How To Play Can I Play With Madness By Iron Maiden

Great Track from the Seventh Son album

How to play Can I Play With Madness by Iron Maiden

For the past few weeks I have be posting lessons on how to play all the songs from the album Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. Here is Can I Play With Madness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvE1wCczIlc

The song is the sixteenth single released by the band.

Released in 1988, it was the first single from their seventh studio album, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988), and hit number 3 in the UK charts.

The song is about a young man who wants to learn the future from an old prophet with a crystal ball. The young man thinks he is going mad and seeks the old prophet to help him cope with his visions/nightmares.

The prophet’s advice is ignored by the young man and they become angry with each other. The song was originally a ballad named “On the Wings of Eagles”, written by Adrian Smith.

The video of the song was set at Tintern Abbey and Chislehurst Caves, and features Graham Chapman; this would be one of his last appearances on television before his death in October 1989 of cancer.

In the video, Chapman plays an irritable art instructor who criticises a young student for including Iron Maiden’s mascot Eddie in his sketch of the abbey ruins. The teacher then falls down a hole in the ground, discovers an underground vault and finally encounters an animated version of Eddie, who leers at him from inside a refrigerator.

The band appears on a TV screen showing footage from “The Number of the Beast” video and the Live After Death concert film. Adrian Smith is shown playing left-handed, suggesting a reversed image.