Iron Maiden’s Paris concert cut short by city-wide power outage
Iron Maiden's concert in Paris on Monday night, June 22, had to be cut short after a city-wide power outage plunged Europe’s largest indoor venue into total darkness. Fans waited nearly an hour before the show at La Défense Arena, which holds up to 40,000 people, could resume.
The performance was being filmed for the band’s upcoming tour film, “Run For Your Lives”, and fans had been told beforehand that the area would be phone-free to preserve the “optimal viewing experience” for the movie. The blackout struck mid-song during “2 Minutes To Midnight” — a particularly fitting title given the circumstances. Ten minutes in, the venue’s service lights came back on, but the stage itself stayed in total blackout for a significant stretch; witnesses reported the outage stemmed from a wider electrical failure affecting the arena’s surrounding neighborhood.
When Iron Maiden eventually returned to the stage, singer Bruce Dickinson had to tell the crowd that, due to the venue’s strict curfew, the show would end at 11:30 p.m. As a result, the band was unable to play its three planned encore songs — “Aces High”, “Fear Of The Dark” and “Wasted Years”.
The abbreviated 14-song Paris setlist included “Murders In The Rue Morgue”, “The Number Of The Beast”, “Powerslave”, “Run To The Hills”, “The Trooper” and “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. The “Run For Your Lives” tour, announced in September 2024 to mark Iron Maiden’s 50th anniversary, focuses on material from the band’s first nine studio albums. In September, the band will headline the US rock festival Louder Than Life in Kentucky.
