Bruce Dickinson Quotes

started to read the excellent biography of Blake by Peter Ackroyd. I think it is one of the best of his books, the other being London: The Biography. I got the feeling that Ackroyd was almost channelling the spirit of Blake to rise from the pages and speak directly to the reader.

Life is too short to do things we don't love doing.

If you dream something, it might happen. If you never dream it, it will never happen.

I had memorised Deep Purple’s Made in Japan note for note. Every drumbeat, every thud of Ian Paice’s bass-drum beater, I had tried to replicate. Ditto the first Black Sabbath album, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, plus my eccentric collection of Van der Graaf Generator albums and treasured copy of Wild Turkey’s first offering.

Fans want to see people who can play; they respect certain values like professionalism, and they don't want to be treated like shit. They pay good money and they look forward to seeing some good music being played by decent musicians, who really put their soul into it.

Die meisten Rockstars mögen zwar auch im Erwachsenenalter noch in der Lage sein, sich wie Kleinkinder aufzuführen, sind aber leider unfähig, auch so zu singen.

I was out of my comfort zone, a fish out of water. My life has been a continual succession of 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' moments. Deep down, I think I probably enjoy it. You are never so alive as when learning something new and overcoming adversity.

"We wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus'. It's a Fable... It's about this bloke named Icarus, right, and one day he goes "'Ello, I think I'm gonna fly about!", so he builds some wings out of wax and feathers, right, and he goes flying about like a cunt through the air, right, and he goes up to this ball of fire called 'the sun' that hides obscured by the clouds over the UK, right... So he goes up to the ball of fire and the wings melt, 'cause they're made out of wax, right, so he goes plummetin', plummetin' down to the earth, and he fuckin' dies, right... alright, so we wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus', right, and it's basically sayin' "Hey man, wake up! Don't go flyin' about near the sun unless you're in an airplane," right, 'cause the wings are metal, right, and they won't melt, right... So, here's a song that's workin' on two different levels at once, right... 'cause the wings of the plane are made out of metal, right... and we play Metal music, right... two dimensional, see? So Maiden's always thinking... Always thinking."

Eddie is Iron Maiden's mascot, monster, alter ego - call it what you will. Part supernatural, part primal, part aggressive adolescent, Eddie is a super anti-hero with no backstory. Eddie doesn't give a fuck. He just is.

Eddie also gets us off the hook as individuals. Eddie is far bigger and more outrageous than any badly behaved superstar. Eddie makes rock stars obsolete. This comes in handy when you get to your late fifties and rather fancy a quiet night in after playing to 25,000 screaming metal fans.

A family trip to Jersey – that’s the Channel Islands, not New Jersey, folks – netted brand-new gatefold editions of Van der Graaf Generator classics H to He and Pawn Hearts. (The latter was such a manically depressive record that you could actually empty a room with it after a couple of minutes. On the other hand, I could listen to it for hours on end in solitary confinement, probably because I am not a manic depressive.)

I had been asked to add a further three-hour rock show, but I protested that there wasn’t enough quality new music to sustain six hours a week.

(On performing in Costa Rica for the first time) It was like finding some weird tribe in the middle of the jungle and, you know, they all come out and go: "Fear of the Dark. Favorite Album." What?!?

Rock stars, of course, have long had the capacity to act like babies, but have not had the sense to sing like them.

Where have you come from?’ she asked. ‘Sarajevo.’ ‘Why were you there?’ ‘Hey, we had a gig. We’re a rock band.’ ‘Sarajevo is a dangerous place. Never come back.

It was a heart-stopping moment, and Donington’s collective jaw dropped. Grown men fought back tears. It was a Griffon-engine Spitfire, which has a distinctive growl, as opposed to the whistling howl of the supercharger on a Merlin engine. No one will ever forget that moment. It upstaged everything.