Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson recalled a weird moment from the early-career show where there was only one attendee. Recently talking to Talk Is Jericho podcast, Bruce recalled:
”I would insult them. Either that or try and try and make friends with them, but in a very odd way. I had one, one show, I was in a band at university. There was one… In the old days, it would have been called a disco. Except there was nobody there. It was like the phantom disco, and there was like mirror balls and lights. And there was also the stage. And there was nobody, nobody there. But we were getting paid like 50 bucks to go and play.
”So then, the door open. And one person walked in. Looked a bit shocked that there was somebody actually on stage. And so he got a chair and he put it right in the middle of the dance floor, and sat down on this chair. And I thought, ‘This is great!’ So I got off the stage. And I went up to him with a microphone. I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, I got to know, what’s your name?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, I’m so-and-so.’ I said, ‘Can I buy you a beer? Because we’re about to do this performance just for you. The least I can do is buy you a beer. You may hate it, you know what I mean?’
”And, and then we kind of relaxed and we had this… We actually had a relationship, we had an audience of one who didn’t know who we were. But actually, we had a great time. Nobody cared, nobody knew. But we had a great time.
”And I think you have to take that there’s always a way in to a bad situation. You just have to think outside the box. A pet peeve of mine is when a band goes on in what is obviously a toilet with two beer crates at one end of the stage. And they go on there, and they pretend that they’re in Madison Square Garden.
”And it’s like ‘Hello, Cleveland!’ And I’m just like, ‘No, it’s not Cleveland, you’re in a toilet with two beer crates.’ If you just said to people, ‘Hey, we’re all in the toilet with two beer crates,’ everybody would go ‘These guys are great! I love these guys!’ But instead, they go, ‘Ah, yeah, just a bunch of poses.’ So you’ve got to be real with it.