IRON MAIDEN Guitarist On Current Tour: 'It's Just A Lot Of Great Fun Playing These Songs'

Christina Fuoco of LiveDaily.com recently conducted an interview with IRON MAIDEN guitarist Dave Murray. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On playing their new album, "A Matter of Life and Death", in its entirety during their current tour:

Dave Murray: "MAIDEN have always done the songs that everyone wants to hear. They're great songs. We love playing them. But it was a case where it's a challenge for us to play the new album. It pushes us a little bit further. It's just a lot of great fun playing these songs.

"We thought the songs were so strong it justifies playing them live. There's a lot of highs and kind of lows — there's a lot of moods with these songs. They're not just straight-ahead bang, bang, bang. There's quite a lot of quiet passages and where it changes tempos. The fans can stand there and listen to the music as opposed to going out there and bashing their head away for two hours. This is a very musical set. You can really get down with it, or, if you want to sit down and listen to it, you can do that too. On every level, you have a nice balance during the set."

LiveDaily.com: How did you make the decision to play all of "A Matter of Live and Death" in concert? It's pretty ambitious.

Dave Murray: "I know. [Laughs] When we were making the album, we just had a really good vibe in the studio. We just felt each track was telling a story. The way we rehearsed and recorded, it felt really natural to play. A lot of stuff on this album, there's a lot of musical, kind of, tricky bits. When we play it live, we have to be right on top of it. It's a case of, it was going to be a challenge for us playing the type of music we've created. We thought, "Well, every tour we've come out and we've been playing a lot of the old material, maybe two, three, four, five, six songs from the new album." We just felt like, "Let's do this whole album." The reaction from the other night was quite stunning, so we thought we had made the right decision. It could fall flat on its face because the music is so strong with the melodies. As well, I think the fans have had enough time — the ones who have the album — they're coming to the show, they know the tunes. It's been out for a few weeks. Hopefully, they would have played it to death. Watching them, they would sing along, they were listening, they were singing along to all the new stuff. We're doing some of the older material, but they have to wait for that until the end. In a way, we feel now this time of IRON MAIDEN [where] it's justified. "Let's do the new album." There will be other tours when we're going out doing all the older stuff. So, this time around, let's just do this and see what happens.

LiveDaily.com: What do you see for the future of IRON MAIDEN? Will you continue cranking out albums?

Dave Murray: "Absolutely. We're touring until the end of the year, and then we're going to take some time off and maybe do something next year. We definitely have plans to do another studio album. Obviously, the dust hasn't settled on this one. There's definitely plans to make a new studio album but fans won't see that for a couple more years.

Read the entire interview at LiveDaily.com.