Can I Play with Madness

"Can I Play with Madness"
Single by Iron Maiden
from the album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
B-side	"Black Bart Blues" "Massacre"
Released	14 March 1988[1]
Recorded	1987–88
Genre	Heavy metal
Length	3:31
Label	EMI
Songwriter(s)	Adrian Smith Bruce Dickinson Steve Harris
Producer(s)	Martin Birch
Iron Maiden singles chronology
"Stranger in a Strange Land" (1986) "Can I Play with Madness" (1988) "The Evil That Men Do" (1988)
Music video
"Can I Play with Madness" on YouTube

"Can I Play with Madness" is a song by the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden. The song is the sixteenth single released by the band. Released in 1988, it was the first single from their seventh studio album, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988), and hit number 3 in the UK Singles Chart.

The song is about a young man who wants to learn the future from an old prophet with a crystal ball. The young man thinks he is going mad and seeks the old prophet to help him cope with his visions/nightmares. The prophet's advice is ignored by the young man and they become angry with each other. The song was originally a ballad named "On the Wings of Eagles", written by Adrian Smith.

Cash Box called it "raging, pulsating metal that should shake up a few speaker cabinets and damage eardrums."^[2]