There’s no doubt that Iron Maiden reached new heights during Bruce Dickinson‘s run as the band’s frontman, so why did the musician leave the group in 1993 after the Fear of the Dark album? Dickinson offered some insight into his reasoning during the March 23 stop in Montreal of his current spoken word tour.
The shows have provided Dickinson a chance to take fan questions from the audience at each stop and during the Montreal stop, the singer was asked about his exit.
As seen in the video shot below (at about 2:14 in) and posted by The Metal Voice (as viewed below), Dickinson recalls, “Honestly, I was as surprised as anybody else. I don’t think people really believed that at the time. You have to change around in your life sometimes.”
He then elaborated, “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. It’s not very important really. Let him have his fun and then he can go back to being in Iron Maiden.'”
“I hated that, right. So I thought, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just leave,'” continued the singer, adding, “And [people said], ‘What happens if your [solo] career doesn’t work out.’ I said, ‘Well that’s God or fate saying maybe that’s [for] the best.’ I said, ‘Maybe [it’s] better to do that now and do something else with your life than sit there somewhere in fantasy world and end up just grumpy.'”
After Dickinson left, Iron Maiden soldiered on with Blaze Bayley at the helm, releasing The X Factor and Virtual XI before Dickinson returned to the group in 1999. Meanwhile, Dickinson made the most of his time away, issuing the solo albums Balls to Picasso, Skunkworks, Accident of Birth and The Chemical Wedding in the six-year span that he was out of the band.
Dickinson’s current “An Evening With Bruce Dickinson” trek is in the home stretch. See the remaining tour dates listed here.
Bruce Dickinson Answers Fan Questions During the March 23 Montreal Stop of His Spoken Word Tour (Per The Metal Voice)
Top 50 Hard Rock + Metal Frontmen of All Time
:quality(85):upscale()/2023/05/11/976/n/1922564/782262e2645d6b967847b4.74342194_.png)
