The Stage Stunt That’s Too Mad Even for Bruce Dickinson

Bruce Dickinson revealed the stage stunt he’s wanted to perform for years – but lamented that he’ll never be allowed to try it.

The Iron Maiden singer is renowned for putting everything he can into his performances. And in a recent interview with Metal Hammer, he explained the motivation that keeps his energy levels up at the age of 67.

“I could be at home, you’re absolutely right,” Dickinson reflected. “But it’s a very simple thing – when I walk out onstage, it’s one of the few moments during my life when the rest of the world can go to hell.

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“On a really good night, you completely lose yourself in some weird higher power that takes you over. You inhabit the song, your voice just seems to anticipate everything, and that’s why I do it.”

Asked if he’d ever performed drunk, he admitted: “Yes. In the early days of [pre-Maiden band] Samson, we thought we’d play better when we were completely f––ed up.

“We listened back to it a few days later with a degree of horror and went, ‘Oh f––k, it doesn’t work like that, does it?’”

He also recalled injuring himself during Maiden’s 1982 world tour. “I f––ed ed up a disc in my neck… basically by shaking my head around and headbanging. Rattling my brain around made me feel good at the time, but it definitely didn’t make me feel good after a while.

Bruce Dickinson’s Favorite-Ever Stage Prop

“It hit me in America. I basically lost the use of my left arm because of it – I couldn’t feel three of my fingers; I had muscle spasms everywhere. I wore a neck collar during the daytime, took it off for the shows and basically faked it in terms of using my left arm.”

Dickinson named the flamethrower he’s been using on recent tours as his favorite stage prop of all time, although he explained that “there’s nowhere on this [current] tour where it’s been appropriate.”

Then he described the prop of his dreams: “I wanted to have a zip line from the PA tower to the stage, and that’s how I would enter the stage. It was just too f––ing complicated.
“And it would also be really nice to levitate and fly and all that stuff, but we would only be told it’s too difficult and not to bother with it.”