Prior to IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson taking part in the Musicians Institute’s MI Conversation Series on April 21 in Hollywood, California, the Musicians Institute YouTube channel got to hang with him in the green room and ask him some questions before he hit the stage. Regarding what advice he would give to artists, Bruce said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): ”One of the most important things is self-belief. And you can’t teach that. That’s character. And self-belief is so important. I’ve played with people who have been astonishing musicians but were forever doomed to be playing in their bedroom because they had no self-belief because they did not go out there and put themselves out there and perform so the people notice them. I mean, it’s like if you’re the greatest guitar player in the world and you sit in the middle of a tent in the Sahara Desert, you are never gonna make it. Sorry. The universe is not fair like that, because you’ll need it, because you’ll get knocked over, knocked down, and other musicians will try and put you down as well because they’re all trying to step on top of you to do X, Y, Z. And try not to just go down the rabbit hole of a particular type of music, even if you love that particular type of music.”
He continued: “There’s an irony. Yes, you need the self-belief, but if you make the performance all about yourself, people will walk away, because nobody’s that interesting. Nobody’s that interesting. What you need to do is have the self-belief to use whatever talent it is you have to tell a story, to say something, to have some feeling inside that you can express that’s real and authentic, and then people will listen because it resonates with them. So yes, you need the self-belief, but we don’t need to hear all about you. It’s like a game of tennis. I mean, when you’re performing live, it is like a game of emotional tennis, ’cause you knock it out there and they knock it back and you go, ‘Hey, let’s recirculate that’ — boom. And then you chuck it out again and you gradually warm up the pot. That’s why concerts are always better at the end than they are at the beginning. [Laughs]”
As for what keeps him inspired, Dickinson said: “Whatever the last thing I did, that’s what keeps me going — not the thing I did 40 years ago or anything else like that. Oh, that’s great, but I did that 40 years ago. I don’t listen to a lot of stuff that I did, and when I do, I hope I’m sometimes pleasantly surprised, and sometimes I’m mildly appalled, , so I go, ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe I did that. Oh, wow. What were we thinking?’ Or I hear some technical thing like, ‘Oh my God. That note’s just a little bit dodgy. How did we let that go?’ So stuff like that. You become hypercritical. And I try and avoid it, because what you want is… It is an instant reaction people get to music, and if you then try and pick it apart, then you kind of destroy the moment. There are moments of technical excellence that coincide with emotional impact. And when you do that, you’re, like, ‘Hey, we were a 10 today.’ But sometimes you don’t — sometimes you get an emotional, nine and a half and a technical five. But what’s more important? For the audience, I argue it’s always the emotional nine and a half, except for, obviously, the geeks on YouTube that go, ‘I don’t like him because he can’t sing a high D above C…’ ‘Fuck off. You know what I mean? [Laughs]”
Bruce also touched upon how music distribution has changed over the years, and what it really means for artists’ livelihoods. He said: ”Obviously when the whole file-sharing thing kicked off in the very early days, the major labels didn’t understand what was about to hit them, so they all went bust. People who loved listening to music, they were, like, ‘Hey, cool. All of our favorite music is suddenly free,’ which was very nice for them. It was not a great disaster for established bands with a live following because they could still sell enough product, physical product, to make it worthwhile doing a record, but they could still go out and tour and make their money and make a living and merchandising, and so on and so forth. So yeah, great. But for everybody else on the planet that was up and coming, struggling to work, Spotify [was a] catastrophe… So you have to use your creative imagination in trying to present what you are doing in a way that people are excited about it. That’s always been the case, but it’s just the media in which you have to do it is now different. Now it’s online, it’s Instagram. And I know there are people who sit in their den with their podcast mic on and do basically kind of like a live broadcast every week with subscribers. And that’s the way they make music and do it. But it’s not the same as going out there with a live concert and building a physical community in one place that does that space. But it may be a way to alleviate some of the problems associated with kind of digital distribution. The good thing is that record labels, all the record labels that have evolved from the ashes of the old system are all very tech savvy and realize that you can stop people giving your music away, you can still sell records and things like that and that there are other avenues. There is endless appetite for consumption of music, so somebody somewhere must be making some money out of it.”
Dickinson‘s latest solo album, “The Mandrake Project”, arrived in March 2024 via BMG.
Bruce‘s “The Mandrake Project Live 2025” North American tour will kick off in Anaheim, California at the House of Blues on August 22 and take the band across North America including shows in New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Florida and Canada, with festival appearances at Rocklahoma (Oklahoma) and Louder Than Life (Kentucky),with more to be announced. The tour will also include a quick return to Brazil for the prestigious The Town festival at the City Of Light in São Paulo.
Joining the IRON MAIDEN singer on the “The Mandrake Project Live 2025” North American tour will once again be his 2024 backing band, featuring Dave Moreno (drums),Mistheria (keyboards) and Tanya O’Callaghan (bass),alongside the group’s latest additions, Swedish guitarist, songwriter and multi-platinum-credited producer Philip Näslund and Swiss session and touring guitarist Chris Declercq (who played on Dickinson‘s “Rain On The Graves” single). Bruce‘s longtime guitarist and collaborator Roy “Z” Ramirez is not part of the touring lineup.
Prior to the April 12, 2024 Whisky A Go Go show, Bruce last performed with his solo band on in August 2002 at the legendary Wacken Open Air festival in Germany.
Bruce and Roy recorded “The Mandrake Project” largely at Los Angeles’s Doom Room, with Roy doubling up as both guitarist and bassist. The recording lineup for “The Mandrake Project” was rounded out by Mistheria and Moreno, both of whom also featured on Bruce‘s last solo studio album, “Tyranny Of Souls”, in 2005.
Dickinson made his recording debut with IRON MAIDEN on the “Number Of The Beast” album in 1982. He quit the band in 1993 in order to pursue his solo career and was replaced by Blaze Bayley, who had previously been the lead singer of the metal band WOLFSBANE. After releasing two traditional metal albums with former MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith, Dickinson rejoined the band in 1999 along with Smith.
Source: blabbermouth.net
