Bruce Dickinson reveals several interesting Iron Maiden on the current spoken-word tour. Answering a question from the audience on the 12th, the vocalist recounted an episode in which he almost punched Steve Harris.
When he was chosen to replace Paul Di'Anno , Dickinson demanded that the center of the stage be free to sing – and this did not please the Iron Maiden founder very much.
“When I joined the band, I was a very different animal from the previous vocalist,” he said (via LouderSound ). “I said, ‘I know I’m the new guy, but here’s the thing: when I sing, I stay at the front of the stage, do my part, and then go somewhere else. You guys can be anywhere, but when I sing, I want to be in the center.’”
To make the new band feel at home, Dickinson instructed the crew to place the teleprompters at the front of the stage. Everything was going well until "the maniac" Steve Harris put his feet on the monitors in his classic pose.
For a while, the roadies would remove Dickinson's monitors from the front of the stage, and the vocalist would insist on having them put back, but the real solution was to buy a larger microphone stand. "It was like a trap for bass players," he said.
Even so, Harris didn't back down from going to the center of the stage, and several collisions occurred. "He was pushing me – I still have marks on my front teeth, with chips and cracks, from all the times he hit my fucking microphone against my teeth," the singer said. "So, we almost came to blows.".
Over time, Dickinson and Harris learned to make room for everyone at the band's shows: "I sing in the middle of the stage, we just made the stage twice as big," he concluded.
After telling the story to the audience, the vocalist sang "Happy Birthday" to his colleague, who turned 66 years old on March 12th. Watch below.
READ ALSO: Bruce Dickinson comments on Steve Harris's "controlling" side in Iron Maiden: "It's his band"
