Hooks in You

In his just-published first book, Iron Maiden stalwart Adrian Smith shares a boatload of big-fish stories

- By John Katic

Iron Maiden guitar maestro Adrian Smith recently published his first book, Monsters of River & Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler. As its full title suggests, the eye-catching tome is dedicated to the guitarist’s number-one off-stage pastime, fishing. But there’s a bit more to it.

“[Monsters of River & Rock] started off as a 100-percent fishing book,” Smith tells Guitar World. “As I went on, I found there were parallels with my two passions of fishing and music; I was combining them more. I’d say the books is probably 70 percent fishing and 30 percent stories from the road, the studio and personal stuff. I don’t think at this point I’d do an autobiography on purely music.”

How did the idea for the book come about?

I was sitting with friends one evening, just talking stories, and somebody said I should write books. That was the seed of it, really. So I did a couple of test chapters. I’d already written a few things I was going to send to fishing magazines, but I never did. I took them out and sent a few test chapters to some publishers and got some feedback from [the publisher]. That was it — I started off writing.

Do you feel anxiety over presenting your written work? We know you as Adrian Smith the musician. Writing a book is, I’d imagine, a completely different window into the world of Adrian Smith.