Iron Maiden released Senjutsu in September of this year, but the band's seventeenth studio album was finished long before. In a recent interview with Louder Sound , Bruce Dickinson discussed the album's creative process and his relationship with Steve Harris .
“I love the energy of the album. We arrived at the studio with nothing planned, looked at each other and said, ‘Okay, what do you guys have?’”, the vocalist recalled. At that moment, Harris and Adrian Smith presented part of a song they were working on at the time – and Bruce liked the result right away.
The band's collaborative work is described by Maiden's frontman as "a mix between a tennis match and a juggling act," with all the musicians contributing their perspectives. Even so, the bassist and founder of Iron Maiden has his own way of directing the work.
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“Steve is much more controlling with his stuff, it’s fair to say. He can take a riff from Janick [Gers] or Adrian and disappear for three or four days, and then resurface and say, ‘Okay, I’ve got three songs ready!’ The pressure he puts on himself is phenomenal, and he’s always up to the challenge,” Dickinson continued.
“When we sit down to work on the vocals and melody lines, he has the arrangements thought out very precisely, and often he has already defined, in his mind, a very specific place for each syllable of the lyrics. As a singer, my job is to find the spaces where I can place myself in the performance,” explained the vocalist. “After so much time in our career, we know how to work together and read each other.”
Asked if there's any kind of democratic vote to decide which songs will be worked on and what Dickinson does if he doesn't like the bassist's composition, the answer was to the point. “It's been Steve's band since day one, ultimately. Have you met Steve Harris? If he wants a song on the album, believe me, the song will be on the album,” the singer summarized with a laugh.
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