving high profile metal bands: Rob Halford suddenly quit Judas Priest. Vince Neil was evicted from Mötley Crüe. Joey Belladonna disappeared from Anthrax. Michael Kiske would soon be gone from Helloween. In other words, Iron Maiden were not in a unique situation.
The band could have picked a Dickinson clone, but went with Blaze Bayley. He was a very different vocalist than Dickinson, primarily singing in a lower register with a very expressive voice. His biggest fault in the eyes of the public was probably that he wasn’t Bruce Dickinson. Replacing a lead vocalist in a major band is very hard, and in each of the above examples, the leaving singer would eventually return to the band. Dickinson would also return to the Maiden fold in time for 2000’s Brave New World album.
In the interim, the Bayley-led Maiden released two good album featuring several great tracks. The second one was Virtual XI (released 23 March 1998), and featured a track called The Clansman. The song is universally hailed as the best Iron Maiden track from the Bayley era – or indeed, amongst the better ones from any era.
Iron Maiden have frequently written long, epic, progressive songs inspired by a fictional work. On their eponymous debut album, the progressive Phantom of the Opera signalled the things to come. On Piece of Mind, they wrote a song about Dune called To Tame A Land. On Powerslave, they surpassed themselves with the epic 14-minute tour de force Rime of the Ancient Mariner, based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic poem of the same name. On Somewhere In Time, we got Alexander the Great – an epic retelling of the life (and death) of the historic figure. You get the picture.
At over nine minutes in length and sporting several musical passages and time signature changes, The Clansman easily stands proudly amongst the other Maiden epics. Written by bassist and band leader Steve Harris, the piece of music initially had a Celtic flavour to it. When he saw the 1995 movie Braveheart about the Scottish knight William Wallace, starring and directed by Mel Gibson, the song instantly got a theme and a direction. Harris also saw the movie Rob Roy (about the well-known Scottish outlaw and folk hero) which was released around the same time. That added some additional punch to the Scottish themes and inspiration.
Whenever Harris gets inspired, he still locks himself inside his barn (which contains a rather extensive recording studio) and work on the song in isolation. This time the ideas flowed freely, and when he emerged the music and lyrics were all done and ready to present to the band.
“The track started as two separate ideas which was put together – and it worked!” said Harris. “It’s got a Celtic flavour to the music which is why I wrote the lyrics about the Scottish clans. They were inspired also by the Braveheart and Rob Roy films.”
Like many Iron Maiden epics, the song starts with a lovely atmospheric build-up. This time these passages also contain lyrics romanticising about life in the highlands.
Wake alone in the hills with the wind in your face
It feels good to be proud and be free and a race
That is part of a clan and to live on highlands
And the air that you breathe so pure and so clean
When alone on the hills
With the wind in your hair
With a longing to feel
Just to be free
The track gets a considerable build-up as the story introduces the invaders and the need to stand up and fight for your freedom.
“I wanted to imagine you’re in the Scottish highlands,” Harris said in the official Iron Maiden biography. “The loneliness, the moods – and then tried to create an anger and aggression in the rest of the song. It’s about what it’s like to belong to a community that you try to build up and then that you have to fight to stop having taken away from you. Musically, it’s all about light and shade.”
Sir William Wallace was a Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence. Along with Andrew Moray, Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297.
The song picks up on the traditional theme of Scottish fight for freedom. There isn’t a huge amount of historical information in the song, and is not about any specific person from Scottish history, William Wallace or otherwise. Instead, it is a more emotional narrative from the point of view of a Scottish clansman defending his home. The song focuses on honour, defiance, and the desire for freedom. The word “freedom” is especially featured in the song, delivered with the same strong defiance that the character of William Wallace does at the climax of the Braveheart movie.
The actual last words of William Wallace are either unknown or greatly argued. “Freedom” does however summarise what Wallace stood for, and the Scottish lust for just that, very well.
And I swear to defend
And we’ll fight to the end
And I swear that I’ll never
Be taken alive
And I know that we’ll stand
And we’ll fight for our land
And I swear that my bairns
Will be born free
And I know what I want
When the timing is right
Then I’ll take what I want
I am the clansman
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
Freedom
Mel Gibson’s iconic blue and white facial warpaint from the movie was used by Eddie on a tour T‑shirt, who stands defiantly in the Scottish Highlands complete with kilt and menacing broadsword.
It has been frustrating to the band and fans alike that some people misunderstood the title (or purposefully chose to read it) as referring to the Ku-Klux-Klan. If anything, this song is the antithesis to what that organisation stands for. This is a song about freedom and resistance against an oppressor, and there is no hint of racism in this or any other Maiden song. It should be clear to anyone who takes the time to read the full lyrics, and not just isolated bits that can be twisted either way, that the song describes the classic struggle of the Scottish clans to free themselves of English oppression.
Some vocalists don’t like singing songs they weren’t part of creating, but Dickinson has never been precious about performing songs from the Bayley era. While those songs have never been in danger of dominating the setlists, those albums were not their biggest sellers in any case, and the band has honestly given them a fair shake. It is always interesting to hear Dickinson put his own spin on stuff like Sign of the Cross or The Clansman. The latter is the most frequently performed track, which is great as it works particularly well.
“Life’s too short to go around chucking your ego around like that,” Dickinson said in an interview on Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon. “[Refusing to sing those songs] is childish, it’s stupid. And, actually, some of those songs kind of worked [with my voice]. Some of them didn’t, but you know what? They were all songs which a lot of Iron Maiden fans bought, and some of them, in particular The Clansman and Sign of the Cross, I think we really nailed those songs and I thought it was great material. Blaze’s voice, obviously, was quite different than mine — it was a slightly lower register — and, actually, I wasn’t complaining, ’cause I could use this kind of lower baritone tone and get quite kind of robust on it all. And I really enjoyed singing those songs.”
Bayley is thrilled to see the band perform “his” Maiden songs. “It’s fantastic,” he said in an interview with Eonmusic. “I absolutely love Bruce Dickinson’s voice. He’s been a great supporter of me before, during and after Iron Maiden. His voice is one of the hallmark voices of metal; that’s the epitome of what heavy metal singing is. Bruce always said that he had no problems whatsoever in singing anything from my era, and for me, what is very cool is that those two albums are obviously considered as important as other albums in the Iron Maiden catalogue. And the fact that these two huge, beautiful songs [Sign of the Cross and The Clansman] feature in the Iron Maiden setlist now is just fantastic, and I’m so lucky to be a part of that.”
In introducing The Clansman, the band would always highlight that the concept of fighting for freedom could be applied universally. At a show in Freiburg, Germany in 2018, Bruce Dickinson introduced the song with “This next song is about freedom. And you know what that’s all about, because for a long time half of Germany belonged to somebody else, and now that’s not the case, so you know a lot about freedom. […] Here’s a guy that thought about something similar about six centuries ago. His name was William Wallace. They made a movie about him called Braveheart, and this is his story. When he thought somebody was taking away his freedom – and they were – he did something about it. This is The Clansman.”
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