Iron Maiden is currently on the road for its 2022 leg of the “Legacy of the Beast” tour. Singer Bruce Dickinson previously explained that the trek will again focus primarily on a decades-spanning setlist of fan favorites. “The ‘Legacy Of The Beast’ tour, people have all paid their money to see the ‘Legacy Of The Beast’ show, with Spitfires and flamethrowers and Icarus and everything that goes with,” he said.
“So they’re gonna get all that. But the first three tracks are probably gonna be the first three tracks on the [‘Senjutsu’] album. ‘The Writing On The Wall’ they already know, so everybody should know the first three tracks. And I just think [the] ‘Senjutsu’ [title track] is just such a great opening song — so dramatic. And then once you’ve done that — and we’ll have a stage set to go with it — once you’ve done that, you’re back to the kind of ‘Legacy’ world at that point. But I think ‘The Writing On The Wall’ is gonna be a great song — I mean, a crowd singalong song. You can imagine that. It’ll be fantastic.”
One thing that wasn’t so fantastic for Maiden’s vocalist was a fan at the band’s July 16 concert in Athens, Greece. As Maiden started “The Number Of The Beast,” a fan lit a flare which enraged Dickinson. “The c*nt with the f*cking flare, I’ve gotta sing up here,” Bruce shouted into the microphone. “You f*cking c*cks*cker. You Greek c*nt. All right. I’ve gotta f*cking sing. All right. F*ck you.”
Dickinson apparently briefly left the stage in hopes the smoke would clear up, but when he returned, it appeared that he was still upset and having trouble getting back into the show, as he sang off time and was out of sync with the rest of the band. Video of the incident can be seen below. Iron Maiden released its first album in six years, “Senjutsu,” in September of last year. It hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart, charting higher than previous classics “Powerslave” and “The Number Of The Beast.”
It was Iron Maiden’s 13th album to appear in the Top 40 in the U.S. “By and large our audience has moved on with us,” Dickinson said. “Maiden’s audience is like a table made of plywood; every year you just add a new layer and the table gets bigger and bigger. We’ve grown organically — not through social media or any of that stuff. We’ve grown by going out and doing it in front of people.”
