IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson was recently interviewed for a special episode of the “Rock Talk With Mitch Lafon” podcast. You can now listen to the chat below.
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Asked why he agreed to perform some of the Blaze Bayley-era IRON MAIDEN material upon his return to the band in 1999, Dickinson said: “Well, you know, life’s too short to go around chucking your ego around like that — it’s childish, it’s stupid. And, actually, some of those songs kind of worked [with my voice], some of them didn’t, but you know what? They were all songs which a lot of IRON MAIDEN fans bought, and some of them, in particular ‘The Clansman’and ‘Sign Of The Cross’, I think we really nailed those songs and I thought it was great material. Blaze‘s voice, obviously, was quite different than mine — it was a slightly lower register — and, actually, I wasn’t complaining, ’cause I could use this kind of lower baritone tone and get quite kind of robust on it all. And I really enjoyed singing those songs.”
Dickinson went on to say that he “had the utmost respect for Blaze, because he stepped into a situation that was extremely difficult for him. Because, manifestly, his voice was so different to mine and yet he had to try and sing some of those [older IRON MAIDEN] songs. He was in a difficult place. And he was a very, very nice guy, and still is a very nice guy, and I have a huge amount of respect for him.”
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Dickinson recently told the “Do You Know Jack?” radio show that he “was surprised” Blazewas chosen to replace him in IRON MAIDEN. “I was delighted for Blaze, but there was a whole bunch of other really good singers out there,” he said. “I thought ‘Wow, they could have picked somebody with a voice that could do what my voice did.’ But they picked Blaze. Obviously, they picked somebody different, but that came with its own set of challenges. I just wondered whether anybody in the management was really giving anybody any serious words of truth on how hard this could be. ”