{"id":35977,"date":"2018-10-15T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T20:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/?p=35977"},"modified":"2018-10-13T15:28:29","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T04:28:29","slug":"bruce-dickinson-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maytherockbewithyou.com\/mtrbwy\/2018\/10\/bruce-dickinson-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Bruce Dickinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cI don\u2019t take myself terribly seriously and I think some people find that they imagine that I probably do because I\u2019m in a big heavy metal band and everything and I do all these things, but I do see the absurd side of life and most of life is kind of absurd when you actually get down to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Release: Bruce Dickinson is considered one of the world’s most storied musicians. Aside from decades spent delivering high-octane performances with his larger-than-life persona in Iron Maiden, Bruce has lived an extraordinary off-stage existence too. A true polymath, Bruce has done a lot. Over the last couple of years, during\u00a0Iron Maiden’s\u00a0The Book Of Souls World Tour<\/em>, Bruce turned his unbridled creativity to writing his memoirs. In\u00a0What Does This Button Do?\u00a0<\/em>Where for the first time he shares the most fascinating recollections, including his thirty years with Maiden, the early days, his childhood within the eccentric British school system, going solo, realising his dream of flying jumbo jets and his recent battle with tongue cancer.<\/p>\n

In Sydney before starting his Australian tour Bruce Dickinson gave us a call to talk about his upcoming tour, his book \u2018What Does This Button Do?\u2019, writing it, reading it, falling pianos, new music, and more\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an absolute honour to speak to you, Bruce, and thank you for your time.<\/strong>
\nThank you!<\/p>\n

We\u2019re here because you\u2019re heading back to Australia but this time in a spoken word environment, do you have an idea of a set and structure for these shows?<\/strong>
\nWell yeah I\u2019ve done sort of like about half a dozen of these shows, actual theatre shows and then before that I was kind of developing it when we were doing a promo tour for the book and that\u2019s what turned into this one man show because it was working so well and somebody said why don\u2019t you do this as a show and I went hmm you know what that might just work. So we\u2019ve done it and it\u2019s gone down extremely well and hence the fact that we\u2019ve got a promoter doing it in Australia and New Zealand and I\u2019ve got about another ten more shows coming up before and after Christmas.<\/p>\n

Obviously in seeing you up on stage with Iron Maiden, you\u2019re so animated and an absolute machine, is it a different process for you in standing on a stage and being Bruce Dickinson the storyteller?<\/strong>
\nYes but it\u2019s still a lot of energy, a huge amount of energy, I don\u2019t lose as much water *laughs* as I do when I\u2019m running around on stage with Iron Maiden *laughs* but I think my brain might work harder.<\/p>\n

So what was it like the first time you got up there in front of a crowd without a band to tell your stories, was it a little daunting?<\/strong>
\nYeah, because you are completely on your own, free-fall without a parachute. So at first when we did it, the very first time we did it was about eight or nine hundred people in London and all the management were there and all kinds of people were there and I was thinking oh my god… and of course we had things to read from the book, bits to read from the book was the idea and then I would talk about it a little bit and I just basically threw the plan out the window as soon as I walked on stage and thought, you know what? I think we might end up reading a little bit from the book but actually I\u2019m going to tell some stories around the pictures because there\u2019s like a little slide show and literally every picture tells a story.<\/p>\n

On top of that there\u2019s some interaction with the crowd with a Q&A I believe?<\/strong>
\nOh yeah what we do is everybody should get a little cue card, what used to be like little Rolodex cardboard question cards and if they want they write down a question, whatever kind of question they want, doesn\u2019t have to do be about music, it could be about absolutely anything you know and obviously I encourage witty, interesting, thought provoking questions, so things like \u2018what did you have for breakfast today?\u2019 maybe not, or \u2018when\u2019s the next Iron Maiden tour?\u2019 is gonna go straight in the bin because it\u2019s not very interesting because it\u2019s like I\u2019m not going to tell you *laughs*. Then you get some really cracking questions and I go backstage with an interval of about fifteen minutes and I whiz off backstage and I go through all the questions and reorganise them and come back out and I do the Q&A and that\u2019s actually sometimes the favourite bit of the evening because it can go depending on the quality of the questions it can really, really rock. It\u2019s great.<\/p>\n

Annoyingly my next question was, what did you have for breakfast?<\/strong>
\n*laughs*<\/p>\n

Now, \u2018What Does This Button Do?\u2019 has been out now for almost a year, why was it the right time to tell your story?<\/strong>
\nOh well that is a good question, I\u2019d been turning down offers to write a biography for quite a long time, mainly because I knew how much work was involved. Then of course I got diagnosed with throat cancer and when I got clear of that I kind of reconsidered and I thought you know what, maybe that was a bit of a wakeup call, perhaps I should write a bit of my story to date *laughs* just in case, you know? You never know, I might get hit by a falling piano.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s such a random thing to choose!<\/strong>
\nWell it is and it\u2019s the sort of thing that would be so random if that happened and you hadn\u2019t written your autobiography it would be really unfortunate.<\/p>\n

When penning your book, what was the process like looking back at your life and putting it all down literally on paper as you handwrote your memoir?<\/strong>
\nIt was much more entertaining than I ever imagined *laughs* in fact I wrote some chunks of it, quite a lot of it actually in my local pub and so I\u2019d go in there early in the evening and sit there for two or three hours nursing the same pint of beer scribbling away and some of my buddies who were locals as well when I\u2019d finish I\u2019d finally go and stand a bit cross-eyed at the bar, a bit shell shocked as I\u2019d write typically between a thousand and fifteen hundred words straight through in a siting, so I\u2019d be a little woozy as it were. So I\u2019d be sitting having a beer and they\u2019d say, \u201cYou know what? You\u2019re giggling all the time\u201d and I went \u201cAm I?!\u201d and they went \u201cYeah, we\u2019ve been watching you, you\u2019ve been chuckling the whole time when you\u2019re writing it\u201d and I went \u201cOh that\u2019s a good sign\u201d *laughs* so yeah that\u2019s what it was like.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s such a great story and I listened to the audio book and it just gave it that personal touch, in retelling it via audio what was it like reliving your story once again?<\/strong>
\nAgain it was just a little wry look at my life as it were and the things that have happened. I\u2019d like to think that most of the, if I poke fun at people in the book it\u2019s in a sort of fairly gentle, amusing sort of a way because I take what I do seriously, I don\u2019t take myself terribly seriously and I think some people find that they imagine that I probably do because I\u2019m in a big heavy metal band and everything and I do all these things, but I do see the absurd side of life and most of life is kind of absurd when you actually get down to it.<\/p>\n

I truly enjoyed that, the way that you said you dressed and the way you grew the beard when you had the cancer, you were just enjoying everything you could.<\/strong>
\nYeah because I\u2019m always a glass half full kind of a guy, so I always try and look for positives even *laughs* if you\u2019re up to your neck in shit *laughs*.<\/p>\n

You talked about leaving out a lot of anecdotes, wives, divorces, births which I thought was great but I audibly got disappointed when you said you left out airship stories, do you have a quick one you can share to alleviate that disappointment?<\/strong>
\nWell there\u2019s a whole story about how I got involved with it in the first place, I mean, there you go, that\u2019s something you should write down on a card and ask me in the Q&A because you\u2019ll get the whole story. There\u2019s 40,000 words worth of stories that are not in the book because the editor, Jack said look, we\u2019ve got a couple of good stories about this and whilst these other two stories are funny, we don\u2019t need four, we only need two and I went yeah I can see that. So there\u2019s a lot of stuff, I mean because the cut off was effectively 2016 things that I started in like 2013 and projects like that I left out of the book because they weren\u2019t finished, they hadn\u2019t gotten to a conclusion. I wanted the book to have a conclusion, I wanted it to actually have like a movie, the end at the end of it so you\u2019ve gone through a narrative journey and you\u2019d gotten to the end of it and you\u2019ve thought the end, fantastic, that was a good story. Now if I did another book I\u2019d have to approach it somewhat differently, obviously it wouldn\u2019t be an autobiography it would probably just be a selection of anecdotes or something like that, I still haven\u2019t figured that one out, but for now the autobiography was intended to have a narrative flow and I think we broadly achieved that.<\/p>\n

As I said I did the audio book and did it over a day, and yeah I couldn\u2019t stop listening it flowed so well, it was great!<\/strong>
\nBit of trivia for you on your audio book and I didn\u2019t realise this until the guy who was the engineer phoned me up and said \u201cI\u2019ve just finished editing the audio book\u201d and I went \u201cYeah\u201d, and he went \u201cDo you know how long it is?\u201d and you\u2019ll never believe this, a pure, pure, pure coincidence it is actually 666 minutes long.<\/p>\n

Oustanding!<\/strong>
\n*laughs* How weird is that!!<\/p>\n

OK, so you\u2019re a Rock God, an airline pilot and captain, a beer brewer, motivational speaker, film scriptwriter, twice-published novelist and best-selling author, radio presenter, TV actor and international fencer, is there anything left that you want to do that you haven\u2019t yet had the chance to do?<\/strong>
\nI\u2019m trying to finish all of those *laughs*.<\/p>\n

Anything you want to add to that list then?<\/strong>
\nNo! *laughs* Isn\u2019t that enough? *laughs* The thing is I can do all of them more effectively, or better, or differently so as long as you\u2019re learning something about every aspect of all of those things then that\u2019s all I\u2019m interested in.<\/p>\n

Obviously I love Iron Maiden but I loved learning about the flying and the fencing and the chapter on your cancer was full on, it really was great learning about that side of you rather than just the rock star\u2026<\/strong>
\nThe book was written exactly with that in mind, you know I\u2019m not just a caricature that people sort of see on stage I\u2019ve done lots of other things, but they tend to be almost some of them like quite geeky in a way *laughs*and but a lot of people like that. So I thought, and the American publishers for example expected some Nikki Sixx \u2018The Dirt\u2019 or something like that and I was like \u201cAre you kidding? I\u2019m about as far away from being that person as you could possibly imagine, so you\u2019re not gonna get that kind of a book, you\u2019re gonna get this kind of a book\u201d which is there for people and not a book that insults people\u2019s intelligence you know?<\/p>\n

Musically I have to ask a sneaky question, is there anything in the works you can let us in on?<\/strong>
\n*laughs* Yes but no but yes but no but no *laughs* the answer is on pain of death I cannot possibly reveal my sources and no\u2026 there\u2019s lots of stuff, lots of really great stuff going on but the only bit the world knows about is we\u2019re doing Rock In Rio on October the 4th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Next year I\u2019m gathering?<\/strong>
\nYeah, unless I\u2019m appearing in an episode of Dr Who.<\/p>\n

Well that hasn\u2019t happened yet, add that to your list!<\/strong>
\nOH YEAH! Bucket list, absolutely, yeah yeah yeah, playing a dustbin lid in Star Wars or something like that *laughs* or being a toilet attendant in Dr Who, yeah, absolute bucket list stuff.<\/p>\n

Lastly let\u2019s look ahead to the future, finish this sentence for me, in 2019 Bruce Dickinson is going to\u2026<\/strong>
\nPossibly get a new mobile phone.<\/p>\n

Possibly?<\/strong>
\nYeah, I still have an old Nokia with \u2018Snake\u2019 on it.<\/p>\n

Well it is a great game!<\/strong>
\nYeah it\u2019s a great phone as well but it doesn\u2019t bloody work in Australia *laughs*.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BRUCE DICKINSON | WHAT DOES THIS BUTTON DO? TOUR 2018<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

SYDNEY<\/strong>
\nThursday 18th\u00a0<\/sup>October \u2013 Enmore Theatre (All Ages)\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
\nticketek.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

MELBOURNE<\/strong>
\nFriday 19th\u00a0<\/sup>October \u2013 Palais Theatre (All Ages)\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
\nticketmaster.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

CANBERRA<\/strong>
\nSunday 21st\u00a0<\/sup>October \u2013 Llewellyn Hall (All Ages)\u00a0<\/strong>
\nticketek.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

NEWCASTLE<\/strong>
\nTuesday 23rd\u00a0<\/sup>October \u2013 Civic Theatre\u00a0(All Ages)\u00a0<\/strong>
\nticketek.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

BRISBANE<\/strong>
\nWednesday 24th\u00a0<\/sup>October \u2013 Eatons Hill Hotel (All Ages)\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
\noztix.com.au<\/a><\/p>\n

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Essential Information<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

From:<\/strong> Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England<\/p>\n

Website:<\/strong> www.screamforme.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Latest Release:<\/strong> What Does This Button Do? (Out Now \u2013 Harper Collins)\u00a0PHYSICAL VERSION AVAILABLE\u00a0HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

PRINTED VERSION<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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AUDIO BOOK<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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