Protein, squatting and “useless tat”: Life on the road with Bruce Dickinson

As he gears up to take brilliant solo album The Mandrake Project on the road, we catch up with Bruce Dickinson to talk decades of touring – from moments of glory where you’re “on the edge of self-destruct”, to less glamorous aspects like, uh, occasionally going to the loo in a hole in the ground.

“A bed to sleep in that doesn’t move. I fucking hate tour buses. Tour buses got old on me after five days on the first Iron Maiden tour I ever did when we drove to Italy. It took us three days and then the bus broke down. We had to push it to start it.”

“I did a day trip to Japan with [1996 solo album] Skunkworks. We got there in the morning from the UK, went and did the gig that night at like 6pm – because that’s when they are – and went back to the hotel. The flight back was at 11 o’clock the following morning, so we just stayed up.”

“The Shellharbour Club in Wollongong, Australia, with Maiden. The promoter was like, ‘Oh, it’s not like a working men’s club, it’s different.’ But it was exactly like one. We were playing in front of an audience of tables, all of which were nailed to the floor, and there were about six kids down the front while everyone else was standing as far away as they possibly could at the back.”

“You need to be careful with your diet so you don’t blow up like a blimp, because I do like a couple of beers after the show. I have the same meal every night after the show which is egg white omelette, steamed broccoli, steamed carrots, steamed beetroot and garlic and a couple of beers. If you’ve eaten shit for the rest of the day, you get your five-a-day and protein all in one hit.”

“There are some venues that don’t actually have any toilets – there’s a hole in the ground and that’s it. If you want to take a shit, you have to carefully pull down your pants and squat, aiming your butt over the hole, making sure you’ve moved your underpants out of the line of fire in case you shit in your own pants.”

“It’ll be a truck stop somewhere like Lincoln, Nebraska, in the middle of the fucking night. It’s just a small city of trucks and 24-hour restaurants where you can get chilli dogs and breakfast and beer and all manner of amazing bits of useless tat that you never knew you needed and will never use.”

“Utilitarian and miserable. It’s just a dressing room like any stadium like that, particularly for stuff like rugby or ice hockey – the backstage areas are always all the bloody same. We don’t spend much time in the dressing room; we turn up, it takes us 20 minutes to get ready, and then we’re on.”

“When you’re in that moment with the band and it’s almost like there’s an additional ghostly band member that’s stepped in and is organising you all. We’re not very scientific about what we do, we’re all on feel, so if Nicko [McBrain, drums] is playing too fast, we’re struggling. But when it locks in and it’s on the edge of self-destruct, it’s amazing.”

“‘Who is that Greek c**t waving a flare?’ In Greece. There was a degree of sympathy from people in Greece who said, ‘He shouldn’t have said Greek c**t,’ and yeah, maybe not, but he probably was Greek. And he probably was a c**t. But it really pissed me off. There I am, trying to sing, and there’s all these people waving these phosphorous naval distress flares, and nobody in the whole place can fucking breathe. I find it really, deeply inconsiderate. But I shouldn’t have called him a Greek c**t because I wasn’t sure of his nationality. I lost my rag and I shouldn’t have done.”

Bruce tours the UK from May 16. This article originally appeared in the spring issue of the magazine.

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