As Iron Maiden gear up for their 50th anniversary EDDFEST extravaganza at Knebworth Park next month, we jet off to Bucharest to see the show for ourselves and exclusively speak to Bruce and Steve about hitting the half-century mark, what the future may hold, and why they'll never really retire...
Up in the executive bar, high up in Bucharest’s big and beautiful Grand Hotel, a casually-dressed man at one table, with long, greying hair up in a knot and an unmistakably English accent, has pricked up the ears of a fellow guest, a friendly American gentleman.
“Excuse me,” he smiles. “You guys have to be in some sort of band, right?”
And Bruce Dickinson replies that, yes, he is. He’s actually in the Romanian capital to play a gig. “Whereabouts?” the new American acquaintance enthusiastically asks. With a tang of very British awkwardness at having to answer in polite company with what might appear to be a boast, Bruce tells him that said gig is at the Arena Națională. This, in case you were wondering, is Romania’s answer to Wembley Stadium.
“No kidding? What’s the name of your band?”
“We’re called Iron Maiden.”
“No kidding!?” a mixture of surprise and delight. “You guys are still going? That’s amazing! I hope the show goes great for you guys!”
The newly-starstruck guest exits, happily shaking his head in would-you-believe-it fashion. Bruce laughs into his beer.
“That’s Maiden right there,” he grins. “We’ve never had that mainstream fame, or celebrity bullshit, but loads of people know of us. We’ve never been cool, but our fans are our fans, and they’ve stuck. That’s why we’re still able to do this.”
Our new chum is in a minority today, being one of about three people in the city not aware that The Beast is coming to town, the third show of the second leg of Maiden’s massive Run For Your Lives 50th birthday tour. At the airport, the band’s shirts are as ubiquitous as passports. Take a trip to the parliament – a stunning building, boasted to be the heaviest in the world, with the awkward history of having been built by Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu at ruinous expense while most of the country underwent a famine in the ’80s, and from where he had to bid a hasty retreat in a helicopter before being killed after over-estimating how much his subjects would like him for it – and you’ll get several ticks in your spotters book without trying.
There’s even more at the enormous Beraria H Herastrau beer hall, playing host to the band’s now legendary Eddie’s Dive Bar for this tour stop. The manageress reports having never listened to Iron Maiden, as well as having “never seen anything like” the amount of uniformed Maiden-heads who turned up on the eve of the gig, to drink a river of Trooper and do a night of Maiden karaoke.
At the show itself, all this is turbo. And for the first night of the tour in Athens five nights ago, Steve Harris says they even managed to indirectly sell-out plane tickets to the city.
“Some people we know couldn’t get there, couldn’t get a seat on the plane!” he laughs. “We saw someone there who said their whole plane was just fans, like a coach going to the football.”
This is also an absolute humdinger of a tour. Those who caught last year’s triumphant super-gig at London Stadium, home to Steve’s beloved West Ham, will already know what we’re talking about. Taking in material from their 1980 debut to 1992’s Fear Of The Dark, it’s an almighty celebration of the best bits from their first decade and a bit (though hopping over No Prayer For The Dying, so no Hooks In You), all sounding absolutely box fresh and bursting with vitality.
You have an opening rapid-fire trio of Murders In The Rue Morgue (played like Bruce is trying to fight the entire stadium), Wrathchild and Killers. There’s a pyramid-tastic Powerslave. Old standards The Trooper and The Number Of The Beast are present and correct, filled with even more fire than usual.
For the epic, there’s Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son and a truly vast Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, complete with projections of the song’s tale of woe on the high seas. During Hallowed Be Thy Name, Bruce actually heads into the scenery for a truly dazzling moment. And, as if all this wasn’t treat enough, The Clairvoyant from last year’s run has been swapped out for Seventh Son… sibling Infinite Dreams, feeling the warmth of a stage light for the first time in 38 years.
“I’ve got no fucking idea why it’s taken so long to get that back in the set,” shrugs Bruce. “I suggested it, and Steve went, ‘Yeah, but that was really difficult song to sing back then.’”
“It’s a bloody tough one, it goes bloody high,” agrees Steve. “I wasn't sure about doing it, to be honest with you, because I thought maybe it would slow the set down. But Bruce wanted to have a go, to see if it still worked, and it sounded great.”
Yes, it does. And on July 10 and 11, Maiden are bringing all this madness to Knebworth, where for two days EDDFEST will be the big candle on the cake of the band’s big five-oh.
“It’s gonna be special,” says Steve. “If you’re a Maiden fan, it’s gonna be something really special.”
Lounging at their hotel ahead of the gig, both Steve and Bruce are in good spirits. Less than a week into the tour that’ll see them on the road until the grand finale at Yokohama, Japan at the end of November (though never more than two gigs in a row these days, and with two days off between any doubles), Maiden’s bassist and leader says that even the usual tour teething problems haven’t really emerged.
“The shows so far have been great. It’s been easy, anything that has happened has only been things we’d notice because we’ve been doing it for so long. I probably shouldn’t say that, should I?”
Iron Maiden’s time at metal’s mill is staggering just in its age. But then consider that they’ve become bigger than ever over the more recent end of it all. And then think on the fact that they’ve never done anything outside of being Iron Maiden to get there and stay there. Their success hasn’t been buttressed by giant, zeitgeist-y hit singles, or media ubiquity. Really, all they’ve done is release records and go on tour. Even things outside that – like the Flight 666 movie, or the more recent Burning Ambition – have existed in what Bruce calls “Maidenworld”.
And when it comes to their 50th anniversary – well, for Steve, but Bruce’s 44 years since joining, minus six-year departure in the ’90s, and everyone’s else’s, is splitting hairs – they may be marking it, but it doesn’t feel like they’re dining out on it all. Whether playing music or football, Steve’s not even sure how he’s meant to feel about Maiden’s latest milestone.
“It’s a bit unreal, really,” he says. “It's a big number, and you think, ‘Wow’, and it’s a bit scary as well, but it's amazing that we're still doing it I can’t speak for the rest of them, but for me, I'm 70 now, and I can't believe I'm 70. Same with the band. I don't know what you're supposed to feel like when you're 70, or in a 50-year-old band, but I feel alright, really!”
For Bruce, it’s a similar thing. He may have had to turn in his pilot’s wings after reaching retirement age there, but even this hasn’t given much pause for thought, other than about what’s happening now.
“I thought about it momentarily, and thought, ‘Yeah, that's a ridiculous amount of time,’ but then you forget about it, just get on with what's in front of you.”
Even five decades in, there are still worlds to conquer. Last year’s West Ham show was Maiden’s biggest headline show ever in the UK, and (somehow), the first time they’d ever played what should be an open goal of an idea.
“Obviously I’ve been there before, done tours of the ground and things, but it still felt really special,” says Steve “Before everyone came in, l, got a couple of photos just being there with nobody actually in the stadium yet. It was great!
“Everyone was going on asking me if I was gonna be nervous, and I wasn't,” he continues. “I just don’t get nervous these days. I dunno why. But then it just hit me the next day, I thought, ‘Wow, what have we just done?’ because it was incredible.
“That show captured the imagination, because so many people came from all over the world, there were so many nationalities there. I know Maiden shows are gatherings of fans from all over the world to a certain degree, anyway, but that really was something else.”
“Maiden shows are gatherings of fans from all over the world, but that West Ham show was something else”
Bruce agrees the gig was “amazing”, but he also adds, in a very Iron Maiden way, that it’s “Not the be all and end all life.” That, he says, is “getting out and doing it the next day and entertaining another bunch of people.”
Which brings us, one year later, to EDDFEST. It’s not their first time at Knebworth, having headlined Sonisphere festival there in 2010 and 2014. At the latter, Bruce even took part in a World War One dogfight re-enactment before the show. “I think Steve and Rod [Smallwood, manager] will be happy not to be worrying if their singer’s going to go up in a ball of flame this time.”
They are going big, though. Friday night will feature a line-up of Maiden-affiliated acts, including Blaze Bayley, alongside a museum, Eddie’s Dive Bar, the ‘Unfair Funfair’ and general Iron Maiden mania. Saturday, meanwhile, will see Maiden top the bill above The Darkness, Airbourne, The HU and The Almighty. In keeping with Bruce’s words about looking at what’s next, it was devised as something to be bigger and simply more than even West Ham.
“Where do you go after doing the West Ham?” asks Steve. “We decided that if we do it this way, we can do our own thing, we can do all kinds of weird and wonderful stuff.
“We start talking about different ideas about what we could do, what different bands we could get that were pretty different. Really, we want to shake things up a little bit. We're trying to make it a special event, which we always do, but even more than usual.”
The other thing Steve wants is for EDDFEST to be about Maiden and everything else around it, not himself.
“It’s great that we’re doing the museum and everything,” he says. “It’s great that we’ve got a line-up of people who have some connection to Maiden in some way, covering songs and things. And it’s great to have Blaze there. A few people have asked me if I’m gonna get up and play with anyone. No. I don’t want it to get like that, where it’s all about me.”
So keen is Steve, though, that he’s getting there early for a mooch.
“I'm gonna get there a day before, because I'm interested to see a lot of stuff going on, and see if they've been out, put into practice some of the things we talked about. We’ll soon find out!”
This hands-on approach to wanting to make something new is part of what’s kept Maiden young, even at 50. Both Steve and Bruce say that a band is only as good as their last gig. When asked if they feel like they still have something to prove, despite already being both enormous and incredibly respected, they both nod.
When he comes offstage, in the glow of the show, Bruce asks himself questions to keep himself on top. “Do you think you could have done better?” is one. “Were there problems that prevented you from giving the most amazing fucking performance?” is another.
“If there were issues, then you don't feel good about it, because you know you could have done it, could have been better,” he says. “I feel like that every gig. I come off and I go, ‘Did I justify my existence tonight?’”
There’s usually a stadium full of people going, ‘Yeah…’
“Yeah, sure. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in my own personal standard of performance. As you say, some older bands seem like they have nothing left to prove. I have something to prove every fucking day.”
This is why people still believe in Iron Maiden. When Bruce says this, or Steve opines that “Whatever we’re doing, the fans have to feel like you’ve given them everything,” they are men telling the truth, that both of them still deeply and genuinely care.
Even when the topic of retiring comes up, neither man wants to think on it, but there’s also a pride in knowing they’ll know from Bruce. As of last summer, Maiden have had this, when legendary drummer Nicko McBrain announced that he was retiring, feeling like he couldn’t give it all anymore. Steve saw his old friend just a few weeks ago, reporting that “He’s in fine fettle, he looks great, he’s doing well, full of the joys of spring”.
Talking to Bruce, the singer understands the skinsman’s decision to step away. Recently, he “had an argument with a journalist” about it, when he said that if he can’t do his very best, he’ll pack it in, to which the writer told him, ‘You can’t do that, you’ve got to go on.’”
“I said, ‘Look, there are loads of singers who voices are shot and everybody knows it.’ He goes, 'Yeah, but they're legends.’ They're not fucking legends, They're people who can't sing anymore. When they were singing, they were legends. When they can't sing anymore, they're not legends anymore.
“That's the end of that, the brutal truth. I couldn't go on stage if I didn't think I could do it. I don't know how people get onstage when they can't do it anymore. Obviously, it's their life, but it's not my way.”
Does that worry you?
“No. It's just a fact of life that one day it may or may not happen. You take each day as it comes, and you try to give the best performance of your life every night. That's the rules of the game.”
“I couldn't go on stage if I didn't think I could do it. I don't know how people get onstage when they can't do it anymore”
The way both of them talk, hanging it up is not in the post anytime soon. Steve says that when they get time off, he enjoys it more these days, but he’s still a man in two hard-touring bands, Maiden and British Lion, and when he’s off, “I’m always keeping busy.”
“I don't like sitting around doing nothing, not for long anyway. I live on a beach, but I don't go on it much. I'm always doing something around the house, a bit of DIY or something. Someone told me I should be writing, but to be able to do that, you need to go and do different things before you can come back refreshed.”
For Bruce, a man with the energy and drive of three a third of his age, rest is good, but stopping everything is an alien idea.
“If I'm sitting at home doing nothing, I'm actually fine with that, but it's a conscious choice. I'm actually not doing anything today, not planning on it, just chilling, and it's a choice.
“I don't know what retirement looks like. Fucking weird concept. I mean, one day I might stop singing, but that doesn't mean I retired. I’ll do something else. Write more books. Retirement to me means just stop doing what you're doing and wait to die. I'm not going to be doing that.”
After this leg of touring wraps up Maiden will be taking time off. Steve and Bruce, however, won’t. Not really. The bassist “Will probably go and do some stuff with British Lion, because I just love playing.
“Also,” he adds, “It keeps you in good habits. I don't really like it, having too big of a break. I like keeping busy, still physically playing, so that when I come back to Maiden again, I'm going to be in a reasonable shape. That's the idea, anyway.”
Bruce is eyeing up another solo album, and new books to go with it. Steve’s heard some of the music, “And it’s some of his best stuff I’ve ever heard.”
Beyond that, plans are spotty. That’s partly down to being “a bit hard work to try and get straight answers out of six people about what should we do on Tuesday, but that's the reality of being together for this long,” according to Bruce. But when asked about new music, there genuinely seems to be no clear idea.
“Personally, I would love to do in another, another album,” is Bruce’s answer. “I would rather do another album than another tour. If I had to choose between the two, I'd rather choose a new album, but Steve's the other way around. He will tour and tour and tour and tour until he probably dies onstage. Touring is fun, but it's not new. I'm a creative bunny, and I like making new, new things.”
“I think Bruce would love to do a new album, and I don't have a problem doing one. I just think if we do one, it's got to be at the right time,” says Steve. “But everybody's got to want to do it, so we'll have to see about that.
“I don't want to say too much about it, but I'm not saying we're not going to do one, I'm just not saying we are eager to rush into it.”
“I would rather do another album than another tour, but Steve's the other way around”
Even this, though, is exciting. After 50 years, vanishingly few bands could put out new music and have it met with the same ravenous enthusiasm as Maiden do as a matter of course. And if the next move is more touring, that in itself gets to be a creative endeavour of sorts.
“That will involve, I would say, 90 per cent of this set going in the bin. There’s so much to do, so many possibilities. It's really quite exciting.”
As Maiden hit the Arena Națională stage, there’s an excitement of something far simpler: Iron Maiden simply being there. As 32,000 people, a good 31,900 of whom are in Maiden shirts, scream for Bruce Dickinson, you’re hit again at just how unique a position they occupy.
Because, after half a century, Maiden do still play like they have something to prove. The way they discuss their next move tells you that the future matters to them with the same weight as their past. What Knebworth is going to be isn’t just a celebration of Maiden’s past glories, but the glory of Maiden themselves.
Because, as our new American friend in the bar was so delighted to hear, Iron Maiden are still going, as strong as ever. No kidding.
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EDDFEST takes place at Knebworth Park on July 10 and 11.
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