IRON MAIDEN’s iconic mascot Eddie has haunted album covers, stalked stages, and become one of heavy metal’s most enduring visual symbols. But how did this skeletal figure first come to life?
In Iron Maiden: Infinite Dreams – The Official Visual History, band manager Rod Smallwood reveal Eddie’s origin story — one that’s as accidental as it is legendary.
“It really came from the fact that the guys were quite shy,” Rod explains. “Even Paul [Di’Anno, former IRON MAIDEN singer] beneath all his bravado, was quite a sensitive soul. I wanted something that we could develop as a sort of conceptual continuity.”
Inspired by Roger Dean’s surreal artwork for YES, Rod envisioned a character that could embody MAIDEN’s energy and mystique. The breakthrough came unexpectedly:
“I was at EMI for a meeting, pre-signing, and noticed artwork on the wall — a jazz poster. I contacted the artist, Derek Riggs. We were in the studio working on the album, so I had Derek come around with samples of his work. There were about two dozen. Twenty-three were effectively science-fiction book covers — more ELO than MAIDEN. But in the midst was what we used for the artwork. It jumped out at me as the ideal character; we just made the hair longer.”
The one missing piece was a name. Steve Harris insisted the character be called Eddie — a nod to an East End joke told by Dave ‘Lights’ Beazley about “Eddie the ’ead,” a disembodied character who lives on his parents’ mantelpiece. Given a gift at Christmas, he moans, “Not another f**king hat!”
What followed was a rocket ride. Unleashed on 8 February 1980, IRON MAIDEN’s major label debut single “Running Free” marked a bold musical statement. When it broke into the UK singles chart, the band refused to mime on BBC’s Top of the Pops, becoming the first act to perform live on the show since Steve Harris’s beloved THE WHO in 1973.
The single’s artwork introduced a mysterious, disheveled figure with his face cloaked in darkness. But with the release of IRON MAIDEN’s debut album in April 1980, the full horror of Eddie was unveiled — the product of Derek Riggs’s giddy imagination and Rod’s vision to create a lasting identity for the band. Eddie, ever evolving and often darkly humorous, would go on to inspire curiosity, awe, and fear across the globe for decades.
One persistent myth is that Eddie was inspired by Ralph Morse’s 1942 photo of a Japanese soldier’s skull on a burned-out tank at Guadalcanal, but the book insists “it was just his reference for Eddie‘s skin texture.”
This article was originally published by Metal Addicts, based on direct excerpts from Infinite Dreams.
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.