Live Review : British Lion + Airforce @ Rebellion, Manchester on November 29th 2021

Tonight’s audience is of a certain vintage and a certain gender. There are fadedIron Maiden t-shirts everywhere and a large gaggle of fanboys have already reserved their spot on the barrier and are not planning on moving anytime soon. Yes, a barrier at Rebellion (and two security guards), but it isn’t often that you get visited by Heavy Metal royalty. British Lion is Iron Maiden head honcho Steve Harris’s other band and there is a palpable level of excitement about being within touching distance of one of the most important and omnipresent figures in our world (presumably the barrier is there to stop any actual groping). 

Opener Airforce also have Maiden pedigree in that drummer Doug Sampson was a member of the band for a couple of years back in the late seventies and can be heard on the legendary Soundhouse tapes. Airforce themselves have been around in some form or another since the 80’s. Guitarist Chip Putman is a good friend of Steve Harris (always a bonus) and the perceived wisdom is that it was he that introduced Chip and his bass playing right hand man Tony Hatton to Doug. 

Unsurprisingly Airforce sound like eighties Maiden. Essentially, they are Maiden tribute act, but doing their own material. They have done themselves no favour in terms of these similarities by hiring Portuguese frontman Flávio Lino whose vocals are remarkably similar to Bruce Dickinson’s, right down to the air raid siren like howl. Playing to a Maiden loving crowd, they seem to be in their element and Chip and Tony have grins from ear to ear, like they can’t quite believe that they are still doing this at their age. Probably more than any other support band I have ever witnessed, they are performing to an already converted crowd because if you have ever enjoyed an Iron Maiden album you will love this. Having Airforce on the undercard is a genius move as it the definition of giving the people what they want. You love Maiden? Well, have a band that sound just like Maiden. Job done.

British Lion are a surprise to me in that they are not the ego driven nightmare that I was expecting. They are actually a highly competent and really rather enjoyable hard rock band. One that just so happens to have a multi-millionaire Metal legend on bass. A multi-millionaire Metal legend, I should add, that seems to be having the time of his life. Watching Mr. Harris mouth the words to the songs and interact with the audience close up, is like watching a kid on Christmas Morning. This is ultimately a vanity project that won’t have come near to covering his costs of being there, but none of that matters as Steve Harris is obviously having a ball from the moment they step on stage to the point when the final note rings out. It is obvious that he is still getting used to small stages as he seems to want to galivant around as if he was at Wembley and sadly the Rebellion stage isn’t built for galivanting. All of this means that for a large proportion of the crowd he regularly disappears behind that darn pillar (“where’s the multi-millionaire Metal legend gone? Oh yeah, he is behind the pillar, again.”).

As I said my biggest take away from the night is that British Lion are not some rock star’s folly, they are a proper band that would hold their own whether Steve Harris was in the band or not. It is obvious that misers Taylor, Hawkins and Leslie are road-harden veterans, much more used to the confides of the club circuit than their celebrity band mate. They also all ooze charisma. Richard Taylor is a fabulous frontman, shadowboxing and twirling his mike stand like a consummate entertainer. Years of the toilet circuit has enabled him to hone his craft and he comes across as genuinely chuffed that he has been handed this shot at greatest. There is real emotion in his voice when he recounts hearing single ‘Spit Fire’ on the radio and you can taste the years of rejection and remorseless hard slog that has led up to this moment.

Another thing I didn’t expect to see was the vast, vast majority of the audience singing along with such gusto and word-perfect reverence. My pre-gig assumption was to find a crowd of Maiden die-hard’s here to see their idol, but with very little interest in the actual band. Well, I got the first part of my prediction right, but the second segment spectacularly wrong. Every bugger in the place seems to possess an encyclopaedic knowledge of British Lion’s (not very extensive) back catalogue. The rampant air of devotion and the emotion seems to trigger something within the band that makes this evening so enticing. The four members of British Lion that haven’t headlined Donington six times seem to treat the fevered reception as some sort of intoxicant, drinking in and savouring its sweet nectar.   

They are having such a whale of a time that nobody wants to do the encore charade, and instead we are simply told they have two tracks to go and that there is going to be none of that going on and off stage business. ‘A World Without Heaven’ is a sprawling anthemic number that has too much blues in its DNA to be prog, but it still allows the band to wander off in an almost Hawkwind-esque jam session. ‘Closer Eyes of the Young’ is a much more straight-ahead rocker and provides a fitting finale. There are lots of whoo-hoo's and what Grahame Leslie describes as “a bit of a sing along”, though by this point most of the crowd have moved onto the bellowing stage. Then with several synchronised showbusiness bows they are gone and the biggest compliment I can give is that they would have still got the adulation at the end of the set even if Mr. Harris wasn’t in the band.