IRON MAIDEN - Maiden Japan Cover With PAUL DI'ANNO's Severed Head Explained By "Eddie" Creator DEREK RIGGS

In celebration for Iron Maiden's current tour, the man on the street Kenny Kessel for The Metal Voice caught up with artist and "Eddie" creator, Derek Riggs, in an exclusive one on one interview.

In the interview, Riggs walks through all of his Maiden and non-Maiden artwork and explains the age old questions about the alternate Maiden Japan cover with original singer Paul Diann's head cut off.

Derek Riggs said, "They wanted to call it Maiden Japan cuz it's a take from Deep Purple (Live Album) Made In Japan so it was a pun. So they wanted a cover. The manager (Rob Smallwood) was off with the band somewhere in America and so he phones up and says, 'I'll let you get on with it.' So I thought well the obvious thing was to put Eddie chopping off Paul Di'anno's head. And so I did that. It's not a bad portrait for two days work actually, considering all the other things I had to do. So I got it (artwork) down to the record company and then they got a call from the manager and the manager said destroy all of those cuz they printed 250,000 single covers he says. I don't want to ever see one again. So they destroyed them and I painted a new cover."

Riggs continues: "And later on when the manager came back he said you know that cover that I had destroyed and I had you repaint the second. He (explained why) said that Paul Di'anno's voice was giving him problems and he was doing one day in three, one day in four, you know sometimes one day a week singing. And Maiden just couldn't deal with that and they couldn't function under those conditions. So they had to find a new singer. They found Bruce Dickinson in the end but the manager said they've been auditioning new singers at this point and he was (Paul Di'anno) getting wind of something going on he knew something was happening. And he if he'd (Paul Di'anno) have seen that cover at that point we would have freaked out. They'd have been left without a singer for the rest of the tour, potentially. So they had all those destroyed I had to do a different cover and and that's the story behind that."