Harris, Steve

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Contents 1 Information 2 Buy Harris, Steve Music on Ebay 3 Member of 4 Harris, Steve Biography

Information

Real Name/Full Name: Stephen Percy Harris

Born On: March 12 1957

Genres: Rock

Buy Harris, Steve Music on Ebay

Member of

• Iron Maiden
• Smiler
• Gypsy's Kiss

Harris, Steve Biography

I was introduced to Steve and Bruce when Gillan were playing Hammersmith Odeon back in the Eighties. I quite liked the lad at the time, and I met him subsequently at a few Maiden gigs after that. He always seemed quite intense and serious and aware of what was going on.

As a person, Steve is one of the few people you meet that you can trust totally. He wouldn�t sell you down the river, he wouldn�t badmouth you behind your back; he�s a very straight fella. You can confide in him and it won�t get passed around, and he doesn�t bullshit. He has the ability to stand back and look at both sides of a situation, but if he�s convinced that he�s right, he will argue with every fibre of his body and he�ll never change his mind, which I think is a great strength. He has very strong mental tolerance.

In situations where other bands might have caved in, the one thing that has kept Iron Maiden doing what it does best is Steve, because he has this belief that what he�s doing is right. When you�re in a young band and your record company come to you, saying, 'You need to soften up your sound, we need a single', Steve�s the kind of guy you need to turn round to them and say, 'Fuck off!'

Steve has a very fertile imagination and a very simple way of writing lyrics. It�s not highbrow stuff � it�s deeper than that. He writes it as he sees it and you really get the feeling the words are from inside him. Every time I play the song �Blood Brothers�, it makes me shiver, because he hit the nail on the head. He lost his dad when he was on tour and when things like that happen to you, sometimes you go to deep places - everyone experiences that - but to be able to write it down is another thing. When you read his lyrics, there�s an honesty in there that comes out and he opens himself up more than he does when you�re talking to the guy.

He�s a great football player and he had the choice to play football professionally or play music when he was a kid, but I think he made the right decision. I don�t think he could cope with the discipline of the footballer�s life at the time when you�re a teenager and you�re starting to meet people and get into music. He�s his own man. But having said that, he doesn�t drink much and he takes care of his body � that�s very important to him. Being a sportsman, his attitude is that if your body is healthy, your mind is too, and I think that helps with the band, because you don�t get locked into that stupid rock'n�roll 'let�s go party every night' lifestyle.

He is an idiosyncratic bass player. He picked up the bass and taught himself in such a way that nobody can really copy it. People say it�s like a lead guitar, but it�s not. It gives the band a basis and it moves around quite a lot, but it�s the tone that he has. He has a way of hearing things and a tone that isn�t normally associated with a bass, it�s more like a rhythm guitar. Him and Nicko provide the pulse of Iron Maiden, the body of the band. You copy it at your peril, because the sound of Maiden is built around the way Steve plays bass and the only band that it would work in is Maiden.

Steve has been very involved in the new album. He has this tunnel vision where he can really hone in on things and he has this tremendous focus when he�s recording albums - or doing anything with Iron Maiden really. He wants to get it right and he�s prepared to put the time in. Not many people have that kind of determination and focus.

He is a very, very strong personality. Without his drive and ambition, it wouldn�t be Iron Maiden, no doubt about it. He�s its heart and its power.

ironmaiden.com

Stephen Percy Harris or 'Arry to his fans (born March 12, 1957 in Leytonstone, London, England) is the bassist and primary songwriter of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. He founded the band as a teenager in 1975. He and Dave Murray are the only original members of the band that still remain, thirty years on.

He used to work as an architectural draftsman in the East End of London but gave up his job upon forming Iron Maiden. During the mid 1970s he was a youth team footballer for West Ham United. He is an exceptional football player, and his bandmates say that if he did not play bass he would definitely have had a career in professional football.

A self-taught bass player, Harris' first bass was a copy of a Fender Precision Bass that cost him about �40 when he was 17 years old. He went on to use a signature Lado "Unicorn" model and a late 1950s Fender Precision with RotoSound strings. He now uses his own signature RotoSound flatwound bass strings. This is surprising because flatwound strings do not sound clanky and bright. In fact, Steve's signature clanky bass tone comes from the metallic noise of the strings hitting the frets.

Harris has been influenced by other bass players such as Chris Squire of Yes, John Deacon of Queen, Mike Rutherford of Genesis, Geddy Lee of Rush, Andy Fraser of Free and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Martin Turner of Wishbone Ash, Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, and John Entwistle of The Who. One of his all-time favourites also was Pete Way from UFO, who influenced Harris' playing style.

Harris' first band was named Influence, later renamed to Gypsy's Kiss. He later joined Smiler, of which all the band members were several years older than he was. He ended up leaving, as the members of the band made it clear that they did not care for a bassist who leapt around the stage and wrote songs. After Smiler, Harris went on to create Iron Maiden. Steve Harris got the name from seeing an iron maiden (the torture instrument) in the movie The Man in the Iron Mask.

Steve Harris is often considered among the best and most influential heavy metal bassists. He frequently writes songs with a 'gallop', a pattern consisting of three rapid notes - one eighth and two sixteenths - which he plays with his first two fingers on his right hand. Before playing, Harris often greases his fingers, to make such 'gallops' easier to play, as shown on the bonus DVD for the A Matter of Life and Death album. Besides this he is very adventuresome on the bass and and plays intricate accompaniment in many of Maiden's songs. He also uses power chords, which are relatively unheard of on bass, on several songs. Some songs that Harris uses power chords on are "Fear of the Dark", "Futureal", "The Evil That Men Do", "Rainmaker", and many more. Harris also says that he never uses a pick and he never warms up before a show. More importantly, Steve Harris is Maiden's principal composer and lyricist. Harris' songwriting has been noted for, besides the aforementioned gallop pattern, his long, epic songs that feature many different tempo changes and movements. He frequently writes lyrics about mythology, history or topics gleaned from books and movies as opposed to the more mundane metal lyrics. The use of such lyrics in heavy metal was influential in the advent of progressive metal. Harris's greatest song is probebly Hallowed Be Thy Name.

He plays a specially-painted bass guitar which has featured on every Iron Maiden album recorded. It is currently sporting the West Ham United F.C. logo. The guitar has gone through three colour changes since construction: originally being white, it was then changed to black, then blue, and is currently cream with the rim done in West Ham's light-blue, and the club's logo on the body. The pickguard is metallic.

It is widely reported that, while Harris does like to drink, he never uses drugs.

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