Doug Sampson

Prior to joining Iron Maiden, Sampson was a member of one of Steve Harris' previous groups, Smiler, along with Dennis Wilcock, Mick Clee (born 1949) and Tony Clee (b. 1949) in 1975, after which he was asked to join Iron Maiden at their inception in the same year. He declined to join at the time as he was "a bit fed up with the whole rock band thing" because he was "completely skint," but accepted a further invitation from Steve Harris at Dennis Willcock's last gig to replace Barry Purkis in 1978 after he had taken up drumming again in a Southern Rock group called Janski. Following a year of rehearsing, the band began playing small pubs during which they gained a large following, a highlight being a gig at London's famous Marquee club. Doug participated in the recording of Iron Maiden's demo, later released as The Soundhouse Tapes, on 31 December 1978, Prowler and other tracks from it appeared in the charts of Neal Kay's Heavy Metal Soundhouse club, published weekly in Sounds. Iron Maiden eventually signed to EMI in 1979, following up by recording further demos, one song from these sessions ("Burning Ambition") was included on the B-Side of "Running Free". Sampson also played on Iron Maiden's BBC Archives released in November 2002 as part of the Eddie's Archive box set. …