Janick Gers

Janick Gers is Iron Maiden's most unpredictable guitarist, and that is precisely the role he fills. Born in Hartlepool, in north-east England, he joined the band in 1990 to replace Adrian Smith, at a moment when the group needed exactly the opposite of the precision it had just lost. His grounding comes from the NWOBHM: he played in White Spirit in the early 1980s, then passed through Gillan, Ian Gillan's band, and was the guitarist on Tattooed Millionaire (1990), Bruce Dickinson's first solo record — which is how the Maiden door opened. With Dickinson he co-wrote tracks such as "Be Quick or Be Dead" and "Wasting Love", both from Fear of the Dark (1992), and later "Ghost of the Navigator", from Brave New World (2000). His style is physical and improvised where Dave Murray's is fluid and Adrian Smith's is constructed: Gers spins the guitar around his body, throws the instrument in the air, covers the whole stage, and his solos change from one night to the next. He is the element of risk in a band that otherwise runs like clockwork. When Smith returned in 1999, Gers did not leave — and that is how Iron Maiden came to have three guitarists, an unusual arrangement that has been part of its identity for the last two and a half decades.