Born in London on March 12, 1957, Steve Harris launched the enduring heavy metal group Iron Maiden as its bassist and chief songwriter. A standout soccer prospect during his early years, he abandoned athletic pursuits to chase music and assembled the band in 1976. While the 1979 debut EP The Soundhouse Tapes echoed punk roots, the self-titled 1980 album shifted fully into metal territory and secured a Top Five domestic ranking. Harris supplied the bulk of the group’s songwriting, mining mythology and the occult for expansive hard-rock pieces such as “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Children of the Damned,” and “The Number of the Beast.” The arrival of vocalist Bruce Dickinson in 1981 cemented Iron Maiden’s status within the New Wave of British Heavy Metal; through the rest of the decade the band built a massive audience both domestically and internationally with virtually no mainstream press coverage. Dickinson’s exit in 1991 dealt a major setback, yet the group persisted with replacement vocalist Blaze Bayley until the original singer rejoined in 1999 to mark the twentieth anniversary.
Although Iron Maiden’s ongoing recording and touring schedule with Dickinson occupied most of his time, Harris slowly assembled material for a solo project. The resulting album, British Lion, surfaced in 2012 and featured collaborators from a group of the same name that Harris had managed and co-written with in the 1990s. Vocalist Richard Taylor and guitarists Graham Leslie and David Hawkins contributed, and the record drew primary inspiration from 1970s rock acts including the Who and UFO.
