| Bruce Dickinson |
Bruce Dickinson performing live in Costa Rica on the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour, 26 February 2008. |
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Paul Bruce Dickinson |
| Also known as |
"Bruce Bruce" Dickinson (in Samson years) |
| Born |
(1958-08-07) 7 August 1958 (age 53)
Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England |
| Genres |
Heavy metal, hard rock |
| Occupations |
Musician, singer-songwriter, author, pilot, marketing director, screenwriter, actor |
| Instruments |
Vocals, guitar |
| Years active |
1976–present |
| Labels |
EMI, Sanctuary |
| Associated acts |
Iron Maiden, Samson, Tribe of Gypsies, Ayreon, Godspeed |
| Website |
www.screamforme.com |
Paul Bruce Dickinson (born 7 August 1958) is an English singer, songwriter, airline pilot, fencer, broadcaster, author, screenwriter, actor and former marketing director, best known as the lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden.
Dickinson began his career in music fronting small pub bands at school and University, including Styx (not the American band of the same name) in 1976, Speed, (1977–1978), and Shots in early 1979. He then joined the band Samson later in 1979, where he gained some popularity under the stage name, "Bruce Bruce." He left Samson in 1981 to join Iron Maiden as their new vocalist, replacing Paul Di'Anno, and debuting on their 1982 album The Number of the Beast.[1] During his first tenure in the band, they issued a series of high impact releases,[2] resulting in Dickinson gaining worldwide fame, and becoming one of the most acclaimed heavy metal vocalists of all time.
Dickinson quit Iron Maiden in 1993 in order to pursue his solo career, being replaced by Blaze Bayley, which saw him experiment with a wide variety of heavy metal and rock styles. Dickinson rejoined the band in 1999 along with guitarist Adrian Smith, with whom he released four subsequent studio albums. Since his return to Iron Maiden, Dickinson issued one further solo record in 2005, Tyranny of Souls. He is the older cousin of Rob Dickinson, former lead singer of British alternative rock band Catherine Wheel.[3] His son, Austin, is the lead singer in metalcore band Rise to Remain.[4] On 19 July 2011, Dickinson was presented with an honorary music doctorate from Queen Mary College, in honour of his contribution to the music industry.[5]
Paul Bruce Dickinson was born in the small mining town of Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His mother Sonia worked part-time in a shoe shop and his father Bruce was a mechanic in the army. Dickinson's birth hurried the young couple, then just teenagers, into marriage. Initially, he was brought up by his grandparents; his grandfather was a coal-face worker at the local colliery and his grandmother was a housewife. This is referred to in his song "Born In '58" from the album Tattooed Millionaire.
Dickinson started school at Manton Primary in Worksop while his parents moved away to Sheffield. Soon afterwards, when he was six, he was also despatched to Sheffield, where he attended "a notoriously tough local primary school" called Manor Top. After six months, his parents decided to move him to a small private school called Sharrow Vale Junior. Of this period he recalls, "I'm sort of quite grateful for the fact that I didn't have what you would think of as a conventionally sort of happy, uncomplicated childhood. It made me very self-reliant. I grew up in an environment where it struck me that the world was never gonna do you any favours ... And I had very few close friends, because ... I never really met anybody for that long. I was always moving." Dickinson has a younger sister named Helena who was born in 1963.[12] He tried to isolate himself from her as much as he could when he was young, supposedly out of spite because she, unlike him, was a planned pregnancy and birth.
Dickinson's first musical experience was dancing in his grandparents' front room to Chubby Checker's "The Twist," back when he still lived with them in Worksop. The first record Dickinson recalls owning was The Beatles single "She Loves You," which he managed to persuade his grandfather to buy him. From then on, he became more interested in music, saying "I remember thinking I liked the B-side better than the A-side, and that's when I started listening to music and deciding what I liked and what I didn't like." He tried to play an acoustic guitar belonging to his father, but it blistered his fingers.
By the time he moved to Sheffield, Dickinson's parents were earning a good living from buying property, refurbishing it and then selling it for a profit. As a result, a lot of Dickinson's childhood was spent living on a building site, until his parents bought a boarding house and a bankrupt garage where his father began selling second-hand cars. The income from their business success gave them the opportunity to give Dickinson—then 13 years old—a boarding school education and they chose Oundle, a public school in Northamptonshire. Dickinson was not opposed to moving away from home, as "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."
At Oundle, however, Dickinson was picked on and routinely bullied by the older boys of Sidney House, the boarding house that he belonged to, which he described as "like systematic torture" and meant that he became "aware that I was this outsider." His interests at Oundle were often military; he co-founded the school wargames society with Mike Jordan, and he rose to a position of some power in the school's cadet force, with which he was allowed to handle live ammunition, which he used to create explosions as booby-traps.
Oundle was where Dickinson became attracted to heavy rock, after hearing Deep Purple's "Child In Time" being played in another student's room. As a result, the first album he ever bought was Deep Purple's In Rock, "all scratched to fuck but I thought it was great, and that's what started me off on buying albums and getting into rock music." After In Rock, he went on to buy Black Sabbath's debut, Jethro Tull's Aqualung and Tarkus by Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Every term, a band would play at the school, the first of whom Dickinson would see was called Wild Turkey, featuring former Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick. After that, he saw Van der Graaf Generator and Arthur Brown.
Dickinson initially wanted to play the drums, later obtaining a pair of bongo drums from the music room and practised. He remembers playing "Let It Be" with his friend Mike Jordan, during which Dickinson discovered his singing voice while encouraging Jordan to sing the high-notes. Shortly afterwards, however, Dickinson was expelled from Oundle for urinating in the headmaster's dinner.
Returning home to Sheffield in 1976, Dickinson enrolled at a local comprehensive school, at which he joined his first band. He had overheard two other pupils talking about their band and that they needed a singer and so volunteered immediately. They rehearsed in the drummer's father's garage and the band were impressed by Dickinson's singing, encouraging him to buy his first microphone. Their first gig took place at the Broadfield Tavern in Sheffield. Originally called "Paradox," the band changed their name upon Dickinson's suggestion to "Styx", unaware of the American act with the same name. They made local newspaper headlines when a steel worker was awoken by their performance and tried to smash the band's drumkit. Soon after, the band split up.
After leaving school with A-levels in English, History and Economics, Dickinson confesses "I didn't really know what I wanted to do." The first thing he did was join the Territorial Army for six months. Although he enjoyed his time in the TA, Dickinson realised that "this is not really a career choice" and so he applied for a place to read history at Queen Mary College, in London's East End. His parents wanted him in the army, but he told them that he wanted to get a degree first; "that was what they wanted to hear, so that was my cover story. Then, when I got down there, I started immediately finding and playing in bands."
In college, Dickinson got involved in the Entertainments 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 1977, Dickinson met Paul "Noddy" White, a multi-instrumentalist who owned a PA and other equipment, with whom Dickinson, along with drummer Steve Jones, would form a band together called "Speed." Dickinson explains, "It had nothing to do with taking speed, we were a completely drug-free band. We just used to play everything ridiculously fast!" In Speed, Dickinson began writing his own material; "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."
Although Speed would play several gigs at the Green Man pub in Plumstead, the band did not last long, but it encouraged Dickinson to continue to work to be a musician. Dickinson spotted an advertisement in Melody Maker with the caption "Singer wanted for recording project" and replied immediately. He "wailed and wolfed and hollered and just made noises" onto a tape and sent it with a note which 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 invited Dickinson down to the studio to make "Dracula," the first song he would ever record, with a band called "Shots," formed by two brothers, Phil and Doug Siviter. The song would later appear on the second disc of The Best of Bruce Dickinson compilation. The brothers were impressed with Dickinson's vocal abilities and asked him what music he 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!' He said, 'We've got to form a band.' I was, like, 'Bloody hell,' you know? 'This guy's got a studio and he wants to form a band with me.' I was like 'Yes!'"
Dickinson played pubs with Shots on a regular basis "to about five people." One particular night, Dickinson suddenly stopped in the middle of a song and started interviewing a man in the audience, heckling 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, 'Fucking 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 not just being a singer but being a frontman, too."
The next step in Dickinson's career was taken in a pub called the Prince of Wales in Gravesend, Kent, where Shots were playing regularly, when Barry Graham ("Thunderstick") and Paul Samson paid a visit. Impressed with his stage-act, they talked with Dickinson afterwards, about which he recalls, "Paul Samson gave me his number and basically said, 'Listen, we've got an album out, we've got a record deal, but we need a new singer and we'd like you to be it.'" Dickinson agreed to join their band, Samson, but only once he'd finished taking his History finals two weeks later. Until that point, he had been neglecting his University education, having "done absolutely fuck all work, got pissed, got laid and just generally had a pretty good time." As a result, the University had tried to kick him out for failing his Second Year exams and not paying his accommodation fees, but was saved because of his role as Entertainments Officer. After writing 6 months worth of essays in the space of two weeks and some last minute cramming for his exams, Dickinson achieved a 2:2, "which is what everybody else got anyway."
Main article:
Samson (band)
"In my naïvety, 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."
—Bruce Dickinson.
After meeting Paul Samson and Barry Purkis at the Prince of Wales, and while still undertaking his final university exams, Dickinson joined Samson onstage at Bishop's Stortford to perform one of their songs, "Rock Me Baby", cementing his role as their new lead vocalist.[29]
The band had already released their debut album, Survivors, in 1979 on an independent label, two months before Dickinson joined. Immediately following the completion of his University work, he met up with the band at Greenwich's Wood Wharf studios to learn the Survivors album. Although the tracks did not suit Bruce's vocal style, the band soon wrote the majority of the following Head On album in their earliest rehearsal sessions, some of which were immediately incorporated into their live set.
It was during these early rehearsals that the nickname "Bruce Bruce" came about, derived from Monty Python's Bruces sketch. The name became very tiresome as the band's management continually wrote dud cheques, made payable to "Bruce Bruce", as a joke. Dickinson later commented "it just stuck. I mean, I wasn't entirely happy with it, but it was, like, 'Oh well, OK. It's a sort of stage name, isn't it?'"
Dickinson was shocked after finding out that not all rock performers were "great artists," as some, such as Samson, only wanted "to have a good drink, a good shag, and take some drugs," which he found "really, really difficult to relate to." Although he had smoked joints before, Dickinson discovered that it was impossible to communicate with other band members if he was sober. He deemed it, "the price that had to be paid", believing it to be "just another step towards my goal of just wanting to be a singer in a rock n' roll band."
While fronting the band, Dickinson also came across Iron Maiden for the first time, who were supporting Samson at the Music Machine in 1980. As Dickinson recalls; "I was watching them, and they were good, really fucking good, and at that moment, I remember thinking, 'I wanna fucking sing for that band. In fact, I'm going to sing for that band! I know I'm going to sing for that band!' ... I just thought, 'This is really me. Not Samson.'"
Dickinson remained in the band for another year, recording two studio albums with them - Head On and Shock Tactics. However, Samson soon ran into difficulties with their record label, Gem, who went out of business and failed to finance their European tour in support of Iron Maiden. The band was turned over to RCA, "who did not give a shit about this unknown band from England," Dickinson explains, and so the band promptly fired their management team and the resulting injunction meant that their equipment was reclaimed and they could not be paid for their concert performances. The band's last gig was at Reading Festival, after which Bruce was approached by Iron Maiden's manager, Rod Smallwood, who asked him to audition to be their new lead vocalist, about which Dickinson recounts; "It wasn't like, 'We want you to do the job.' It was more like, 'We'd like to offer you the chance of an audition.' ... I remember being very self-confident at the time, though, and saying, 'But when I do it, I'll get the job, so let's talk about what's gonna happen when I get the job.'"
Main article:
Iron Maiden
"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."
— Bruce Dickinson at Gino, Stockholm.[37]
Bruce Dickinson, left, performing on his first world tour with Iron Maiden in 1982
Dickinson went to audition for Iron Maiden at a rehearsal room in Hackney in September 1981, about which he describes, "As soon as I walked in, I knew this was something entirely different from anything I'd known up till then ... They had proper, professional roadies; they had a proper monitor system; they had cars laid on. They had everything! I thought, 'Right, there'll be no smoking dope in the back of the tour bus any more, then.'" In the practice rooms, the band played through "Prowler", "Sanctuary", "Running Free" and "Remember Tomorrow", before asking Dickinson to sing the same songs again in a recording studio, and "that was it. We all went out and got roaring pissed and I was in Iron Maiden."
Iron Maiden had a strict and organised routine that suited the band's writing style, which Dickinson described as a "time table".[37] After a few gigs, they began writing new material for their third album, The Number of the Beast, released in 1982. In the wake of Samson's contractual problems, Dickinson could not legally be credited on any of the record's songs, having to make, what he called, a "moral contribution", later revealing that he had contributed limited creative input to "The Prisoner", "Children of the Damned" and "Run to the Hills." The album was a major success, topping the UK charts,[41] and the band embarked on a supporting tour around the globe.
On the following albums, 1983's Piece of Mind and 1984's Powerslave, Steve Harris's song-writing monopoly was pushed aside in favour of other members' ideas, with Dickinson contributing to a number of tracks, including the singles "Flight of Icarus" and "2 Minutes to Midnight".[42] Throughout the World Slavery Tour, as part of the new theatrical elements incorporated into the band's stage-show, Dickinson wore a feathered mask during "Powerslave".[43] This was the band's longest tour to date, during which Harris and Dickinson considered going home mid-tour, due to the high number of shows.[44] Iron Maiden's management were continually adding dates, until Dickinson demanded that they stop "or I was gonna jack it in. I guess it was the first time I really thought about leaving. I don't just mean Iron Maiden, I mean quitting music altogether. I really felt like I was pretty much basket-case material by the end of that tour, and I did not want to feel that way. I just thought, 'Nothing is worth feeling like this for.' I began to feel like I was a piece of machinery, like I was part of the lighting rig."
After a six-month break, which Dickinson mostly spent practising fencing, Iron Maiden began writing their next album, Somewhere in Time, but Dickinson was unhappy with its synthesised bass and guitars and the progressive rock-influenced style.[47] He has no writing credits on the release, as his material, based on his own suggestion that they should "make a more acoustic based album," was rejected by the rest of the band. As Dickinson explains; "If I'd had my way, the album would have sounded very different. Powerslave, for me, felt like the sort of natural rounding off of Piece of Mind and Number of the Beast ... I felt we had to come up with our Physical Graffiti or our Led Zeppelin IV ... It wasn't so much that it had to be acoustic; I just felt that we should be leading and not following ... the time was right for us to do something audacious, something vast and daring, and I didn't feel that we did that with Somewhere in Time. We just made another Iron Maiden album." Steve Harris, on the other hand, stated, "I just thought he'd lost the plot completely. Bruce just wasn't himself at the time. We didn't realise it at first, but he was probably more burnt out than anyone at the end of the last tour ... he just couldn't seem to get himself together with any of the writing or anything ... It wasn't 'cause it was acoustic, necessarily, or even that it was very different sort of stuff; it was just that we didn't think it was good enough, really. And I could see he would feel bad that his songs were rejected, but he seemed to accept it quite readily at the time."
After a subsequent tour, Iron Maiden started working on their next studio effort, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which became their second release to top the UK charts.[41] Unlike Somewhere in Time, Dickinson was much more enthusiastic about this album and has several song-writing credits; "I remember Steve rang me to tell me about this idea he'd had for the next album, all about this seventh son of a seventh son stuff, and I thought, 'What a great idea! Brilliant!' And of course I was really chuffed, too, because he'd actually rung me to talk about it and ask me if I had any songs that might fit that sort of theme. I was like, 'Well, no, but give me a minute and I'll see what I can do.'" After the following tour in 1988, the band decided to take a year off.
During the next album's writing stage, Adrian Smith left Iron Maiden, and was replaced by Janick Gers. Iron Maiden's eighth studio release, 1990's No Prayer for the Dying, had a raw sound that did not "hold up well" compared to past efforts,[52] as it was recorded in a barn which Steve Harris owned, with a mobile studio owned by the Rolling Stones.[53] The record featured Dickinson's "Bring Your Daughter... to the Slaughter", originally composed for a film soundtrack, which despite receiving a Golden Raspberry Award for worst original song in 1989, became the band's first and only single to top the UK singles chart.[41] By 1992, Harris had converted his barn into a proper studio, and the new album, Fear of the Dark, was recorded there, resulting in a better overall sound than No Prayer for the Dying,[55] although Dickinson still claims it had "big limitations" due to its size.[53]
After the Fear of the Dark Tour, Dickinson decided to leave Iron Maiden to concentrate on his solo career; "I think I realised that I had reached a creative fork in the road, you know? I thought, 'If you want to, you can stay with Maiden, but things are sure not gonna change.' Or I could take a chance and go somewhere else." At that point the band had already booked a following tour in 1993, which Dickinson did not enjoy; "I thought it wouldn't be a problem to go out and do the shows at all ... but it wasn't a good vibe ... we walked out onstage and it was like a morgue. The Maiden fans knew I'd quit, they knew these were the last gigs, and I suddenly realised that, as the frontman, you're in an almost impossible situation. If you're like, 'Wow, this is really fucking cool tonight, man,' they're all gonna sit there going, 'What a wanker. He's leaving. How can it be cool?' Or do you go on and say, 'Look, I'm really sorry I'm leaving - not to put a damper on the evening, but I am quitting'? I mean, what do you do?"
Throughout the tour, Dickinson drew a lot of criticism from his band mates, with Steve Harris in particular saying, "I really wanted to kill him." Harris explains that "When all the press was there, ... he had no problem turning on a professional performance ... but I swear, some nights all he did was mumble through the songs." "It was so calculated, you know? ... we played in Paris, for example, where there's loads of press ... Then he'd perform, you know, pretty well. But if he played somewhere like Nice or Montpelier or somewhere like that, where it doesn't really matter, he was terrible ... One night, I went to the monitor man and said, 'What the fuck's going on? I can't hear him!' And he pushed the fader up to full and said, 'Look, there's nothing there. He's just mumbling into the mic.'" Dickinson responded to the accusations by saying, "That's crap. That's absolute crap. The singing was always really, really good. What I did do at the shows was decide that I was not going to make like Mr Happy Face if the vibe wasn't right. ... I was trying as hard as I could, every single night, but as hard as I could some nights it was impossible. A rock concert is supposed to be a celebration. It's not supposed to be a wake."
His last performance with the band was filmed by the BBC at Pinewood Studios and released as a live video, entitled Raising Hell. "I don't recall saying goodbye," states Dickinson, "It was a very strange way of parting. After the show, I had a couple of beers and went home to bed."
Along with Adrian Smith, Dickinson rejoined Iron Maiden in 1999 with Janick Gers remaining in the band, about which Dickinson recalls, "It was Rod who took me aside and said, 'How do you feel about putting it back together?' I said, 'Well, you know, there's a couple of things that concern me, but 90 per cent of things that I think are massive opportunities." Initially Steve Harris had reservations about Bruce's return, but soon came round to the idea; "When Rod first mentioned it, I wasn't really into it," Harris stated, "I thought, 'Well why would he wanna come back? ... But then I thought, 'Well if the change happens, who would we get?' The thing is, we know Bruce and we know what he's capable of, and you think, 'Well, better the devil you know.'"
Performing on 6 July 2010 during The Final Frontier World Tour. The 2010 leg consisted primarily of material released since Dickinson's return to Iron Maiden in 1999.
[61]
Harris and Dickinson met up at Rod Smallwood's home in Brighton in January 1999 for the first conversation they would have with each other since 1993. "It was strange," Dickinson remembers, "I think we were both a bit nervous. But as soon as we walked in the room, we gave each other a big hug and it evaporated. Literally, like, boof! Gone. And we both just chatted away ... And then, of course, we all ended up going down the pub. One thing led to another and we all woke up with thick heads the next day." Steve Harris confesses, "I thought we'd have the meeting and that it wouldn't work ... then we actually had the meeting and it really changed everything. His enthusiasm was 100 per cent, so I thought, 'Well, maybe it is the right thing to do.'"
After embarking on a small tour, the band set about recording Brave New World, their first studio album with Dickinson since 1992. Dickinson insisted that they find a replacement for the now retired Martin Birch, the band's regular producer, and record in a different studio than the one in which they made No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark; "When we had our first get-together, my main concern was how did I know we were gonna make this great record ... And Steve immediately said, 'Well I think we need a producer. And I don't think we can do it in the same studio. We've got to get the best studio we can possibly get.' By which point, you could have picked me up off the floor!"[63] The album was recorded at Guillaume Tell Studios, Paris with producer Kevin Shirley, after which Iron Maiden undertook a supporting tour culminating with a performance at the Rock in Rio festival before a crowd of 250,000.
In 2003 they recorded and released Dance of Death at London's SARM Studios with Kevin Shirley, now the band's new regular producer. After two further stints on the road (Dance of Death World Tour and Eddie Rips Up the World Tour) Iron Maiden returned to SARM in 2006 to record their next studio album, A Matter of Life and Death,[67] and embarked on a supporting tour. In 2008 and 2009, the band set out on the Somewhere Back in Time World Tour,[68] which has since been described as "groundbreaking"[69] for its use of Ed Force One, the band's customised Boeing 757, flown by Dickinson himself,[68] and led to the documentary film Iron Maiden: Flight 666, which had a limited cinema release in April 2009.[70] Iron Maiden held another world tour in 2010 and 2011 in support of The Final Frontier,[71] their first album recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau, Bahamas since 1986's Somewhere in Time,[72] and which peaked at No. 1 in 28 countries.[73]
In early 1989, Zomba asked Dickinson to produce a track for the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child,[74] providing a budget, a studio, and a producer, Chris Tsangarides. Dickinson took up the opportunity and called an old friend of his, former Gillan guitarist, Janick Gers, and, shortly after meeting up, they had "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter" ready for the studio, then recorded with the assistance of bassist Andy Carr, and drummer Fabio del Rio. "I wrote it in about three minutes", states Dickinson, "I don't know where the title 'Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter' came from, but it just popped into my head. I thought, 'Bloody hell, straight out of AC/DC!' And I thought, 'Nightmare on Elm Street. Yeah, that'll do.' Impressed with the results, Zomba asked Dickinson if he was willing to record a whole album as well. With the same line-up and producer, Dickinson's solo debut, Tattooed Millionaire, was written and recorded within two weeks, and released in May 1990, followed by a supporting tour.
Later that year, Dickinson participated on a re-recording of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water", as part of the humanitarian effort Rock Aid Armenia.[79] Backed by the band Skin, he produced a cover version of Alice Cooper's "Elected", along with Rowan Atkinson (in character as Mr. Bean), which was used in 1992 for Comic Relief,[80] and five years later, on Bean Soundtrack.[81]
Dickinson performing with
Tribuzy in São Paulo, 11 November 2005. The performance was recorded for a live album, entitled
Execution – Live Reunion.
For his second solo effort, Dickinson received the collaboration of American producer, Keith Olsen, and, while working on the record in LA, decided to leave Iron Maiden. Unhappy with the direction he was taking with Olsen, Dickinson began working with Tribe of Gypsies guitarist Roy Z and started the album again from scratch.[37] Balls to Picasso was recorded with Tribe of Gypsies as the backing band,[37] and was released in 1994. That same year, Dickinson recorded a cover version of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" with the band Godspeed for Black Sabbath's tribute album Nativity in Black.[82] Tribe of Gypsies departed to work on their own material and Dickinson tracked down another band, including his new writing partner and guitarist, Alex Dickson.[37] After the Balls to Picasso supporting tour finished, he started working on a new studio record, Skunkworks. Dickinson decided that Skunkworks would be the title of the band as well, but the record company refused to release the album without his name on the cover.
Due to musical differences, the "Skunkworks" entity ceased to be when the tour ended. "I was devastated by the Skunkworks thing", stated Dickinson, "Skunkworks was a record which I tore myself apart to make and nobody seemed to give a shit."[84] After a short period of inactivity, Dickinson once again teamed up with Roy Z and Tribe of Gypsies to record his next album, Accident of Birth; "It was actually Roy that dragged me back into some assemblance, because he called up and he said, 'Listen, I've got some stuff and it's like a metal record.' And I wasn't thrilled, I wasn't really sure that I had anything to offer... Then he played me some backing-tracks he'd done for what was to become Accident of Birth down the phone and I thought 'There is something there.'"[84] Former Iron Maiden guitarist, Adrian Smith, was asked to guest on the record, but remained as a full-time member of Dickinson's solo outfit.[85] The album marked a return to heavy metal for Dickinson, with Sputnikmusic remarking, "The album's heavy feel is very satisfying, and definitely fills that void left by Maiden during the 90's."[85] The follow-up, The Chemical Wedding, was a semi-concept album on alchemy, which drew inspiration from William Blake's writings; with some songs, such as "Book of Thel", having the same title as some of his poems, and the cover artwork featuring one of his paintings.[84] The record was even more successful than its predecessor, with Sputnikmusic commenting, "Bruce had shattered all expectations to create an album that might even be better than the previous one."[86] During The Chemical Wedding's supporting tour, the live album, Scream for Me Brazil was recorded in São Paulo, after which Dickinson and Smith returned to Iron Maiden in February 1999.
In 2000, Dickinson performed vocals on the song, "Into the Black Hole", for Ayreon's Universal Migrator Part 2: Flight of the Migrator.[87] Later that year, he collaborated with Judas Priest's front-man, Rob Halford, recording, "The One You Love to Hate", for Halford's debut, Resurrection.[88] A compilation, entitled The Best of Bruce Dickinson, was released in late 2001, including two new songs and a bonus disc of rarities.[89] His latest solo album, Tyranny of Souls was released in May 2005. This time the song-writing was all split between Roy Z and Dickinson and many songs were composed by Z sending recordings of riffs to Dickinson while he was on tour with Iron Maiden.[90] On 21 June 2005, Dickinson's complete solo discography was re-released, featuring bonus discs with rare and remastered tracks. That same year, Dickinson contributed to the song, "Beast in the Light", from Tribuzy's album, Execution, and their subsequent live album.[91] A three-DVD box set, entitled Anthology, was released on 19 June 2006, containing concerts and promo videos from throughout his solo career, as well as an old Samson video, entitled "Biceps of Steel."[92]
Dickinson's interests include literature, writing, fencing (at which he has competed internationally, placing 7th in Great Britain,[93] and has founded a fencing equipment company under the brand name "Duellist"[94]), railway technology and aviation. Due to the wide variety of Dickinson's pursuits, the Winter 2009 edition of Intelligent Life named him as a living example of a polymath.[95]
Dickinson learned to fly recreationally in Florida in the 1990s[96] and now holds an airline transport pilot's licence. He regularly flew Boeing 757s in his role as captain for the now-defunct UK charter airline Astraeus,[97][98] which, from 16 September 2010, employed him as Marketing Director.[99][100] One of his key roles in said position was to promote Astraeus' services by increasing their number of videos,[100] leading to the UK CAA releasing a video featuring Dickinson on aircraft loading safety in June 2011.[101] Following Astraeus' closure on 21 November 2011, Dickinson launched Cardiff Aviation Ltd on 1 May 2012, an aircraft maintenance business based at the Twin Peaks Hangar in St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales.[102]
In mid-2006, Dickinson flew about 200 UK citizens home from Lebanon during the Israel/Hezbollah conflict.[103] On 12 February 2007, Dickinson was given permission to fly Rangers F.C. to Israel for their UEFA Cup game against Hapoel Tel Aviv.[104] After the collapse of XL Airways UK in September 2008, he piloted an Iceland Express aeroplane and flew home 180 stranded holiday makers from Egypt,[105] as well as a Boeing 757 with a group of British RAF pilots from Afghanistan.[106] "A lot of them recognised him because they are Maiden fans, but he was there in his professional capacity as a pilot," says an RAF spokesman.[106] Dickinson flew Liverpool F.C. from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to an away European tie with S.S.C. Napoli in Italy on 19 October 2010.[107] Following Hurricane Irene in August 2011, Dickinson was one of the first pilots to be ready to fly out of New York.[108]
For the 2008-2009 "Somewhere Back in Time World Tour," he piloted Iron Maiden's chartered Boeing 757, dubbed "Ed Force One", specially converted to carry the band's equipment between continents.[68] Dickinson flew "Ed Force One" again for "The Final Frontier World Tour" in 2011.[109]
Dickinson presented Bruce Dickinson's Friday Rock Show on BBC radio station 6 Music from 2002-2010. Jean-Jacques Burnel, bassist with The Stranglers, took over the presenting duties while Dickinson toured the US with Iron Maiden. In March 2010, the BBC announced that, after over eight years, Dickinson's show was to be axed.[110] His final broadcast was on 28 May 2010, with the regular format abandoned in favour of a personal and musical tribute to the recently deceased Ronnie James Dio. Dickinson scorned the BBC executives for the cancellation, playing the Johnny Paycheck version of "Take This Job and Shove It".[111]
He has recently taken the helm of BBC Radio 2 serial Masters of Rock and presented the 5-part historical TV series about aviation, Flying Heavy Metal, which was shown on the Discovery Channel, and later on Discovery Turbo in the UK.[112] He was a guest on an episode of the Military Channel's The Greatest Ever, where he drove a Russian T-34 tank. In 2006, Dickinson presented a documentary for Sky One entitled Inside Spontaneous Human Combustion with Bruce Dickinson, in which he investigated the phenomenon by enlisting the help of several experts and performing various experiments to determine its possible cause.[113] Other television appearances include guesting on quiz shows such as Never Mind the Buzzcocks and the short lived Space Cadets, as well as the chat show Clarkson, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson.[114] Dickinson has also appeared in a BBC series called The Paradise Club, undertaking the role of a musician named Jake Skinner.
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.
— Bruce Dickinson commenting on Lord Iffy.[115]
During a 1986-1987 Iron Maiden tour, and in the wake of a divorce, Dickinson started writing his first book. He spent sleepless nights trying to give birth to the main character, Lord Iffy Boatrace, an English landlord, whose problems were always related to a lack of money, questing a wealthy life.[115]
The novel, entitled The Adventures of Lord Iffy Boatrace (ISBN 0-283-06043-3), was released in 1990 and sold more than 30,000 copies almost immediately. Due to the high demand, the publisher, Sidgwick & Jackson, asked Dickinson to produce a sequel, which became 1992's The Missionary Position (ISBN 0-283-06092-1).[115]
Dickinson has turned his hand to scriptwriting, co-authoring Chemical Wedding with director Julian Doyle. The film, in which Dickinson played a few small cameo roles and composed the soundtrack, was released in 2008 and starred Simon Callow.[116]
At the 2005 Ozzfest, Ozzy Osbourne's wife, Sharon, encouraged family friends and members of other bands to sabotage Iron Maiden's last performance at Hyundai Pavilion in San Bernardino on 20 August.[117][118] The attack was in response to Dickinson's comments on reality television, to which Osbourne took offence,[119] ordering interference with the band's PA and delaying the entrance of Eddie,[117] as well as encouraging members of the Osbourne camp to throw eggs, lighters and bottle tops from the front of the audience.[119]
Performing "The Trooper" with Iron Maiden in Paris, France, 1 July 2008. Dickinson has always waved a Union Flag during live renditions of the song.
[120]
On top of Dickinson's attack on reality TV, it was also claimed that he made several anti-American comments, of which Classic Rock magazine claimed that "nobody can present any cast-iron evidence."[120] Classic Rock also argued that there had been "bad blood" between the band and the Osbournes since the start of the tour, with the allegations that Iron Maiden refused to pay "a substantial fee" to appear on the tour T-shirt and had complained about Ozzfest's seating arrangements, with Steve Harris commenting that "it's awkward because we feed off the front audience. A lot of 'em look like they want to get out a remote and change the channel."[120] Sharon Osbourne would later claim that the flag-waving during "The Trooper" was disrespectful to American troops, at the time fighting alongside the British in Iraq, even though Dickinson had always held a Union Flag during the song, being based on the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War.[120] Classic Rock pointed out the hypocrisy in Osbourne's statement as her husband had, in the past, been incarcerated for urinating on the Alamo, causing upset in the U.S.[120] Sharon Osbourne also accused Dickinson of "making other comments about the other artists," believing "he was at a battle of the bands," while other performers "don't even look at Ozzfest as touring, but as its heavy metal summer camp." Dickinson went on to criticise this comment, stating that "the whole way it's being portrayed as being some kind of altruistic holiday for all the bands is absolute nonsense, it's complete bullshit. Most of the bands are there because they paid to be there."[122] It was also reported that Steve Harris had spoken to Ozzy Osbourne in San Bernardino, apologising for Dickinson's comments,[120] which Harris denies, stating, "No I didn't [apologise]. What I actually said was that, if there was anything to apologise for, then I'd do it. But that was twisted around to seem like I'd said sorry — that never happened!"[123]
In response to the incident, Iron Maiden's manager, Rod Smallwood, published a statement criticising the attack as "vile, dangerous, criminal and cowardly" as well as disrespectful to fans who had paid to see the band perform "a full unhindered performance."[124] Speaking some years later to the Daily Mail, Dickinson commented that "Our revenge was to simply carry on regardless and play the best show of the day," and that "I haven't changed my views about reality TV either. I think it's a complete disgrace – freak-show television, the lowest of the low."[119] Speaking to Metal Hammer in 2006, Dickinson stated, "so much has been written about what I did, or didn't say onstage. Did I have a go at Ozzy and Black Sabbath? No. Why would I? But I do find The Osbournes TV series loathsome, and the whole cult of reality TV celebrities disgusting."[123] An eyewitness report, published on Blabbermouth.net, praised Iron Maiden for being "the consummate professionals," continuing to play in spite of "the amount of terrorizing and intimidation that [they] had to deal with."[118]
Iron Maiden's 2006 album, A Matter of Life and Death, contained a song entitled "These Colours Don't Run", a phrase which Dickinson also used onstage on 20 August 2005.[123] When asked if the song was inspired by the Ozzfest incident, Dickinson replied, "I suppose it's inevitable that people will think the song's about Sharon Osbourne, she thinks everything is about her anyway! But it isn't. It's about men going off to war, and the fears and hopes they leave behind ... The phrase 'These Colours Don't Run' fitted the mood of the song perfectly. That's all."[123]
Although Dickinson never received formal training, he still possessed a wide vocal range which was trademarked by his quasi-operatic tenor. Along with Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford, Dickinson is one of the pioneers of the operatic vocal style later to be adopted by power metal vocalists and regularly appears near the top in lists of the greatest rock vocalists/front-men of all time.[125][126][127][128] Dickinson says that his style was influenced primarily by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill (Van der Graaf Generator), Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) and Ian Gillan (Deep Purple).[89]
Dickinson's singing varied notably in the 1990s in the recording of albums such as No Prayer for the Dying, Fear of the Dark and his first solo work Tattooed Millionaire, making use of a much more raspy and unpolished sound,[129] befitting their stripped down style. Since returning to Iron Maiden in 1999, his singing style has returned to much like it was in the 1980s,[131] though soft and reflective passages have been incorporated with the familiar operatic wail to suit the more progressive direction of Iron Maiden since the reunion. His voice has lowered with age, making him a dramatic tenor in opera terms.
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^ * Dickinson appeared on the album's re-issue only, as it had been originally completed before he joined the band.
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- ^ Stagno, Mike. "Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark". Sputnikmusic. http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/9184/Iron-Maiden-Fear-Of-The-Dark/. Retrieved 2011-09-10. "Much like the previous album, Bruce Dickinson employs a raspy singing style."
- ^ Stagno, Mike. "Iron Maiden - Brave New World". Sputnikmusic. http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/8681/Iron-Maiden-Brave-New-World/. Retrieved 2011-09-10. "As with his solo material, Dickinson ditched his painfully bad raspy vocal style and returned to the operatic vocal style found on earlier Maiden records."
- Shooman, Joe (2007). Bruce Dickinson: Flashing Metal with Iron Maiden and Flying Solo. Independent Music Press. ISBN 0-9552822-4-1
- Wall, Mick (2004). Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills, the Authorised Biography (third ed.). Sanctuary Publishing. ISBN 1-86074-542-3
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