08 29 25 KOA's Chad Bower speaks with Iron Maiden former lead singer Bruce Dickinson

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chad Bauer in for Marty and Gina. Today, legendary Iron
Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson is embarking on his first North
American solo tour in almost thirty years, and it includes

(00:22):
a stop in Denver. The tour is in support of
last year's album The Man Drake Project. Dickinson recently released
more Balls to Picasso, with reworked versions of songs from
his nineteen ninety four solo album Balls to Picasso. I
spoke with Dickinson about the new record, his show in Denver,
and plans for his next solo album. What led you

(00:43):
to revisit Balls to Picasso and add the new flavor
to it?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Back in the day, we did a record called Action
in the Birth and then we did another one called
Chemical Wedding. And when we did those records, look back
both to Picasso went wow, we should have sounded like
we're sounding now when we made that record. So that
was a long time ago that we made the realization that,

(01:09):
you know, that record should have been a whole lot
heavier than it turned out. And now I've got this
amazing band and I'm touring with it, and I've toured
I did sixty something shows with it last year. We've
got thirty shows this year, So I like, who better
to reimagine the album than some of these guys. So

(01:30):
our producer for the new album and the guy that
mixed Mandrake came in kind of at the back end
of the project really, and Brendan Duffy he was the
man to do it. So we've reimagined it is. The
heavy bits are heavier, guitars are more crunchy. We've added
some guitars. There's an orchestra on it, there's strings on

(01:52):
Change of Heart. They've got a horn section on Shoot,
all the clowns, all stuff which we would have loved
to have done in the original recording frankly, but we
didn't really know how if it was a motorcar. This
is a chassis up restoration.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Can you mentioned the tour You're playing here in Denver
September thirtieth at the Summit Music Hall, a much more
intimate venue than a typical Iron Maiden show. So what
yeah can look at? We spent from that, oh looking
forward to it.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, first of all, you know, this is not like
a comic book concept show. Although we've got three tracks
from Man Raak, I mean Shadow of the Gods we're
playing which has never been played anywhere outside of the USA,
so we're doing that for the first time on this tour.
We're doing one Maiden song which has never been played
by Iron Maiden ever at all, except on one record,

(02:42):
So we're going to do that a version of that,
which is kind of a surprise, I hope for people.
We got stuff from chemical Wedding, from Accident, the birth obviously,
Ballster Picasso, plus we are mucking around with some some
pretty weird ass percussion. We've got huge Japanese drums on there.
We've got the theorem in in there that people are going,

(03:02):
what the hell is a theorem in there? One you
find out you come to the show. It's heavy, Yes,
bone crushingly heavy on occasions, but it's not just that.
I mean we do the whole range of emotions from
you know, Okay, I think I'm going to cry to
oh my God, I think I'm going to crap myself.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Now. Do you have any plans of redoing any of
your other solo albums in the future.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
We're looking at every album and seeing what is the
best way to approach it. Frankly, With Balls to Becasso,
it was obvious what we could do to improve it.
With some of the other ones, they're a little bit
more tricky. They can be improved, but whether or not
you have to make a judgment call on some of them,

(03:49):
you know, the remastering and the just making it sound better,
which is really possible. Now that's a given, I think
for all of them. But whether or not we add
things like we did on Balls to Be Casso, that's
another question. We just take that one on a song
by song, case by case basis, you know, where some

(04:09):
of these songs are quite precious to people. So you know,
we don't want to We don't want to We don't
want to destroy them for the sake of going. Oh,
we just have to do something new for the sake
of it.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
And you went a long time between solo albums, But
does a success and the great reception of the Mandrake
Project make you want to do the next one sooner?

Speaker 2 (04:29):
We're recording the album. In January, we've got eighteen songs demoed.
We started out with sixty six. There you go. So
there's a lot of creativity within this band. And April
we demoed eighteen songs, and then ten days ago we
were in the demo studio again turning the bits that

(04:50):
were on drum machines into real drums. And you know
the Tanya, the bass player, wasn't around in April, so
she's contributing all her bass parts now. So we're ready
to rock in January. So the album will be recorded
early next year for a release probably sometime in twenty seven.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Bruce, anything else you want to add, I.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Hope to see you in Denver. We're very excited to
come to Denver. It's always a really cool stop on
the Maiden tour, and of course you've got some great
beer

Speaker 1 (05:24):
At his Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, who has a
show with his solo band at the Summit Music Hall
in Denver on September thirtieth,