According to Dennis Stratton, Iron Maiden made one thing wrong in their 1981 album ‘Killers.’
In a chat with the Metal Voice, the interviewer wanted to learn which song from the record album should have received more recognition for. The guitarist replied by saying:
“A very important question because most of the songs on ‘Killers’ were already written. We were rehearsing both albums because we needed a one-and-a-half-hour set for Metal for Muthas’ Tour 79-80. So all them songs were already written and put down as demos, I just added my harmony guitar bits and everything else.”
Stratton Further Discusses The Making Of ‘Killers’
He talked about who would choose which songs would be on the album:
“And then it was a case of Steve [Harris] choosing what songs are going on the first album. Then, when we got halfway through the Metal for Muthas tour, doing an hour and a half, we went on the Judas Priest tour where we’re going to do 45 minutes slot, so then we reverted back to the first album, and maybe ‘Wrathchild’ or two songs from the from the ‘Killers.’”
Dennis Thinks Doing A Cover Was A Bad Idea
Then, Stratton revealed which song should have been off the record:
“We did work on ‘Killers’ [the song] and Steve wasn’t a lover of that riff. But I think everything was so rushed that everything had to be done yesterday for the record company. I didn’t like ‘Women in Uniform.’ I must admit I’ve told a lot of people I don’t think we should have done a cover, they had so many good songs of their own. But as I say the song I did the most work on was was ‘Killers’ because we were working on that right up until I departed from the band.”
Dennis also previously talked about the band’s self-titled debut album in an interview with Metal Express Radio. The musician recalled how he tried to add Queen tunes to the record:
“But that was a bit of fun because I was in the studio with the engineer, and we were doing the ‘You haunt me, you taunt me / You torture me back…’, and I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have a big Queen sort of powerful chorus on that?’”
Still, Iron Maiden’s manager, Rod Smallwood, didn’t like Stratton’s idea and wanted them to get rid of that sound during the studio sessions. In later years, the guitarist quit Iron Maiden in October 1980 because he didn’t get along with Steve Harris and Smallwood. The band officially said it was because of musical differences.