Billboard Interviews Bruce Dickinson

As Iron Maiden continues its worldwide Somewhere Back in Time tour (which I will see on June 2 in Washington), Billboard Magazine posted a pretty good interview with singer Bruce Dickinson yesterday.

For tried and true Maiden fans, there's not a lot of new stuff in the interview, but I thought these two quotes were telling:

Q: How did you develop as an artist during those solo years?

Dickinson: I was a much deeper musician by the time I got to "Chemical Wedding" than I ever was during the latter two or three albums with Maiden. I was much more serious about it. Roy Z, who was my producer and collaborator, said, "You've got to go back. You've done it, you've changed yourself around, it's worked. But the world needs Iron Maiden."

And I thought, "It does." Then we had a meeting, myself and Steve. He was a bit leery at first. His main thing was wanting to know, if I came back, that I wasn't going to leave again. I said, "Quite the contrary -- if we glue it all back together again, we could do stuff that's better than we ever thought possible. It could be bigger than we ever dreamed of."

And that's pretty much the way it's turned out. It's a really exciting place to be at the moment.

Q: So how would you compare Maiden now with the group of, say, 25 years ago?

Dickinson: The way we play the songs now is in many ways more powerful, it's more under control. It's not like somebody running so fast that their legs are running away underneath them, which is kind of what it was like in the '80s. This is a mature runner now who knows the pace and has always got something in the tank for the sprint when it's appropriate. We've reached that sweet spot.