“Can I Play with Madness?” by Iron Maiden

Iron Maiden fired off "Can I Play with Madness?" in 1988 as the first taste of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, their seventh studio album, and it stormed up to number three in the UK. It began life as something much softer, an Adrian Smith ballad called "On the Wings of Eagles", and by the time it reached the record Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris shared the writing credit with him.

The story is pure Maiden melodrama: a young man, sure he's cracking up under his visions and nightmares, goes to an aged seer and his crystal ball to learn what's coming, then brushes off the advice until the pair fall out in anger. Martin Birch produced and mixed it, and Harris and Smith lay synthesizer over the charge of Smith and Dave Murray's guitars and Nicko McBrain's drums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.