Yeah, this thread. I've got a lot to say in this thread.
First of all, book tour. I remember thinking about contacting a promoter how they should bring him in my home country in a beautiful venue, like, it would be probably a sell out for them. Guess what, exact same thing happened. But! When that happened, I saw the announcement in the afternoon (there were no prior rumors before) and the tickets were already on the sale from early morning. Yes, first couple of rows/sectors were sold out. Pissed off, I decided not to go. And now I regret it. I should've gone. As far as I've read from the reviews, it was awesome. And I missed it. I do regret it a bit although I'm a bit relieved I managed to restrain my Maiden fanaticism by bit. I'm trying to tone it down for some years now and it looks I've managed to do that, even for the wrong reasons.
Considering his private life.
I mean, it's funny that people here are commenting what could be the reasons of his split with his wife. Let me tell you this. All of you (probably) have married friends about whom you have no idea in what kind of shape their relationships is. If something goes on between them, it goes behind closed doors and if it does surface out at some point, it sometimes takes years and leaves you completely baffled. I've been in that kind situation where I would have heard the news and just left speechless (like a minute before I would've swore everything is OK with certain people only to find out a situation is far from perfect). Also, Bruce wrote a book, I think you've noticed it, he's been touring that thing 2 years now. Except his childhood and teen years, there are no mentions of his personal life. IIRC correctly, there was a recent interview where he said that he thought should he include his family in chapter about cancer, but later decided he won't. That shows how much he wants to keep his private life private. Yes, he first spoke about his girlfriend, but that also would surface out and if it didn't came from him it would probably be dragged across newspapers much worse than now. Where was I going with this? I don't know. Just wanted to say it's kind of disrespectful to talk about his private life like he's your next door neighbor. Bad Maiden fans! *smacks with curled newspaper on the nose.
I believe his solo stuff would come out eventually. At least, when he's in retirement they'll probably just roll out tons and tons of these demo tapes. What I'm more interested at (and it seems that even Bruce himself mentioned it on this book tour) is his solo tour. Now, I'd travel and pay big buck to see this one. But at this stage and age, I doubt it would be festival performances and club shows. He'd probably sell out smaller arenas. Still, I'd go.
Oh, and that Bruce solo beer. I'm still waiting.