Reliable Resources (all dates/locations substantiated by these kinds of sources are listed in dark orange)
1. Media-reported concert reviews. Concert reviews coming from newspapers, magazines, and major media web sites tend to be the most reliable source of information. This is because these media groups a have earned a reputation for accuracy for conducting control measures, such as fact-checking before printing information, and they provide the "trifecta" necessary to confirm a concert did happen - date, location, and event details. Media groups also usually publish their concert reviews shortly after the concert happened, thus reducing the liability of incorrect date and location information while, at the same time, establishing for fact that the concert did happen. The closer the review to the date of the concert, the better, which means that daily publications tend to me more reliable than ones published less frequently. One caveat: no matter how good the control measures are that these groups implement, they do make infrequent mistakes. The most common error is publishing a review after its intended publication date without correcting the date-related language of the review. For example: when a review reads "last night..." and it was held back from publication for a later date without being re-edited, the date-related language becomes misleading. Such examples are obvious when the "last night" error wrongly refers to a date and location already established to be another date and location by other evidence.

2. Fan concert reviews. A fan review is a reliable source as long as the fan writes in a journal or publishes on a web site his/her account of a concert shortly after the event occured - preferably within a week. Several things have to be taken into consideration, however. The fan must have the "trifecta" listed in his review. Without all three key pieces of information being tied together in one source, a tour date and location cannot be listed as verified unless there is other corroborating evidence from another source to support it. Also keep in mind that a fan review can be misleading. Many fans now are digging up old journal entries and posting them on their own blogs or web sites, and in the absence of any component of the "trifecta," they research information from another web site and list the researched information as part of the original journal entry. In most cases of an online fan source, an email to the individual can help determine the authenticity and reliability of the source. Many fans do not realize the historical value of their online expositions, and fortunately, when confronted with this information and how it is valuable to conducting research about the band, they are honest and willingly helpful.

Resources of Questionable Reliability (all dates/locations substantiated by these kinds of sources are listed in orange)
3. Multiple isolated fan accounts, long after the event occured. If several fans with intimate knowledge of the event recount the same dates, locations, and other details months or years after afterward, then this can very well be considered as a reliable source. However, there is one major issue with collective memory that makes the reliability of this type of source questionable. Psychological tests have revealed that memory can be manipulated even on a massive scale: if enough people are exposed to the same piece of misinformation over a period of time, they will remember that misinformation as part of their original experience. This was the very case of the Moscow 1993 shows when several fans, having believed the dates listed by the band in the multimeida re-issue of A Real Live/Dead One to be correct, actually remembered those dates despite a Moscow newspaper review which listed different information. Because collective memory mishaps such as this are rare, and because most collective memories usually can be corroborated by other evidence, this type of source usually can be of benefit.

4. Publicized individual tour dates. Print publications and institutional web sites receive press releases from management and report tour dates as they are informed of them, yet they rarely, if ever, make corrections to these dates and locations as changes in the itinerary occur. However, if a local newspaper reports a concert as scheduled to happen anytime from approximately a week prior to the day of the concert, then this resource tends to be reliable because of the proximity of the report to the actual date. The longer the distance between the report and the planned date, the less reliable the report is. Read "Tour Itineraries" for more information on publicized tour dates.

5. Concert flyers. While these are very good resources indicating city, date, and venue, they can cause quite a bit of confusion when the band is forced to cancel and/or reschedule dates. One thing to note: they have a slight edge over concert tickets because concert flyers sometimes are reprinted for a rescheduled date, whereas new tickets are rarely, if ever, re-issued for a re-scheduled date. Concert flyers also pose an additional problem: since they have no publication date on them, it can be difficult to determine which one has the correct date when there exists flyers with conflicting dates. In cases such as this, other resources must be used to help determine which flyer is the original and which is the rescheduled date.

6. Concert tickets. While these are very good resources indicating city, date, and venue because they are not printed unless final arrangements have been made between management and the venue, they can cause quite a bit of confusion when the band is forced to cancel and/or reschedule dates. Tickets with the original date and location are usually used for the new date and location as a convenience and cost-cutting measure by the venue and/or promoter. This is why it is not uncommon to come across a ticket stub with the wrong date, and in some cases, with the wrong date crossed-out by a fan who attended the concert and the correct date written in its place. This was the very case with the Portsmouth gig originally scheduled for 3 June 1980. Two tickets were discovered with the date crossed out and and "1 July" written in place. The mystery was solved by an account from a fan who attended the show, and it was further corroborated by a Sounds article establishing that the band had rescheduled the date.

7. Official Iron Maiden publications and merchandise. This is not to be confused with tour-related merchandise. This is, instead, regular merchandise unrelated to concerts, such as DVDs, CDs, and books. While one would think that these kinds of merchandise would be have accurate information, these tend to be fraught with inaccuracies. Management has made it clear that tour dates and locations are considered bonus material to merchandise and not worthy of being thoroughly checked for accuracy. However, it is clear that these dates go through some minimal checking because some errors listed on tour merchandise have been corrected. On the other hand, sometimes merchandise includes band interviews or quotes from the band, management, or tour support crew, and these sources occasionally provide a few nuggets of reliable information

8. Iron Maiden biographies and collector books. These things tend to be hit/miss. One would expect an author to do a good deal of research before presenting anything as fact, yet many authors print incorrect tour dates and locations because they either borrowed them from other authors or they took them directly from tour programs or tour itineraries without checking for accuracy. Nonetheless, biographies and collector books can and often do provide a good amount of fairly reliable information through band interviews and tour narrations. Any date or location written about with detail can be considered potentially accurate, but dates and locations merely listed without commentary should be suspect. A good example of this is in Gary Bushell's Running Free, in which he lists the band playing in the UK on various dates in early September 1980, but narrates that the band opted out of playing the UK in early September, but instead, took a vacation at the Adriatic Coast. It should also be noted that biographies and collector books make for excellent resources when they feature reproductions of concert flyers, tickets, tour shirts, programs, etc., such as Marco Gamba's Iron Maiden Collectibles.

9. Tour shirts. Tour shirts are problematic as a resource because they are sometimes printed before the band's management has the tour arrangements finalized. Additionally, plans do change mid-tour for various reasons, and it is too expensive to re-print shirts with the correct dates. Therefore, many tour shirts have the wrong information on them. However, some tour shirts prove to be more beneficial than others. Localized tour shirts, such as shirts specialized for just a specific portion of the tour, tend to be more reliable because management does not print them as early in the tour as they do with the rest of the tour shirts. The reason why: it's quite difficult, or at least quite embarrassing, to sell a shirt specific for one concert location (e.g. "Chicago Mutants," 30 September 1983) with an incorrect date or location. However, it still happens - the band printed a shirt for Essen, dated 9 July 2000, but they had to reschedule for 6 November after Janick's accident the night before in Mannheim.

10. Tour programs. Tour programs are questionable for the same reason tour shirts are questionable: they are usually printed before the tour starts and are never re-printed to reflect mid-tour changes. These are also considered less accurate than tour shirts due to the fact that management does not normally print programs specialized for just one concert or one region of a leg of a tour, although, management does print separate programs for separate tour legs. This is important to note because the band traditionallly has played Japan at the end of the tour, and management has waited as late as possible before printing programs for that particular leg. As a result, the Japanese tour programs usually reflect more accurate tour dates - not just for the Japanese leg - but for the entire tour since these programs tend to reflect the changes in the tour itinerary.

11. Tour itineraries. For being a source coming from the band and/or reputable media outlets, one would expect tour itineraries to be a great way to verify dates and locations, especially since they list the whole tour. The problem is that these are usually published before the tour begins. While updated tour itineraries are commonplace on the internet, older media sources rarely published updates. As such, tour itineraries have no more value than giving you a baseline to work from and further corroborate or negate individual dates and locations through other resources. The No Prayer for the Dying Tour presents a great example of the problems with tour itineraries. The band released several different itineraries before starting off the tour, and since none have a publication date on them, it is difficult to discern which dates and locations are correct without using other resources.

12. Isolated fan accounts. Any single fan accounts that come months or years after the fact tend not to be reliable because of the nature of the human mind to forget details over time. Fans who did not attend the event are especially not reliable because they base their information on other accounts and not on first-hand knowledge. However, if a fan reveals associative memories, such as remembering a certain date or location because of its close association to another memory (such as a concert date coinciding with a birthday or some other notable experience), then this source should be considered potentially reliable. It should also be noted that any information about primary sources (e.g. ticket stubs, programs, etc.), coming from another party that is not considered authoritative or scholarly, should not be accepted as fact unless that party provides verifiable proof of the source. In other words, it is not prudent to take someone's word for it that "such and such piece of evidence exists because my friend told me about it!" or "such and such piece of evidence exists because I saw it with my own eyes!" While Iron Maiden fans have proved to be mostly honest and very helpful, their memories betray their their benign intentions.

13. Fan-created tourographies. This is the bottom of the barrel, and it is so for a valid reason. Most fan site tourographies propagate the same errors from other fan sites by copying the information from other fan sites and accepting that information as fact without making any serious effort to check the accuracy of the information used. However, not all fan sites are like this, and some prove to be of value because the authors conduct their own research and publish their sources and findings. Nonetheless, because of the problems inherent in many fan sites, and because these sites are secondary sources of information, most should be disregarded. A good thing is that this fan site is trying to fix that problem by making the information here available to the public, in addition to authorizing, upon request, the republication of the findings here at other sites.

When conflicts occur between sources, the type of source rated higher on this list is generally accepted as the correct one.