Bruce Dickinson recently discussed why he felt he “had to leave” IRON MAIDEN almost 30 years ago at a recent spoken-word show.
Dickinson walked away from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal pioneers in 1993 to work on several solo projects and was replaced by vocalist Blaze Bayley. Bruce would eventually return to the group in 1999.
Bruce touched on his quitting IRON MAIDEN during the question-and-answer portion of his March 23 spoken-word show at MTelus in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. When asked why he left the group in the first place, Dickinson said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Honestly, I was as surprised as anybody else. I don’t think people really believed that at the time. I just thought that if I stayed with MAIDEN forever, all I would learn about was what it was like to be in MAIDEN. And in order to learn what it was like outside MAIDEN, you have to leave, because, unless you left, nobody would take anything that you did seriously. It would always be, like, ‘Oh, bless him. He’s doing a solo record. Let him have his fun and then he can go back to being in IRON MAIDEN.’ I hated that. So I thought, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just leave.’ And [people said], ‘What happens if your [solo] career doesn’t work out.’ And I said [it’s] better [to take a chance] now and do something else with your life than sit there somewhere in fantasy world and end up just grumpy.”
Bruce’s two-month North American spoken-word tour kicked off on January 17 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and will run through the end of March.
Dickinson is set to hit the road with IRON MAIDEN for a North American leg of the band’s “Legacy Of The Beast” tour this September.