Dickinson also spoke about the first show he did with Iron Maiden
Bruce Dickinson spoke in an interview about when he was invited to join Iron Maiden .
“It was like I was playing football for a third division team and suddenly someone says, ‘You’re going to play for Barcelona. And your teammate is Lionel Messi .’ ‘Oh, I think I’d better practice, then,’” he said, laughing.
He revealed that he couldn't open his eyes during the first few songs of the first show. “What made it easier was that we played a lot of the new material from Number of the Beast . So I didn't have to reinterpret old things. We did five shows in Italy and it was the first time I'd performed outside the UK. I had no experience. So it was very interesting,” he said.
Soon after, came the albums Piece of Mind and Powerslave . “At this point we already had a Number One album. I worked hard on writing the next two. Joining Iron Maiden was the biggest rollercoaster in the world. Except rollercoasters. You go up, then down, then up, then down. But I was going down the whole time. I mean, it was a huge, non-stop adrenaline rush for 5 years. It was really something.”
When Bruce was called to join the band, the former vocalist Paul Di'Anno was still in the band and didn't know he was going to be fired. “I thought the atmosphere would be heavy. I was feeling uncomfortable. So we started playing old Deep Purple that we all knew. Then we played other songs that we all knew. Then we realized that we loved the same songs. When Steve [Harris] arrived, he asked me what we would do. They only had two albums and I had learned all the songs. Basically, we played both albums from beginning to end. Then Steve said, 'Oh, when do we start?'”
READ ALSO: Steve Harris defends albums with Blaze Bayley
