I'd barely considered the question of whether I would sing again, which surprised me. I realised that I loved life above all else, and if singing was… - Bruce Dickinson

"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."

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.

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.