Quotes

Random quotes taken from interviews and articles

• “You’d be amazed at the kind of crap that goes through my head when I’m making records, all the shit and all the images and all the weird little vibes and things like that; little balls of light that you see in your head, and all that kind of thing. I mean, one day I’ll do an embarrassing interview and go off the f**king deep end about it all.”

• When I first learnt to fly, I expected it to be combative - desperately battling agains the odds, and the whole Biggles thing. But it wasn’t at all! It was all about balance, and trying to make the whole thing flow…”

• “To be honest, I was astonished they took it too seriously. It was never meant to be Shakespeare.” - Commenting on his books

• “The way I see it. You can shove your life full of alcohol or drugs or bombs, or you can do something interesting.”

• “I became a piss-artist who wanted to shag women!” - back in 1993

• “I knew I needed to change the verse, so I said I’d rap it. So I did, and ran out of words in about 30 seconds!… Can you imagine Maiden doing a rap part? or slapping bass?”

• You’ve got to stabilish that your’re not the Spandex-clad puppet that used to leap around with Maiden. This is a real guy who means what he’s doing. It’s important to him that people listen to his record…”

• It was very hard to unlearn the Maiden process at first. It scared me silly! I’d been doing similar sort of music for 12 years, and I suddenly realised I didn’t have a clue how to do something different”.

• “That’s our hero these days. - The bloke who is in bloody rehab!”

• “That’s probably the most important thing about being a singer - not being a fake!”

• On Catherine Wheel - “The singer, Rob Dickinson, is actually my cousin, six foot tall and much better looking Godammit!”

• “Rob and I used to chase each other round the garden with sticks. And I might have eaten his hamster”

• “Painless, on my sleep; I’m a chicken!” - Commenting on how he would like to die

• “Furry and a bit eccentric.” - Commenting on how he would describe himself on a blind date.

• “The thing that terrifies me most is becoming a parody of myself”

• It was never meant to be a record for brain surgeons, but a lot of people bought it. It was a bit of laugh - the only reason it happened was that the studio was free.” - Commenting on Tattooed Millionaire

• “When Live After Death came out, people were saying, ‘I bet you can’t wait to go out on the road’ and I’m going, ‘No, actaully, if I never toured again I’d be quite happy!’. We’re no robots!”

• “I was going to call my album ‘The secret Life if a Fridge!’ What goes on in a fridge when you close the door? Does the light stay on?” - 1994

• “I’ve never done an album this heavy. Ever. This is heavier than anything I’ve everd done with Maiden, and in many ways it’s more of a metal album than Maiden have ever made.” - Commenting on The Chemical Wedding

• “I took great delight in reading William Blake cos he was totally uncool in his life.”

• “Nah! They shoukd giv him a medal for letting her suck his knob!” - commenting if President Clinton should be impeached

• “If you kill me Vader, I shall become more impossibly powerful than you can ever imagine.” On saying that’s the phrase you should be able to say to every bastard that’s ever fucked you up in your life

• “Nine months from now, Skunkworks will have vastly outsold everything I’ve ever done.” Around 1997. Convinced that people will understand it in 5 years time.

• “Pissing on my auntie Joanie’s mouth” - Commenting oh his first childhood moment

• “There’s no point in playing Bon Jovi” - Commenting on his radio show

• “The kids like ‘Firestarter’ (The Prodigy’s album), so I have to keep them away from matches.

• “Let’s face it: leaving any big band with a track record like Iron Maiden, AC/DC or Judas Priest is leaving Heinz beans and starting to make baked beans of your own variety. People come and look at the supermarket shelf and they always pick heinz.”

• “A singer who tried to make people happy” - Commenting oh how his epitaph should be

• “I’m not hanging up my leather trousers any time soon!”

• “I have some of the most embarrassing trousers ever worn in the history of rock music.”

• “You start off doing appalling things… and you continue. I mean, my taste for embarassing trousers has remained unabated throughout the years”

• “I love shooting videos. It’s a bit like acting,a nd I’ve never felt ill at ease about acting.”

• “Do you know how frustating it is to drive down the M6 while the Kama Sutra is enacted in your rear view mirror?”

• “I’d better not get that cast in the water!” Commenting on the fact he’d never shagged a woman with a broken arm before.

• ” I know there are still going to be some critics who would love to see me get run over by a bus “

• “Maiden records were sincere, but in black and white. This one’s sincere in colour.” Commenting on Balls To Picasso

• “In many ways, he is Roy of The Rovers, and I think he casts himself in tha mould” Commenting on Steve Harris

• “There’s no animosity with Maiden, but the wrong impression about my intentions were presented” - Around 1994

• “For the last few years my interests have been based on two things - this album and my kids.” - Commenting on Balls to Picasso.

• “What’s done is done. Even looking back at the Maiden stuff - people can say that was a daft lyric, or maybe at the time I was wearing silly trousers. But at the time I thought they were cool - so f**k you”

• “I always sort of thought that I could probably sing, in fact I knew I could sing because somebody had heard me yelling away to ‘Jerusalem’ in the school choir and said “You’ve got a really good voice.” I sort of went, “Bollocks!” you know, but it made me think.”

• “I wanted to be Ian Paice’s left foot”

• “When we did Rock In Rio, we were so hyped up about playing in front of 350,000 people but we didn’t know what the sound would be like. For the first number, the sound was completely crap. I got totally bent out of shape because you’re trapped, you’ve gotta sing but you might not be able to sing for weeks later if you blow your voice out to hear yourself. I had this beautiful blue guitar and I ran up to the monitor desk and smashed it over the desk. ‘That’s what I think of your monitor sound, you f**king c*nt.’ Then I got so angry about smashing the guitar that I hit myself over the head with it. Split my forehead in three places, blood everywhere, but I sang great after, felt much better. I walked off-stage before the encore and me manager goes, ‘Can you bleed some more? It looks great on telly.’”

• “When you’re young and you’ve only had two girlfriends, you go to America and there’s all these birds throwing themselves at you so you bonk yourself stupid.”

• “I’ve got a book by Jimmy Swaggart at home, Music: The New Pornography, with a big picture of Steve on the front! It was sent to me by a Bible-basher and a quite sincere letter came with it, very sincere. She sent me a copy of the Holy Bible, which was good because I didn’t have one and I needed one to research for some songs.”

• On ‘Children Of The Damned’ - “I have to make a full and frank confession that I was suffering from Black Sabbath-itis when I recorded that track, far too much ‘Children of the Sea’ and all that stuff. Spotted by someone in the press at the time and vehemently denied by me.Of course I’ve never listened to a track called ‘Children of the Sea’ by Black Sabbath before I sang…ahem.”

• On ‘Number Of The Beast’ - “The whole album was recorded and mixed in five weeks, without any computers - cos there weren’t any back then. It was winter, and we were at a studio in Willesden, in North London. We got extremely pissed all of the time. The recording sessions used to go on until about four in the morning, and for the last three or four hours of that we’d play back what we’ done that day very loud and get drunk. Looking back, I’m not sure how we managed to actually record it. The tape operator was a guy called Nigel Green, and he used to go out on what we called ‘The Willesden Run’ at about 1am every night. There was some dodgy supermarket where you could get beer after hours… and places to buy other things that helped you stay up late. It was sort of like a slalom for late night booze and chemicals! The first track we recorded was ‘Run To The Hills’. We’d no idea how any of the stuff was going to come out, but when we played it back we freaked ourselves out. It was blindingly obvious that it was completely amazing. The day the album went to Number One in the UK charts, we were push-starting our bus on tour in Zurich, because the battery was flat. It was bloody freezing, but we were going, ‘The album’s Number One! The album’s Number One!’. So we had a Number One album, we were on the road in Europe, and we were earning £100 a week! But that whole time was great. It was better than anything. I can’t remember the last time I heard the whole album, but I heard ‘Children of the Damned’ recently and I thought it sounded f**king amazing. It’s a brilliant record…”

• From ‘The Adventures Of Lord Iffy Boatrace’ - ‘The taxi sat outside, Iron Maiden music blasting out of the driver’s side window. Roderick was already in the passenger compartment with his head in Laetitia’s lap; and with Mark West, who was moaning in pain as the bass guitar notes hammered through his spine and the vocals set his teeth on edge like a dentist’s drill.’

• “How happy am I with the album? Like a dog with two dicks!”

• “I didn’t quit in 1986 cos I thought, maybe I’m acting like a spoilt kid!”

• “If you see another plane do holler! Don’t assume I’ve seen it!”

• “Ett spartips: Samla på rabattkuponger. Det lönar sig alltid”
  Translation: “A (money) saving-advice: Collect coupons. It always pays off”