GLORY ROAD
“I IMAGINE IF YOU PAIRED RITCHIE BLACKMORE AND YNGWIE MALMSTEEN, IT WOULD BE AN EXPLOSION — THEY’D JUST GO UP AGAINST EACH OTHER. BUT RICHIE AND I BLENDED QUITE EASILY” — ADRIAN SMITH
IRON MAIDEN LEGEND Adrian Smith wasn’t looking to collaborate with another guitarist, but several years ago he and his wife, Nathalie, went to see Richie Kotzen perform in London, and what they saw impressed them. “Richie was terrific. Right away, I could sense that he and I were on the same wavelength,” Smith recalls. “My wife thought so, too. She started coaxing me — ‘You should get together and play with him.’”
As it turned out, Kotzen was a massive Iron Maiden fan, and he jumped at the chance to jam with one of his idols. “We played Bad Company, Deep Purple, Humble Pie, Johnny Winter, Free — stuff like that,” he remembers. “We bonded really quickly on classic hard
