When the owners of the Aladdin Hotel decided to level the building with a series of controlled explosions in April 1998, not only did Las Vegas lose one of its most iconic structures, but the world lost a rock’n’roll landmark. It was here at the Aladdin that Elvis Presley married his 21-year-old fiancée Priscilla Beaulieu on May 1, 1967. The ensuing publicity established the newly opened hotel as one of Vegas’s premier nightspots, and in subsequent years the most storied names in the music business, from Frank Sinatra to Black Sabbath, would follow in The King’s shadow by taking headline bows in the hotel’s beautiful, 7,500 capacity theatre.
Surveying that room from the side of the stage on the evening of June 3, 1981, Iron Maiden’s 25-year-older leader Steve Harris was less concerned about the Aladdin’s rich heritage or its elegant architectural lines as by the sight of hundreds of stoned heshers slumped on the velvet-covered seats sweeping down to the lip of the stage. This was not quite the vibe Harris had envisaged for Maiden’s first gig on American soil.
Surveying that room from the side of the stage on the evening of June 3, 1981, Iron Maiden’s 25-year-older leader Steve Harris was less concerned about the Aladdin’s rich heritage or its elegant architectural lines as by the sight of hundreds of stoned heshers slumped on the velvet-covered seats sweeping down to the lip of the stage. This was not quite the vibe Harris had envisaged for Maiden’s first gig on American soil.
As Maiden’s instrumental intro tape, Ides Of March, swelled out into the half-empty venue, Harris gestured to his bandmates to follow his lead and leapt over the stage monitors to confront the room, his face contorted with rage, his Fender Precision bass stabbing at the air, its headstock inches from the faces of startled crowd members.
“We were right in their faces, screaming: ‘Get up, you fucking wankers!’“ Harris recalls with a laugh. “People were sitting in their seats going, ‘Woah, what the hell is this?’ That was our first 10 seconds on stage in America. And we pretty much carried on from there with the same attitude.”
