During an appearance on The Eddie Trunk Podcast, IRON MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith with THE WINERY DOGS frontman Richie Kotzen discussed their latest musical collab Smith/Kotzen, and their self-titled debut album.
One of the topics Adrian touched on was singing lead vocals on IRON MAIDEN‘s 1986 track “Reach Out“, released only as the B-side of the “Wasted Years” single. Smith replied on the question (transcribed by UG):
“I think it was just before we did [1986’s] ‘Somewhere In Time.’ We had shock news, MAIDEN took six months off. This was in the mid-’80s, it was a big deal at the time because we never took any time off.
“[Manager] Rod Smallwood said, ‘Yeah, go and have six months off, it’s great.’ and then Nicko [McBrain, drums] and I ended up in the studio together – because we were always jamming and messing around at soundchecks.
“So we got a band together what ended up being called The Entire Population of Hackney, and I drafted a couple of my old mates in.
“A guy called Andy Barnett, the guitarist who played with FM, Dave “Bucket” Corwell, who played with Bad Company and Paul Rodgers, Nicko played drums, and we just used to go to a studio and play every day. We did a gig at the Marquee club, we did a couple of clubs, and I was singing lead vocals at the time.
“And from that, when we went to do ‘Somewhere in Time‘, we had to do some B-sides, so [IRON MAIDEN bassist and bandleader] Steve Harris suggested, ‘Won’t you do some of the stuff you did with the Hackneys?’
“So we did ‘Reach Out,’ which was written by Dave Colwell, the guitarist, a good friend of mine, great songwriter. So we did that as a B-side. It wasn’t really a surprise – Steve‘s idea was as about as far away from MAIDEN as you can get, but you know, I sort of said, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’
“And Bruce sang backups as well, so we sang together. It was great, and Martin Birch produced it, so I was behind the glass with Martin Birch producing me, the guy who did [Ian] Gillan and Ronnie Dio.”
Check out the video for IRON MAIDEN‘s “Reach Out” below:
