Bruce Dickinson looks "Back in Time"

By Paul Sexton

LONDON (Billboard) - Bruce Dickinson made his live debut with Iron Maiden at the end of 1981. He had viewed the group's early emergence from a ringside seat as lead singer with Samson, another of the bands in what the rock press dubbed "the new wave of British heavy metal."

Since then, he has been not only Iron Maiden's definitive lead singer, but an author, sportsman, a solo artist for five years in the 1990s, a radio DJ and a pilot. Before the May 12 release of "Somewhere Back in Time," a compilation of the band's '80s hits, and in the middle of the most successful global tour of the band's career, which launched February 1 in Mumbai, India, he sat down with Billboard to discuss his, and Maiden's, life and times.

Q: When you joined Maiden, how aware had you been of the band?

Bruce Dickinson: We effectively grew up together, musically, because I was in Samson, and all the bands were aware of everybody else, we all gigged together. It's fair to say Maiden had this momentum about them. It was like standing in front of a truck. They had that energy before they got the deal (with label EMI).

Q: But that took quite a while to build, didn't it?

Dickinson: It did, but a lot of that was Steve (Harris, bassist and founding member) trying to get the personnel right, trying to get the commitment from people. Once the deal was signed, the press leapt all over it. "Running Free" came out, and it cunningly snuck in under the radar of all the punk stuff. They must have had to restrain Steve, because he absolutely hated punk. The first album ("Iron Maiden," 1980) went to No. 4, which was an astonishing feat for a band like that.

Q: What were the circumstances of you replacing Paul Di'anno as lead singer?

Dickinson: Things with Paul hadn't been going terribly well, and they'd made the decision to get rid of him. So they came and took a peek at me. Clive (Burr, Maiden's then-drummer) had been in Samson for three years, and (the album) "Killers" was being made at Zomba Studios (in northwest London), which back then was Morgan Studios.