TAKEN FROM BEAT INTERNET SITE: lol
Iron Maiden: Date: 30 Jan 2008
Issue: Beat #1100
by Gav Ross
At the age of 49, Bruce Dickinson has achieved some pretty remarkable things during his time on earth thus far. Leading the ultimate British metal band Iron Maiden as vocalist through an enormous period of success during the ‘80s and early ‘90s, then making a triumphant return to the group in ‘99, is but one accomplishment. He’s also a dab hand at being a radio host, flying planes (actual jumbo jets, not small ones), fencing at an international level of competition, writing some best-selling books and recording several excellent solo albums. All that aside, he reports that he still enjoys the relaxing benefits of a good drink over the Christmas break as much as any regular bloke.
“Well, Christmas recovery, really,” he adds ruefully. “The old liver is still in shock. In fact, I think I unzipped it and it has run screaming down the road, but I’m sure it’ll return in time for the tour.”
The tour in question is aptly named Somewhere Back In Time and it sees Maiden visiting Australia for the first time in over 15 long, long years. Aussie fans may have missed out on the Blaze Bailey-era tours of the mid-‘90s, the reunion shows and subsequent world tours on the tail of comeback albums Brave New World and Dance Of Death, but it seems as if the agonising wait and disappointment over the years is about to be washed away with a show that encompasses the band’s undisputed ‘golden years’, namely that glorious period between 1982 and 1988.
This tour is focusing on albums Piece Of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son with maybe a few cuts from the few albums before that thrown in for good measure. The exact song selection appears to be tightly under wraps until the first show in Mumbai on February 1.
“Yes, it is,” Bruce says firmly. “But I have to say that it’s a pretty bloody stunning set-list. There were also a couple of ones from Number Of The Beast that we looked at and thought ‘well we can’t not play those’, so it really is going to be absolutely amazing. Even we forget sometimes how many iconic songs the band has produced over the years. When you put them all back to back and stick Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner in the middle you think ‘holy cow!’.”
Did the front-man just accidentally slip that they’re going to be playing Powerslave’s most epic track?
“Oh go on then, all right, yeah,” he chuckles. “That didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”
This current tour actually has a lot in common with Iron Maiden’s first visit to Australia in the mid-‘80s, when the band were backed by a mammoth Egyptian-inspired stage set-up. Dickinson remembers that particular tour for a number of reasons.
“In 84/85, I was very single and very available, so I have lots of very fond memories (and) I actually had an encounter with an osteopath over there who was very helpful,” he recalls vaguely. “It was after another encounter that was like an episode out of a Bon Scott lyric really; something to do with women and thighs and, anyway, someone sat on my head in a very pleasurable way and when I woke up in the morning I couldn’t move! I thought ‘Christ, I’ve got to go and do a gig and I can’t move my neck!’ Australia left its mark on me.”
Both times that Iron Maiden have left their mark Down Under in the last 24 years they’ve played at large venues like Festival Hall to sizeable crowds. It’s rather astonishing that this time around they’re not only playing at an upgrade like Rod Laver Arena, but it’s for two nights and they’ve sold out both of them. When Dickinson is informed that another musical luminary, Justin Timberlake, had played said venue recently, his tone turns quite serious.
“Well, we’ll have to do something about that,” he says. “Is his ghost walking the corridors? We’ll have to go and exorcise that.”
The ticket sale response in Australia is just one of many examples of Maiden’s popularity surge in the last few years. In the ‘80s, they were beyond massive as it was, and then although they may have faded into the background somewhat during the ‘90s, a dedicated fan-base numbering the millions still remained worldwide. Now, in 2008, the band seems to have gained respect and admiration from legions of younger fans, even some that probably weren’t even born the last time they played in Melbourne.
“In some parts of the world it’s getting to sort of like Rolling Stones proportions,” Dickinson muses. “I mean, like when they were at their peak; they’re probably in a gentle decline now in terms of ‘you have to go see The Rolling Stones’. I think that with us and what we’ve been doing, so much of our activity has been based on new material. What that’s done is it has generated a whole wave of 13-16 year old fans worldwide. Those are the people that keep the whole thing alive and make it grow, really. Like in Scandinavia we’re doing six shows and playing to a quarter million people. No rock band in history has ever done that. We never played to that many people in the ‘80s and ‘90s or anything. There’s almost like a slingshot effect you get from doing a really cool new album (2006’s phenomenal A Matter Of Life & Death) that gets great reviews and we went out and played the whole thing back to back. It was kind of controversial and lots of people went ‘wow, this is a hell of a gamble’ but it worked and thankfully our audience loved it.”
More importantly, the singer also believes that it’s the consistent quality of the material the band has released both recently and in the past that has allowed them to become not just a popular band, but an institution.
“Most bands actually have a three or four year window,” he explains. “If you look at Zeppelin or Purple or all these kinds of bands who are our mentors when we were growing up; they usually have a tight window of 3 or 4 albums. After that people are like ‘yeah, they’re ok but these are the classic three albums.’ But Maiden had like a 10 year run of stuff, it’s extraordinary.”
The classic album run didn’t end with a crash and burn, but it’s no secret that Dickinson has expressed disappointment in 1990’s No Prayer For The Dying – an album that, whilst containing some excellent tracks, failed to deliver the standard of excellence fans had so long been given. This was even though the disc contained the single Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter – a track that, funnily enough, saw Maiden reach #1 on the UK charts for the first time. Bruce’s departure just a few years later gave indication that the golden years of Iron Maiden were indeed probably over. One wonders if the band could ever have reached the stratospheric level of popularity they’re at now if the vocalist stuck with the group?
“I tend not to think back and do ‘what ifs’,” he says quite simply. “That’s pretty pointless because it’s already happened. I’m more of a chap that looks forward and says ‘what if?’ rather than the other way around. I think that if I’d stayed with Maiden we may have fallen too much into a bit of a comfort zone. I think we would probably still be going but I don’t think it’d be anything near this big. When I left, for all the trauma it caused – and sometimes a bit of trauma is good to stir the passions a bit – it was never my intention to cause trauma but inevitably it was going to.
“Just from the point of view of singing and being a musician and a performer, I learned so much about the real world when I was outside of Maiden. You’re exposed to the elements. Like when Spartans used to leave their babies on the hill and they’d died it was like ‘oh well, tough - that wasn’t a good one anyway’. Leaving Maiden was the same sort of thing; it was like ‘ok it’s exposure time, if I’ve got anything useful left in me this is going to reveal it and if not well why prolong the agony?’ In actual fact, my discovery and coming up with (solo albums) Chemical Wedding and Accident Of Birth and doing those tours that I did got me going massively again. So when I rejoined Maiden all that stuff came back into the pot and I think we came out with some cracking albums which surprised a lot of people.”
Above all else, Maiden can pride themselves in never succumbing to commercial pressures and doing something ‘extra-curricular’ that could have tarnished their legacy.
“There are very few bands who have been together as long as we have and haven’t somewhere sort of lost a chunk of their credibility, either by going and doing something daft or, dare I say it, reality TV shows,” Bruce says. “Maiden never has and that’s very important. If you’re a kid and you grow up with a band and you’re suddenly seeing them doing something (like that) you can feel really let down and think ‘they’re the same as everybody else’. Maiden are not the same as everybody else and that’s why we’re at where we’re at now. I’m very proud of that fact and we just have to make sure we don’t slip and slide into corporate monster syndrome, but I don’t think we will because we’ve been around the block enough times and we enjoy it too much, frankly. We’re just going around having a great laugh. Iron Maiden is like a big sandpit for grown-ups and that’s what it’s like for us on stage. Where else do you get to dress in tights and run around yelling and screaming and get pissed afterwards? It’s fantastic!”
Iron Maiden bring their Somewhere Back In Time tour to Rod Laver Arena on Wednesday February 6 and Thursday February 7 with support from Lauren Harris and Behind Crimson Eyes. Very limited seating is still available for the second night from Ticketek. Live After Death gets a DVD release next week through EMI.
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