‘We created our own universe… we never compromised,’ says Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson ahead of new film and festival
“I WAS a bit of a Duracell bunny,” confesses Iron Maiden’s irrepressible Bruce Dickinson.
“To some extent, I still am — much to the dismay of people around me! They’re like, ‘Don’t you EVER stop?’”
Dickinson is reflecting on the manic energy he brought to the heavy metal titans after replacing original singer Paul Di’Anno.
In 1981, he was a 22-year-old member of hard-rocking fellow travellers Samson when Maiden’s manager Rod Smallwood came calling.
Unlike many of his peers, including his predecessor, Dickinson didn’t have to rely on drugs and booze to fuel his high-octane performances.
He continues: “I discovered that having these amazing, ecstatic, endorphin-filled moments — being in front of people and singing with a group in total sync — was way more uplifting than any drugs on offer.”
One of the great spectacles in rock is a sweat-soaked Dickinson running and jumping around on stage with audiences in the palms of his outstretched hands.
Match his physical presence to a rich operatic tenor and an iconic catchphrase, “Scream for me!”, and you have a powerful combination.
The songs that stretch his vocal cords aren’t too shabby either — many filled with intriguing historical references.
Run To The Hills deals with European colonisation of Native American territory, The Trooper visits the Crimean War’s Charge Of The Light Brigade and Aces High is a pilot’s eye-view of the Battle Of Britain — not your average metalhead subject matter.
What about the 14-minute Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, based on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem and written by Maiden founder and leader Steve Harris?
“It’s just epic,” says Dickinson of the closing track on the band’s fifth album Powerslave, released in 1984.
“It’s one of my favourites to perform.
“I love the storytelling aspect and we’ve got huge screens now to tell the whole story.”
Let’s also not forget the enduring core band which today comprises bassist and chief lyricist Harris, three virtuoso guitarists in Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Jannick Gers, mighty drummer Nicko McBrain (now retired from touring after a stroke in 2023) — and, of course, Dickinson.
The singer remembers Maiden’s gruelling, breathless climb to metal’s summit in the Eighties, when he was “run ragged but young enough to handle it”.
Now 67, he accepts that his unfettered antics have taken their toll on his body, but insists: “Damaging it and knackering it by doing things on stage is a relatively easy fix — drugs take away your soul.”
I’m speaking to Dickinson to mark the arrival in cinemas next Thursday of Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition, a riveting film documenting their 50-year rollercoaster ride with insightful interviews, live footage and unguarded offstage moments.
Through the prism of band members past and present, and superfans including Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, Public Enemy rapper Chuck D and actor Javier Bardem, it is 106 minutes of pedal to the metal.
The movie is the first milestone in a momentous year for the band formed in Leyton, East London, by Harris in 1975.
In late May, Maiden continue the Run For Your Lives world tour, including a monster outdoor event, Eddfest (named after their shape-shifting undead mascot Eddie), at Knebworth on July 10 and 11.
Then, in November, they join Oasis, Phil Collins and Billy Idol, among others, in being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in the US.
Dickinson says: “We’re about to do the biggest tour of our lives, playing to 2.5million people in six months.
“People might say, ‘How the hell did that happen?’ to which I answer, ‘Have a look at the film — that is how’.
“We’ve had lots of tidal waves and earthquakes in our career.”
Crucial to the upward trajectory has been the sense of community around Maiden and their fans, which Dickinson believes is only rivalled by “a very different kind of band, the Grateful Dead and their Deadheads”.
He says: “We’ve never compromised and have grown on our own terms, creating our own universe.
ON CANCER: ‘A PROFOUND EFFECT ON ME’
IN 2014, Bruce Dickinson faced one of the biggest challenges – and it had a profound effect.
“I discovered I had a three-and-a-half centimetre tumour at the base of my tongue,” he says. “And another one in my lymph node.”
He recalls how he felt at the time of his devastating throat cancer diagnosis: “You’ve had scans, you’ve had biopsies and you’re sitting there at home, going, ‘I’m not dreaming, this is real’.
“You start wondering what it feels like to die and you have to own up to these thoughts.”
Dickinson adopted a positive approach. “I decided to take proactive measures and to make the assumption I could beat this.
“I fattened myself up, eating like a pig over Christmas. By the time I went into treatment, I was 75 kilos and just under 67 when I came out. Some people lose a lot more, so I got off lightly.
“I had 33 radiation sessions over five weeks and nine weeks of chemo, which knocks the hell out of you. But in May 2015, I got the all clear. All gone. No surgery. Nothing.”
Dickinson reserves huge praise for the medical professionals. “I had a great oncologist and a great team – and I wish that everybody was able to have that.”
And how does he look back on that time? “When I was asked afterwards what effect cancer had on me, I tried to make light of it.
“But recently I realised that it affected me quite profoundly. I’ve always been one to grab life by both hands – now, doing that is more important to me than ever.”
“You reach those millions one person at a time,” he adds. “Look them in the eyes — although that is a lot easier in a pub than in a 50,000-seat arena!”
Though the upcoming tour will send Maiden through Europe, then on to North, Central and South America, Australia and Japan, Dickinson spares a thought for the places they can’t visit “because of the chaos in the world”.
“There are huge pockets of fans in Iran,” he affirms.
“And in Israel, Ukraine and Russia — all these wonderful people who just want to love everybody else who loves Iron Maiden. It’s tragic.”
This is cue for him to trawl through the mists of time to the early days again and it’s clear that, above all, it is Steve Harris’s band.
Referred to as “the boss”, he formed Maiden just before punk upended the music scene.
Dickinson says: “Steve felt very strongly about punk because many in the media decided it was the ‘acceptable face of heavy metal’ — and that enraged him.
“Frankly, the first LP wasn’t that well produced so it actually sounded like a crap punk album.
“Steve has always said, ‘My God, I wish I could have remade it with Martin Birch [who produced their next eight records].”
In the Burning Ambition film, we see the struggles of original singer, the late Paul Di’Anno, who embraced rock and roll excesses to the full, prompting Harris and Smallwood to search for a replacement.
“Paul was very charismatic with a characterful voice,” says his successor. “He was a bit of a pirate . . . like Adam Ant or a member of band I loved, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates.
“His look was different to the rest of the metal world — and that was cool.”
With a rueful expression, Dickinson remembers being described as a “human air-raid siren” after his first gig with Maiden.
He says: “They were obviously big fans of Paul who came to see me at the [now defunct] Rainbow and one of them sent a letter to a music magazine, Melody Maker maybe.
“It said what a terrible disaster the show was, like ‘hearing my favourite songs being sung from inside a cement mixer by an air-raid siren’.
“Even though someone was trying to be insulting, Rod Smallwood took the attitude, ‘When life throws lemons, make lemonade’.
“He nicked the idea and turned the whole thing on its head, which actually made me laugh.”
ON EDDIE: ‘EASTWOOD OF ZOMBIES’
MENACING mascot Eddie is an Iron Maiden icon.
Illustrated in numerous guises by Derek Riggs, the shape-shifting creature has appeared on every album cover and in every outlandish stage set.
He inspired the name of the band’s outdoor shindig Eddfest at Knebworth in July and features in new animated sequences for the Burning Ambition movie.
Bruce Dickinson calls Eddie the “Clint Eastwood of zombies” and says: “He has a Dirty Harry type of morality about him.
“You think he’s evil but he’s ambivalent, so you don’t know exactly where you stand with him,” he explains.
“If you’re basically a good person, you’re probably going to be OK – but he’ll blow you away if you’re not!”
Dickinson believes Eddie has a future beyond Maiden. “One day, inevitably, we’ll stop playing live.
“The great thing about Eddie is that he’s eternal. He can have a whole career on his own. We could even write albums for him.
“In fact, there’s so much you could do with him, whether it’s movies, animation, or an Eddie avatar show. All these things are up for grabs.”
To Dickinson, sharing the stage with Eddie is a rite of passage.
“He’s an extension of our world but you just can’t pin him down.”
A fascinating aspect of Maiden has been Dickinson’s relationship with Harris, not always plain sailing but one that created undeniable chemistry.
And surely Harris accepts that the flamboyant singer helped propel his band to stadium-slaying proportions.
“When I was in Samson, people were calling Steve ‘the Ayatollah’,” says Dickinson. “He had a reputation for being uncompromising and rigid.
“But, as we’ve got older, he’s been much more amenable to ideas that might broaden the vision.”
However, Dickinson had to set one thing straight from the start.
“When I first did shows with Maiden, I was thinking, ‘Why am I standing on one side of the stage? I’m the singer’.
“The answer was because Steve would go running down front and centre playing the bass. Suddenly I would have this big old lump of wood thrust in my ear. I nearly lost a couple of teeth because of it!”
Dickinson insisted that, as lead singer, he was going to “stand at the front, in the middle — and I wasn’t going to back down”.
Iron Maiden’s third album, The Number Of The Beast (1982), was Dickinson’s first and its songs including the title track, Run To The Hills and Hallowed Be Thy Name took the band to the next level.
For the new recruit, making the album was the calm before the storm.
He says: “It was like 1939 when Britain was at war but everybody was still out sunbathing and reading the papers because nothing bad had happened.
“Then we hit the road and, wow, we had a No1 album, the single was going crazy and we were doing seven, eight, nine shows in a row. Even our day off was travelling.”
Despite the overwhelming demands, Maiden enjoyed a rocket-fuelled rise to the crest of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM), a movement that included Def Leppard, Saxon and Motörhead.
Dickinson says: “The albums we were producing in the Eighties were phenomenal. We created a style with The Number Of The Beast and it continued with Piece Of Mind and Powerslave. The trajectory was fantastic.”
As the Burning Ambition movie attests, the band began building a devoted following in all corners of the globe.
In August 1984, Iron Maiden ventured behind the Iron Curtain to play five shows in Poland, much to delight of fans starved of music from the West.
In January the following year, the band went nuclear in South America by playing Rock In Rio to a 300,000-plus crowd.
ON FLYING: ‘I HAD ROAD TO DAMASCUS MOMENT’
ANYONE who follows the life less ordinary of Bruce Dickinson will know there’s a lot more to him than just being the singer in Iron Maiden.
At school, he took up boxing but he “wasn’t very big” and people “would beat the crap out of me”.
So he took up fencing instead, inspired by a metalwork teacher who brought in a “full-on, two-handed sword like Excalibur”.
Not one to do things by halves, he became a champion – so good that he reached the UK top ten, trained with the Olympic squad and is still a member of fencing clubs in London, Paris and LA.
Dickinson harboured other dreams, too. “I was really into aviation and wanted to be an astronaut or a pilot,” he says.
This helps explain how he qualified as an airline pilot and ended up flying Iron Maiden on three world tours, firstly in a Boeing 757 dubbed Ed Force One and then, in 2016 for the Book Of Souls tour, a jumbo jet.
He says: “My love of flying came from my great uncle who was in No. 200 Squadron RAF in the Second World War. When I was five, he’d tell me all these stories.
“But I was rubbish at maths in school and you need to be a rocket scientist to be a pilot so I became a rock star instead.
“Then, in the Nineties, I took a trial flying lesson in Florida for 30 bucks, just to see. It was a road to Damascus moment.”
The next step for Dickinson was training with British Airways, flying a 757. Picking up the story, he says: “From 2000 to 2011, I was a pilot for UK company Astraeus, flying people around the world on holiday. I had to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden.
“You would probably have had no idea I was your captain because no one listens to captain’s announcements!”
During this time, Dickinson hatched the idea to extend his flying exploits to his other job as a member of Iron Maiden.
“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we put all the equipment, the band and the crew on one airplane?’ To my surprise, our manager Rod thought it was a great idea. Normally, I get told to p*** off!
“So we did three world tours. It was brilliant calling it Ed Force One – I think that was an invention by the fans.”
Dickinson remembers his initial horror when American secret servicemen boarded the plane in Chicago. “I went, ‘Oh s**t! What have we done wrong?’ Turned out Obama was coming in the next day on Air Force One and the men just wanted to have a look at Ed Force One.
“I’ve still got Air Force One-branded M&Ms, matches and a bottle opener somewhere.
“So, I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on in the President’s plane?’ They’re cracking open beer bottles, smoking themselves to death and taking all the red Smarties.”
As the Eighties progressed and the Nineties dawned, the pace rarely slackened and, as we witness in unvarnished detail in Burning Ambition, “the wheels eventually fell off”.
Guitarist Smith quit in 1990 over “creative differences” and an exhausted Dickinson dropped a second bombshell by leaving in 1993 to pursue his solo career, much to the consternation of his bandmates, notably McBrain.
“It was a sudden burst of artistic integrity of my own invention,” confesses Dickinson.
“I knew Maiden were great, but they didn’t allow me to do anything a bit out there.
“I was still in my thirties and the thought of leaving momentarily terrified me. But then I read Henry Miller’s quote, ‘All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience’.
“It hit me like a ton of bricks. I thought to myself, ‘If you don’t jump, you’ll never find out’.”
As for the reaction to his departure in the Maiden camp, Dickinson says: “The only person I told was the manager, Rod. I don’t know what got said between him and the guys but Nicko got upset about it. And fair enough.”
He sees what became a five-year absence as part of “a real story of real people”.
He adds: “We’re a bunch of bizarre brothers who got stuck together. In the end, we had to make it work.”
So it was in 1999, after Wolfsbane singer Blaze Bayley had gamely attempted to hold the fort, that guitarist Smith and singer Dickinson returned to the fold — for good.
“To use a football analogy, Blaze had been passed a ball which was a ticking timebomb,” says Dickinson, before recalling his bizarre meeting with Harris and Smallwood to discuss his return.
They convened in secret at a yacht club in Brighton, entered by a special code — an occasion Dickinson likens to a scene from a John Le Carré novel.
“Part of me was thinking, ‘This is ridiculous’. It felt like going through Checkpoint Charlie in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,” he says.
“But I looked at Steve and realised he’d been through the ringer with all kinds of things. I decided that if he’s up for it, then we should get on with it.
“I told him, ‘I am the one guy on the planet you can trust. When I say we’ll make a great new album together, we will’. And we did [Brave New World].
“Steve and I are very different individuals — but that’s our strength.
“I’ve certainly grown to respect him. Has he grown to respect me? I don’t want to put words into his mouth.”
Dickinson signs off with a heartfelt statement: “The music is the thread that holds us in Maiden together. Whatever we started, we started well — and when eventually we finish, we will finish well.”