Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris said his band didn’t deserve its 2011 Grammy win for the track “El Dorado” from the group's 15th album, The Final Frontier.

He argued that the three other songs that had been nominated over the years – “Fear of the Dark” in 1994, “The Wicker Man” in 2001 and “Blood Brothers” in 2013 – were better examples of the band’s writing abilities.

“To be honest with you, I think we ended up getting it for a song which I thought was not one of our best ones,” Harris told the Miami New Times in a new interview. “I didn’t think we really deserved it for that one but maybe one of the others. So it was a bit off, really.”

Listen to Iron Maiden's ‘El Dorado’

Reflecting on the career that brought Maiden to the level of Grammy nominations, he said it was down to “years and years on the road. ... When we started off, we weren’t even thinking of being a global band. We just ended up becoming that. That wasn’t the goal to start with. You just try different things, and here we are.”

Harris remains one of the band’s chief songwriters, and mainly composes on the bass, which he admitted was unusual. “I find it natural … and a lot of people find that really odd,” he explained. “It’s not the usual way, and it takes [the rest of the band] out of their comfort zone. But that’s not a bad thing.”

Maiden’s Legacy of the Beast tour continues across North America until Sept. 25, with further dates running until Oct. 15. Despite the band’s large-scale production, Harris insisted it was the strength of the material that made the shows so successful.

“What we have is so powerful, it lends itself to a lot of different imagery,” he noted. “A lot of people are saying it’s the best show they’ve ever seen.”

 

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