Bruce Talks to ‘The Mirror’

They are the British heavy metal band that wouldn’t lie down. Iron Maiden formed in London’s East End in 1975, but they really became the enduring 100 million-selling heroes of the new wave of British heavy metal with the arrival of singer Bruce Dickinson in 1981.

Metal’s original renaissance man, Dickinson, 49, is a published novelist, film- maker, qualified pilot and was once ranked the seventh-best Brit in the sport of fencing.

Twenty-seven years after Bruce’s maiden voyage, the band, flying in the face of fashion and business expectations, are more popular than ever. They are currently touring to promote the Somewhere Back In Time compilation which recently introduced new listeners to their classic metal legacy.

“We’ve just come through Canada and they are much closer to the Brits in audience reaction than the Americans,” says Bruce, taking a break between shows on the US leg of their tour.

“They’re familiar with football chants. Americans don’t get going in quite the same way. They wave their fists in the air a lot and go ‘woo hoo’, whereas the Canadians do a big chant of ‘Maiden, Maiden’.”

But no matter how the audience reaction changes, Iron Maiden stay the same.

“That’s one of the reasons we’re now bigger than ever,” smiles Bruce, “whereas a lot of bands and people in general worry about what others think of them and change accordingly.

“We don’t because we’ve never really cared what others think. We always thought that if people don’t like it, that’s tough – we’ll just have to do it for a smaller audience. But the opposite has proved the case.”

Indeed, Maiden can sell 50,000 tickets in the unlikely venue of Bogota, Colombia. So does Bruce have any explanation for Maiden’s phenomenal popularity?

“I think it’s a variety of things,” he muses. “We started a whole new generation of metal bands and there aren’t too many originals around. The Stones – bless ’em – are certainly one, and I’ll be very happy if we are still running round like them at 65.

“With the internet, bands can come and go every five minutes and the music looks disposable. Maiden represents something that’s not disposable.”

Many thought the band peaked in the early 1990s, but the box office returns for their last two tours have been the biggest of their career. “The thing that energises us as a band is looking out on the floor and seeing a whole bunch of kids jumping around,” Bruce grins.

With their mascot Eddie, British flag and opening speech from Sir Winston Churchill, Maiden’s traditional British values aren’t in question. Don’t such aspects ever seem old-fashioned to him?

“Not really,” counters Bruce. “You have to put things in context. The Churchill speech is relevant because the song we attached it to – Aces High – is about the Battle Of Britain. We bring out the Union Jack for The Trooper because it’s the story of The Charge Of The Light Brigade – a great British military disaster.

“The stories we tell aren’t about glorifying the event but rather the heroism of the people that fought it. It’s a guy thing, but guys are fascinated by war because it takes in the best and worst of mankind.”

From their earliest success to their current in-demand global status, Maiden are very much a people’s band.

“We literally wouldn’t exist without our fans,” admits Bruce. “Press and radio don’t give us much of a leg up. Same with MTV. Fortunately, we get a lot of kids saying let’s go and see Maiden.”

For the band’s homecoming show at Twickenham, Bruce will cycle the short distance from his house to the famous stadium.

“I’m trying to be as green as I can,” he says. “As an airline pilot I have a carbon footprint that’s a size 10, so it’s pretty hard. Twickenham is a great stadium and the sound is much better than at Wembley because it’s so self-contained.

“Rod, our manager, is a massive rugby fan, so he’s leaping around excited about drinking in the bar, walking the hallowed turf and jumping in the team bath. There’ll be our biggest firework show ever with fireballs and gas bombs, and we want to make sure of a good sound so we are bringing in a lot of extra equipment.”

These days, he’s happily married with three kids, but Bruce enjoyed the excesses of rock ’n’ roll during Maiden’s early career.

“We were a bunch of 24-year-olds from England going round America in the 1980s,” he laughs. “What do you think went on? We weren’t vicars, but at the same time we’re not daft. Nobody was married, nobody got hurt and we’re all still here to talk about it.

“We’re proud of the fact that we’re fit, healthy, drink beer and have a laugh.”

Sneak preview of Chemical Wedding film in New York

Director and co-screenwriter Julian Doyle will be in NY to attend a sneak showing of the film, and to answer questions at the end of the film.

The showing will be held at Two Boots Pioneer Theatre for a midnight screening, 12:00 for 12:15 start on Sunday 15th June (technically morning of Monday 16th June)

The Two Boots Pioneer Theater is located at:
155 East 3rd Street (between Avenues A and B) - New York, New York
(212) 591-0434
http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/

advance tickets: click by showtime or call (800) 595 4849 (service charges apply)
Click here for a map

Subways and buses:
- F or V train to Lower East Side / Second Avenue. Exit toward 1st Avenue. Walk north (away from Houston) to 3rd street, then east just past Avenue A to 155 East 3rd.
- 9 or 21 bus to Houston Street and Avenue A. Walk north to 3rd Street. Turn east and go a few doors down to 155 East 3rd.
- 14A bus to 3rd street and Avenue A.
The 8 and 15 buses also come relatively close, as do these trains: 6 (Bleecker Street station), B and D (Grand Street), JMZ (Delancey / Essex), and L (1st Ave).

Click here for the location of the nearest parking lot

Tickets: $10.00, $6.50 members. indicated.

Chemical Wedding book now on sale

Jack Parsons was a brilliant chemist, member of Cal Tech propulsion unit that invented of the rocket fuel used for the US space flight to the moon. He was also a fanatical believer in the Magyck of Aleister Crowley the aging occultist who considered himself ‘The Beast’ incarnate.

In 1947 Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard were performing Crowley’s mystic rituals in a house in Pasadena, California. Parsons wrote excitedly to his occult leader, Crowley: “I have had the most devastating experience of my life. I have been in direct touch with One who is most Holy and Beautiful as mentioned in your ‘Book of the Law’. First instructions were received through Lafayette Ron Hubbard the seer. I have followed them to the letter. There was a desire for incarnation. I am to act as an instructor, guardian, guide for nine months; then it will be loosed on the world…”

Crowley wrote despairingly to a disciple about Parsons: “It appears that he has given away both his girl and his money to this writer of science fiction and is now invoking my ritual to produce a MOONCHILD. I am fairly frantic…”

Nine months later while being visited by two students from Cambridge, Aleister Crowley died of cardiac degeneration. Missing from his personal possessions was his magical diaries and his pocket-watch. His funeral took place in the Chapel of the Brighton Crematorium. The final rites were performed by the novelist Louis Marlowe reading extracts from Crowley’s ‘Book of the Law’. The Brighton Echo denounced the whole ceremony as a Black Mass.

In 1952 Jack Parsons was blown up in his laboratory in Pasadena. L. Ron Hubbard died on his yacht as leader of the Church of Scientology. But did the issue end with these three deaths? Would Crowley, as he claimed, ever return from death to rule the world? Why did US astronauts name a crater on the moon after Jack Parsons? Is L. Ron Hubbard really dead? What had been generated by the ceremony in California that seemed to signal Crowley’s demise? And what happened to the missing pocket-watch?

Unanswered questions till, late in the twentieth century, Dr. Joshua Mathers brought a ’state of the art ‘Interactive Suit’ from Cal Tech California to Cambridge in England to begin an experiment that, unknown to mankind, changed the course of our planet.

ISBN: 978-1906510-909

Read the Press Release - (Adobe Acrobat Reader Required)

Read the advance information on this book - (Adobe Acrobat Reader Required)

You can buy the book from Amazon.com by clicking below:

‘Iron Maiden’s secret to success’ - Bruce talks to O.C. Press

Singer Bruce Dickinson explains how the British metal gods still attract teenage metalheads by the tens of thousands.

To keep the excitement level high, he says, “we just, you know, play a bit less.”

Iron Maiden’s touring schedule is never very full, typically sporting only a handful of stateside dates each time out, and often with a conceit attached, from The Early Days Tour, focusing strictly on material from the band’s first four albums … to 2006’s trek behind the hailed return-to-form “A Matter of Life and Death,” when the group would play the album in its entirety … to this season’s Somewhere Back in Time Tour, devoted to reviving the bulk of the band’s 1984 World Slavery Tour, complete with a wilder pyrotechnic display and the most gigantic Eddie (Maiden’s skeletal mascot) ever assembled.

“When we looked back at the `Live After Death’ DVD,” Dickinson recalls, “the big Eddie at the back that comes out … we said, `Oh, well, let’s just build it the same as we did before.’ And then we found the measurements of it, and we went, `Yeah, that’s pretty small. We can’t do that. We’ve got to at least double the size of it.’ So now it is absolutely monstrous.”

So big, in fact, that a special hydraulic cherry-picker has to be flown with the band in order to lift it.

Could be stunts like that that keep attracting fresh-faced fans. Or it could also be that while so many of Maiden’s peers and progeny have faded out or lost their edge after an album or two, these British veterans - including founding members Steve Harris (bass) and Dave Murray (guitar), drummer Nicko McBrain and guitarists Adrian Smith and Janick Gers, all in their early 50s - have soldiered on, surviving a rocky `90s to re-emerge this decade as one of the enduring masters of the form.

I caught up with Dickinson, 49, by phone while Maiden was in final rehearsals after touching down in Texas, and I began by wondering the same thing I do of all global phenomena: Great though both highs must be, it must feel different to play for 30,000 Californians across two nights in Irvine than it would to encounter 45,000 people all at once in Bogota, or 50,000-plus most anywhere across Europe.

But … how is it different, exactly?
Well, it doesn’t so much go geographically, but it is different from place to place. Over the years, it’s strange how places have taken on different characteristics.

When we first started coming to America 25 years ago, we always used to imagine that the West Coast was the laid-back one, and the East Coast was where it was really happening. But certainly for the last 10 years, we were doing shows in Los Angeles and going, “Man, what a great gig!” The audience reaction is just really in-your-face, and they’re really attentive and listening and informed. It was just really spectacular. I would say, actually, that the West Coast is one of our favorite places to play in North America at the moment.

Well, you have some history here, of course. (Maiden’s widely regarded 1985 live album “Live After Death” and its companion video, finally released on DVD in February, was captured across four nights at Long Beach Arena in 1984.) Do you have specific memories of those shows that stand out the most?
Well, it was just a gorgeous summer. It was a time when metal and rock music were really at a peak, culturally speaking. After “Live After Death,” to be honest with you, I think the sort of hair bands, and one or two of the more embarrassing episodes in metal history that happened around then, tended to take over a bit in the public perception. Which was a shame, `cause of course we were still doing the same thing. And we’re still here doing the same. So we must be doing something right.

How would you characterize metal now?
It’s kinda come full circle. Except, of course, that now more than ever the audience own the music, because of the Internet and downloads and things like that. Audiences have such a choice now. But because of that, it’s really heartening when you see your ticket sales going through the roof. And with no radio advertising, no TV - we don’t even have a record out. Well, we do now …

But it’s a greatest-hits record (”Somewhere Back in Time: The Best of 1980-1989″).
Yeah, and it’s designed - completely designed - to capitalize on people that are new to the band, who need some kind of reference to know what to dip into first. In effect, what we’re looking at is a global phenomenon that is caused by word-of-mouth, and it’s pretty unprecedented.

It does seem that way. When I saw you … I noticed the crowd was astonishingly young. To see 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids … other bands who have been around as long or longer than you don’t draw like that. What accounts for it?
The heartening thing is that it’s happening in America now. This is what’s been going on in Canada for ages, and it’s what we expect in Europe and South America. When we go into a country and 45,000 people show up in Colombia, 30,000 in Costa Rica … we don’t even have a record company in Costa Rica. These are not old, die-hard fans. These are people who are seeing us for the first time.

And a lot of them are very, very young, which is great, because with all respect to old rockers, they don’t put out like 16-year-old kids. You know, they sit there and nod their heads sagely and ruminate - and they enjoy it for sure. But they don’t really start leaping up and down and head-banging and taking their clothes off and sweating buckets. They’d end up in hospital.

But with kids and us … it’s like feeding the hurricane. You need those warmer-temperature waters to keep the hurricane fed. We get our energy from the audience, and we fire it right back at them.

Some of why you’re so popular with younger listeners must have something to do with older brothers and even parents handing down records. But I think a lot of it also has to do with metal now bearing so much of your influence.
Yeah, I think a lot of the bands that are around now will all name-check us as being a major influence. Because, you know, we went out and we did things our own way. We went, “Screw the Establishment, we don’t care about radio, we just want to rock the way we want to do it.”

You continue to do that.
Exactly. But the thing I’m really proud of is that the stuff we’ve been doing really stands up to scrutiny. So many of the bands now - the young bands coming up - are much heavier than we are. We don’t have a problem with that - we’re not gonna try to out-heavy them or anything else like that. We just do what we do.

Yeah, but you out-sing the majority of them. I think there’s good new metal, fine, but there’s also just a lot of growling and screaming now.
Look, I’m not gonna diss people’s choices. People choose to sing that way, and audiences choose to buy it. They enjoy it. My son is in a band, and he’s a singer, and his vocals … they’re screaming-growling stuff … and he’s got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I’m, like, “Hats off to you.” And then I go along to see him at gigs, and I’m like, “OK, I get this.” It’s not how I would sing it. But I get it, within the terms of reference.

At the same time, all the kids in his band are really into Maiden. They love it because of what it represents and its heritage, but also because of what we do right now. So many of these kids who are into the band now have gotten into us during the last five years. Effectively, that means that they’ve been listening not only to our heritage albums - if even that - but to the new stuff we’ve been putting out.

Perhaps, but they must be hoping to recapture some part of your past, too.
Oh, one of the main reasons this tour has seized young people’s attentions in particular is that they have no idea what it was like when Maiden played “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” back then - but they would have given their eyeteeth to have been there.

And now we’re offering them that opportunity. Not by doing kind of a pastiche or facsimile of the World Slavery Tour. But we are bringing those songs back to life with more experience than we did in 1984. Everything in 1984 sounded like we were really in a hurry to get to the end, `cause we were just excited, and still pretty young. We’d come on stage and play everything at twice the speed.

Now, as we’ve gone down the slippery slope of doing this for umpteen years, we have the confidence to give our songs the power they really deserve. A lot of bands along the way lose the excitement level, `cause they’ve been doing it for years. So they get really good at delivering music that kids are gonna look upon and go, “Yeah, but they look kinda bored.” (Laughs.)

You look anything but bored.
We figured this out a while back. How do we stop this happening to us? `Cause all of us would be really disappointed with ourselves if that happened. And we thought, well, don’t play too much. Treat this as a huge privilege. Treat it like when kids get together and they’re in a band, and they’ve got their first three or four gigs - each gig is just like the first time you do a world tour, `cause it’s so exciting.

So to keep that excitement, we just, you know, play a bit less. And we leave gaps in between. That gives us time to recover physically, but more importantly, mentally. It keeps that excitement level there.

That also helps keep a mystique going.
Of course, once you go out, like when we did the initial part of the tour and we played in L.A. and we played in New York … I mean, you could tell the sort of seismic ripples that went through on the Internet after we played L.A. That went all the way through North America. Kids were e-mailing going, “God, you should have seen it, it was awesome, they were fantastic.” The business on this tour … we’ve never done business like this for years and years and years in North America. It’s really, really cool.

I think part of why you endure is that your music has added resonance, especially now. I think your last album reflected our times very heavily.
I think “A Matter of Life and Death” is one of the best albums Maiden has ever made. It stands up to all of our best from the `80s. I’m immensely proud of that album, and funnily enough, it was critically quite well-received. But even if it hadn’t been, what mattered is not so much what the critics say. What matters is what happens when people listen to it and go, “Wow, this is anything but an old and tired band.”