Description

Derek Riggs painted Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie on every major album the band made in the 1980s, and The Number of the Beast is his most famous scene. Eddie stands over a burning hellscape, working the Devil like a marionette, while the Devil in turn holds strings attached to a tiny Eddie. Manager Rod Smallwood summed up the puzzle: "who's the really evil one here? Who's manipulating who?"

The painting was not made for this album. Riggs first produced it for the single "Purgatory", but Smallwood thought it was too strong to waste on a single and saved it for the next record. Riggs took the puppet idea from a Doctor Strange comic in which a villain controls the hero, and the hellish landscape from medieval Christian art. As a private joke, he gave the Devil the face of Salvador Dalí. He had planned wings of lightning and smoke for the Devil, but ran out of time, and faint traces remain.

The first printing also had a mistake: the sky came out blue, when Riggs had painted it grey or black, an error by the printer that later editions corrected. Released in March 1982, the album was Iron Maiden's first with Bruce Dickinson, and in the United States its cover and title track drew protests from religious groups. The controversy only helped. The image has been parodied, reused on T-shirts and recreated in the band's 2015 video for "Speed of Light".

Credit

Cover art by Derek Riggs