Almost 40 years ago a group of working class Dundee lads with no music industry experience brought one of the most hotly-tipped rock acts in the world to the city.
It was 1980 and the band was Iron Maiden, with the Caird Hall gig becoming the stuff of local legend.
And now a film charting the antics of the boys from Dundee, who launched their careers off the back of the concert’s success, is just days away from wrapping up.
Yesterday the crew behind the film, Schemers, called upon the people of Dundee to attend Caird Hall dressed as retro rockers as they sought extras for the movie’s finale, a re-staging of the epic Iron Maiden concert.
With the help of The View frontman Kyle Falconer, who stars in the film, more than 50 locals showed up to take part in the scene.
The movie – set in the late 1970s into the early 1980s – is being directed by Fife man Kyle Titterton and is entirely set in Dundee, with all the filming also taking place within the city.
Along with two of his friends, the film’s producer and co-writer Dave McLean is one of the original “schemers” which the film is based upon.
He said his formative years in Dundee had been a “launch pad” into his career in the music industry, leading him to work with the likes of Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Roxy Music, Pearl Jam and Oasis.
Mr McLean added: “We were the schemers. We were all from the schemes. Fintry, Whitfield all these places and there was no jobs or anything like that. We thought we’ll do something different, we needed to escape.
“We started various businesses, all crazy sort of things. We did a lot of concerts with up and coming bands. We did a lot of gigs in a lot of bars, a lot of clubs. We made a lot of money, (and) lost a lot of money.
“Our biggest gig was here at the Caird Hall with Iron Maiden.”
He said: “It was a bit of a shambles on the day, I had no crew booked, I had no catering booked, they rolled up in two artic trucks, I had to go and get crews from off the street, my mum made the sandwiches, it was just hilarious.
“I’d sold about 200 tickets in advance, only because we’d done absolutely no promotion. We were absolutely useless. And the band had no profile really, but the band went to number 4 that weekend.”
Mr McLean said he thought the gig was going to be a “disaster”, but they turned up at the venue on the evening to find more than 1,000 people queued up outside Caird Hall.
“This is all one story of hundreds. It’s no all centred around this, there is so much more going on in the film,” he added.
“It was my launch pad to get into other things.”
The film stars actors Tara Lee, Liza Callinicos, Mingus Johnston, Reanne Farley and Jim Sweeney.
