What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen at a wedding? Well, for a group of Polish folks, the answer is quite likely “an impromptu Iron Maiden concert”.
Back in 1949, George Orwell released Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian novel about a totalitarian future, and one that has gone on to become a literary classic. However, while many of Orwell’s “predictions” have since come true, the one thing he did not foresee was Iron Maiden hitting up a wedding in Poland.
Yes, in August of 1984, English metal outfit Iron Maiden found themselves embarking upon their World Slavery tour in support of their latest album, Powerslave. Kicking things off with a run of shows in Poland, the band were eager to head out on the road and really let loose.
By the third night, August 11th, the group had just wrapped up their latest show at Poznań’s Hala Arena. Content with having rocked the faces of countless fans, the group decided to hit the town afterwards, directing themselves towards what they had assumed to be a disco.
As it turns out, the venue was actually playing host to a wedding, and band soon discovered that the mention of their name allowed them to join the fun, where some guests soon recognised the musicians as the members of Iron Maiden.
“The name Iron Maiden worked and we were allowed to have a drink,” explained music journalist Roman Rogowiecki, who toured with the band, in 2012. “We stood at the bar, wedding guests came to us, rubbed their eyes as if checking if they had drunk so much that they could see Iron Maiden.”
“Suddenly there were some people who are completely cut off from the rest: long hair, different clothes, different behaviors, they come on stage and we wonder[ed] ‘what’s going on?'” recalled groom Piotr Żmudziński in some translated quotes to TVN24 back in 2014.
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“Suddenly, my cousin shouts, ‘Look, this is Iron Maiden!’ and we [said] ‘well, yes, yes.’ At first, we treated it [like] a good joke.”
“We knew that there was a concert on the day of our wedding in Poznań,” Żmudziński added. “I even had an invitation from a friend who was supposed to go to the concert with my girlfriend.
“She got sick […] and the ticket was released. He asked me if I would go [with him]. I replied ‘very willingly, I just have a wedding’. I couldn’t [go to the concert], so they came to me.”
Check out Iron Maiden’s ‘2 Minutes To Midnight’:
Before long, the band’s presence found them asked to get up on stage to perform a few tracks. While the group were a little unprepared, they ended up playing about four songs, including covers of ‘Tush’ by ZZ Top, and ‘Smoke On The Water’ by Deep Purple.
“The musicians looked into the room where guests were dancing and the wedding orchestra was playing,” Roman Rogowiecki recalled. “Someone joked that maybe they would play. They agreed. They entered the podium, [and] the wedding band gave them their instruments.”
“We ended up going to, well it was supposed to be a disco, and it ended up be sort of like a converted ballroom,” drummer Nicko McBrain explained in the band’s 1985 Behind The Iron Curtain documentary.
“So there was this wedding going on at the time, about 300 people dancing the waltz as we walked in. Then these people in the club said, ‘would you like to have a jam?’. ‘Yes,’ we said, and we did.”
“I don’t remember anything about the whole evening,” added frontman Bruce Dickinson.
“All in all it turned out to be enough to dance,” explained bride Dorota Nawrocka, with Piotr Żmudziński adding, “You didn’t have to persuade them to play. […] They just sat down and played for their own pleasure.”
“We had to stop telling friends that Iron Maiden [played] at our wedding, because we were not taken seriously,” Żmudziński concluded, noting that friends attempted to one-up the couple by jokingly claiming that The Beatles played at their own wedding.
While there are conflicting reports about whether marriage between Piotr Żmudziński and Dorota Nawrocka sadly has lasted (TVN24 says the couple split, Dickinson himself begs to differ), the legacy of Iron Maiden certainly has.
Although countless fans will look back on their fond experience of seeing Iron Maiden play a massive stadium show along with legions of other screaming fans, a group of Polish people managed to bear witness to a small-scale wedding gig, the likes of which we’ll probably never see again.
Check out Iron Maiden performing at a Polish wedding:
