Steve Harris

British Lion announced in November 2019 that their second album, titled The Burning, will be released on the 17 January 2020.

In an interview with Classic Rock in August, Harris stated that he will be releasing more solo albums and hopes to tour with the band in the future. Harris has taken the outfit on two separate European club tours in 2013 and 2014, with an additional tour taking place in 2016. On 2 September 2016, Harris announced that he intends to issue a live album recorded at shows from across the three tours.

On 24 September 2012, Harris released his debut solo album, British Lion, which was followed on the 17 January 2020 by The Burning.

In September 2012, Harris released his first solo album, British Lion. Originating with a band, named British Lion, which he managed and wrote with in the early 1990s, Harris kept in touch with its vocalist, Richard Taylor, and guitarist, Graham Leslie, and the album, consisting of 1970s influenced hard rock songs, was written and recorded over a number of years around Iron Maiden's tour schedule. Speaking to Kerrang! in September 2012, Harris stated that he considers the record to be "more of a side-project" than a solo album, as he is more "comfortable in a band environment."

Since Iron Maiden's beginning to the present day, Harris plays a specially-painted Fender Precision Bass, featured on every Iron Maiden album, which has gone through a total of four colour changes since he began using it. Originally white, it was then changed to black prior to the band's first album, followed by blue sparkle and finally white with claret and blue pinstriping with the West Ham United F.C. crest. Harris has had his bass modified to include a mirrored scratchplate, Badass bridges and Seymour Duncan custom SPB-1 pickups and uses his own signature set of RotoSound flatwound strings. In 2009, Fender issued a signature Steve Harris Precision bass, featuring an alder body, a blue-sparkle finish, mirrored scratchplate, Seymour Duncan SPB-1 pickups and a Badass II bridge. In 2015, Fender released a revised model of the signature bass, which now features a maple body, a white finish with blue pinstripes and the West Ham crest, a Fender High Mass bridge and a Seymour Duncan SPB-4 Steve Harris signature pickup, with the pickup also being sold separately.

Harris' eldest daughter, Lauren, is a singer and supported Iron Maiden with her solo outfit in 2006 and 2008. In 2008, she released a solo album, entitled Calm Before the Storm, and is currently a member of a band called Kingdom of I after forming Six Hour Sundown. In addition, Harris' oldest son, George, plays guitar in a band, the Raven Age, who were the opening act on Iron Maiden's The Book Of Souls World Tour in 2016, and also in the Legacy of the beast tour 2019. His second-oldest daughter, Kerry, works as a Production Assistant for Iron Maiden while his third-oldest daughter, Faye, is a fashion writer for HuffPost.

In 2005, Metal Hammer reported that he uses eight 4x12" Marshall cabinets with Trace Elliot amplifiers. He also uses four Sony WRT 27 wireless transmitters, allowing him to be as mobile as possible on stage. A diagram of Harris' 2000 bass rig is documented on GuitarGeek.com.

In 1993, Harris was divorced from his wife, Lorraine, whom he met 16 years previously. He later said this was "probably the toughest time I've ever faced," and the changes in his personal life are credited with inspiring the mood of the following Iron Maiden album, 1995's The X Factor. Harris has four children with Lorraine: Lauren, Kerry, Faye and George, and two children with current partner Emma: Stanley and Maisie.

Steve Harris is also known for playing an increasing role in mixing the band's albums and produced most of their 1990's output, with recording taking place at a studio he owned at the time, located in a barn on his property, named "Barnyard Studios". Since 2000's Brave New World, at Bruce Dickinson's insistence, the band did not record again at Barnyard, which Dickinson claims had limitations due to its size, and hired Kevin Shirley, with whom Harris co-produces.

Harris also directs and edits many of the band's live videos, beginning with Maiden England in 1989. Although not intending to himself, Harris edited the Rock in Rio DVD as he was unsatisfied with the results produced by the band's hired production crew. In undertaking the project, Harris had to teach himself how to use digital editing software with equipment he had installed in Barnyard Studios, and went on to edit Iron Maiden's next DVD, Death on the Road. On top of this, he has contributed to the production of thirteen of the band's music videos, with "Infinite Dreams", "Holy Smoke", "Tailgunner" and "Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter" being directed and edited by Harris alone.

Although he performed keyboards on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, in 1988, Harris only began regularly contributing keyboards to Iron Maiden's studio albums from Virtual XI onwards. Until Virtual XI, Michael Kenney, Harris' bass technician, had provided the keyboards from 1990's No Prayer for the Dying onwards, and still does so live and acts as a supervisor in the studio. Along with Smith and guitarist Dave Murray, Harris experimented with synthesizers on the Somewhere in Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son albums, using bass synth on Somewhere in Time, and performing "string synth" keyboards on Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

Since the 1980s, Harris has owned a Grade II listed building in Sheering Essex, in the grounds of which he built his own recording and editing studio, "Barnyard". In November 2012, the nine-acre property was put on sale.

Upon leaving Smiler, Harris went on to create Iron Maiden on Christmas Day 1975, with the band's name being inspired by the film The Man in the Iron Mask. Before Iron Maiden signed their contract with EMI in 1979, Harris worked as an architectural draughtsman in the East End of London (he had studied architectural drawing at Leyton Sixth Form College) until he was made redundant, at which point he undertook a job as a street sweeper.

Just 10 months after he bought his first bass, Harris joined a band, initially known as Influence and later Gypsy's Kiss, featuring Bob Verscoyle (lead vocals), Dave Smith (guitar) and drummer Paul Sears. After a short number of gigs at the Cart and Horses pub in Maryland Point, Stratford and the Bridgehouse in Canning Town, the band split up and Harris auditioned for a band called Smiler in February 1974. In this outfit, Harris began writing his own songs and worked with future Iron Maiden members Dennis Wilcock and Doug Sampson, but left the band after they refused to play his material, claiming it was too complicated.

Initially Harris wanted to play drums, but did not have enough space for a drum kit in his house and so decided on the bass instead. Entirely self-taught, his first bass was a copy of a Fender Precision model which cost him £40 in 1971.

Harris was influenced by the progressive rock bands of the 1970s, as well as early hard rock and heavy metal bands. His influences include Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis, Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, and Yes. Speaking about the early Iron Maiden sound, Steve Harris described the band as using twin-guitar harmonies inspired by Wishbone Ash and Thin Lizzy, complex time and mood changes from Genesis and Jethro Tull, and the dark melodic elements of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin.

Stephen Percy Harris (born 12 March 1956) is an English musician, bassist, keyboardist, singer, backing vocalist, primary songwriter and founder of the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden. He has been the band's only constant member since their inception in 1975 and one of only two to have appeared on all of their albums, the other being guitarist Dave Murray.