The Trooper
Iron Maiden released “The Trooper,” written by bassist Steve Harris, as the second single from Piece of Mind on June 20, 1983, exactly 43 years today. The lyrics draw on the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854, filtered through Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem about the same doomed cavalry charge. By the time it came out, the band had settled into the lineup most fans still picture first. Bruce Dickinson on vocals, Dave Murray and Adrian Smith on guitars, Harris on bass, and Nicko McBrain, freshly arrived, on drums.
The song was recorded at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, the Bahamas, between January and March 1983, with longtime producer Martin Birch behind the desk. It was McBrain’s first session with the band, replacing Clive Burr and locking in the galloping rhythm that became one of Iron Maiden’s signatures. Murray and Smith traded the song’s harmonized lead riff, a passage AllMusic later singled out as one of the most memorable in the band’s catalog.
“we’d killed the horses ourselves instead of using an old Errol Flynn movie”
The music video, filmed at Brixton Academy and directed by Jim Yukich, cut in cavalry-charge footage from the 1936 film The Charge of the Light Brigade starring Errol Flynn. The BBC refused to air it unedited, calling the battle scenes too violent for broadcast, a decision Smallwood mocked at the time.
“The Trooper” reached number 12 on the UK Singles Chart, an improvement on the band’s previous single, “Flight of Icarus,” and climbed to number 28 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in the United States. Live, Bruce Dickinson has waved a Union Flag through the song for decades, more recently in a red coat built to match the cavalry uniform the lyrics describe. More than four decades on, the song still turns up in unexpected places, including a needle-drop in Stranger Things’ final season earlier this year.