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"Transylvania" is an instrumental piece by the band Iron Maiden, which was composed by founder and bassist Steve Harris while he was with his previous band Smiler.
The song appears as the fifth track on the original U.S. & U.K. releases of their debut album Iron Maiden and as the sixth track of the remastered release of the same album.
Steve came up with the basic idea of the song while walking home from a local club called the Cart & Horses. He presented the song to his band at the time, Smiler, but everyone in Smiler found most of his songs too complicated, and refused to play them.
When he formed Iron Maiden Transylvania became a regularly played song during The Early Days. The piece would be the guitar solo spot of guitarist Dave Murray in live performances from 1980-82 as heard on the Beast Over Hammersmith live recording from March, 1982. Another example was featured on the The BBC Archives recorded at The Reading Festival in August of 1982 which is of note when co-lead guitarist Adrian Smith had to play the second lead guitar solo before the finale as Murray had to replace his guitar which went dead.
Transylvania was covered by American heavy metal band Iced Earth (on their 2001 studio album Horror Show), all-female Malaysian band Candy and by the all-female tribute band The Iron Maidens (on their 2008 EP The Root of All Evil).
In 2008, on the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour the band used a recorded audio track of the song Transylvania and various video footage, including that of Ed Force One, as an intro at the concerts.
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