ONE HECK OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH IRON MEIDEN

ONE HECK OF AN ENCOUNTER WITH IRON MEIDEN

by Liz Derringer & Sydelle Schofield

Although the PMRC weaves dark and devious tales of heavy metal music and its creators—which are swallowed whole by the yuppie brigade en masse across the nation—Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson recently proved to us that headbanging musicians can be unpretentious, intellectual, and charismatic.

We knocked on the hotel room door. It was wrenched wide open by 5’7” Bruce, who was clad in tight red gym shorts and a cut-off sweatshirt. His long brown hair shone reddish blonde highlights from the dim glow of the lamp in the corner. After the formalities of the introductions, we made ourselves comfortable on the couch to begin an hour’s worth of colorful conversation.

Immediately, we noticed a canvas case shaped in the position of a strange instrument resting against the wall. Could this guy be moonlighting as a tuba player in some geriatric society club jazz band? (It turned out to be his fencing equipment; he never leaves home without it.)

"I was going to pursue a career in the army."

“Basically, I’ve been living out of that brown bag (points to an overstuffed leather gym bag) and my fencing bag for the last two months,” says the ironlunged one. “Normally, when I’m not on the road I train about six days a week.”

Bruce enthusiastically strides over to the blue and white bag and unzips it. He majestically whips out his sword (not that one!) and begins educating us on the history of fencing. “I’ve been in about 25 competitions so far this year,” he proudly tells us. “I’ve been competing in Europe quite a bit. I’m involved in something like a World Cup competition for World Championship points. They have levels called ‘A grades’ and ‘B grades.’ It’s a fairly big international competition, with anywhere between 100 and 150 guys competing against each other.

“It’s a sport like tennis, which has a very similar mental strategy—you psych out your opponent. It’s a one-on-one combat sport. You score a hit, which is how you accumulate points. They have a valid target service depending on which particular weapon you fence.

“It’s also a very intellectual, academic sport, because there’s a lot of cunning and a lot of skill involved. Speed is very important, as well as physical strength.”

Meanwhile, he is cavorting and demonstrating with the fencing mask, costume and equipment. He jumps and dances around, using Sydelle as a bewildered opponent.

He continues, “The whole idea is to hit the guy on the target. You can only score points in certain circumstances. Some of the same rules apply as in some forms of karate.”

Interesting. Go on, Bruce.

“Fencing is not like Errol Flynn in those romantic movies. The maneuvers are all completely different. Nowadays, fencing is an academic thing. You fence for the touch as opposed to for the kill, like in the 16th century. You also fence with your personality. I’m very noisy and loud. I really get into it.”

Conjures up some ideas about his personality, doesn’t it? But why fencing?

“I always liked the idea of one-on-one combat sports. I went to a boarding school and I wasn’t the right build for the two other main sports, rowing and rugby. So I started fencing instead.”

Fencing lesson over, we retire back to the couch. Bruce is now all energized and excited. He begins to tell us how his musical obsession came to be.

“I’ve had a strange childhood. I suppose my family was mildly eccentric in their general behavior.”

No comment. We won’t even touch that one.

“Anyway, I wanted to be a drummer, because it’s a very physical instrument.

I looked at the guitar and bass and thought that they were far too complicated for me. The drums seemed much easier, and you get all sweaty doing it. But I could never get a drum kit, especially at boarding school. And then I thought of all the various other problems, such as getting a car. I didn’t want to get tied down maintaining a wretched vehicle, though. So, I played the next best thing to a drum kit: bongos. Instead of playing the bongos in the right way (imitates a Spanish salsa beat) I was banging away on them with all my might (imitates loud banging). I was getting blistered, red hands and making such a diabolical noise!”

We’re almost afraid to find out what his very first band was like. But, being such troupers, we ask anyway.

“I was involved in a little garage band at school and we were doing the Beatles ‘Let It Be’ (he imitates the sound of a boarding school beginner band banging out a neolithic hardcore form of “Let It Be"). We chose this song because it had the only three chords that the other guys knew how to play. We only had one little amplifier and two guitars. The ‘real musician’ of the house had a 12-string guitar with only six strings on it, and he played Bob Dylan tunes. He was very wise and even claimed to smoke cannabis once!”

Where is this guy? We want to interview him right away!

“I was the animal in the corner with the drums. The bassist had won competitions for his voice, which was an operatic bass. He was classically trained.”

At this point, he belts out yet another imitation—a Pavarotti-styled version of “Let It Be.”

“Eventually, they told me, ‘Shut up playing those fucking drums and do something else! Go and sing!’ So I sang. Then they told me, ‘You look like a jerk, but you sound good.’ I did look like a jerk.

I had very short hair and an awfully spotty face.”

He rides another tangent: “I was going to pursue a career in the army. I did five years of the army cadets while at school. I was set to go to the University and join the Officer Training Corps. I was going to be an officer I was still into rock ’n’ roll, but I had really short hair. There was a slight conflict of interest there.”

A wicked and mischievous smile spreads across his scruffy, unmown face as a memory plays on the movie screen of his mind. He lets us in on it.

“It all got fucked up when I was 17 because I got thrown out of school for pissing into the headmaster’s dinner. They did, in fact, eat it."

What an incorrigible little degenerate! Tell us how you did it!

“I didn’t actually whip out the offending member and do it right in front of them. What we did was, we defrosted a great block of french green beans and stewed it all up. It was a dinner party being thrown by the housemaster for all the important people of the school. He was a sexually perverted bachelor with a kink in his neck, and he puffed on a pipe.”

How does someone come up with the idea of such a dirty deed?

“Me and this other guy were in his study one day, which is just a small room where you’re supposed to study. We were in there drinking, and this guy walks in and asks us if we’d help him defrost some beans and he would conveniently forget that he saw us drinking. My friend and I were both dying to go for a leak. We just looked at the beans and did it. It wasn’t that much piss, just about a half a milkbottle full.”

“We made the decision when we first came over to America that if they don’t like us, we’d go away and never bother returning. ”

Bon Appetit.

‘‘During the course of the process of getting drunk again later on in the evening, the story came out. That was it for me—I exited the following evening. Somebody told the headmaster after he ate it. He summoned me into his office immediately. I wasn’t actually expelled, I was ‘asked to leave.’”

His face contorts itself into a parody of that long ago housemaster, and he goes into a Monty Python-like routine of that memorable moment.

Bruce did, however, enter a university after going through a fair amount of red tape because of the incident. He joined his first professional band soon after.

“I finished my finals on a Tuesday morning, and I was rehearsing with Samson that afternoon. They made me the offer about four weeks prior to that particular Tuesday. In the University, I was playing in small bands basically learning the ropes of how to sing.”

Let’s talk about Iron Maiden. Their lyrical concepts are very eloquent and interesting. But, according to Bruce, their writing technique is ass-backwards.

‘‘We write songs first, then select the titles for the songs which we think fit. We always do things the wrong way around. Then we pick the tour title followed by the album title. We can build up a concept around just the title itself. The title, ‘Somewhere In Time’ actually has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrical content of the song ‘Somewhere In Time,’ which is about a guy who tries to sell his soul to the devil.”

Suddenly, the phone lets out a shrill ring. Bruce emanates a violent “Fuck!” and slams down the receiver. Somebody just got a pleasant surprise.

Iron Maiden is one of the most internationally popular bands, although they receive little radio airplay. This fact does not bother them a bit. They know that their legions of worldwide fans are dedicated to them and their music.

“We made the decision when we first came over to America that if the Americans didn’t like us, we’d go away and never bother returning. But they loved us.” Needless to say.

AT&T rears its ugly head again. He answers it a trifle bit friendlier this time.

“Hellol’mverybusyatthemomentl’llbe readyinfiveminutesleavemealone.” He exhorts all in one breath. Slam.

Onstage, Iron Maiden do not rely heavily on image, preferring to spend their energy on their musical deliverance.

“We don’t like to fuck around with the audience’s expectations. That way, we entertain them on a much deeper level. If you have a concert that’s like a piece of bubblegum, it goes ‘Pop!’ at the end. You go away saying, ‘Wow! The guy next to me puked 38 times and the band parted the red sea in the first number and at the end the whole stage blew up then out came the dancing midgets followed by the diesel-powered nuns.”

His spontaneous spurts of vernacular configurations are quite admirable.

Touring with other well known bands is also fun and action-packed for the Iron Maidens. Bruce recalls an incident that happened in Switzerland with Vince Neil of Motley Crue. They were taking hot showers (stop thinking those thoughts!) when Vince suddenly threw a bucket of freezing water over Bruce’s head. A chase ensued outside of the arena in the sub-zero weather, both guys running around in the raw. Quite a sight, we’re sure.

He becomes serious now, when approached with the subject of the increasing amount of vandalism at heavy metal shows which seems to be a growing trend, especially on the East coast.

“We can’t play the Meadowlands because of all the damage that has previously been done. They don’t want any heavy metal shows there anymore.

I think the few people that ruined it for everyone else by being violent at these concerts are all assholes—and DON’T DO IT AGAIN!

“It’s a community facility for people that live there, and not a cesspool for rock ’n’ roll bands to go crazy and encourage the audience to participate that way. Metal has a bad enough name in the general population as it is, without the small minority of kids spoiling it for others.”

It is now time for us to end our interview. Our stomachs are sending out collective messages that it’s feeding time.

One thing must be answered, though. What is his secret on how he maintains an abnormally high energy level?

“I’m in love with life. You gotta enjoy living,” he confides to us.

So, if you’re having problems with life, you can always take a journey somewhere in time with a couple of dancing midgets.