Solution - Behind the Music

By Andrew McManus, James Hopkin, and Jeremy Horwitz, with Dave Hardtke on guitar

Answer: Click here to reveal

Songs played by the band are given in alphabetical order; all are included in a list of known cowbell songs on an internet search. The full list is:

	BRASSINPOCKET
	DANCETHENIGHTAWAY
	DONTFEARTHEREAPER
	DONTSTOPTILYOUGETENOUGH
	DOWNONTHECORNER
	DRIVEMYCAR
	EVILWAYS
	FUNKYCOLDMEDINA
	GOLDDUSTWOMAN
	GROOVEISINTHEHEART
	HONKYTONKWOMEN
	LIFESBEENGOOD
	LOWRIDER
	PLAYTHATFUNKYMUSIC
	WALKTHISWAY
	WEREANAMERICANBAND
      

Bruce Dickinson mentions a different letter of the Nato Phonetic Alphabet in his commentary about every song. Reordering the songs by the order of these letters produces the new list:

	DANCETHENIGHTAWAY
	WEREANAMERICANBAND
	DONTSTOPTILYOUGETENOUGH
	LOWRIDER
	HONKYTONKWOMEN
	DRIVEMYCAR
	FUNKYCOLDMEDINA
	EVILWAYS
	PLAYTHATFUNKYMUSIC
	GROOVEISINTHEHEART
	WALKTHISWAY
	LIFESBEENGOOD
	BRASSINPOCKET
	DONTFEARTHEREAPER
	DOWNONTHECORNER
	GOLDDUSTWOMAN
      

The next step is to recognize that Mr. Dickinson's repeated call for "more cowbell" should focus the solver's attention on the cowbell hits in the songs. A close inspection of each song reveals that, while the cowbell strikes for each song are all in a constant rhythm, the cowbell player misses a single strike on each song (as an example, for DANCETHENIGHTAWAY, this is the 7th strike), often using a 'pump fake' where he misses the cowbell with the beater.

Indexing the reordered list of songs by the number of the missed cowbell strike gives the clue phrase "HENRY M CLARK BREED". The puzzle answer is BROWN SWISS.