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shows up. At the time of the interview, Maiden’s impending 13-date UK and Ireland arena tour, which starts this week, is fast-approaching. It is set to initiate the last touring cycle of their triumphant 2015 The Book Of Souls double album, which debuted at No.1 in the charts and, according to Official Charts Company data, has sold 126,786 copies to date – 109,100 of which were physical. Fortunately, Smallwood’s co-interviewee for the day, Phantom Management’s managing director, Dave Shack, is on hand. And in his hands is further evidence - alongside those recent sales and chart positions - that despite their rich history, Maiden are not coasting on their past glories. The proof is on Shack’s iPad. As we wait for Smallwood, he gleefully demonstrates the latest iteration of Iron Maiden’s mobile game The Legacy Of The Beast, which is being updated to coincide with the tour. Shack was appointed as managing director in December 2013 – thus forging a new management triumvirate with Smallwood and Andy Taylor – but that doesn’t tell the whole story. His roots with Maiden run deep. Before Phantom, before his marketing, promotions and international work at BMG/Sony BMG, he was a journalist – writing for Kerrang! and even interviewing the band for Metal Forces magazine. Before that, he was a fan. Today he produces a ticket from his desk drawer that confirms he saw Maiden on The Number Of The Beast tour at Bradford St George’s Hall, March 1, 1982.
In a career as storied as Maiden’s that’s quite close to the beginning, but Smallwood has been there from the start, seeing Maiden traverse a music world that is virtually unrecognisable from the same industry the band entered into. And, somehow, they are more successful than ever. For the best part of a decade, Iron Maiden have toured the world in their own custom plane – Ed Force One – piloted by none other than their own singer, Bruce Dickinson. It speaks volumes, though, that this feat is not the most pressing topic surrounding Maiden’s current world tour. Amid the wider furore over secondary ticketing, Iron Maiden took a stand – adopting a paperless policy that led Nigel Adams MP, chair of the APPG on music to opine, “Iron Maiden and their management should be commended for their innovative approach to tackling touts.”
This endeavour itself is nestled amid a business enterprise that includes the aforementioned video game, their own brand of beer (Trooper), their own brand of headphones (née ED-PH0N3S) with Onkyo, a merch empire that by their own mandate requires excessive scrutiny, and a series of complex vinyl reissues.
MUSIC Week Eddie, Set, Go!: Iron Maiden’s Eddie live onstage
Quite frankly, it’s a miracle they had time to speak. But they have, and with Rod freshly liberated from his meeting and grinning with excitement about the upcoming tour, over the course of an hour, the pair dispense lessons about life in the music industry that extend far beyond the remit of a metal band.
“Belief in your band,” says Smallwood of his overriding philosophy. “I think Maiden have got to stand for something special – their whole attitude that they’re about the music and not the bullshit. I’m very proud I’ve dealt with them so long.” More on that later. First, let’s talk touts...
“We almost completely eliminated secondary ticketing” ROD SMALLWOOD, PHANTOM MANAGEMENT
The big story attached to this tour is the stance you’ve taken on secondary ticketing. When did you first decide that was something you wanted to fight? Rod Smallwood: When I realised what secondary ticketing actually involved, which is basically industrial scale touting. That was around 2009, and it was particularly in America. In 2010, when we toured there, we did paperless ticketing for the best 2000 or so tickets, thus limiting the touts getting the high value tickets which they can mark up more and keeping the pricing at the level we set. In 2011, we looked to do the same here but it just wasn’t commercially feasible for us, which is something I always regretted because the Monday after the tickets went on sale on a Friday, I think there were 6294 [listings] – because we counted them – on three major secondary ticketing sites. I was really pissed off, because for every one of those tickets our fans were paying double, or triple, or quadruple the price or more. And it’s wrong. And it wasn’t anything to do with exchanging a ticket. We continued to do paperless in America every tour since 2010. For this UK tour we met with Ticketmaster and Live Nation and insisted on having a way to protect the fans and the price they
RUN TO THE TILLS
Global Merch Services chairman/owner Barry Drinkwater has worked on Maiden’s iconic merch for decades. He explains the appeal…
The ides of merch: Maiden’s latest merch stall
What role does merch have in Maiden’s world? It’s been key in their ethos as a band, the persona of the band. It’s a badge of allegiance for the fans. It’s not what the band’s about – the band’s about the music – but there’s more to it with the entity of Eddie and how he’s portrayed on the merchandise which makes them more than just a band. Metallica are a band, they’re a great band, and they’ve got half-decent merchandise. Most bands have OK merchandise. Maiden are exceptional and unique in the fact that the merchandise embraces the fans.
How much do their T-shirts play into complementing the vision of the music? It totally does. Rod will hate me for saying this, but it’s because of him – it’s his vision. Yes, he works with everyone else, but it’s really Rod’s mental anguish – and he anguishes about this – over the details of every little aspect, he looks at every piece of merchandise and colour. Which again is incredible. No acts have a manager like this, and I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of artists over the years. Nobody is on it like he is. And it shows.
pay for a ticket – to keep them available to the fans at face value. We had just over 200 tickets on sale on Viagogo for this current tour – which was remarkable. Ticketmaster agreed to not list Maiden on GetMeIn and SeatWave and then StubHub followed suit. It was a great success. We almost completely eliminated secondary ticketing.
Was it a difficult decision to make - striking the balance of slightly inconveniencing fans while also fighting on their behalf? RS: The reaction from the fans has been very, very positive. We’ve had a few cases where people didn’t quite understand they had to have their own credit card, but within the office we managed to arrange exchanges for them, or for them to change their credit card details. And even those were just a couple of hundred out of over 130,000 tickets sold. Again, that’s something else about the secondary, they claim to be there to exchange tickets, but we found on this tour we had very few people looking to do that. There’s a lot of work involved in putting all this together – and enforcing it – we spend a great many man hours, and there’s no benefit to us or the band except for the great benefit of it being good for the fans. But that is well worth the effort…. I reckon over
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