Bruce Dickinson has revealed his initial impressions upon seeing Iron Maiden live for the first time – well before he eventually joined the band as their singer. Speaking to Record Collector‘s Joel McIver (reported by Metal Injection), Dickinson reminisces about how impressed he was when he witnessed the then-emergent British metallers take to the stage at London’s Music Machine venue (now KOKO). Maiden were supporting Dickinson’s own band at the time, Samson, and were fronted by Paul Di’Anno and yet to release their game-changing debut album.
“The first time I saw Maiden was at what was then the Music Machine in Camden,” Dickinson explains. “Samson were headlining because our management had bankrolled the gig and said, ‘We want the top slot,’ although we didn’t really deserve it. That became obvious when Maiden came on because the whole place was rammed. I’d heard rumours about how good they were, and I thought I’d better see them. When they came out, I thought, ‘I’ve never seen Deep Purple, but this is what it must have felt like to see Deep Purple in their prime, rocking up a storm.'”
Dickinson has some polite if not exactly gushing words for the man he’d eventually replace in Maiden, describing Di’Anno’s performance that night as “okay” before adding: “he didn’t have a lot of flex to his voice. I thought his voice had come as far as it was going to get.”
When it came to the rest of Maiden, however, Dickinson had no doubt that he was witnessing something special.
“I saw what the rest of the band were capable of straight away, and I remember thinking, ‘Good God, I’d love to front that band,'” he says. “And as soon as they finished playing, everybody in the venue left and we were headlining to about three people.”
Di’Anno would be removed from Iron Maiden towards the end of 1981, with Dickinson replacing him soon after. Dickinson himself would depart the band after an immensely successful decade-plus, leaving in 1993 only to return six years later, remaining Maiden’s frontman ever since. The singer has spent most of this year, however, focusing on his solo career, releasing the critically acclaimed The Mandrake Project in March. He’ll return to Maiden duties for the continuation of the successful Future Past Tour later this year.
“There’s only so many things you can do in the limited period of time you have,” Dickinson told Metal Hammer earlier this year. “But it’s like the William Blake quote at the start of the video says: my business is to create, it’s what I do.”