Uncomfortable Admissions (Part One): The Strange Case of Dave Murray

I am a heterosexual.  I've been attracted to females since the day I came into the world almost forty-four years ago.  I love everything about them, even their irritating habits and endless need to buy the most useless crap to place around the house.


In 1980, I was a sixth grade student.  A friend of mine let me borrow a cassette by a heavy metal band called IRON MAIDEN.  I became a fan of theirs.  When their second album came out in 1981, I bought a cassette and played it non-stop.  Like most white suburban teenage boys into rock music at the time, this band consumed my mind 24/7, from their horror-imagery to their amazingly fast bass lines and gruesome lyrics.  I must have listened to their first two albums a million times each during these two years.


Then something strange happened.


I bought a couple of posters featuring IRON MAIDEN, both in their original five-man lineup (today the band has six members, only three from the first two albums still on board).  The long-haired man pictured at the top of this post is MAIDEN guitarist Dave Murray.  After countless hours spent in my bedroom staring at these posters as I read horror magazines and listened to MAIDEN on my stereo, I eventually developed a non-sexual man-crush on him.  A pre-"bromance."  I thought he was the coolest-looking guitarist ever with his extra-long hair and hard-to-identify cool-ass attitude when he played live on stage.  To me the guy was the epitome of a rock n roll god.  I saw Iron Maiden's 1983 and 1985 world tours, and most recently saw them on their 2008 retro-80s tour here in New York City.





My daughter (now 16) became a serious fan of IRON MAIDEN around age eleven, although she had been listening to them since she was three.  When my wife and I took her and my son to see IRON MAIDEN in 2008, my Dave Murray story came out and disturbed the poor child more than I intended it to.


"But you're not gay," she said, laughing as I attempted to explain my fascination with the British guitar slinger.


"I know," I said, "But if I was a chick, I'd probably think he was hot."


She laughed, especially when I told her one of my ex-girlfriends back in high school thought Murray looked like E.T.  Naturally, we broke up shortly after.


I'm one of those guys who has a hard time determining what other guys the ladies find attractive.  While most of my female friends are in love with Johnny Depp and Brad Pitt, I just don't get it.  Being straighter than an arrow, I enjoy some of the films these men act in, but couldn't tell you if one was better looking than the other.  OR Dave Murray.  Because to me--if I was a chick--would be after Dave Murray, the metal guitar wizard who has been blowing me away with his unique axe-sound for over thirty years.


And then...tragedy struck:


On a fateful afternoon in 2008 (shortly before we saw the 2008 tour), my daughter and I watched a VH1 program about IRON MAIDEN.  In the program, Dave Murray is interviewed along with the rest of the band.


It was the first time I heard Dave's voice.


After noticing a look my face had never made before or since, my daughter broke out into a fit of confused laughter that was a mixture of hysteria and genuinely feeling bad for her father.


Dave Murray--the rock god I had idolized since I was twelve years old--was the first man I ever heard speak with a British accent that also had a massive LISP.  And I mean MASSIVE.


I didn't know if I should laugh or cry.  I felt cheated.  How could such a cool-looking guitarist (and handsome son of a bitch) sound so goofy?  I looked on in disbelief as I remembered the stories former MAIDEN vocalist Paul Di'anno told about Murray in his autobiography, THE BEAST.  Murray--who had been a mad party animal with wildman Di'Anno during many of his arrests and nights of pure debauchery--was speaking like a mentally challenged reject from ROMPER ROOM.  My stomach sank to the lowest depths of the planet.


I didn't move from my seat for about two hours.  My daughter even handed me a cold bottle of water in an attempt to get this voice--this image--out of my mind.  How could I EVER listen to classic MAIDEN songs such as PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, KILLERS, or MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE again without thinking of my favorite guitarist's ridiculous-sounding voice?  How could I listen to any of their songs ever again without feeling cheated and having a mental breakdown?


My non-sexual man-crush came to an end after this program.  And to this day I couldn't tell you who a handsome guy is...not only because I'm a hardcore heterosexual, but because I am DONE answering this stupid question many of my female friends seem to ask me all the time.


As for Dave Murray . . . at least we had the early 80s.


(POST NOTE: Below is a picture of Dave Murray TODAY (2011).  What on earth was I thinking?)