POP MUSIC REVIEW : Maiden Man: Sleepy, Sloppy

Metallica may play the intellectual’s favorite heavy metal, Def Leppard the star-struck teen’s, but Iron Maiden is the metal band of the working man, a sweaty, honest bunch of guys devoted to beer and soccer and twin-guitar racket. They’ve sold something like 26 million records in the last decade.

Tuesday at the Country Club, Maiden’s singer Bruce Dickinson took a solo turn in support of his solo album. You can see why a 32-year-old heavy-metal hero would want to swap Maiden’s cyborg robots and rotting corpses for a chance to wail Mott the Hoople’s hit “All the Young Dudes” with his buddies, if only for a few months, but he was kind of underwhelming. Dickinson seemed amiable enough, with a pleasant metal baritone that sounded sort of like Bon Scott without the mischief.

Maybe Dickinson (who completes his Southern California swing at the Whisky tonight) went solo because he was tired of running around all night. Tuesday, he looked as sleepy as Pete Seeger up there, which may or may not have had something to do with the zillions of cameras swooping around all night, filming for his video, or with the sloppiness of his band. The highlight of the show came when sideman Janick Gers did a tap dance on his guitar.

The chorus to his solo anthem--the one all the kids pumped the devil sign to--goes “I don’t wanna be a tattooed millionaire.” If he isn’t, it’s the fault of his tattooer, not his accountant: His shirtless, sweaty body looked ink-free from the waist up, and the song was as blandly life-affirming as a Coke commercial. Hey . . . no harm done.