Metal Hammer recently sat down with Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson to talk about his early solo career.
Speaking exclusively with the magazine, the 67-year-old discusses what made him launch a solo career in the late 1980s, his early outings with the albums Tattooed Millionaire (1990) and Balls To Picasso (1994), and the success of his 1994 single Tears Of The Dragon.
Watch the full chat below.
Revealing what first made him take the plunge to go solo, which began with the contribution of the song Bring Your Daughter To Your Slaughter to the A Nightmare On Elm Street 5 soundtrack while he was still an active member of Maiden, Dickinson says: “It was by accident. The publishing company that we were published by with Maiden, Zomba, came to me and said, ‘We know you like to do odd things. Have you got any tracks kicking around for a movie, Nightmare On Elm Street?’ That ended up as Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter.”
He continues: “I actually contacted Janick [Gers, current Maiden guitarist], ’cause Janick was a mate of mine. He was having a hard time with trying to get a gig, frankly. He refused to cut his hair, he looked like he was from the 70s, and he was so pissed-off with it he was going to sell his equipment and just go off to uni and become a teacher.”
Later in the conversation, Dickinson talks about the significance of Balls To Picasso, the first album he released during his absence from Maiden from 1993 to ’99.
“It’s growing pains,” he says. “The problem with the original version of Balls… was it was tentative. It was not full-on enough, and it’s taken us all these years to go, ‘Can we make it as full-on as it should have been?’ [referring to the 2025 remix]. Some of that was because the record label was expecting Tattooed Millionaire part two. No.
“Shay [Baby, producer] almost stepped back from making it super-heavy. I think Roy [Z, guitars] wanted to make it heavier, but he was the new boy, so he didn’t feel like he could push for it. I was like, ‘I’m not sure what we should do exactly,’ so I just kind of went with the flow.”
Dickinson released More Balls To Picasso on July 25 and is currently touring North America with his solo band. His next stop is at the House Of Blues in Dallas tonight (August 29). The frontman is at work on his next solo album of original material, with an eye to a 2027 release date.
