Dead gods
a SUIT column by Chris Jungle

Last week I had the privilege of seeing one of my old idols on stage for free courtesy of Lies Magazine. On a dark, sliver of a moon kind of night, Bruce Dickinson rolled into town. For those who may not recognize the name, Bruce was the lead during the salad days of Iron Maiden, and from age 14-17, I used my obsessive abilities that all teenagers have on being the best Iron Maiden fan I could be. On many a night, I spent my time head banging to the hour and half tape of Live After Death, and to this day, I own all ten studio albums plus three live albums. I've seen the band twice in concert and still have about a dozen posters and five T-shirts, although none are displayed any more. Needless to say, I was a pretty devoted fan.

About a decade after I first connected with the band, Bruce pops into town. He's no longer with Iron Maiden and has released three solo albums since his departure (I only bought the first one). As I stood with about two hundred and fifty others looking for a glimpse of something we had loved all those years ago in a time called the '80s, I realized how long it had been. Not only had heavy metal music come and gone from the spotlight, but so had grunge, and even alternative is starting to fade. Then Bruce came on stage, and suddenly everything was all right again.

He ran around stage, threw water on the crowd, yelled at the venue for changing the show from an over-18 to over-21 (for the sake of selling beer), and even did his patented 'Scream for me' line. In this case, it was 'Scream for me, Albuquerque.' When he comes to where you live, he'll say the name of your town instead. He even had one of the old Iron Maiden guitarists, Adrian Smith, playing with him. So forty percent of the guys on stage were actually in Iron Maiden. I jumped around, sang the songs I knew, and banged my head like the old days. There was even a big Indian guy standing next to me smoking a joint--just like the first time I saw Iron Maiden live.

While the music was going, everything was great. Lots of memories, lots energy, lots of fifteen-year-old thinking, and it was great. The set was short. An hour, tops. And at the end, I was thinking more about what I was like as a kid than actually thinking about the show I just saw. When I was a kid, Bruce was a god, and for a couple of years, he was the god over every other in my mind. I looked at lyrics to find the answers to all the things going wrong in my adolescent years, and with several tapes to use, I usually found something to explain almost every problem I had. Bruce taught me about death, war, dreams, hope, and fear. Like most teenagers, I didn't listen to my parents very much, so Bruce stepped in nicely as the adult I believed in.

Through growing older and a lot of maturity, my gods changed and ultimately were unnecessary for my existence, but when I needed a lot of support, they were always there. So, what was it like to look upon a former god who was now just a singer with a better vocal range than most? It was amusing. Not because Bruce looked silly on stage, because he still has a great stage presence, but because I was looking at the man who I, for a time, would have followed on any adventure, any task, or any demand. Now, I saw him for what he was, and I laughed at myself for what I used to be.

I can't say I'm ashamed for the way I was as a teenager. There are much worse things to be as a teenager than a boy who headbangs and plays his music way too loud. I still pull out old Iron Maiden CDs (yep, I have them all on CD now), and the songs still rev me up more than almost any other music. Some sort of Pavlov response, I assume.

The truth is that show was all about pretending. Me pretending to be something I used be, Bruce pretending he had the clout he used to have. But even the mightiest of gods falls. Partly because the followers choose a new messiah, partly because the messages get muddled along the way, and partly because none of it was as real as we all wanted it to be.

Chris Jungle currently endorses no gods but mentions the names Duckman, Andre Rison, and William S. Burroughs too much not be considered minor deities.

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