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Iron Maiden will take to the skies once again in their customized Boeing 757 airliner Ed Force One, which will be transporting band, crew and their entire 10-ton stage production 50,000 miles around the globe. The 26-city world trip will commence in Moscow on February 11 and will close with the final show of the tour in Tampa, Florida on Sunday, April 17 at 8:00 p.m.
Lead singer and airline captain Bruce Dickinson, who will again be one of the 757 pilots, comments, “Last year when we took the plane ‘round the planet, we decided to play a show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at the end, coming out of Brazil and sort of on our way home. This had the dual purpose of dropping our Florida-based drummer, Nicko, off at home and also to see if anyone still wanted to see us in Florida, as it had been so many years since we had played a show there. When the show sold out in advance at the Bank Atlantic Centre, l guess we found we still had many fans down that way. We decided this time around not only to visit Fort Lauderdale again, but also to play Tampa, where we last played in August 1991. The fans last year in Fort Lauderdale gave us a tremendous welcome and we hope it will be the same in Tampa, which will be the last stop on this leg of The Final Frontier Tour.”
“We will be bringing with us pretty much the same production and lights as on this year’s summer tour of the U.S., but the set list will be a bit different. On this trip, we are playing in some new countries for us, such as Korea, Indonesia and Singapore. The set will be a mix of some of the new album, The Final Frontier, and recent stuff with a healthy dose of the older fan favorites we know these new guys would wish to hear, but haven’t had the opportunity to hear live before.”
The tour is in support of a new Iron Maiden studio album, The Final Frontier, released in August on EMI Records (UME in the U.S.). The album has proved to be the most successful on the charts in the band’s illustrious career, as the No.1 selling album in 28 countries and also the band’s highest ever debut in the U.S. at No. 4.
Iron Maiden is an international phenomena in the rock and metal world with career sales of over 85 million albums. After 30 years at the forefront of metal, Iron Maiden has been a major influence on many of the successful bands who have followed them.
The Final Frontier World Tour 2011 will be an even more ambitious venture than the pioneering 2008-09 Somewhere Back In Time World Tour which encompassed 38 countries and saw the band perform to almost two million fans with Ed Force One circumnavigating the globe twice.
The adventures of that unique and groundbreaking tour, both on and off stage, were captured in an award-winning DVD released in May of last year titled, “Flight 666.” Hot on the heels of the band picking up their first ever Brit award for Best British Live Act, the DVD reached the No.1 spot in the Music DVD Charts in 25 countries.
Just over a year later, the band once again surpassed their own chart success with the release of their fifteenth studio album The Final Frontier in August 2010 on EMI Records and UME in the U.S. This album reached the No.1 spot in an impressive 28 countries around the globe, as well as reaching No.1 in Billboard’s European, Tastemaker and Rock Charts and No. 4 in the U.S. – their highest position ever. That’s quite an achievement for a band that first stormed the charts exactly 30 years ago with their eponymous debut album and today has 85 million album sales, close to 2000 live performances and 15 studio albums of unerring quality and power to their name.
The Final Frontier World Tour opened in June 2010 with 25 shows in North America playing to almost 400,000 fans. The band then travelled across Europe in August headlining their own stadium shows and major festivals, including three Sonisphere Festivals and Germany’s Wacken Festival. The 2011 leg of The Final Frontier World Tour 2011 starts off in Russia at Moscow’s Olympic Stadium before moving into the uncharted Iron Maiden territory of Singapore and Indonesia. The tour then arrives in Australia to headline the Soundwave Festivals, followed by a first ever concert in South Korea, two nights in Tokyo, Mexico and a run of dates throughout South America, Puerto Rico and a final two shows in Florida. During this leg of The Final Frontier Tour, Iron Maiden is expected to play to over 600,000 people prior to undertaking a massive tour of European stadiums, arenas and summer festivals.
As part of Iron Maiden’s ongoing effort to ensure their fans always have access to the best possible tickets at the fairest price, paperless tickets will be offered at this show.
As Iron Maiden’s manager Rod Smallwood commented during their North American tour earlier this year,“Like all bands, Maiden get fed up with the way fans sometimes pay more than the ticket price to get good positions at our shows. So, we are trying with the assistance of the promoters, and wherever possible subject to venue facilities, to arrange paperless ticketing at least for the front sections to try and eliminate as much of the ticket scalping as we can.”
Also, at both shows, members of the Iron Maiden Fan Club will get the opportunity to win the “First to the Barrier” competition where 60 lucky members (plus a guest each) get the chance to enter the venue before the general public and grab themselves a prime viewing position right by the front of the stage barrier.
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