"Running Free" was the first single released by Iron Maiden. It was released on the 8th of February 1980 on the 7" 45 rpm vinyl record format. It was written by Steve Harris and Paul Di'Anno. The song appears as the third track on the band's debut album Iron Maiden.
The song is about a troubled 16-year-old boy who runs away on a pick up truck, ends up in a Los Angeles jail and picks up a woman from a bar. The song is known to be one of the band's more traditional rock numbers and is still played at Maiden gigs today with the band members individually named by the lead singer during the long bass-solo.
The single's cover art is also famously known as the first official appearance of the band's mascot Eddie. However in the cover-art his face is obscured because the band didn't want to unveil their mascot until the album's release. On the cover is a young metal-head resembling somewhat a young Bruce Dickinson. This should not be considered deliberate, as Dickinson had nothing to do with the band until some time after this. Also in the background, drawn on the wall, there are some band names such as AC/DC, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin and Scorpions, rock groups that may have been inspiring Iron Maiden at the time.
The B-side "Burning Ambition" is one of Harris' earliest compositions written around the time he was in Gypsy's Kiss. The guitar solo in this song is played by Dave Murray. It is the only commercially released recording by Maiden to feature the band's former drummer Doug Sampson (he was featured in Maiden's demo Soundhouse Tapes) who was replaced by Clive Burr for the band's first album. The song has never been released on any album but was featured on the Best of the B'Sides in the Eddie's Archive Boxset as well as being featured as one of the background tunes on the The Early Days DVD documentary.
In 1985, a live version of the song was released as the first single from the album Live After Death (Maiden's twelfth single).
"The Running Free" is a song by Coheed and Cambria from their fourth album Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV, Volume Two: No World for Tomorrow and the first single from the album. The song was premiered on the Warped Tour 2007.
The cover is an unfinished rendition of the character Chase from The Amory Wars and one of the other IRO-bots. The unfinished cover was released with the single, but the finished version can be seen on posters promoting Coheed and Cambria's headlining tour.
Claudio Sanchez states on the DVD that accompanies the album No World for Tomorrow that he originally wrote "The Running Free" with two other songwriters for the Transformers movie soundtrack. However, when the track was rejected, he adapted the song for the new record.
The song has been performed acousticly on 92.3 K-Rock , as with many of Coheed and Cambria's other singles.
