Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith recently visited Matt's Guitar Shop. In the clip below, Adrian and Matt chat about the 1955 Gibson Les Paul Black Beauty, formerly owned and played by Paul Kossoff from Free and Eric Clapton during the Cream years.

Back in 2022, Metal Hammer caught up with Smith, who picked the 10 songs that best tell his story - from his two separate stints in Maiden (1980 - 1989 and 1999 - present) to solo projects, guest appearances and collaborations. Following is an excerpt from the rundown.

Iron Maiden – Stranger In A Strange Land (Somewhere In Time, 1986)

Smith: "Jumping right forward to Somewhere In Time and one of the last songs I wrote for the band before my departure, 'Stranger In A Strange Land'. We were recording at Wisseloord Studios, which is in Holland about an hour outside Amsterdam. I actually lived in Amsterdam for about two months which was… interesting. It wasn’t in the nice part of town, but we had fun! I really liked that album and had a lot of fun recording it."

Michael Kiske – The Calling (Instant Clarity, 1996)

Smith: "After I left Maiden I ended up doing a couple of solo albums, as well as some work with a guy called Michael Kiske, of the band Helloween. He’s a great guy and was in the same position as me, he had left a big band and was looking to do a solo album. We shared management and they suggested we get together because he was looking for songs for his first solo album. I went out to Hamburg – or near it, at least – and stayed with him a couple of times, which was funny because I’d never actually met him so just turned up on the doorstep with my guitar! 

We got on really well and wrote a couple of cracking songs, one of which is called 'The Calling'. He was a bit eccentric though and had rented this dilapidated house in northern Germany which had all the recording gear in but no heating. It was bloody freezing. The room I slept in, we blocked up with cardboard to stop the draft. It was good fun though and he kept trying to get me to write a song like '2 Minutes To Midnight' or 'Total Eclipse', a B-side from 'The Number Of The Beast'."

Read the complete rundown here.