Composition
Lyrically, the album reflected the group's literary interests, such as "To Tame a Land," based on Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune, and "The Trooper," inspired by Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, as well as film, such as "Where Eagles Dare", a film by Brian G. Hutton, and screenplay & novel by Alistair MacLean, and "Quest for Fire", based on the film by Jean-Jacques Annaud. On top of this, the writer G. K. Chesterton is quoted at the beginning of "Revelations". More exotic influences include Greek mythology, albeit slightly altered for "Flight of Icarus". Aleister Crowley influenced a good piece of the remaining lyrics of "Revelations", which was written by Dickinson. The last track was meant to be entitled Dune, but, after seeking permission from Frank Herbert's agents, the band received a message which stated, "Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially bands like Iron Maiden."
Read more about this topic: Revelations (Iron Maiden Song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)