Iron Maiden is a band that has often combined metal theatricality with dramatic stories inspired by real life. Their first two albums with original singer Paul Di’Anno leaned towards Gothic horror themes. But The Number of the Beast, which marked the arrival of legendary frontman Bruce Dickinson, started the shift towards more songs inspired by historical events. Enter “Run to the Hills.”
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A Breakthrough Song
For people not steeped in Maiden lore, this is the song they mostly likely know. The video got some decent airplay on MTV back in its early days, and even though Iron Maiden has rarely released a single in North America—“Flight of Icarus” from the subsequent album Piece of Mind being the first—“Run to the Hills” is the song that everybody assumes was released as a single over here.
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And a hell of a song it is. The tale of white European settlers who came to America and killed Native Americans and stole their land is told with vigor, vitriol, and in Maiden’s signature galloping musical style. The lyrics are also interesting because they shift in their narrative perspective. First they are told from the point-of-view of Native Americans whose land is being invaded and whose people are being slaughtered. Then it shifts to a third person take on the attacking settlers who view the populace as subhuman. But the people who are the invaders are the real savages, as described in the verses after the first chorus:
Soldier blue in the barren wastes
Hunting and killing’s a game
Raping the women and wasting the men
The only good Indians are tame
Selling them whiskey and taking their gold
Enslaving the young and destroying the old
The video intercuts a frenetic band performance, with black and white movie footage taken from an early to mid-20th century film. It’s a lot of Cowboys and Indians stuff, but taken from a bizarre movie that has much of the fighting played for laughs. Some of it is rather slapstick. Was this done to make the video more palatable to channels like MTV, or it is also a commentary on the stereotypes that Americans have foisted upon the Native American population since the beginning? Their media portrayal in the early to mid 20th century was one of being barbaric, being villains, and a force to be defeated by the allegedly noble white man.
The True Villains Were the Victors
Judas Priest’s “Savage,” from 1978’s Stained Class, also made a historical commentary. It spoke of missionaries who corrupted and tortured the people they claimed to be saving. Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills,” then, was about the slaughter of Native Americas by white frontier settlers. Why? They wanted to claim their land as their own.
American thrashers Anthrax would tackle a variation of this same topic on “Indians” from the 1987 album Among the Living. It, too, speaks about the depressing state of Native American affairs in modern times. (That New York band’s frontman, Joey Belladonna, is of Iroquois heritage on his mother’s side.)
Of the creation of “Run to the Hills,” Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris once told Rolling Stone, “We’ve always been fascinated with Western movies and books. I was interested in a lot of things but I had never been to America at that point. I just used to read a lot of books by an author [of Western novels] called Louis L’Amour and I got inspired. The first few lines of the song were definitely inspired by reading those types of books.”
Pushing the Needle Forward
“Run to the Hills” started a buzz on some European charts, hitting No. 7 in the UK, No. 16 in Ireland, and No. 55 in Germany. The album Number of The Beast became Maiden’s biggest seller yet. It hit No. 1 in the UK and No. 33 in the U.S. It also made the Top Ten in Austria, Norway, Sweden, France, Holland, and Finland. The record’s cover artwork naturally invoked the ire of religious types who viewed it as Satanic, but sales were strong. The album went platinum here in three years, and the song has 57 million views on YouTube and 344 million streams on Spotify.
Over 40 years later, “Run to the Hills” is still one of Maiden’s best and arguably its most memorable tune. It utilizes the power and volume of metal to describe a bloody period of American history we conveniently gloss over. It’s rather interesting that it was decried by a band from one of the colonizing countries that decided to re-tell the tale. But not just from the side of the victors that whitewashes the truth.
Photo by Michael Montfort/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
