Bruce Dickinson

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Bruce Dickinson
For the record producer Bruce Dickinson 'featured' in Saturday Night Live's skit, see More Cowbell.

Bruce Dickinson (born Paul Bruce Dickinson, August 7, 1958 in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England) is the lead singer in the heavy metal band Iron Maiden. According to All Music Guide he was the most acclaimed and instantly recognizable vocalist to emerge from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement of the early-'80s.

Before Iron Maiden he was the singer in a similar band called Samson from 1979 until he joined Iron Maiden two years later. He made his recording debut with Iron Maiden on their Number of the Beast album in 1982. During previous years, he was in Styx (1976) (not to be confused with the American band of the same name), then went on to sing for Speed (1977 - 1978). When Speed split up, he joined Shots until the summer of 1979.

Bruce quit Iron Maiden in 1993 in order to pursue his solo career, but rejoined the band in 1999 along with guitarist Adrian Smith. Both are still in the band to date.

Other interests include literature, writing, fencing (at which he is considered expert), train technology and flying Boeing 757 charter jets for the UK charter airline Astraeus (which Iceland Express leases planes from) where he is employed as First Officer. He was taught to fly by British Airways commercial pilot Captain Phil Dales.

He is sometimes called "Conan the Librarian" after a character in the "Weird Al" Yankovic movie UHF, and has been nicknamed 'The Air Raid Siren'. Dickinson went by the stagename "Bruce Bruce" prior to joining Iron Maiden. He is also an accomplished guitarist and drummer. He studied history at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, and was active in student politics as a member of the Conservative Party; however, he is known to have supported New Labour in recent years, describing the Conservatives as 'dangerous'. He is not to be confused with the rock producer (in reality a sound engineer, played by Christopher Walken) for Blue Öyster Cult in the famous Saturday Night Live More Cowbell skit.

Dickinson currently presents the Saturday evening "rock show" on BBC alternative rock radio station 6 Music. He has recently taken the helm of BBC Radio 2 Serial, Masters of Rock. He also presented the 5-part historical TV series about aviation; Flying Heavy Metal was shown on the Discovery Channel in the UK. He was also a guest on a Discovery Channel show where he shared his enthusiasm for trains. The most recent television programme he has presented was a show on spontaneous combustion for Sky One called "Inside Spontaneous Human Combustion with Bruce Dickinson", in which he investigates the phenomenon of this occurrence by enlisting the help of several experts and performing various experiments to determine its possible cause.

Bruce married his second wife Paddy in 1990, and they have had three children together.

Biography

Childhood

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Bruce (center) at Oundle, 1974

Paul Bruce Dickinson was born on August 7, 1958, in the small mining town of Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His real first name is Paul, although everybody, except his parents and grandparents, insisted on calling him 'Bruce' from as early as he can remember.

His mother worked part-time in a shoe shop and his father was a mechanic in the army. Dickinson's birth hurried the young couple into marriage, as was common in pre-abortion fifties Britain. To begin with he was brought up by his grandparents. His granddad was a coal-face worker at the local colliery and his grandmother was a housewife.

When Dickinson was about to start school his parents moved from Workshop to Sheffield, the nearest big city, where more jobs were available [citation needed]. Dickinson's first school was Manton Primary, a notoriously tough place in a fairly run-down area. He remembers his granddad teaching him to stick up for himself and don't let anybody push him around. "I grew up in an environment where it struck me that the world was never gonna do me any favours. And I had very few close friends, because we were always moving. I think that's partly why I grew up feeling like such an outsider. I didn't have an unhappy childhood, but it was unconventional, to say the least." A positive side of this unconventional upbringing was that Bruce grew up very independent and self reliant.

Bruce's first musical experience was dancing in his grandparents front room to Chubby Checker's "The Twist". The first record he recalls owning was the Beatles single "She loves you" which he managed to persuade his granddad to buy him. "I was still only four or five but I really loved that whole Mersey scene, like The Beatles and Gerry & The Pacemakers. I used to try and collect all their singles. Then I noticed they had B-sides, and that sometimes I liked them even more than the A-sides. That was when I first began noticing the difference between 'good' music and 'bad'. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the first time I began to think like a musician."

When Bruce was six he moved in with his parents in Sheffield who had set up a house and had regular jobs. He found it difficult to adapt himself to the environment. "They never listened to music, they would be totally focused on making money". His dad did have an acoustic guitar though, and although it was virtually unplayable, Bruce used to have a go at "playing" it making this terrible noise and making his fingers blister.

When moving to Sheffield this meant Bruce had to change school. He was sent to Manor Top which turned out to be sheer hell for young Bruce, so tough, in fact, that after six months, his parents decided to move him out to a small private school called Sharrow Vale Junior. His parents would make money by buying a house, do it up, sell it, then buy another house somewhere else and start again. A lot of his childhood he spent living on a building site. But his parents had got to the stage where they were actually making money. They had bought a boarding house where his dad was selling second-hand cars off the forecourt.

This gave them the opportunity to offer Bruce, then 13 year old, to go to boarding school. His secondary education would take place at Oundle public school in Northamptonshire. Bruce fancied the idea of getting away from home. "I didn't particularly enjoy being with my parents, so I saw it as an escape. I think it was because I hadn't built any real attachment to them when I was very, very young." It was also the classic case of parents wanting their kids to have everything they never had.

Once he got settled at Oundle it's fair to say that he didn't fit in very well. Bruce was picked on and routinely bullied by the older boys. "Like systematic torture", is how he describes it now. "You couldn't get away, that was the thing. At Manor top, at least you got to go home at the end of the day. I knew I could have called mum and dad but that would have been bottling out so I didn't do it." Bruce was determined not to let people get the better of him. "Even if you're lying there with all your guts kicked in, you can still go away saying; 'All right, you're bigger than me, you can beat the shit out of me if you want, but you're not superior'. That's me, mate".

Dickinson was in charge of the school army-cadet course. At fifteen Bruce joined the school amateur dramatics society. Dickinson was only allowed one hour of television a week, so the only outside entertainment he had was music; "I was 13 when I first heard Deep Purple's 'In Rock' album, and it just blew me away! I heard this thing coming out of someone's room one day, and I went in and said 'Whoa! What's that?' And they just looked at me disdainfully and went 'It's "Child in time" by Deep Purple. Don't you know anything?' But I was too amazed to care. The first album I ever bought was Deep Purple In Rock, all scratched to fuck, but I thought it was great."

The end-of-term concert was what made Dickinson start buying albums. "The first gig I ever saw ... was a band called Wild Turkey. They were great ... my ears were ringing for the next three days."

Dickinson obtained bongos from the music room and bashed away. Dickinson remembers trying to learn 'Let it be' and the guy who was singing couldn't hit the high notes. "I started trying to encourage him by singing along - only I could sing the high notes." Dickinson would later decide to become a singer. "I always sort of knew I could sing ... [someone] in the school choir ... said; 'You've got a really good voice'"

Eventually Dickinson was expelled from Oundle for urinating in the headmaster's dinner. Returning home to Sheffield in 1976, he was enrolled at a local Catholic Comprehensive school. In the summer of that 1976 he joined his first band. He had overheard two kids talking about their band and that they needed a singer. Dickinson volunteered to do the vocals. The band used to rehearse in the drummers father's garage and they were impressed by Dickinson's singing. It was at this point Dickinson decided to buy a microphone.

The first gig he did was at a place called "Broad Fall Tavern" in Sheffield. They were originally called "Paradox" but, upon Bruce's suggestion, changed the name to "Styx", totally unaware of the American act with the same name. "We got into the headlines in the local newspaper when we got attacked on stage by this shift-working steelworker we'd woken up. He bottled the guitarist and chucked the drums off-stage"

Soon after the band split up and that was that - except now Bruce had a mic and an amplifier of his own.

College

After leaving school Bruce didn't really know what he wanted to do so he joined the Territorial Army for six months, just to discover that there was just as many, if not more, idiots in the army as anywhere else. "I'd never seen men get that drunk and do such horrid things, and I'd never seen so many 'loose women'. I mean, I didn't do anything with them, I had no idea what to do. I remember this one woman trying to pull me and all I did all evening was play darts. I had no idea how to deal with it."

As army life was not what Bruce necessarily wanted to do, he applied for a place at University. He had somehow managed to scrape the minimums for getting in and found himself taking History at Queen Mary's College, in London's East End.

His parents were a bit suspicious in letting Bruce go down there and he told them he was still going to join the army, but that he wanted to get his degree first. "That was what they wanted to hear so that was my cover story. When I got down there I started immediately finding and playing in bands."

At college Bruce got involved in the Entertainment's Committee. "One day you'd be a roadie for The Jam, the next you'd be putting up the Stonehenge backdrop for Hawkwind or whatever." In the winter of 1977 Bruce met a guy called Paul "Noddy" White. He was a bit of a multi-musician and he had a PA and all sorts of equipment. Bruce suggested that they'd form a band together, which they did, and this would eventually evolve into the band Speed, described by Bruce himself, as sounding like a crossover between Judas Priest and The Stranglers with a Hammond organ on top of it. "It had nothing to do with taking speed, we were a completely drug-free band, we just used to play everything ridiculously fast. Like Speed Metal, but ten years too early." Bruce was the vocalist and, occasionally, played a bit of guitar. "I got Noddy to give me a few guitar lessons and I just started writing stuff straight away. He showed me three chords and I'd write stuff just from those three chords."

Then they started playing a few gigs. They used to nick the college minibus, (under the pretence of borrowing it for a course outing) rip all the seats out, cram the gear in and go down to the Green Man pub, in Plumstead. This gradually gave Bruce the on stage experience he would need to crack at the big time.

Speed was just one of those bands that didn't last very long, but it gave Bruce the belief and encouraged him to delve even further into musicianship. One day Bruce spotted an ad in Melody Maker saying "Singer wanted for recording project". Since he had never been near a recording studio he replied immediately. He "wailed, wolfed, hollered and made noises" onto a tape and with it went a note that read; "By the way, if you think the singing's crap, there's some John Cleese stuff recorded on the other side you might find amusing." They liked what they heard and Bruce came down to the studio. The band was called "Shots" and were formed by two brothers, Phil and Doug Siviter.

They were amazed by Bruce's vocal abilities and they started talking about what music they liked. "I started saying Ian Gillan, Ian Anderson, Arthur Brown, and Doug goes, 'That's it! Fucking Arthur Brown, man! Sometimes your voice is a dead ringer for Arthur! We've got to form a band.' This guy's got a studio and he wants to from a band with me! I was like 'Yes'."

Bruce started playing pubs with Shots but nobody was really interested, until one night, when Bruce all of a sudden stopped in the middle of a song and started interviewing a guy in the audience, making fun of him for not paying enough attention. He got such a good response he started doing it every night until it became a regular routine. "Suddenly everybody was paying attention, cause they might be next. The first time I did it, afterwards the landlord of the pub was like ' Great show, lads, See you next week'. So we started sort of building this bit into the show. And that was when I first started to get the hang of, just not being a singer, but being a frontman, too."

The next step in Bruce's career was taken in a pub called the Prince of Wales in Gravesend, Kent, where Shots were playing regularly. One night a Mr Barry Graham (known to others as "Thunderstick") and a certain Paul Samson paid a visit. The legend says that Thunderstick, who was there in his every day guise, became the victim of Bruce's gimmick. "He looked a bit weird so I did a spiel on it".

Obviously impressed with his stage-act Thunderstick and Paul had a chat with Bruce & co after the gig. A couple of weeks later Paul called and asked him if he was willing to join their band, Samson. Bruce was of course interested since this meant he could play all these big gigs in London. Bruce really wanted to "do things with a bit of a weird edge to it". By then Shots had almost become a heavy metal comedy act. The show had completely taken over the music.

The next stage was that Bruce went along to see a Samson show. "I said, well look, the only problem I have with that is that I'm taking my degree examinations and I said can you wait for three weeks whilst I do these exams? They said yeah, that's alright."

Actually getting his degree had never seemed important - until he realised he might not get the chance to even take his final exams until he put his extracurricular activities to one side, at least for a short time. "They tried to throw me out for non-payment of rent, because I spent all my college grant cheque on buying a PA for the band. I used to hide when the rent inspectors came round. Also, I'd failed all of my second year exams, so they had a pretty good case really, But I was Ents Officer for the Student Union and in those days it carried a bit of weight. So they relented and in the end, I did six long essays in the space of two weeks, that normally took people six months to do, and got great marks in all of them, and they just let me stay in." He managed to secure a 2:ii, which is what everybody else got, anyway.

Samson

Formed by Sidcup-born guitarist Paul Samson in 1977, the band had already been established with their debut, "Survivors", released on an independent label, receiving raving reviews. The band toured quite extensively in the UK along side with the other fore runners of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Bruce finished his final exams in the morning and in the afternoon he went down to Wood Wharf Studios in Greenwich to rehearse with them.

Since he was not sure of what to expect from a professional rock band - Samson had a record deal and a management - he decided just to jump in and make the best of it. "In fact, the first rehearsals I went down to with Samson pretty much set the scene for my entire time in the band. I left my girlfriend who I had been with for three years at University. I told her I was gonna turn into a complete arsehole. I thought it was what I was gonna have to do, frankly. Because it was not at all what I expected. In my naivety I thought people who were in rock 'n' roll bands were great artists, and it was a huge shock to the system to realise that they weren't, that they didn't even aspire to be, really. Some of them did, maybe, but some of them, like Samson, were very frightened of the idea, some of them just wanted to have a good drink, a good shag and take some drugs, and I found that really, really difficult to relate to. I thought 'I've got to find out if I'm gonna work with these guys and we're gonna make music'. And as soon as I sort of accepted that, I thought 'Right, I'd better go down and find out what all this drug-taking and shagging's all about then'."

He did smoke a bit already and he had even tried dope at college. And in Samson it was more of a habit. "I discovered quickly that if you were straight you couldn't actually communicate with anybody. It was impossible. So I just thought I'd have to smoke a joint, otherwise I wouldn't be able to write anything, and that's pretty much how it went. I more or less resigned myself to it. I thought it was just part of the price that had to be paid. To be honest, every single thing I ever did at that time, I believed it was just a step towards my goal, of just wanting to be a singer in a rock 'n' roll band."

Bruce nowadays refers to his time in the band as "a blur of chemicals". But he was never into the hard stuff. When it came to illegal highs, marijuana was his biggest personal vice.

During the first rehearsals they wrote a bunch of songs that would be recorded and released on the album called 'Head on'. "I had loads of stuff kicking around and they had loads of bits so we just glued it all together." The songs were slipped into the live set on the coming tour, which was to promote the "Survivors" album. This was quite a step forward for Bruce as his first real tour was third on the bill with Randy California and his all time hero Ian Gillan.

During his time in Samson Bruce was, bizarrely, billed as 'Bruce Bruce' (derived from the Monty Python sketch about the Australian philosophers), a nick that was forced upon him by their management. They insisted on making all the checks out to "Bruce Bruce" which had the effect that Bruce had to go through enormous trouble to cash them in.

The management was one of Samson's reoccurring problems. They booked the band on rather ill matched support tours and had them playing a place and then come back one week later to play the same place but with another act. Eventually it all ended up in high court leaving the band unable to play gigs and get paid. And when the legal side of things were settled and the band left their management in 1981 they discovered that their record company was going bankrupt. "We made every mistake in the business" Bruce acknowledges.

Frustrated with the fact that the band never seemed to get anywhere, Bruce had contacted guitarist Stuart Smith with the idea of forming a band. They had a few rehearsals and wrote some material together but then Samson seemed to get a better deal and the obvious thing for him to do was to stick with them.

The state of the artistry in itself in the band wasn't the best either. "We actually had a lot of really good ideas but we were pretty limited. I mean, Thunderstick had great drumming ideas, but was really short on the ability to execute them." Thunderstick, the mad drummer, was wearing a mask, pouring beer over his head on stage and refusing to utter human sounds in public. He also wanted a cage bout round him on stage. "We actually had this cage built and in the true Spinal Tap fashion we couldn't get into any of the gigs. The only place we could use it was the Reading Festival where he insisted on it. It was like a budgie's cage actually. He insisted on it being covered with a cloth so people wouldn't know what it was".

"But Samson worked together as this crazy, fucked up set-up. We used to play some terrible shows and we used to play some brilliant shows and you never know what you're gonna get. I was the heavy rock, Heavy metal end of Samson and Paul was a traditional rock blues boogie guy and we glued the two things together and got this exciting sound." As the band developed it became more and more obvious that the main men were evolving in very different directions. "The 'Shock tactics' album I did with them and in many ways the best. It had a clear direction but it wasn't a direction Paul was happy with. He wanted it to be more bluesy guitar orientated. But it was the first time I discovered a voice that was really my own."

During the Shock Tactics tour (nicknamed the "We don't give a f**k about the petrol bill tour" due to the appalling routing) Thunderstick left the band and was replaced with Mel Gaynor, a black Funk/Rock drummer who was in the band very briefly and later ended up in Simple Minds(!). "When you took Thunderstick out of the equation and replaced him with Mel, this phenomenal drummer, there was no excitement in it there anymore. When he played he played everything perfectly. Everything was in time, there was no mistakes, there was no danger anymore. So I got bored. I had time to think about the shopping list on stage and that's not good. And I realised that this was what Paul wanted. It enabled him to go into more ZZ top, boogie sort of areas."

Bruce's last gig with the band was at the Reading Festival in 1981, a gig which was immortalised by the BBC and subsequently released on the album "Live at Reading 81". "Listening to some of these old tracks they stand up really well" says Bruce. "Certainly all the stuff on 'Shock tactics' does. When you hear the Reading Live album the band was really cooking. And the songs don't sound dated at all."

Around that time, Iron Maiden had began considering change of vocalist due to of increasing problems with Paul DiAnno. Steve Harris says: "Right from the very first time I heard Bruce singing on stage with Samson, I remember thinking, 'Blimey, that singer's fucking great!'" So Steve Harris and manager Rod Smallwood came to Reading to check Bruce out for the job. Samson went down by storm and Bruce was asked to come down to auditions for the band.

Iron Maiden

After the invitation he'd spent a week rehearsing with Maiden and recorded some demos, and was totally convinced that they were the band for him. "When I first heard Maiden I got the same buzz of them I did when I heard Deep Purple In Rock. It was like a steam train coming at you and none of the other bands did that anymore. I really wanted to be the in their band."

Bruce saw his time in Samson as an education rather than any kind of career move. So when he was offered the gig in Maiden there was no need for Bruce to think twice. "Half the time in Samson we were so fucked up. We used to smoke a lot of dope we used to drink a lot and we used to do a lot of chemicals and go on stage in that state. I kind of stopped doing that when I joined Maiden cause it became obvious that Maiden was not that kind of a band."

Bruce discovered that the routines in Maiden were very strict and regimented. Where Samson would just fool around aimlessly Maiden were working with a very clear idea of the result. "The intention behind that changed after the first couple of records for me, because it became obvious that Maiden worked to a time table. A table that wasn't absolute but it had to be stuck to. 'Now you'll write for six weeks, now you'll make a record for three months, now you're rehearsing for two weeks, now you'll tour for eight months'. It was organised like that and that seemed to suit the style of writing of the band."

After a few gigs to break him in they started writing new material for their third album. This was the first time the band had to write an entire new album, in opposite to the two previous which basically consisted of songs the band had been playing for years, with a couple of exceptions on Killers. The album, The Number of the Beast, was put together in five weeks. In the wake of Samson's contractual problems Bruce couldn't be credited on the songs to which he contributed. "I think you could say I had a very big moral contribution to certain songs. Like 'Children of the Damned', 'Run to the Hills' and 'The Prisoner' Those three songs were the songs in which I had the biggest moral contribution." "Moral contribution" meaning he had just as much to do with the writing of the song as anybody else.

"Run to the Hills" was a huge hit in the UK peaking at no 7 in the charts and the album and the following world tour was the bands most successful to date. Bruce almost immediately received a new nickname, "The Airraid Siren". "It was a name given to me by someone who was less than complementary about my singing. He said 'The new singer sounds as if he's putting all the old songs through an airraid siren.' And it kind of stuck with me ever since."

During the Beast tour Bruce had grew into the role as the bands frontman and the next two albums, Piece of Mind and Powerslave, showed a very tight and creative band. With Adrian and Bruce contributing with half of the songs on the albums, Steve's monopoly of the song writing would be pushed aside in favour for the other guys ideas. "It wasn't always easy, we didn't always agree... In fact we fought like cat and dog at various stages, but we made great music." Musically this was extremely beneficial to the band. Not having to produce as many songs as before, Steve showed a huge improvement as a song writer. Songs like "To Tame a Land" or "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" were bombastic epics where the more operatic elements of Bruce's voice were thoroughly explored. Just as the scope of their music had widened, so too had the breadth of their musical vision. The lyrics were functional, generally intelligent and, at times, thought provoking.

On the Powerslave tour Bruce was sporting a feathered, supposedly Egypt-inspired, mask during the title track. This was an attempt to introduce more theatrical elements into the stage show. "The mask was an attempt to go in that direction. It was about as far as you could go in Maiden. That tour I think was the best tour the band did that I was on. All around in terms of material, the performance and everything." It was, in many ways the peak of the bands career, in terms of sales and popularity, but it was also what could have caused the bands final demise. The tour lasted for over a year as dates kept being added all the time. "It got to the point where me and Steve said 'If they add another weeks shows to this tour, we're both going home.'" Bruce continues, "I thought of leaving. If it's gonna carry on like this, if I'm gonna feel bad all the time, this imprisoned, then I don't really want to go on tour."

After a well deserved six month break, of which Bruce spent a great deal indulging in his favourite sport, fencing, Maiden were about to start writing for a new album but he wasn't 100% up to it. "When it came to writing for a new album, whenever I started to write very 'eavy metal things, I found I was thinking along these lines, you know, 'I should do one of these, one of those.' So I ended up writing a lot of different things instead for bagpipes, folk things, stuff like Jethro Tull. Bang went my royalties."

It was rather disappointing that the band didn't feel they could take any of Bruce's esoteric ideas into the new studio-session. "Maiden was not the kind of band which I would term experimental. In the early days they were doing stuff that was very different, but it didn't stay that different, It didn't continue the process. It pretty much developed into a formula." He continues; "After Live After Death I think that Maiden had become quite civilised. And I saw my position in the band as being the one to try and take Steve's ideas, reinvent them and fuck around with it as much as I could, or as much as he allowed." With the album, Somewhere In Time, the band seemed afraid to stray too far away from the established Maiden-sound. It didn't offer anything new, and that was dissatisfactory in the wake of Powerslave.

Ironically it was the tour that followed that brought back Maiden to their very best. It was during this tour that Bruce started writing what would become his first published novel, The adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace. "Plotting it out was the doddle. It came from a series of mad conversations, actually, that all gestated together along with some Sherlock Holmes, some Biggles and Penthouse, and out it came." It was released in 1990 and due to Maiden's extremely loyal fans 40,000 copies were sold, on the strength of which he produced a sequel, titled The Missionary Position, in 1992.

When the Somewhere In Time tour was finished they were genuinely looking forward to the next album, and that would make a world of difference to what was to come. "I must say, when we got to Seventh Son... I was quite optimistic about that album. I think it was the last really good record the band made and it was a record where everybody was really trying hard to come up with directions, but it was so slow developing that record and it took such a long time to record it. But it was a pretty good record." This was also unexplored territory for the band as it was a concept album. Steve had written the song "The Clairvoyant" and Bruce really liked the idea and the band was quite keen on doing the entire album based around this character with the gift of clairvoyance.

When the recordings were finished in December 1987 Bruce moved to Bonn to that he could be close to the West Germany training centre for fencing. At the end of the 80s Bruce was at the peak of his fencing career, eventually ranked as high as 7th in Great Britain in the men's foil discipline, while his club side, the Hemel Hempstead Fencing Club, represented Great Britain in the European Cup of 1989. Bruce might even have been able to make the Olympic games in 1992 but the closest he ever got to the Olympics was his involvement Duellist Ltd., a fencing company which sponsored James Williams (sabre), the only UK fencer at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1994.

After the Seventh Son... tour 1988 which climaxed when Maiden headlined the Donington festival in front of 107,000 people the band had decided to take a well deserved year off. Rumours were floating around that the band was splitting up, as various members were seen doing different stuff on their own. In 1989 Zomba was looking for someone to do a track to the movie Nightmare on Elm Street Part 5 and Bruce was asked to contribute. There was a budget, a studio and a producer, which was Chris Tsangarides. Bruce was delighted to get this opportunity and immediately phoned up an old friend of his, Janick Gers. Within three minutes after meeting up they had the track "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter" ready for the studio. Zomba really liked the track so much that they asked Bruce if he had other material like that lying around, to which he had responded "Yes," lying through his teeth.

With assistance from the same people as on the previous single - Andy Carr on bass, Fabio del Rio on drums and Janick on guitar - Bruce's intention was to do something he wouldn't normally do in Maiden and the album was written and recorded in two weeks. Bruce regarded this album as a follow up from where he left off with Shock Tactics in Samson, in terms of the attitude.

Around this time Bruce did an appearance in one episode of the TV-series Paradise Club, playing the part of a rock guitarist wanting to break free from the dictatorship of his record company. Some tracks were recorded by Bruce & Co. to be used in the episode, mainly cover tracks, with exception of "Ballad of Mutt" which Bruce played solo on an acoustic guitar.

The album, Tattooed Millionaire, was released in May 1990 and, ironically enough, the song that had started it all off, "Bring Your Daughter..." was not on it since Steve had heard it and insisted on having it on the next Maiden album. By this time, Janick had replaced Adrian in Maiden and the mini world club tour that Bruce & Co. embarked upon during the summer introduced his audience to the new Maiden guitarist. The same band was used as in the studio except for Fabio del Rio who was replaced by Dickie Fliszar. Bruce's first solo adventure left behind it a well attended tour and a couple of hit singles. "If anything, the joy of doing my own album had made me sure I was happy where I was."

With Janick in the league, Maiden was flooded with energy and enthusiasm. Bruce says, "There were several ways the band could have gone at that point but as it turned out, the next one, No prayer for the dying, was a huge backward-step, I thought." The idea was to make a low key, very street sounding, album, but the production - it was recorded with a mobile studio in their rehearsal room - was just not right.

When it came to making a new album in 1992, Bruce was thrusted by the fact that Dream Theater's demos sounded infinitely better than No Prayer... and determined to make sure the over all sound of the album would be given a good treat. By now Steve had set up a studio of his own and it was a foregoing conclusion that the new album, Fear of the dark, would be recorded there. "I think it was the first album where we were attempting to recapture something in the past. In many ways I think that we were looking backwards to other albums that we've done in the past while other bands are looking forward to something new."

As a writer Bruce was expanding his horizons and was no longer willing to be confined by the typical Iron Maiden fare. Some of his lyrics on Fear of the Dark were dealing with serious issues, such as AIDS and the backside of promiscuity, and the change in his lyrical stance might have been greeted with a more sympathetic hearing if he'd had a real sense of the new direction he wanted them to go in.

Bruce always thought of himself as more than a singer in Iron Maiden. He had been a top fencer, written two novels, done some acting and was doing an increasing amount of guest DJ-ing on various radio-stations. Having settled with his wife, Paddy, and their firstborn, might have changed his perspective and his view of his roll in life. He was now a different man.

His US label, Sony, asked him if he could do another solo album, and as he was feeling, kind of, bored and looking for other things to do, it would offer a welcome "break." The Fear of the Dark tour was divided into two parts and in the gap between Bruce entered the studio to record his second solo album, backed by the band Skin, again with Chris Tsangarides at the technical helm. Manager Rod Smallwood emphasised that if Bruce was to make a solo record he'd better do a really good one. This had the effect that Bruce went full-stop and canned the whole thing on the merit that it sounded too much average metal. "I realised I was just going along with the flow, making my solo album in the same way we were motoring on with Maiden."

This is when Bruce first started questioning his ambitions. He wanted to break out of the routine and do something "really out there." So off he went to America to record with producer Keith Olsen. "The recording was basically put together electronically, written on computers and keyboards," Bruce explains. "I wanted to do something quite unusual and quite mad." With the feeling of being tossed between two camps, Bruce started thinking of leaving the band. "I wore a groove in the kitchen floor for that one." He was playing the devil's advocate with himself, only to come to the conclusion that he would do neither parties any good if he went on in Maiden half-hearted. So, in January 1993 he announced he was leaving, agreeing to complete the second part of the tour, although this is something both him and Maiden regret doing, looking back at it.

Solo career

His career outside Iron Maiden started with the recording of "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter" which appears on the A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child soundtrack and Disc Two of The Best of Bruce Dickinson album. A different version of the song was recorded by Iron Maiden for the No Prayer for the Dying album. The original version got him a studio deal for a full album. Along with friend and soon-to-be Iron Maiden guitarist Janick Gers, Dickinson wrote the Tattooed Millionaire album within two weeks. The result was a rather poppy rock album with surprisingly fun, solid songwriting. It was, however, far away from Iron Maiden's heavy metal sound and fantasy lyricism - the baudy sexual innuendoes of "Dive, Dive, Dive!" would never find themselves on one of Iron Maiden's releases. It is possible that some of the songs are leftover ideas from the Somewhere in Time sessions, in which Dickinson presented more experimental ideas to Steve Harris who was not convinced, thus leading to a complete absence of Dickinson songwriting credits on that album.

Before the release of his second effort, Balls to Picasso, Dickinson left Iron Maiden and went through two different efforts with two sets of different collaborators. The first was with Myke Gray of the band Skin, and the second with the producer Keith Olsen. Of the second, a few songs surfaced as B-sides and one, "No Way Out... Continued" appears on the 2-disc The Best of Bruce Dickinson collection. Dickinson was not happy with the majority of the material on these efforts. Salvation came at last in the form of Tribe of Gypsies guitarist Roy Z. He agreed to work with Dickinson to improve the Keith Olsen album and ended replacing all of it except "Tears of the Dragon". Balls to Picasso was recorded with the Tribe of Gypsies and was a far more mature record than Tattooed Millionaire, with some very well-crafted songs, spurred along with the melodic and shredding leads of Roy Z.

The Tribe departed to tour and record under their own steam, leaving Dickinson to track down another band. Dickinson's new writing partner was Alex Dickson, and after touring his current song catalogue (documented on Alive in Studio A) with him and the rest of the new band, sat down to write Skunkworks. The idea was that the band would be called that, but the record company insisted Dickinson's name be on the release. Dickinson likened that to David Bowie attempting to do the same with Tin Machine and how it did not work for him either. The album is often described as grunge, which while not wholly accurate does convey the idea that the songs are rather short, with relatively brief guitar solos and overall less of a metal edge.

The Skunkworks entity ceased to be after the touring due to musical differences (Dickinson wanted the next album to be more metal), and after a period of inactivity Dickinson once again teamed up with Roy Z to record Accident Of Birth. Adrian Smith was asked to guest but played on the whole album and tour. The album marked a return to heavy metal for Dickinson; in fact the album could be considered to be heavier than Iron Maiden. It was a big success and for the first time, a follow up was inevitable. The Chemical Wedding, a semi-concept album on alchemy and the writings of William Blake followed. This record proved to be even more successful, with engaging lyrics and powerful songs. Scream for Me Brazil was a live album that documented a show of the Chemical Wedding tour, and featured songs from the last two albums and two from Balls to Picasso.

The Best of Bruce Dickinson album with two new Roy Z songs and a limited edition disc of rarities was released in 2001. Dickinson is said to have wanted to record another album with Roy Z, but he was busy with Judas Priest vocalist, Rob Halford, and the window of opportunity was missed. Tyranny of Souls was finally released in May 2005. This time the songwriting was all split between Roy Z and Dickinson, with Roy playing all guitars and even basses in some songs. Much of the writing was done by Roy sending recordings of riffs to Dickinson which he wrote lyrics and melodies for while on tour. With the release of Tyranny of Souls, Dickinson's back catalogue was reissued with a bonus disc of extra tracks for each album except The Chemical Wedding and the two live albums, the latter of which were packaged together in a three-disc set.

A three-disc DVD package, named simply Anthology, was released June 2006 and contains three concerts from his career, promo videos and footage from his Samson days.

Discography

Speed

  • Man In The Street (1980)

Samson

Iron Maiden

Bruce Dickinson

Iron Maiden Videos/DVDs

Bruce Dickinson Videos/DVDs

  • Dive! Dive! Live! (1991)
  • Skunkworks Live Video (1997)
  • Anthology (June 19 2006)

Misc. Appearances

Current members of solo band

Roy Z - guitars ,(bass) (1992 - 1995 . 1997 - current )

Former/session members of solo band

Adrian Smith - guitars (1997 - 1999)

Eddie Casillas - bass (1992-1995, 1997-1999)

Dave Ingraham - drums (1992-1995, 1997-1999)

Doug Van Booven - percussions ( 1992-1995)

Alex Dickson- guitars ( 1995-1997 )

Janick Gers- guitars (1989-1992 )

Andy Carr- bass ( 1989-1992 )

Chris Dale- bass (1995-1997)

Fabio Del Rio-drums (1989-1992)

Alessandro Elena- drums (1995-1997)

Ray "Geezer" Burke - session bass on Tyranny of souls

Juan Perez - session bass on Tyranny of souls

David Moreno - session drums on Tyranny of souls

Giuseppe "Maestro Mistheria" Iampieri - session keyboards on Tyranny of souls

Trivia

  • Rod Smallwood did not originally want Bruce in Iron Maiden because of a grudge he held against his former band, Samson. After an audition it was agreed that Bruce could be in the band if he bought a leather jacket and started to use his real name instead of his former stage-name, Bruce Bruce, which Smallwood thought sounded "daft".
  • In the Early Days documentary Bruce mentioned that he and Harris had scuffles when he joined the band as to where they both would stand during the show since both wanted to be at centre-stage. Originally Harris would elbow Bruce out of the way, Bruce returned the favour by adding an extra-long stand to his microphone which caused Harris to trip over it.
  • Also in the Early Days documentary he described an incident where Ozzy Osbourne wanted the two of them to "Nick a cab and ride it across the hills".
  • Bruce Dickinson says he gets bored very easily so between recording albums and touring with Iron Maiden, he records solo albums, presents TV shows, writes books, presents radio shows and works for an airline company as first officer. His main interest outside all that is Fencing. He is a skilled fencer and was asked to join the Great Britain Olympic Fencing team for the '92 Olympics.
  • Dickinson airlifted 200 British citizens who had fled war torn Beirut, Lebanon back to the UK on July 20, 2006. He picked up the evacuees in Cyprus on a Boeing 757 and flew them back to London's Gatwick Airport.

Bibliography

Audio

External links

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