Musician Steve Harris: Biography and Creativity

Steve Harris is a popular British guitarist who is the founder of the famous Iron Maiden band. Almost all the lyrics and music for songs performed by this band were written by Steve. Do you want to know more about this musician and his creative path? Welcome to this article!

Childhood

The future musician was born in March 1956 (London, East End). Steve grew up in a large family of four children, among whom he was the only boy. The father of the future musician was an ordinary trucker, and my mother had several works. As a rule, she was engaged in raising children. In addition, Stephen's father had four younger sisters who constantly visited the Harris house. Thus, little Steve grew up in a female environment. As Harris Steve later admitted, the main reason that the young man began to engage in musical activities is that his house was constantly played by various musical compositions. His sisters simply "trudged" from the Beatles, Animals and similar groups.

In addition to implementing musical talent, Steve Harris (photo can be seen above) has made some progress in the sport. He was an amateur football player, played badly in cricket. In addition, the boy was a promising tennis player. Steve from the early years dreamed of becoming a professional football player. The boy wanted to play for a local sports team called West Ham United. He went on for a long time and zealously to this goal. In his youth, Stephen Harris was very promising and almost joined the adored West Ham United. Nevertheless, the irresistible craving for musical activity eventually took its toll, Steve decided to abandon football.

Further activities

A real revolution in Steve's mind occurred when a friend gave him a couple of albums of Genesis, King Crimson, Jethro Tull. Harris caught fire with a huge desire to play the drums. Nevertheless, a small London apartment did not allow buying a bulky drum set. Therefore, the music had to be forgotten for a while. In order not to be a burden to his parents, Steve Harris graduated from college and immediately went to work. However, the boring, laborious work of the draftsman did not suit the energetic young man. Steve wanted something more. It was for this reason that he bought himself a bass guitar for the first money he earned.

Gypsy's Kiss

In his spare time, Steve Harris mastered the basics of playing the guitar. In addition, in order to gain first experience in a musical group, the young man plays in a local band called Influence. It was quite a small and unimportant team. Nevertheless, Steve was very pleased with his musical career. In 1973, the boys were bored with the name Influence. It is for this reason that the members of the collective decided to change it to something more sonorous. Thus, the group was renamed Gypsy's Kiss (in English - "Kiss of the Gypsy").

The musical repertoire of the band was slightly less than completely composed of cover versions of popular blues bands. Because of this development of Steve Harris as a musician is very slowed down, because he could not fully show their skills. The band played only six concerts, and then broke up.

Smiler

After the collapse of Gypsy's Kiss, Steve began to look for a new group. Once he came across a band called Smiler (in English - "Smiling"), which just needed a bass player. Soon Harris joined the team. Nevertheless, he did not stay in the group for a long time. All the guys from Smiler were older than Steve for a couple of years and had a great musical experience. It is for this reason that the members of the collective were very arrogant and did not pose their own new bass guitar player in a penny. One day, Steve offered the band his material: the songs of Burning Ambition and Innocent Exile. Innocent Exile became an integral part of the concert repertoire of the band, and the Burning Ambition track was rejected.

As for the stylistic orientation, the creativity of Smiler was a mixture of rockabilly and classical rock. In general, the songs of this collective differed in the simplicity of their performance.

Steve Harris: Iron Maiden

By the end of 1975, Steve realized that Smiler had no place for him. Because of disagreements with members of the team, he leaves the group. After a long search in the local musical environment, Steve gathers his own band. Officially a new group was born in May 1976. Steve decided to name his team Iron Maiden (translated from English - "Iron Maiden"). The name Harris took from an adventure film called "The Man in an Iron Mask", which narrated about the times of the Inquisition. "Iron Maiden" in the Middle Ages called a special device, which was intended for cruel torture: an iron female figure that was a cavity with sharp spines inside.

The staff pretty quickly gained popularity. Already in 1981 the band played at a professional level and had regular contracts for replicating their own albums. In addition, the group participated in concert tours not only in England, but throughout the world. At most, this is the work of Steve Harris, who not only collected and untwisted the team, but also made an invaluable contribution to the development of world rock culture.

It is also worth noting that the musician has namesakes. Harris Steve (actor born in 1965) starred in such films as "Quarantine" and "12 rounds".