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If you feel like it’s two minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock right now, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson has what you need: an evening of spoken word from the haired legend. longs mocking himself.
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The 63-year-old is at the Winspear Center in Edmonton on Friday and at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary on Monday night.
“It’s a bit of self-mockery, if you will,” Dickinson said from his home in Paris last week. “I want people to laugh. It’s a comical look at my rake’s progress throughout its life.
“I take the absurd stories from the journey I’m on, follow the pattern that runs through your life. You go to school, you get into rock and roll, you go to college, you don’t study, you get fired.
“And then something random happens to you and now you’re wearing the most ridiculous pants in the world.”
Since Maiden’s second album, Number of the Beast in 1982, Dickenson has led what is arguably the most stable and cohesive heavy metal band in history – while personally embodying the very definition of a polymath. as a commercial pilot, international fencer, brewmaster and repeating author.
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And although the band last played here in 2019 with no new dates booked yet, this Q-and-A will give you a taste of Dickinson’s current storytelling tour. in the first half, then answers questions from the audience in the second. .
Read on, there’s a good word about Maiden’s mascot, Eddie, at the end, who’s been with the band longer than Dickinson.
Q You’re kind of riding a human wave of Twitter with this format — what do you learn about us?
A Some questions are quite rude! I was offered the other night. “Have you ever been intimate with a man? Would you like to be?” The answer to this question was really simple, just read the question and read the phone number and say, “Are you alone tonight? I guess not.”
Q If the stories you tell had chapter titles, what would some of them be?
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A I start at the beginning, which is my involuntary arrival on this planet because we haven’t reached the end yet — although we all will. It’s quite chronological. I have a T-shirt that is selling very well at the salon and on the back it says, “Life is better than all the other options.” I talk about everything related to throat cancer. And having people laughing around a subject like that is quite gratifying. It’s my cancer, so I can tell jokes about it, you know?
Q What other questions do you have?
A One was like, “Do you remember meeting my mother in 1983 in a hotel in Budapest? By the way, you’re not my father, I checked.
Quite a few questions about the music, but not as many as I would have thought. Lots of questions about airplanes, so either it’s one person generating hundreds of them, or there’s a lot of people interested. “Have you ever seen a UFO or little green men? It’s kind of like showing up saying you’re a doctor at a party and people say, “That pain in my leg, what do you think it is?”
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Q You and I flew to Yellowknife in an old DC-3 from the TV show Ice Pilots ten years ago and you were so giddy in the cockpit. Have you ticked off any other white whales?
A I spent time at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton and had a flight in the Avro Lancaster which was breathtaking.
Q What do you like about flying?
A I just like that planes keep you honest. Whatever he does is not personal. If you manage to screw up the landing, it’s your fault.
Q Last time we spoke, I thought you were operating by the two Guinness rule, no more, no less.
A What, while we were flying you mean? (Laughs.) I’m pretty liberal with my beer drinking, I just don’t like having headaches in the morning, so I try to keep it under control. I like beer. Clearly, I’ve been doing it for several years.
Q In the promotional video for the tour, you are asked if you could be in any band in history, which you would be, but it cuts. So which one was it?
A (Laughs.) I don’t really remember. One day you think I’d like to be in Deep Purple, and the next week I’d like to be in Kansas or something weird like that.
Q General, but do you have pets?
A We have a long term plan to get a Maine Coon cat, which is more like a little lion. I love dogs, but with my lifestyle, it’s not fair to have a dog. I’m a big fan of border collies because they’re smarter than me; play chess.
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Q I love the video you scripted for The Writing on the Wall, total Heavy Metal cartoon vibe. It made me think of Eddie, who is a force for good in the video. But you also fight all those giant Eddies on stage. So who is Eddie to you?
A It’s a real big melting pot and full of different metaphors. Nobody knows. He’s kind of elemental, that’s how I would describe him, he’s just a force of nature. And you better hope you’re on his good side when he gets mad.
fgriwkowsky@postmedia.com
PREVIEW
An Evening with Bruce Dickinson
Edmonton
Winspear Center, 7:30 p.m. Friday
Tickets start at $54.67 at www.winspearcentre.com
Calgary
Jack Singer Concert Hall, 7:30 p.m. Monday
Tickets start at $42.50 at artscommon.ca
