Now that he’s got a new lease on life, Blaze Bayley is thinking big. The former Iron Maiden vocalist has long since had a successful solo career since exiting one of the biggest heavy metal bands on the planet, and his forthcoming album, “Circle Of Stone,” is among some of his best work to date.
He almost wasn’t around to see it.
Early last year, just a day after signing off on the mix of his latest album, Blaze suffered a heart attack at his home. Paramedics were on the scene within minutes, and he ended up having quadruple bypass surgery.
“A heart attack is about as serious as it gets,” Blaze said. “It was two minutes and they were there treating me in my house, and I got the wires on. In 15 minutes I was in hospital because I live close. They said if it had been 10 minutes instead of two minutes, I probably wouldn’t have made it. It’s really spooky.”
A near-death experience is frightening enough on its own. But Blaze was also spooked by the lyrical content on the record finished just prior to his health scare. “A lot of the lyrics that appear on the album, it’s very spooky,” he said. “It really feels like it could’ve been written after a serious life threatening event rather than finished on the eve of that event.”
Blaze will soon hit the road on tour in support of “Circle Of Stone.” He’ll also be doing select sets celebrating 30 years since he joined Iron Maiden. The part where he’s thinking big about the future comes when asked if he would like to someday appear as a guest on stage with his former band.
“To be honest, I’m totally open,” he said. “I just think it would be so much fun for fans. I hope that (no fans) would start having a punch up, I just think it would be so much fun. I think maybe if there’s ever a 50th Iron Maiden anniversary, maybe they might think, ‘Well, we’ll do that.’”
It also wouldn’t mark the first time Blaze has been on stage with a Bruce Dickinson-fronted Maiden. It happened in the early ’90s when Blaze’s first band, Wolfsbane, were supporting Maiden on their UK tour.
“I already sang on stage with Bruce,” Blaze explained. “In Wolfsbane, we used to climb on stage for ‘Heaven Can Wait,’ and I did ‘Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter’ with Maiden in Brixton. I managed to get the mic off Bruce, and it was so much fun. I love Bruce as well. He’s always been very kind to me and very generous with his time before I was in Iron Maiden, during Iron Maiden and after with my solo career. He’s a lovely guy, and I think we’d get along really well doing that.”
Recently, Blaze spoke at length with Web Is Jericho about his new album, his near-death experience and his first show post-surgery. Here are the highlights.
The connections between Blaze’s heart attack and his lyrics go deeper than “Circle Of Stone.”
“Some people are saying that this is my best solo album. And I would never have seen it and never have gotten to play these songs live. It’s absolutely crazy. On one of the more intense songs called ‘Absence,’ the music is very intense. I kept the lyric very simple. It’s an emotional, passionate lyric, but simple words. One of those lines is ‘From my chest, my heart is torn.’ That’s exactly what they do with open heart surgery. I had a quadruple bypass. They cut you open and they take out your heart, and all of your bodily functions are being taken care of on a machine. It’s bizarre. I was thinking, I did an album called ‘Silicon Messiah’ with a song called ‘Ghost In The Machine,’ and now I am a machine. A machine is pumping my blood, and a machine is breathing for me. What?! It’s crazy.”
Blaze was seriously worried about his vocal cords being damaged during the surgery.
“I said to the anesthetist, ’Is the pipe for the antistatic going past the larynx?’ I knew the answer. He goes, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Here’s my concern.’ And I told him about my singing. And he said, ‘I tell you what we’ll do, I’ll use the smallest pipe we can get away with. Just remember, we’re never setting out to hurt anyone.’ Anyway, I woke up in the intensive care after the operation, and I (starts singing). And it was there. The woman next to me, I don’t know what she thought. I’m sitting up singing. The doctor goes, ‘You’ll be off this ward today!’ I felt so relieved.”
It felt like destiny that the album would be called “Circle Of Stone.”
“Before the album was done, I took my lady to lunch. We’re going out early, 10 a.m. She said, ‘It’s taking a long time to get there.’ I took her to Stonehenge about four hours from the house. I took her down there to the heal stone, and you line yourself up the heal stone. And I asked her to marry me at Stonehenge. Later on, (guitarist) Chris (Appleton) and I thought, ‘What are we gonna title the album?’ I said, the B-side could be a story now. We had this song that we really liked called ‘Circle Of Stone.’ And I’m looking at this postcard of Stonehenge where I’ve gotten engaged. And I’m going, I think we gotta call this ‘Circle Of Stone.’ And there’s hundreds of stone circles of varying sizes all over Europe. It’s a dream. The six songs on the B-side, it’s the beginning of a story. It’s the ancestors and they’re calling from a dream world.”
The album’s lead single and title track also bear a connection to the song’s guest vocalist, Niklas Stalvind of Swedish band, Wolf.
“I thought wouldn’t it be great if we had someone who was the voice of the ancestors calling from the dream world. We go, ‘What about that guy Niklas that we met from the band Wolf?’ We were sharing a dressing room, which I hate. I don’t even like sharing a dressing room with my own band! ‘Oh what! We’re supposed to have our own dressing room!’ But anyway, we get along great. Wonderful guys and great musicians. My co-producer Chris said to me, ‘What about Niklas?’ He has such a different voice. There would be no way of mistaking him for Blaze Bayley. I was talking to him about the project, and he said ‘There’s a stone circle in my village. It’s dedicated to my ancestors. Viking warriors.’ I go, ‘What!?’ How can that coincidence happen that I’m asking him to be the voice of the ancestors and in his village is a stone circle dedicated to his ancestors? Unreal!”
‘Mind Reader’ also carries significant meaning.
“‘Mind Reader’ is when people judge you by the way you look and they don’t even know your name. But already they decided who you are and what your values are. Oh, they can read your mind and they know what you’re thinking? I don’t think so. You don’t know what I’m thinking, because if you did you would know I want to knock you out! So that’s kind of what it’s about. Don’t let those people and what they say become of what you think about yourself. It’s difficult enough to stop yourself from talking bad about yourself without other people and taking that on board. As difficult as it is, all of us that love music and live for music, we’re better than them that are living for money. We’re much better. Our values are different, man. As people doing what we do, we live a different way to those people.”
Blaze was terrified his first show post-surgery.
“Terror. Anxiety. They give you a spray, and it’s like, if you feel your heart going, you have this spray. So I’ve got my spray on me, I’ve got my fiancé in the front row with spray on her, just in case I collapse on the stage. The amount of anxiety, I’m like, ‘Am I breathing too hard? Am I getting out of breath? Is it muscle pain? Is it heart pain?’ Luckily the stage is tiny. A very small room that I’m familiar with. A lot of hardcore fans had flown in, and I had a lot of great support. I just tried not to get out of breath. I tried not to move too much. I checked myself afterwards, and I was OK. Getting that first one in, the anxiety of it was just incredible. Getting that first one done and doing it well was a huge relief. And then, the way things worked out, there were five clear days before the next show. So if anything had happened, I would’ve had the chance to get myself back together. But nothing did happen. And the next one, I felt a bit more confident. We only had six shows left with my solo band, and they just got better and better. By the last one I was like (raises arms), I’m Rocky on the steps.”
‘Circle Of Stone’ sports arguably the best production on a Blaze Bayley record since he worked with famed metal producer and current Judas Priest touring guitarist Andy Sneap.
“We’ve learned to produce ourselves. It’s something I wanted to do, and I didn’t know if it was possible. The first album that I produced all on my own, it didn’t go so well. But I thought, I’ll give myself a chance. It’s a learning process. I worked with the best from Rick Rubin to Andy Sneap. I recorded at Abbey Road. I recorded at Roundhouse Studios in London and very famous studios in Los Angeles. For me, I wanted to take the creative process on the next step, just the same as Led Zeppelin. They produced their own albums. Jimmy Page produced his albums, so his artistic vision, the song he was writing, as he was putting that together, he could think, ‘How I record this, and what part of the sonic picture will this bit take up?’ So you’re already thinking much further ahead when you’re composing a song. And I really wanted to be in that situation where I’m taking you as the listener on a journey. And as we mix it, we are directing your attention to come on that journey. 4-5 listens in, you’re gonna go, ‘Oh, I can hear that.’ The first couple I’m pulling you in.”
“Sometimes it’s very challenging, you’re stuck together a lot of the time. And there are dark, desolate moments, and there are moments of absolute joy and invigoration. With this one, a lot of anxiety thinking, ‘Well, we think we’ve done it, but we can’t really play it to anybody or have a sense.’ It’s a long, long time. As it gets further from that final mix and master, you’re going, ‘Is it really finished?’ You’ve got to leave it. You can’t come back, and so far we’ve had fantastic reactions. We’ve tried to keep things very simple as well. Our mantra is just, ‘Does it serve the song?’ Whatever bells and whistles and interesting sonics that have to be on an album, if we take it back to the acoustic guitar and me, is that gonna work? Can we still do it start to finish and feel good? That’s what we’re constantly asking.”
Chris Appleton’s guitar playing is a great balance of metal, melody and rock.
“I’m not a player, but I’m a lover of electric guitar, and I’m coming from the Eddie Van Halen/Jimi Hendrix school of, ‘A guitar can sound like what?’ Chris has great melody in his hands. We’re bouncing around, and I’m going, ‘Can it go a bit faster there?’ And he’s goes, ‘Uh, give me a minute.’ (Laughs). So I’m encouraging him a lot of the time. I’m producing him. I’m encouraging to really lay into his shredding and when it’s melodic, those melodies are so strong and so defined, they’re just breathless. It’s like he’s playing massive cables tying up a ship with the tone he gets on those. And he produces me. ‘No it’s gotta be softer here. Try this.’ And we go through that. Because I love electric guitar, we’re never in a hurry, and I think this is the thing about really great solos and instrumental sections. We’re not in a rush to get them over quickly. But we are concerned that the journey is always interesting. So something is really going on for you as the listener to get to the next part. We’re thinking of you all the time. And also how it’s gonna feel live. If this is one of the songs that gets picked for us to do, how are we gonna feel doing this live? Embarrassed? Cause you might if you don’t put the work in. With this album, we also have (guitarist) Luke (Appleton) who has helped with the writing as well. And to have Chris and Luke together, it’s just been fantastic. Just massive powerful parts and also very sparse melodic emotional parts. It’s just been great.”
When Blaze fronts Wolfsbane, it’s a bit of a different approach than what he does on his solo material.
“Wolfsbane is definitely a band. I am just another guy in the band. And we are all equal. Whoever comes up with an idea, that’s what we’re doing. We’ll work together and give each other a bit of latitude. Make a few small changes here and there. There’s a kind of chaos, where the four of us are in a room together, and somehow (Wolfsbane guitarist and producer) Jase Edwards manages to capture that in his studio and make it sound compelling and fun. Fun, cause you know what’s happening. You know why it’s fun. You are saying, ‘Life is tough. And we get dog sh*t on our shoes. But you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna take our shoes off.’ So that’s Wolfsbane. And we’ve known each other 40 years, so we’re old friends. We’re very easy going compared to how we used to be, and there’s a certain power that is born of this simple way of looking at things. On the last album, we were just going, ‘Oh it sounds like the old days. Well, it sounds like us then.’ And we’re just encouraging each other to be even more like we used to be. We’re not trying to move away from what we were, we’re trying to stay what we were. And in these crooked, broken down old bodies, let our 14-year-old selves come back to life.”
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