Brief Bruce Interview

[The_Prisoner]

IRON MAIDEN Singer Says They Are Performing Like They Are Still 25 Years Old - Aug. 24, 2003

IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson recently spoke to Jon Matsumoto of The Mercury News about the group's announcement that their current world tour will be their last extensive tour.

"We all have families, and we want to have lives apart from music," he said. "Nicko McBrain, our drummer, will be 50 on this tour. I'm the youngest guy in the band. I'm 45. But we're still performing like we were when we were 25. It's started to take its toll on everybody's body.

"[Bassist] Steve Harris has got a crushed vertebra from running around on stage all these years with a huge bass guitar. Some days he can hardly walk. If we go on and try to play five nights a week in arenas for months at a time, this band is going to be unable to function."

In the States, IRON MAIDEN are one of the few metal bands still capable of headlining shows at large arenas. In Europe, where there's still a thriving metal scene in many areas, including Germany and Scandinavia, IRON MAIDEN's popularity is even greater.

"Europe has always been our strongest area," said Dickinson, adding that on a recent tour they "played to 700,000 people in 28 days. We were outselling THE ROLLING STONES in Scandinavia. People want to see us because they've heard that we're the source material for metal stuff."

In the United States, classic metal groups such as JUDAS PRIEST have been overshadowed for a decade now by hard rock-metal bands incorporating elements of rap, grunge, punk or industrial music.

"People talk about freedom here in the United States,'' said Dickinson, "but you only have freedom if you have a choice. People over here really aren't made aware of the choices they have in terms of music because of the corporate control of the concert business and radio. Everybody is segmented. Depending on what age group you slot into, you're put into a little stall, and you have blinkers put on you."

 

[salty]

News about the group's announcement that their current world tour will be their last extensive tour.

Looks like it could be our last chance...

 

[Los4words]

very true.....

they really are old men now... shit happens I guess

 

[The_Prisoner]

As they roar through a tour in support of their soon to be released new offering, Dance Of Death, those crazy British purveyors of true-metal, Iron Maiden, paid a visit to Toronto, and when they did, the band's ever-talkative vocalist Bruce Dickinson sat down backstage to let us in on what's up with the new CD.

"The writing style's a bit looser," says Dickinson as he lounges on a red couch before the Amphitheatre show. "We were prepared to be a bit more open with our emotions on this record than we were on Brave New World, and on Brave New World in fact we were more open than we were on a lot of the previous albums."

Don't worry Maiden fans 'cause that doesn't mean Dickinson, bassist Steve Harris, drummer Nicko McBrain, and triple guitar team Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Jannick Gers have gone emo or anything.

"Every Maiden album is a challenge because you have to stay within the tramlines of what Maiden is, or else you lose it," says Dickinson. "To develop within that framework can be tough, so you just have to relax about it and you have to sometimes not try so hard and just wait."

Fans will be happy with new tracks like "Wildest Dreams, " New Frontier" and "Montesegur," because they have that classic Iron Maiden sound, but in Dickinson's opinion getting that Maiden sound is all about waiting for inspiration to hit. "The key thing about writing a Maiden album is patience and waiting 'til the right idea comes along," he says. "It's not about locking yourself away and writing feverishly every day for six months, it's probably about playing pool for about six months and then going, 'Ah, an idea! Great!'"

According to Dickinson when inspiration does indeed hit, it hits like lightening. "When it does happen it happens very quickly, and when we get a really good idea it can be turned into a song in 24 hours," says Dickinson.

Having been part of a touring act for more than 20-odd years Dickinson now looks out to a mixed crowd of elder metalheads and their kids, so how does Bruce feel about performing for a multi-generational fan base?

"It's flattering, but sometimes confusing when you go out live — depends on where you go because you get an audience of under 23 year olds and when they're going nuts it's great for us, but when you get an audience that's much older it's frustrating 'cause the night before we might have played to a bunch of kids that were going wild and then you go out and you're playing in front of a bunch of people drinking Coke and eating fries," he says. "You just think 'Why did you come?' But ironically if we went to a show we'd be that person eating fries and drinking Coke!" —Tim Melton