Bruce Dickinson

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In this interview Bruce is confident there will be more of his solo tours. Maybe it means that Maiden years are numbered. Imagine, Maiden boys retire, whereas Bruce's solo career gets a big boost, because Maiden fans still want to see live what's left of Maiden.
And then, on one of the sunny barbeque days (Steve's and Bruce's children are now married) Steve will give to Bruce a bottle of beer and will go in his mumbling manner: So, I've heard your solo career is going uphill...
Bruce: Yeah, it's going great. Can you believe it?
Steve in his mind: Lucky bastard
Bruce: How's British Lion? More like a British Lamb.
Sreve: It's tough..
Bruce: Really?
Steve: In fact, we just broke up.
Bruce: Huh, such a nice day. I mean, it's sunny and that's nice.
Steve: Maybe... maybe I can play bass in your band?
Bruce: And beer is good. Oh, it's not Iron Maiden beer. Wait... what?
Steve: I would be glad to play bass in your band. You know, those real heavy metal tunes and not some whiny rock.
Bruce: Well...
Steve: Yes...
Bruce: In fact, that would be good from the business side of things.
Steve: Yes!
Bruce: But there's one condition...
Steve: I immediately agree. Happily!
Bruce: I will be Boss, you know.
Steve: Ha, no problem. It will be interesting experience.
Bruce: To be fair, there's two more..
Steve: No problem
Bruce: Primary lyricist wll be me.
Steve: That's fair!
Bruce: And you will stay away from the mixing desk..
Steve: Whaleoilbeefhooked
Bruce: What?
Steve: Hmm... Ayyyy.... Heck, I agree... I just want to go out and play!
Bruce: And my PA system will be in the center.
Steve: Ok. No problemo.
Bruce: Oh, now you talking in pseudo-Spanish. Are you sure you agree to those conditions?
Steve: Yes, sir!
Bruce: That's my boy, that's the Spirit! In that case, get ready, next week we will start recording the new album. It will be very heavy sounding.
Steve: No...
Bruce: ...problemo, I know. And one more thing, I think you should play with a pick. It will be good for you. Challenges...
Steve: ...Whaleoilbeefhooked... I.... was born to play with a pick or without it!
Bruce: That's the Attitude! Ride on you son of a gun.

The End

* Sorry if there's mistakes. My English is self taught
 
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Bruce’s teasers on Instagram are really giving off a Halloween vibe. Well all that talking to the devil in the graveyard and all is kinda giving off a horror vibe. Also hoping Bruce doesn’t have Vampire teeth.
 
redandtheblack92 said:
Bruce’s teasers on Instagram are really giving off a Halloween vibe. Well all that talking to the devil in the graveyard and all is kinda giving off a horror vibe. Also hoping Bruce doesn’t have Vampire teeth.
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actually - that would be awesome but it would be also a shame that it is not a halloween...
 
Melony said:
Metal Hammer Germany 02/2024

My translation

Interview (part 3):

After everything you told us about the songwriting and production process of "THE MANDRAKE PROJECT" it's obvious that there was no alternative but to visit Roy Z in L.A. to play with and capture ideas. So it would have been impossible to finish the album as it is
during the pandemic.

No, that wouldn't have worked for us. The first two songs that we wrote immediately when we got back together were 'Afterglow
Of Ragnarok' and 'Many Doors To Hell' - they have nothing to do with the concept of the comic or the things surrounding it. We asked ourselves: "Does that bother us?" - "No, let's get on with it!" The comic now exists for itself. You don't need to know the album to be able to read the comic;
you don't have to read the comic to enjoy the album. But if you know both, then they intertwine with each other
and increase your enjoyment of the project as a whole.

You refuse to call it a concept album. It is rather a networked "Bruce Dickinson Universe" that is opening up.

It's a world of its own! I have created a world without realizing it. Take the last song on the album, 'Sonata', it's the oldest of them all. One day Roy watched a movie, 'Immortal Beloved' (German title: ‘Ludwig van B. – Meine unsterbliche Geliebte’ , 1994 - editor's note) with Gary Oldman, about Beethoven, had a moment of inspiration and decided to sample and loop the beginning of the 'Moonlight Sonata'; he spent the day adding guitars, keyboards, layers of sounds, a drum computer - ten minutes long. Why and what for, he didn't know yet. We were sitting
late one night and he played it for me. It seemed like a trance number; I had no idea what to do with it vocally. But we went
spontaneously into the studio to see what would happen. And 80 percent of the finished song came from this one take! A complete stream of consciousness.

But the lyrics had already been written...?

No, the lyrics are what came out of my mouth when I closed my eyes and imagined being in a dark forest.
That's the reason why there is no classic second verse. I sang the first verse and went straight into something that then revealed itself to me as a
chorus afterwards. "Save me now ..."
I asked myself, what and about what I was actually singing ...(Bruce recapitulates his stream of thought) It's a fairytale,
but something is wrong. It's Sleeping Beauty, but in an evil version. The prince is coming ... the prince? No,
the king is coming ... to get his queen back! 'Taking The Queen'! The henchmen from 'Taking The Queen' ("ACCIDENT OF BIRTH"- editor's note) are still standing around her, but they are demons.
The King returns ... to kiss her and bring her back. Because he loves her? No, because he needs her. He needs her because ... otherwise he will
lose his kingdom. So it's not the right reasons.
It is also a meditation on what beauty means. "Your beauty will not last." The Queen cries out "Save me! Save my beauty" because
she thinks she is getting old and it will be terrible. This is a worry that I know bothers women much more than men. Generally speaking, women are often tormented by the thought of getting old, of no longer being desirable. Men basically don't give a damn.
Many women I know say that men mature, women fade away; they believe they have to work on themselves to stay beautiful. But no, you don't have to. You age, like all of us. You look great. You look interesting. That's what was in my head when I came up with the text. And it is
tragic: "Love has brought you here, and love will tear you apart." It has this great solo at the end.

As we enhanced the piece, I wrote and sang a second verse, and there was one more little thing I wanted to fix because it wasn't quite right.
But the spoken word part, "The king returned and all was silent", all that came from one take. I put it aside, completely forgetting that I had ever done that until Roy pulled it out again on a CD.
Leana (Dolci - editor's note), my girlfriend at the time, now wife, heard it when we were driving around L.A. and I played her demos. She
said: "What song is that? This is incredible. It makes me want to cry." - "Oh, this, I don't really know what to do with it because it's so different." -
"That's exactly why! You can't not do this." She was the deciding factor in putting the piece on the album. I'm so glad we did that.
It closes the album perfectly.

Also through the cross-reference to "ACCIDENT OF BIRTH". It brings the album full circle.

It's a 58-minute journey - with "Face In The Mirror", for example, it takes completely different paths. And at the end you realize that
you've been on an emotional rollercoaster. At the beginning you think: Yeah, that's heavy! And then suddenly it gets dark and sad. It's great!
SEBASTIAN KESSLER
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So the album will be like TCW - the second half will be with the deeper stuff.
Wickerman1204 said:
So three last songs are slow.
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Yeah, although I don't think they will slow all the time (Shadow and Sonata). I sure hope so for a song that is 10 minutes long.
I hope it works, unlike in TBOS imo.
GhostofCain said:
To be fair, the whole improvisational nature of a song loosely based on the story of Taking the Queen fills me with trepidation. The previous effort in that vein (Midnight Jam) is a considerable turd!
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The improvisational feel could go either way really, but I believe in Bruce, although he was initially hesitant to include it on the album because it's a different piece. The song is long, so there should be interesting parts. Midnight Jam was never a ''serious song'' in a way, with the thought of being included on an album.
mtmccox said:
Did I understand it correctly, that Sonata will sample (or use melodies, bits, wave back at) Beethoven, not sure to what extent, but it will?
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I think so too. It's expected this long song to have melodies. I also hope Roy to has more than 1 solo, not only at the end of it as Bruce mentioned.
 

The curious bits:

Bruce: ''The album is a rare, emotional and old-school journey''.

He doesn't think that if the album was made in 2014-2018, it would have been as good as it is now.

He wants to push the boundaries, stay authentic and still make interesting music and songs. He gave an example with the catchy and probably not that complex Many Doors To Hell - and said that was also one of the reasons he didn't choose is as the album opener. With the heaviness of Ragnarok and the light chorus, the attention to the rest of the album is better built and more indicative of the album, yet with more surprises.

The video for Rain On The Graves will be way better than the one for Afterglow Of Ragnarok. It's another story.

An album title should make you curious. The album cover is a medallion.

According to Bruce, the Double Vinyl is a thing of beauty! That's great to hear. I really hope for some different (little) artworks in the booklet. The visual concept!

He thinks he and Roy are a great songwriting team and Roy is a pretty amazing guitarist and songwriter.

He thinks ''his thing'' is the dramatic stuff.


They will play Resurrection Men from the new album and Bruce wonders if he has to play the intro he recorded on the album live.

Bruce: ''We're gonna do 'Tears Of The Dragon', we're gonna do 'Chemical Wedding', we're gonna do 'Accident Of Birth', and all this, this stuff.
I'm gonna limit it, probably, to the things I did with Roy, because that's stuff that we share, with Roy and Dave Moreno, the drummer, and Mistheria did keyboards on all my records. So, you've gotta have a little limit that goes some way. 'Okay, where's our starting point?' And effectively, it's gonna be from 'Balls To Picasso' forward. I'm probably not gonna put any 'Skunkworks' stuff — not because I hate it, there's some cracking songs on there, but just because we've got so many other great songs. I'm sure this won't be the last tour that we do together, so we've got we got plenty of opportunity to go and do stuff. There'll probably be three or four off the new record, for sure. And, obviously, Janick was on 'Tattooed Millionaire'. But, again, I'm not gonna do anything off 'Tattooed Millionaire' — not this tour. I mean, we might dig stuff up for future tours and things like that, but for now I wanna concentrate on the heavy stuff. And I think people will wanna hear stuff off 'The Chemical Wedding' because that was my little bit of a groundbreaking record in the '90s''.

He also said he's having a blast on TFP tour. He joked that because they're playing Alexander, no one is missing Run To The Hills this year. And they have played it an awful lot of times.
 
Kalata said:
The improvisational feel could go either way really, but I believe in Bruce, although he was initially hesitant to include it on the album because it's a different piece. The song is long, so there should be interesting parts. Midnight Jam was never a ''serious song'' in a way, with the thought of being included on an album.
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You say this like Sonata had not been gathering dust for more than 20 years! :lol:
 
The more I hear about Sonata the more it seems like an absolute mess of a song. I have a ton of morbid curiosity to hear it, but the whole stream-of-consciousness lyrics, 80% of the vocals being the first take and also sampling Beethoven sounds absolutely dreadful to me. Don't get me wrong, Beethoven is an amazing composer and I enjoy listening to his pieces, but I'm not a fan of taking music by a different artist and building on top of that (that's why I can't really listen to The Nomad anymore). I want to hear Bruce and Roy Z's music, not a jam session over a few bars of Beethoven.

Also, everyone knows that the best part of the Moonlight Sonata is the final, frantic, movement :D
 
Melony said:
Metal Hammer Germany 02/2024

My translation

Editorial:

“...There was a certain amount of nervousness before the 45-minute interview with the metal icon, as the singer was not very forthcoming during the interview about the last Iron Maiden album "SENJUTSU". Now, however, the 65-year-old is back to his old self, appearing enthusiastic and alert - even by Dickinson's standards, he has an enormous flow of words and a never-ending stream of thoughts...”

Interview:

Inspiration between life and death

"The D(ickinson)-Zug (= express train) is unstoppable: In a never-ending stream of thoughts BRUCE DICKINSON draws us into his own created universe. “THE MANDRAKE PROJECT” is more than just an album, its genesis spans more than 20 years and will grow for another two years in the form of a twelve-part comic. The singer raves about creative explosions, unlikely companions and his solo sparring partner Roy Z -while the songwriting traits of Iron Maiden get a little side-swipe that might resonate with some fans.

But the ten new songs are an integral part of the project that stretches back to the 1997 solo album "ACCIDENT OF BIRTH", closely interwoven with the William Blake tribute "THE CHEMICAL WEDDING (1998) and makes amends for "Bring Your Daughter...To The Slaughter' (from the Iron Maiden album "NO PRAYER FOR THE DYING", 1990). Not every song on "THE MANDRAKE PROJECT" has a direct connection to the overarching story: "Face In The Mirror" deals theatrically and tragically with alcohol addiction, and "Sonata" wants to be both a dark fairy tale and a feminist
manifesto. We provided keywords and steered the conversation with the newly (re)married singer through the thematic thicket - and started right at the beginning.
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Thx a lot for the translation. From start to end it was a great read! But I didn't get the beginning of the translation, the "editorial" part. Is that your editorial or the mag's editorial? did sth happen before the interview about Senjutsu? or during the interview? was he uncomfortable about a spesific question or didn't wanna answer a Maiden related question... Sorry, I'm confused...
 
Kalata said:

The curious bits:

Bruce: ''The album is a rare, emotional and old-school journey''.

He doesn't think that if the album was made in 2014-2018, it would have been as good as it is now.

He wants to push the boundaries, stay authentic and still make interesting music and songs. He gave an example with the catchy and probably not that complex Many Doors To Hell - and said that was also one of the reasons he didn't choose is as the album opener. With the heaviness of Ragnarok and the light chorus, the attention to the rest of the album is better built and more indicative of the album, yet with more surprises.

The video for Rain On The Graves will be way better than the one for Afterglow Of Ragnarok. It's another story.

An album title should make you curious. The album cover is a medallion.

According to Bruce, the Double Vinyl is a thing of beauty! That's great to hear. I really hope for some different (little) artworks in the booklet. The visual concept!

He thinks he and Roy are a great songwriting team and Roy is a pretty amazing guitarist and songwriter.

He thinks ''his thing'' is the dramatic stuff.


They will play Resurrection Men from the new album and Bruce wonders if he has to play the intro he recorded on the album live.

Bruce: ''We're gonna do 'Tears Of The Dragon', we're gonna do 'Chemical Wedding', we're gonna do 'Accident Of Birth', and all this, this stuff.
I'm gonna limit it, probably, to the things I did with Roy, because that's stuff that we share, with Roy and Dave Moreno, the drummer, and Mistheria did keyboards on all my records. So, you've gotta have a little limit that goes some way. 'Okay, where's our starting point?' And effectively, it's gonna be from 'Balls To Picasso' forward. I'm probably not gonna put any 'Skunkworks' stuff — not because I hate it, there's some cracking songs on there, but just because we've got so many other great songs. I'm sure this won't be the last tour that we do together, so we've got we got plenty of opportunity to go and do stuff. There'll probably be three or four off the new record, for sure. And, obviously, Janick was on 'Tattooed Millionaire'. But, again, I'm not gonna do anything off 'Tattooed Millionaire' — not this tour. I mean, we might dig stuff up for future tours and things like that, but for now I wanna concentrate on the heavy stuff. And I think people will wanna hear stuff off 'The Chemical Wedding' because that was my little bit of a groundbreaking record in the '90s''.

He also said he's having a blast on TFP tour. He joked that because they're playing Alexander, no one is missing Run To The Hills this year. And they have played it an awful lot of times.
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The man forgot he entirely wrote Powerslave by himself. One of the greatest Maiden tracks. He remembers dark horses like Sun & Steel instead which he co-wrote with H.

Maiden has gotta get rid of Fear of the dark. That song had been on their list since even before the beginning of time.
 
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redandtheblack92 said:
The man forgot he entirely wrote Powerslave by himself. One of the greatest Maiden tracks. He remembers dark horses like Sun & Steel instead which he co-wrote with H.
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There’s no Powerslave beer!!

Joking aside, he is prone to forgetting things and less likely than us Maiden nerds to remember details about his career.
 
GhostofCain said:
There’s no Powerslave beer!!

Joking aside, he is prone to forgetting things and less likely than us Maiden nerds to remember details about his career.
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Umm he was talking about songs he wrote for Maiden. Wasn’t talking about beers.

Agreed on the memory front but come on man, you write one of the greatest ever Maiden songs & how do you forget that.
 
The album is increasingly sounding like a hodgepodge in general. So if I have the timeline right, there’s the original album (to be titled If Eternity Should Fail) which was a concept album that sprung into a comic book. The Mandrake Project includes some of those songs plus some new ones that are unrelated because “the comic tells the story and the music doesn’t need to be a slave to the concept.” Also material that predates 2014.

Honestly it kinda reminds me of Seventh Son meets Balls to Picasso in terms of how the album came together. One is a concept album where the concept was famously abandoned on several songs and the other is an album that went through several versions before it became what it is. Reading some of these interviews has made me raise an eyebrow or two, but then again I love both Seventh Son and BTP.
 
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