10 Hidden Details You Never Noticed In Iron Maiden Songs
7. "Back In The Village" Is The Spiritual Sequel To "The Prisoner"
The Number of the Beast and Powerslave are connected in that they're probably Iron Maiden's two strongest albums. However, they're also conjoined via "The Prisoner", the third track on the Beast record; it's a little-known fact that one of the deeper cuts on Powerslave, "Back in the Village", is the distant cousin of that song.
Both tracks are based off of the classic British TV show The Prisoner, which ran from 1967 to '68. The series told of an ex-spy who is kidnapped and held against his will in a mysterious seaside "Village", where he is given the label of Number Six (hence the dialogue at the opening of "The Prisoner", which was taken directly from the show).
While "The Prisoner" is very much the stronger song of the two (with its semi-regular presence in the Maiden setlist reaffirming that sentiment), it is still interesting to draw connections between two seemingly unrelated tracks from Maiden's golden age.