During an interview with Metal Hammer, Steve Harris, the bassist for Iron Maiden, made a revelation that may be difficult for some fans to accept.
During a discussion about occasionally adding ‘Only The Good Die Young’ to their setlist, the bassist expressed that they couldn’t always cater to fans’ desires. He said:
“This might be blunt and brutal, but we don’t do it for the audience. We do it for our own thing first. We’ve gotta feel comfortable with what we’re playing and enjoy it, and then hopefully they’ll like it. That’s always been our stance all the way through. We don’t do a census of, ‘Oh does everyone like this or like that?’, or whatever. We don’t do that.”
Earlier in the same interview, he commented about the song:
“There’s a few tracks that would be nice to dig out once in a while, I suppose. I think ‘Only The Good Die Young’ is a really nice song that would be nice to play. We did play it a couple of times. It would be nice to play that, maybe. It’s a bit more one of those obscure songs. But it’s just…what do you drop out?! That’s the problem. So many songs, so many albums.”
According to Harris, ‘Only The Good Die Young’ has been played a few times in their shows, but, reportedly, Setlist.fm has no records of the song to prove that it has been played before.
The band is now on their ‘The Future Past Tour’, and the setlist for the shows was released with illustrations for each song. See the dates and the tracks here.
