Legendary Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson released his first solo album in nearly two decades last week with “The Mandrake Project.” The hard and heavy effort has been widely praised thus far, and Dickinson will also tour in support of the album.
In a new interview with SongFacts, Dickinson talked about his new record and also was asked what the most challenging Iron Maiden song is to perform. It’s the classic “Aces High,” from 1984’s landmark effort, “Powerslave.”
“The song I find the most challenging to sing in the Maiden repertoire would be ‘Aces High’,” he said. “That’s not just because I’m 60-something years old. Trust me, when I was 26, it was equally challenging. I always said, ‘If we’re going to do ‘Aces High,’ can we put it towards the front of the set please?’”
Iron Maiden are one of few classic metal bands that still perform their songs in standard tuning the way they were originally recorded.
“But we still do all the songs in the original key,” Dickinson said. “I’m sure it would be easier if we dropped the key, but then it wouldn’t sound as good. That’s the most challenging Maiden song to sing.”
Dickinson also commented on challenging songs from his solo catalog, but admits those are generally easier since he has such a hand in the songwriting.
“Solo-wise, I don’t know. Because I wrote the vocal parts, I’m pretty comfortable with it all. It’s not that the songs are necessarily difficult to sing,” Dickinson explained. “I think if you’ve got a good, decent sound, and decent monitors, then you can pretty much pull off all the solo catalog. If you’ve got crappy sound, you’ve got to be a little careful when you start doing things like “Darkside Of Aquarius” and “Book Of Thel” so you don’t blow your voice out if you’re not getting all the required feedback from the monitors.”
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