Bruce Dickinson joined Iron Maiden in 1981 replaced original singer Paul Di’Anno. He made his recorded debut with the band fronting the metal classic, “The Number Of The Beast,” and he made numerous albums with the band until his departure in 1993. Recently during the Q&A portion of his spoken word show in Montreal, Dickinson was asked about the reasons why he left the group. He was replaced by Wolfsbane singer Blaze Bayley, but eventually returned to the group in 1999 for the “Brave New World” album and world tour and has been in tow ever since.
“Honestly, I was as surprised as anybody else,” Dickinson said. “I don’t think people really believed that at the time. I just thought that if I stayed with Maiden forever, all I would learn about was what it was like to be in Maiden. And in order to learn what it was like outside Maiden, you have to leave, because, unless you left, nobody would take anything that you did seriously. It would always be, like, ‘Oh, bless him. He’s doing a solo record. Let him have his fun and then he can go back to being in Iron Maiden.’ I hated that. So I thought, ‘F*ck it. I’ll just leave.’ And [people said], ‘What happens if your [solo] career doesn’t work out?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s God or fate saying maybe that’s [for] the best.’ And I said [it’s] better [to take a chance] now and do something else with your life than sit there somewhere in fantasy world and end up just grumpy.”
Dickinson previously said he had no interest in returning to the band if they only focused on nostalgia. “Well, all I needed to know was that we were not gonna come back as some sort of a reunion-type thing,” he said. “I didn’t want to go back to the past. This was gonna be about putting a band together that was looking ahead to the future — to do a great new album and to really restart the whole impetus and direction of the band. And Steve [Harris, Maiden bassist and leader] said that’s what he wanted to do, and I was, like, ‘Okay. Let’s do it.’ And, of course, the first album we came out with after that was [2000’s] ‘Brave New World’ — I think one of the best Maiden albums that we’ve ever done.”
Bayley fronted Maiden through some challenging commercial years for the heavy metal genre appearing on 1995’s “The X Factor” and 1998’s “Virtual XI.” Two songs from that period have survived in Maiden’s recent live sets, however, including “Sign Of The Cross” and “The Clansman.”
