Bruce Dickinson , vocalist of Iron Maiden , commented on the importance of the iconic figure of Eddie as the band's mascot in a recent interview and complained about those who didn't understand the pun with the character on the album Piece of Mind (1983).
On the cover of the fourth studio album by the heavy metal giants, Eddie was drawn by Derek Riggs in a straitjacket, confined to a cell in a mental institution and bearing lobotomy scars, a surgical procedure used on psychiatric patients until the 1950s, in which the frontal lobes of the brain were severed.
Upon seeing the image, the band decided to adapt the album title to a pun: Piece of mind can be literally translated as "piece of the mind," in this case, Eddie's brain, but it's also an expression used to describe what one thinks in a heated discussion. Furthermore, the sound is similar to "peace of mind."
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“Eddie acquired a whole existence, it’s possible to place him in any period,” Dickinson commented in an interview on the Next Level Soul . “We had a whole visual pun [in Piece of Mind ], his head was shaved and stitched up to the back, like Frankenstein, in a padded cell… And we had people saying, ‘Hey, man, he cut his hair.’ Damn, if we have to explain… Let’s go ahead.”
The album was the subject of Wikimetal podcast , which also celebrated the anniversary of Fear of the Dark , another Maiden album released in May. Watch or listen here .
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