86 Facts About Bruce Dickinson

1.

Paul Bruce Dickinson was born on 7 August 1958 and is an English singer and songwriter.

2.

Bruce Dickinson is best known as the longtime lead vocalist of the heavy metal band Iron Maiden.

3.

Bruce Dickinson is known for his wide-ranging operatic vocal style and energetic stage presence.

4.

Bruce Dickinson began his career in music fronting small pub bands in the 1970s while attending school in Sheffield and university in London.

5.

In 1979, he joined British new wave heavy metal band Samson, with whom he gained some popularity under the stage name "Bruce Dickinson Bruce Dickinson" and performed on two studio records.

6.

Bruce Dickinson left Samson in 1981 to join Iron Maiden, replacing Paul Di'Anno, and debuted on their 1982 album The Number of the Beast.

7.

Bruce Dickinson quit Iron Maiden in 1993 to pursue his solo career, which saw him experiment with a wide variety of heavy metal and rock styles.

8.

Bruce Dickinson re-joined the band in 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith, and has released six subsequent studio albums with the band.

9.

Outside his career in music, Bruce Dickinson has pursued a number of other activities.

10.

Bruce Dickinson undertook a career as a commercial pilot for Astraeus Airlines, which led to a number of media-reported ventures such as captaining Iron Maiden's converted charter aeroplane, Ed Force One, during their world tours.

11.

Bruce Dickinson presented his own radio show on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010, and has hosted television documentaries, authored novels and film scripts, created a beer with Robinsons Brewery and competed at fencing internationally.

12.

Paul Bruce Dickinson was born on 7 August 1958 in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.

13.

Bruce Dickinson's mother, Sonia, worked part-time in a shoe shop, and his father, Bruce, was a mechanic in the British Army.

14.

Bruce Dickinson's birth hurried the young couple, who were then just teenagers, into marriage.

15.

Bruce Dickinson started school at Manton Primary in Worksop while his parents moved away to Sheffield.

16.

Bruce Dickinson has a younger sister, professional showjumper Helena Stormanns, who was born in 1963.

17.

Bruce Dickinson tried to isolate himself from her as much as he could when he was young, supposedly out of spite because she, unlike him, was a planned pregnancy and birth.

18.

The first record Bruce Dickinson recalls owning was The Beatles single "She Loves You", which he managed to persuade his grandfather to buy him, which made him more interested in music.

19.

Bruce Dickinson tried to play an acoustic guitar belonging to his father, but it blistered his fingers.

20.

Bruce Dickinson was not opposed to moving away from home because he had not built "any real attachment" to his parents, having been raised by his grandparents in Worksop until he was six.

21.

At Oundle, Bruce Dickinson was picked on and routinely bullied by the older boys of Sidney House, the boarding house that he belonged to, which he described as "like systematic torture" and meant that he became an outsider.

22.

Oundle was where Bruce Dickinson became attracted to progressive rock and early heavy metal after hearing Deep Purple's "Child in Time" being played in another student's room.

23.

Every term, a band would play at the school, the first of these which Bruce Dickinson saw was called Wild Turkey, featuring former Jethro Tull bassist Glenn Cornick.

24.

Bruce Dickinson initially wanted to play the drums, later obtaining a pair of bongo drums from the music room for practice.

25.

Bruce Dickinson remembers playing "Let It Be" with his friend Mike Jordan, during which Dickinson discovered his singing voice while encouraging Jordan to sing the high-notes.

26.

Shortly afterwards Bruce Dickinson was expelled from Oundle for participating in a prank in which he allegedly urinated in the headmaster's dinner.

27.

Bruce Dickinson had overheard two other pupils talking about their band and that they needed a singer and so volunteered immediately.

28.

Bruce Dickinson's parents wanted him in the army, but he told them that he wanted to get a degree first, which acted as his "cover story", and immediately began playing in bands.

29.

In Speed, Bruce Dickinson began writing his own material after White taught him how to play three chords on the guitar.

30.

Bruce Dickinson spotted an advertisement in Melody Maker with the caption "Singer wanted for recording project" and replied immediately.

31.

Bruce Dickinson played pubs with Shots on a regular basis to small audiences.

32.

One particular night, Bruce Dickinson suddenly stopped in the middle of a song and started interviewing a man in the audience, heckling for not paying enough attention.

33.

Bruce Dickinson got such a good response he started doing it every night until it became a regular routine used to catch the audience's attention.

34.

The next step in Bruce Dickinson's career was taken in a pub called the Prince of Wales in Gravesend, Kent, where Shots were playing regularly, when Barry Graham and Paul Samson paid a visit.

35.

Bruce Dickinson agreed to join their band, Samson, but only once he'd finished taking his History finals two weeks later.

36.

Bruce Dickinson later commented that he did not like it but considered it "a sort of stage name" and accepted it.

37.

The band's last gig was at Reading Festival, after which Bruce Dickinson was approached by Iron Maiden's manager, Rod Smallwood, who asked him to audition to be their new lead vocalist.

38.

Bruce Dickinson went to audition for Iron Maiden at a rehearsal room in Hackney in September 1981 and immediately discovered that this was a much more professional operation than he was used to with Samson.

39.

Iron Maiden had a strict and organised routine that suited the band's writing style, which Bruce Dickinson described as a "time table".

40.

Iron Maiden's management were continually adding dates, until Bruce Dickinson demanded that they stop or he would leave the group.

41.

Bruce Dickinson was disappointed with the effort as he felt that the band needed a more dramatic stylistic departure from past records to remain relevant, despite its introduction of synthesised bass and guitars.

42.

Bruce Dickinson has no writing credits on the release, as his material, based on his own suggestion that the album should be more acoustic-focused, was rejected by the rest of the band.

43.

Steve Harris, on the other hand, stated that his material was rejected because it was not good enough, and that Bruce Dickinson "was probably more burnt out than anyone at the end of the last tour".

44.

Unlike Somewhere in Time, Bruce Dickinson was much more enthusiastic about this album due to its concept and has several song-writing credits.

45.

At that point the band had already booked a following tour in 1993, which Bruce Dickinson did not enjoy.

46.

Bruce Dickinson has since denied the accusations that he was deliberately under-performing, arguing that it was impossible to give a decent performance some nights because of the atmosphere.

47.

Smallwood spoke to Steve Harris about Bruce Dickinson's return, who initially had reservations about the prospect, but soon came round to the idea, deliberating that they knew of his abilities and that it was a case of "better the devil you know".

48.

Harris and Bruce Dickinson agreed to meet at Smallwood's home in Brighton in January 1999 for the first conversation they would have with each other since 1993.

49.

Bruce Dickinson insisted that they find a replacement for the now retired Martin Birch, the band's regular producer, and record in a different studio than the one in which they made No Prayer for the Dying and Fear of the Dark, to which Harris agreed.

50.

The band toured the album in 2016, during which Bruce Dickinson piloted the band's private plane, Ed Force One.

51.

In early 1989, Zomba asked Bruce Dickinson to produce a track for the movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, providing a budget, a studio, and a producer, Chris Tsangarides.

52.

Bruce Dickinson took up the opportunity and called an old friend of his, former Gillan guitarist, Janick Gers, and, shortly after meeting up, they had "Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter" ready for the studio, then recorded with the assistance of bassist Andy Carr, and drummer Fabio del Rio.

53.

Later that year, Bruce Dickinson participated on a re-recording of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water", as part of the humanitarian effort Rock Aid Armenia.

54.

Unhappy with the direction he was taking with Olsen, Bruce Dickinson began working with Tribe of Gypsies guitarist Roy Z and started the album again from scratch.

55.

That same year, Bruce Dickinson recorded a cover version of "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" with the band Godspeed for Black Sabbath's tribute album Nativity in Black.

56.

Tribe of Gypsies departed to work on their own material and Bruce Dickinson tracked down another band, including his new writing partner and guitarist, Alex Dickson.

57.

Bruce Dickinson decided that Skunkworks would be the title of the band as well, but the record company refused to release the album without his name on the cover.

58.

Bruce Dickinson hired producer Jack Endino, most noted for producing the first Nirvana album.

59.

In 2000, Bruce Dickinson performed vocals on the song, "Into the Black Hole", for Ayreon's Universal Migrator Part 2: Flight of the Migrator.

60.

That same year, Bruce Dickinson contributed to the song, "Beast in the Light", from Tribuzy's album, Execution, and their subsequent live album.

61.

Bruce Dickinson recorded a new version of the theme song from Monty Python's Life of Brian for the sixth and final episode.

62.

Bruce Dickinson married Erica "Jane" Barnett in 1984, and they divorced in 1987.

63.

All three were born in the Chiswick area of London, where Bruce Dickinson lived for a few decades beginning in 1981.

64.

Bruce Dickinson stated in a 2018 interview with French magazine L'Obs that, despite residing mainly in France, he supports Brexit and voted for the UK to leave the EU during the 2016 referendum.

65.

In 2021, after the Withdrawal Agreement entered into force, Bruce Dickinson said he was angry that British musicians and performers were restricted from free travel through Europe.

66.

In 2015, Bruce Dickinson underwent seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiation therapy for a cancerous tumour found at the back of his tongue.

67.

On 19 July 2011, Bruce Dickinson was presented with an honorary music doctorate from his alma mater, Queen Mary University of London, in honour of his contribution to the music industry.

68.

In 2019, Bruce Dickinson was made an honorary citizen of Sarajevo and received the city's prestigious Sixth April Award for his efforts in performing under siege in 1994.

69.

Bruce Dickinson is credited as a producer on the critically acclaimed 2016 documentary Scream for Me Sarajevo, which chronicles this performance and his return to Sarajevo.

70.

In 2019, Bruce Dickinson was presented with an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Philosophy by the University of Helsinki.

71.

On 6 January 2020, Bruce Dickinson was made an Honorary Group Captain of 601 Squadron RAF.

72.

Bruce Dickinson learned to fly recreationally in Florida in the 1990s and now holds an airline transport pilot's licence.

73.

Bruce Dickinson regularly flew Boeing 757s in his role as captain for the now-defunct British charter airline Astraeus, which, from 16 September 2010, employed him as marketing director.

74.

Bruce Dickinson flew "Ed Force One" again for "The Final Frontier World Tour" in 2011.

75.

In 2014, Bruce Dickinson purchased a Fokker Dr I triplane replica G-CDXR and joined the Great War Display Team, which re-enacts First World War air battles at air shows across the UK.

76.

In March 2010, the BBC announced that, after over eight years, Bruce Dickinson's show was to be axed.

77.

Bruce Dickinson scorned BBC executives for the cancellation, playing the Johnny Paycheck version of "Take This Job and Shove It".

78.

In 2005, Bruce Dickinson hosted a five-part historical TV series about aviation, Flying Heavy Metal, shown on the Discovery Channel and later on Discovery Turbo in the UK.

79.

Bruce Dickinson was a guest on an episode of the Military Channel's The Greatest Ever, where he drove a Russian T-34 tank.

80.

Bruce Dickinson has appeared in a BBC series called The Paradise Club, undertaking the role of a musician named Jake Skinner.

81.

On 27 July 2012, Bruce Dickinson spent a day being filmed as a guest star for a season four episode of Ice Pilots NWT, in which he flew a Douglas DC-3 and took part in "touch-and-go drills" in a Douglas DC-4 with Buffalo Airways.

82.

Bruce Dickinson turned his hand to scriptwriting, co-authoring Chemical Wedding with director Julian Doyle.

83.

The film, in which Bruce Dickinson played a few small cameo roles and composed the soundtrack, was released in 2008 and starred Simon Callow.

84.

Bruce Dickinson says that his style was influenced primarily by Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Ian Gillan.

85.

Bruce Dickinson's singing varied in the 1990s in the recording of albums such as No Prayer for the Dying, Fear of the Dark and his first solo work Tattooed Millionaire, making use of a much more raspy and unpolished sound, befitting their stripped down style.

86.

Bruce Dickinson's voice led to the nickname "The Air Raid Siren", which Billboard states is "due to the ferocious power of his singing", although Dickinson claims it actually originated from a fan complaint.