Bruce Dickinson

Black Bart said:
Clubs, mostly. In terms of attendance, Bruce's all time highs were a bit like Maiden's all time lows (i.e The X Factour in the USA). He did have nice spots in festival during his 2002 summer tour though.
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Looking at setlist.fm he was playing in some pretty insignificant venues in the UK - including the small room in the Glasgow Garage! :eek: It's hard to imagine Bruce playing there, especially since the main room itself is only 600 capacity and I've seen less significant bands play in it (like British Lion). I'd have thought that with fans crying out for Bruce to rejoin Maiden that they'd have gone to his shows instead. Perhaps this was endemic of Metal in the 90s with a lot of bands struggling to maintain fanbases. I know that Saxon basically disappeared from the UK until about 2005. If Bruce ever does another solo tour I'd be surprised if he played such tiny venues again. Nottingham Rock City is a fairly significant venue though.
 
In the US, he played mostly in places that were high hundreds to low thousands in capacity. From the shows I went to, they were generally pretty packed. Though, you have to consider metal in general was drawing pretty poorly at the time here, so I think he did okay.

That said, I think if he did another solo tour, it would probably be limited to Europe (possibly South America) .. but sadly, I cannot see a US tour from him. I think a 20-ish date UK-European tour is probably the best we could hope for.
 
Black Wizard said:
Looking at setlist.fm he was playing in some pretty insignificant venues in the UK - including the small room in the Glasgow Garage! :eek: It's hard to imagine Bruce playing there, especially since the main room itself is only 600 capacity and I've seen less significant bands play in it (like British Lion).
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There's a second part of The Garage that's quite big; some big DJs played there in the late 90's/early 2000's, did residencies, etc. I do know Prince played there in the early 90's too. They did (at that time) attract some big performers to the venue, then stopped doing real live music for years (late 90's), then started again.
 
I saw Bruce in 1998 in a venue of 1,600 capacity. Crowded, perhaps sold out (don't remember). In 1996 he toured with (opened for) Helloween. Saw him in a venue with a capacity of 1,000. 22 years and 5 days ago. I just found a poster on internet:
626-19960422HelloweenBruceDickinson.jpg

He also played there in 1995.
 
Black Bart said:
I've bought the whole box... but I'm not really interested in comparing original soundscapes to reeditions, I am just glad that it is a nice object with great songs in it. :) The only disappointing thing is that there is the same bio printed on each inner sleeve, not one related to the period of the album only.
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Mosh said:
I have the solo works box. Like Black Bart mentioned, its lame that they recycled the same inner sleeves, but other than that I’m pretty happy with the set. The pressings are pretty good quality and the packaging was nicely done, even if I disagreed with some of the design choices. I also liked that everything was a gatefold, even the single LPs.

Compared to the CDs, Accident of Birth is probably the most essential. Tattooed Millionaire is also good if you’ve only heard the remastered CDs (which are horribly brickwalled). Other than that I’d say it’s mostly something for the hardcore fans.
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Thanks guys. The inner sleeve thing seems to be one of the few complaints I've been hearing. I'm thinking of saving up some money to buy it (and an actual record player, lol). So long as the sound quality is good that's all I'm interested in. :)
 
Jer said:
Small clubs in the U.S. for the headlining Accident Of Birth tour. My 20+ year old interview and observations from that tour, courtesy of the Internet Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/19991111113357/http://alabanza.com:80/jer/bruce/sds1.html
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Nice:
ADRIAN: Kai Hansen's a friend of mine, and he's a great musician. He's a
really good singer, great player...and, you know, he comes up with these
fantastic pieces, you know, these real long, fantastic kind of pieces.
Some of it I like, and some of it I don't care for...but it's well done.
And it's got its fans, you know.

I asked Adrian the same question on an instrumental album, back in 1999 or 2000 when fans could do Q&A with band members. He said he was planning to it. ;-)

EDIT:
And this is interesting!

JER: First, what's the real story behind your exit from Iron Maiden...
because the popular story is that you had some different musical ideas, so
you left amicably to pursue that; but I've also heard stories that you had
kind of a "discussion / argument" with Steve Harris about the number of
songs to write for the album, and how they should be written, and that
sort of thing, and that you didn't leave entirely willingly...

ADRIAN: There's probably a bit of truth in both, really. I mean, I did
have other ideas, and I think deep down I did want to explore other
things. I think basically I felt very stifled - I couldn't really express
myself. I spent ten years, you know, I had some great times, and we did
some good stuff, you know, but it was never...probably "Somewhere in Time"
was the most expressive period. But I think deep down I felt that I
needed to do something else, and the stuff we were working on for the
album which I left on, I wasn't crazy about...and the manner in which we
were going to record it, and the arrangements to some of the songs, I
just...you know, I didn't up and quit, but I was less than enthusiastic,
and, you know, the rest of the band...you know, "What's the matter? Do
you want to be in the band or not?" And I said "well...", and once I
expressed that, I thought that, everyone else was like... You know, I
think it's sort of black and white when people quit, especially if you're
in a band for ten years, you know...it's quite a decision, really. But,
you know, I think it's been for the best, really. You know, I think I've
managed to grow a lot as a person since I left the band. I didn't do
anything for a couple of years - I think I needed to do nothing for a
couple of years. And then I just started writing a lot, and I've done all
kinds of different...well, not all kinds of different music; but I, like,
explored different things, and I got a lot of stuff out of my system. But
I'm really probably the happiest I've ever been playing music, like, you
know, right now, like doing Bruce's thing and then having the outlet of
Psycho Motel as well, you know, it's great.
 
CriedWhenBrucieLeft said:
There's a second part of The Garage that's quite big; some big DJs played there in the late 90's/early 2000's, did residencies, etc. I do know Prince played there in the early 90's too. They did (at that time) attract some big performers to the venue, then stopped doing real live music for years (late 90's), then started again.
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But it's smaller than the main room we saw British Lion play in five years ago.
 
Now that was a good read; great interview! :)

"See, I think that that Skunkworks record...I
mean, it didn't surprise me that the project sort of, like, split apart,
because there was kind of an inevitability to that...but the record was
bloody fantastic - it's a great record, and it just got totally
overlooked. But it's one of those records that I think people are just
gonna dig through, they're going to discover it and go "wow, this is a
gem!", you know."

That is exactly what happened.
 
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Bit of a slide in terms of audience sizes, that's for sure. Even the Cathouse, that's a crazy small place to have seen him. That would have been pretty cool.
(Can't find anything online with the capacity of G2.)
 
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