The IRON MAIDEN bassist has been unsuccessfully trying to sell his eight-bedroom mansion in Essex for the past five years. He originally put the home on the market in 2012 for £6.75 million (approximately $8.71 million), but that price came down in 2013 by £0.9 million to £5.85 million (approximately $7.55 million) and in 2015 by another £0.9 million to £4.95 million (approximately $6.39 million).

 

After floating on the market for almost four years, the nine-acre property had its price reduced last year to an even lower guide price of £3.95 million (approximately $5.10 million).

 

"It was a little bit crazy to start with, because when I first put it [on sale], I wasn't really sure if I wanted to sell it," Harris told Swedish radio station Bandit Rock. "'Cause I was [moving] abroad, and I thought, 'Well, I don't know if I'm gonna really wanna stay abroad,' so I put it at a silly price, and I thought if somebody wants to pay silly money for it, then they're welcome to it. But then I brought the price down. It's actually a very reasonable price now."

 

Assuming that he can't sell the place at the current asking price, Harris has a possible back-up plan in mind. "In an ideal world, I'd like to turn it into a boutique hotel, and I think MAIDEN fans would go there," he said. "I mean, I had a small bar in Portugal — called Eddie's Bar — which is no longer open; it closed a few years ago. But people used to come from all over the world just to go to that little bar, and I think maybe they would go to the house. 'Cause we recorded some albums there, too, in the studio — 'Fear Of The Dark' we recorded there and a few others — and there's lots of memorabilia there and everything like that. So… I don't know. That would be a nice plan. A boutique hotel… It means I could still stay there as well, which would be great. It'd be an ideal world for me, really. Yeah, it'd be nice."

 

Harris, who made headlines in 2013 when more than $8,000 worth of goods and electronics was stolen from his Bahamas property, revealed that he has been living in the former British colony "for the last ten years. My youngest is still in school there," he said. "She's gonna have another four years of school, so we'll be living there for at least another four years till she finishes school anyway and see what happens after that. That was another reason as well — I had so many problems with my back, and I thought I'd go somewhere warmer and get better, and it's actually made a big difference."

 

Regarding his decision to move to the Bahamas, Harris said: "I got to fifty. I was running around on a football pitch. I was freezing my nuts off. It was wet, rainy, and I thought, 'You know what? I've had enough of this. I think I've done fifty years of my time in England with all this bad weather. I'm out of here.' So that was another reason as well, amongst a few other reasons. But I just thought, 'That's it, really.' But it did definitely help with my back and just about everything, really."

 

Harris continued: "I always wanted to live [in the Bahamas], really, 'cause we made albums in the early '80s at Compass Point studios — we made three albums there; we did 'Piece Of Mind', 'Powerslave' and 'Somewhere In Time' there. And then going back only a few years, we also did 'The Final Frontier' there as well… It was great to go back [there for the recording of 'The Final Frontier']. It was good for me, 'cause I was just living just down the road — my house was five minutes away from the studio, so every day was perfect for me. We've had a lot of good times there. Even from when I first went there in '83, I thought, 'One day I'd like to live here.' I really liked it. It made a big impression on me — the place and the people and everything. So I thought, 'One day I'll go there,' and I did."

 

MAIDEN's 'The Book Of Souls' world tour kicked off in early 2016 and recently returned to North America.