Steve Harris reminisces on the time he played Tennis with his longtime hero Peter Gabriel of Genesis.
Even a veteran rocker such as Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris has other musicians that he would consider legendary. Everyone has to look up to someone after all, right? However, sometimes meeting your heroes can turn out to be a rather confounding affair, which is exactly what happened when Steve Harris met Peter Gabriel.
When Harris met Peter Gabriel for a tennis match, the Iron Maiden bassist did his best to sidestep interaction with the former Genesis singer for fear that he’d “fanboy” too hard. That’s how Harris described it to the magazine Classic Rock in the issue that hits newsstands this month.
“I ended up playing tennis with Peter Gabriel once, just because he was on the court in the same hotel as me,” the Iron Maiden icon recalled. “I don’t know if he even knew who I was, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to get tongue-tied. I didn’t want to act like a fanboy, even though I felt like one.”
Turns out our celebrities have celebrities in their minds.
Gabriel isn’t the only performer that’s intimidated Harris with their musical talent. The 63-year-old bass player also claimed he “avoided meeting Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson for so long because I didn’t know what I’d say to him.”
“When you’re into bands that much, you don’t really think about working with them,” Harris further explained. “You never really have a chance. You tend to put them on a pedestal.”
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Earlier this week, the musician discussed why he first decided to pick up the bass guitar. Of course, that led to the circumstances that saw Harris form Iron Maiden 44 years ago, on Christmas Day in 1975.
Listen to ‘The Trooper’ by Iron Maiden below.
