Iron Maiden “We Could Never Replace Bruce At Thus Stage Of Our Career” Bruce Dickenson Response ” It’s a very humbling thought, but let’s not go there again. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, you never know what’s going to happen until you’re there in the moment. Who’d have thought that Axl Rose would sing for AC/DC?”
WHEN your singing voice is known as ‘The Air Raid Siren’ naturally Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson had major concerns after invasive radiation and surgery for throat cancer last year.
Praise the dark metal gods that the ‘Siren’ has not been diminished to something akin to the distress call of a smoke alarm with a dying battery.
Indeed Dickinson is surprised that parts of his booming voice have had a Six Million Dollar Man-style improvement post surgery.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that some bits of my voice are better than they were before,” Dickinson says. “The top end of my voice is really belting at the moment. I’m not sure what to attribute that to but I’m not going to question it. When they did all the radiation s— they were busy whizzing beams through my throat they were shooting in the dark a little bit.
“The doc did say he was going to miss my larynx completely. There’s a few bits where you go ‘Ah, OK, this has changed a little bit’ but I’m not sure how much of that is noticed by anyone else. It’s a work in process. It’s a lot stronger than I imagined. In some senses even stronger.”
Dickinson is the first to state that if he couldn’t sing to the best of his former abilities, there’d be no tour.
“I couldn’t do it,” he said. “I couldn’t look the audience in the face and know it wasn’t happening.”
Dickinson’s cancer shock saw the release of Maiden’s 16th studio album The Book Of Soulsdelayed, with the world tour pushed back to this year.
Maiden bassist Steve Harris admitted he’d pondered the band’s future had Dickinson been unable to perform after his cancer treatment. Dickinson already left the band once — in 1993 for a solo career, replaced by Blaze Bailey — before returning in 1999.
“We can’t really replace Bruce anyway, so we wouldn’t try at this stage in our career,” Harris said this year. “We didn’t even consider it. There’s no point. The main thing is that he’s okay … thank God we are still together.”
Dickinson was chuffed at being considered irreplaceable by his band.
“It’s a very humbling thought, but let’s not go there again. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, you never know what’s going to happen until you’re there in the moment. Who’d have thought that Axl Rose would sing for AC/DC?”
As someone who’s seen his band mates play on with a different singer, what did Dickinson think ofBrian Johnson being replaced by Axl Rose?
“It’s an odd situation. I hope Brian can get some respite for whatever his medical issue is, he’s a lovely guy. There’s just Angus (Young) in AC/DC now as far as original members. I hope Angus ends up holding up the amazing reputation and the name of AC/DC. It’d be horrible to see it end with people not turning up on stage or being very late. I hope it works out OK for everyone.”
Maiden’s Book Of Souls tour is not an exercise in taking it easy after Dickinson’s recovery from cancer. They’re playing 72 shows in 36 countries over six continents in seven months, with trained pilot Dickinson on double duty flying their own customised Boeing 747-400 Ed Force One.
“I’m the youngest guy in the band and I’m 57,” Dickinson says. “We just did eight shows in 12 days in the US and Canada with no days off. The days in-between are travel days, no rest, and it’s a two hour show with some tough vocal numbers.”
The travel days are extra work for Dickinson, who has already clocked up the requisite training hours on the new aircraft, prompting an Icelandic airline to offer him work flying the plane for regular passengers once the Maiden tour is over.
“It’s a fantastic aeroplane,” Dickinson said. The bespoke Boeing was involved in an accident last month where it hit a tow truck while being taken for refuelling after landing in Chile.
“The airline did an amazing job at fixing the damage,” he says.
“They basically replaced the two engines that had been totalled.
“I’ve flown every sector on this tour so far, except for two during the chunk when we were very busy. So I sat in the back and chilled, even though I’m travelling at least I’m not working and having to talk on the radio and shout at people, I could be a bit less stressed.
“There’s 12-hour flights, nine-hour timezone changes, we have 24-hour rests and dive into the next show. When the manager booked this tour it wasn’t sure what he was thinking! I asked if everyone else was okay with it, he said yeah. They asked ‘Is Bruce was okay with it?’, he said yeah. So when we all got together on the tour we said ‘What the f— is this!’ But it was a case of ‘he said you said he said it was okay!’ It’s going really well. The band is unbelievable, people tell us it’s sounding extraordinary. There’s a really palpable atmosphere every night that people are seeing something special.”
The Book Of Souls was a truly epic release — 11 tracks and a 92 minute running time. The tour features six songs from the new album — that’s a lot of gig time.
“Between the title track and The Red and the Blackthat’s nearly 20 minutes plus, they’re pretty lengthy songs,” Dickinson says.
For a band this far into their career, it’s also far from a greatest hits set, although The Number Of the Beast gets a run as well as fan-pleasers from the early ‘80s Children Of the Damned andPowerslave.
“We’re not a karaoke band,” Dickinson says. “At the same time we love a bit of the heritage stuff. The setlist is fantastic, we’re mixing it up in such a great way, it really works. There’s not a moment in the set when I’m not 100-per-cent confident we’re not playing the right song.”
After the tour ends Dickinson has several possible projects lined-up. Merchandise-wise there’ll be a model version of Ed Force One and another in their Trooper beverage line, this time stout.
“It’s called Red’n’Black,” Dickinson says. “It’s a variant on an imperial stout, 6.8 per cent alcohol and it’s great tasting. It’s got a very retro label, inspired by the Crimean War.”
He’s also plotting another solo album, which will be his first since 2005.
“I’ve got a third of a record sitting there gathering dust. One of the tracks was If Eternity Should Fail,which we used on the Maiden album, that should give people a clue what some of it will be like.”
And after several fictional books, Harper Collins have signed Dickinson to do his version of his memoirs.
“It’ll be a book of tall tales,” he says. “I’m not doing a biography because I hope that’s a little bit early yet. I’ve done quite a few odd and peculiar things in my life, not just Iron Maiden, there’s a few good stories kicking around. The main idea of the book is to entertain other people, not entertain myself. They won’t be works of fiction but on occasion you think you couldn’t make it up.
“I’m conscious of trying to do quality stuff and not just rush things,” he adds. “This is a long tour, we won’t be done until August. Before I do anything I’m going to have a lie down in a darkened room with a case of Trooper.”
Dickinson hopes going public with his throat cancer, and returning to work, will provoke people to get themselves tested.
“Anyone who gets a lump in the side of their neck that doesn’t go away and isn’t a cold don’t assume it’s an abscess or a cyst, go and get it properly checked. Throat cancer doesn’t discriminate. It used to be something men who were old and drank and smoked a lot got. Not any more. There’s a new epidemic of fit men getting this. The good news is that so many examples of it are treatable and dare I say it curable. It goes away and it doesn’t come back. The type of cancer that it is is almost a different type to all the others. If you’re going to get cancer, this isn’t a bad one to get although the treatment can be unpleasant. It’s not unpleasant when you’re alive at the end of it.”
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