Run to the Hills the Official Biography of Iron Maiden by Mick Wall

Author:Mick Wall [Wall, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781860742873
Google: QkijOAAACAAJ
Amazon: 1860742874
Publisher: Sanctuary
Published: 2001-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Run To The Hills

12. Bruce

From the outside, sacking Paul Di'Anno when they did looked like a huge gamble for Iron Maiden. In fact, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to them. With the benefit of hindsight, it's not difficult to see that Maiden had gone as far as they could with the self-styled Cockney wide-boy leading the charge. They had successfully conquered Europe and Japan with Paul. Now, poised to take on the USA with their third album, it was imperative that they should have a frontman equal to the task. Clearly, Paul Di'Anno was not that man.

Genuinely rattled by the ever-increasing demands placed upon his usually hungover shoulders, Paul had visibly shrunk from the task of helping lift Maiden to the next level.

On the other hand, Bruce Dickinson, the Samson singer that Maiden would eventually turn to, had no such hang-ups. Where Paul Di'Anno's dreams and ambitions ended, Bruce's were just getting warmed up. Like Steve Harris, he'd dreamed of nothing less than to be standing on the tallest stages in the world since he bought his first album, Deep Purple's In Rock, when he was 13. Known variously these days as author, pilot, video director, radio and MTV presenter, solo artist and father of three boisterous children by his second wife, Paddy, it's sometimes overlooked that Bruce Dickinson is also one of the greatest white rock singers to emerge on the international scene since the heyday of British blues rock vocal legends like Robert Plant, Paul Rodgers and his beloved Ian Gillan. Musically, you could say that he and Maiden simply belonged together. As Steve Harris says, "If I'm honest, I'd have to say it was probably more Bruce's style of singing that I really imagined singing my Maiden songs, right back in the early days. It's just that Paul came along first."Paul Bruce Dickinson was born on 7 August 1958 in Worksop, a small mining town in Nottinghamshire. Although Paul was his proper first name, he always preferred to be known as Bruce, even as a child. His parents were still in their teens when they married, and baby Bruce's imminent arrival hurried the young couple into the kind of make-do-and-mend union common in pre-abortion '50s Britain. Barely out of school themselves and virtually penniless, the expectant young couple were initially forced to live with Bruce's grandparents, who would take on much of the responsibility for the child's earliest upbringing.

"I was a bit of an accident," Bruce admits. "My mum was 16 or 17 when she became pregnant and my dad was 17 or 18. They were subsequently married and I was born about four or five months later. My mum worked in a shoe shop, part time, and Dad was in the army. He was a motor mechanic, but he lost his driver's licence through being a general hooligan and so he just thought, 'Fuck it,' and he volunteered for the army. It paid more and he got his licence back straight away.

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