In the ’80s, I was about as far from an Iron Maiden fan as you could get. I had an aversion to most metal and hairbands as a whole then. I was one of those angsty teens that sought out the comfort of The Cure, The Smiths, New Order, and their ilk. Though as a comic book fan, and afficianado of all things spooky, even I couldn’t deny the coolness of the shirts. Metallica, Maiden, Judas Priest, and their metal bretheren put out some of the coolest shirts of all time. They were marketing geniuses.

All of the stoner dudes at Arroyo High would wear ‘em. I didn’t identify with those kids one single bit, but there was always something cool and dangerous about them thanks to the shirts. And for some reason, our school’s dress code had no problem with some of the more outrageous ones. I remember being in awe of one kid in particular, who’d walk around the halls with Metallica’s brazen, “Metal Up Your Ass” shirt, which featured an arm sticking up out ofa toilet holding an ice pick. I didn’t want to sit on that toilet. And I didn’t want to listen to Metallica. But I sure as hell wanted that tshirt.

My father tried to oblige my interest in cool shirts, but misfired completely. There was a local music chain called The Record Factory that often had a barrell of discounted merchandise that my dad brought home a couple of rock jerseys for me as a present. Rock band logos printed on baseball jersey style shirts were huge at the time. A uniform for lost kids who didn’t identify with the jock crowd.

One of the shirts featured this Jethro Tull design for Broadsword And The Beast. Now I was a big Dungeons and Dragons fan, so in retrospect, this was actually a pretty cool choice. But for a poor zit faced kid who was desperate for girls to talk to, it might as well have said, “Born To Die A Virgin” on it. I wore it quite a bit, though.

The other one was a Rush shirt, which was a band I was OK with, but I just had a hard time wearing a shirt with a naked dude standing in front of a pentagram. My sexuality was questioned enough at school without wearing a muscular dude with a perfect shaved ass right on the front.

My aunt once sent me a “cool shirt” from K-Mart one Christmas in the ’80s that said “Punk Rock” on it (recreated lovingly in Photoshop above). The canary yellow fabric,  with black and neon orange text was about as far from Punk as you could get, however. I wore it to school once, and was told by an older Punk dude, “You know, if you wore that to a Punk Rock concert, you’d probably get your ass kicked.” I took that sage advice to heart and left it at home from that point forward. Though, in retrospect, it was one of the all time dorkiest shirts I’ve ever seen, and would love to have it again now.

My family failed quite a bit in the t-shirt department, now that I think about it. Remember those old school vinyl iron ons that would eventually crack and peel off if you washed them too much? I had one with glittery silver cursive script that said “I Love Country Music”. The thing was, I fucking hated country music. I wanted a Kiss shirt, and that’s what I got instead.

I also got a shirt that simply said “Air Hockey” on it. I never played the game and didn’t know anybody who had one, but I had the shirt to show my love for it, nonetheless.

Probably the one time as a kid I actually got a shirt that I really wanted badly, was an awesome red one with a vinyl Star Wars design on it. I even had my 3rd grade class picture taken in it. Sadly, after it was washed about 4 times, it was a bleached out peeling mess.

One cool thing about running retroCRUSH is that I can design shirts for the site that are exactly the kind of stuff I would have loved to wear as a kid. Commissioning Johnny Ryan to draw demons, hobos, and scary lizard monsters, or Calvin Wong to bust out a squid fighting a whale while drinking martinis is a dream come true.

So when I had a chance to see Iron Maiden a couple weeks ago, I simply had to get a shirt. I’m not a huge Maiden fan by any stretch, but I’ve come to appreciate their classics like “Number of the Beast”, “The Trooper”, and “Run To The Hills” (the latter two tune were sadly absent from the set list). I picked up a gorgeous multi-colored shirt of Eddie on the moon, spearing an alien’s head with the American flag (pictured above). It’s beautiful.

T-shirts are one thing that’s truly never gone out of style. Sure the pictures on them may change, but we’re always going to have embarrassing ones to look back on, no matter how cool you think those “Team Jacob” and “Team Edward” wardrobe additions look today.

My 13 year old daughter went through a 1 month twilight shirt phase, and liked wearing peace logos for a while, but found a beat up old Howard Jones shirt that my wife bought at an ’80s concert back in the day.

Meanwhile, my 10 year old son would happily wear any of the shirts discussed in this article, if he could find it on his floor within 2 minutes.

Robert Berry
rberry@retrocrush.com