Bruce Dickinson

From a 19 December 1998 interview. Here we can see Roy was busy with Downset:






It's the end of 1998 and it looks like 1999 will be a busy year for you.

It seems like for the last few years, every year has been a busy one (laughs). But yeah, sometimes I'm overwhelmed. If I think too much about everything I have to do, I think I'll have a breakdown (laughs). I'm in the studio with Downset and hopefully that will be finished by the end of February. Then, I have to do 6 more Tribe songs for a new mini-album, some very cool stuff. In between, I'll be writing new stuff for Bruce. I don't know when we'll dot it but he already asked me to start writing. Also, I'll be doing some other things for different people. And let's see what happens.
 
From a 19 December 1998 interview. Here we can see Roy was busy with Downset:






It's the end of 1998 and it looks like 1999 will be a busy year for you.

It seems like for the last few years, every year has been a busy one (laughs). But yeah, sometimes I'm overwhelmed. If I think too much about everything I have to do, I think I'll have a breakdown (laughs). I'm in the studio with Downset and hopefully that will be finished by the end of February. Then, I have to do 6 more Tribe songs for a new mini-album, some very cool stuff. In between, I'll be writing new stuff for Bruce. I don't know when we'll dot it but he already asked me to start writing. Also, I'll be doing some other things for different people. And let's see what happens.

Thanks for sharing the link!
 
So his playing with Bruce on Scream For Me Brazil was a one-off?

I always thought he "wasn't there for the Euro leg", but the South American leg, as Forostar pasted above, was only 5 shows...
 
I'm in the studio with Downset and hopefully that will be finished by the end of February.

So the tour started in August, Roy returned in April next year. Technically he was 8 months absent due to just recording/producing the album, as opposed to 4 months he spent on Chemical Wedding. The return were 5 final gigs of the band, in front of a big audience (biggest ever for them in concert setting).

If you consider they've been working very hard almost two years, made a band, excellent "debut" album, toured it, made an excellent follow up...and then the partner goes look I'm taking absence in duration equal to entire past tour, right now at the start of a new tour, to work on some other album where he's not the "primary musician, composer, producer" and the rest of the People's Hero titles he lists on his site.
 
He really was into a lot of work (probably also other bands). He preferred to do that.
It is not something that was received with a lot of understanding or enthusiasm, though.

And Bruce was not touring in the first months of 1999. "Something" else going on. ;--)
 
I always thought he "wasn't there for the Euro leg", but the South American leg, as Forostar pasted above, was only 5 shows...

I seem to remember those shows were only scheduled after Bruce and Adrian's return to Maiden was officially announced, possibly just to record a live album showcasing how great the material created by that line-up of Bruce's solo band was.
 
Bruce was instrumental in getting the Tribe of Gypsies a deal and that meant they had a career of their own and did not have the time to be another artist's backing band.
^This. Speaking of Balls To Picasso, Bruce said that he and Roy were talked into making the album less heavy than it should have been (he mentioned this in the Tyranny of Souls EPK from his Anthology DVD, if I'm not mistaken). I like the sound/style of the album, but I wonder how the album would have been if it was heavier (''Cyclops'' is a song that should benefit a lot from that) - as Bruce said, if the album was heavier, we would have had TCW a few years earlier.
 
667 would actually be the bloke across the street. For shame! Can't believe they got such a simple joke wrong.
 
I always knew it as 666, number of the beast, 665 neighbour of the beast, 664 the bloke next door?
 
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