Bruce Dickinson Says Iron Maiden Can Be Like ‘Groundhog Day’
Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson said the band isn’t planning to go away anytime soon – but he also admitted that work with the British icons can sometimes feel like Groundhog Day as a result of their global success.
In a new interview tied into the publication of his autobiography, What Does This Button Do?, Dickinson was asked if his life really was as exciting as the book suggests. “I suppose it has been quite exciting,” he told the BBC (via Blabbermouth). “There’s a lot of stuff that’s not in the book that we didn’t put in there that I think is really exciting. But the editor was like, ‘We’ve got all these great airline stories.’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s a whole bunch more.’ And she said, ‘Save that for book two.’”
Dickinson one of the thing he learned from writing the book was "that all the most interesting things that happen in your life tend to be the first things that happen to you. So the first time I headlined Reading festival, it was like, ‘Wow!’ The first time you headline Donington, ‘Wow!’ I don’t know how many times we’ve headlined Donington now. Quite a few. So when somebody says, ‘Oh, you’re gonna headline Donington,’ you’re, ‘Oh, cool.’”
Dickinson went into more detail when asked if he felt pressure to top his previous achievements. “Well, you’re a bit stuck, because it’s always gonna be a little bit kind of like that movie Groundhog Day,” he replied. “There’s always a little bit of a sense of that. I mean, when I got done with my first big tour with Maiden, which is the first one I did, the Number of the Beast tour, we went everywhere in the world. I’d been on a school trip camping and I’d been on a sail training ship. And apart from that I’d never hardly been abroad at all.”
He recalled that his previous band Samson had never toured outside the U.K. "And suddenly in Iron Maiden, I’ve got a No. 1 album, I’m headlining Europe, I’m touring the States, I’m touring Canada and Japan," he noted. "And I’m like, ‘Wow! What’s left?’ I mean, it was just like every single dream I ever had under the bedclothes as a 16-year-old adolescent has just happened to me.”
Dickinson also touched on his band’s longevity in the interview. “We have a fabulously long career for a rock band, and it shows no sign of going away," he said. "And it’s not gonna go away any time soon. I haven’t written this book ‘cause I’m planning on stopping singing or any nonsense like that.”
His book tour continues in the U.K. until Oct. 28 and then Dickinson will make seven U.S. appearances between Oct. 30 and Nov. 4. Iron Maiden will release The Book of Souls: Live Chapter on Nov. 17.
Bruce Dickinson Book Tour Dates 2017
Oct. 26: Waterstones, London, U.K.
Oct. 27: Waterstones, Newcastle, U.K.
Oct. 28: Waterstones, Leeds, U.K. (11AM)
Oct. 28: Waterstones, Nottingham, U.K. (4PM)
Oct. 30: Book Review, Huntington, N.Y.
Oct. 31: Hudson Union Society, New York City, N.Y. (12PM)
Oct. 31: St Vitus Bar, Brooklyn, N.Y. (7.30PM)
Nov. 01: Regent Theater, Los Angeles, Calif.
Nov. 02: Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park, Calif.
Nov. 03: Gramercy Theatre, New York City, N.Y.
Nov. 04: Bookends Bookstore, Ridgewood, N.J.
Iron Maiden Albums Ranked Worst to Best