Just as James Brown liked to call himself The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, so Bruce Dickinson is the hardest-working man in heavy metal. In 2024 the singer released his seventh solo album, The Mandrake Project, and embarked on an accompanying tour, after which he returned to Iron Maiden to complete the band’s Future Past tour. Amid all of this, Dickinson has also been overseeing a reissue programme of his solo back catalogue. And he’s looking forward to a busy schedule in 2025.
Classic Rock described The Mandrake Project as “a grandiose vision”. Did the album turn out exactly how you’d envisaged, and were you surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to it?
In sequence, no and yes! It didn’t turn out the way I thought. It was a constant work in progress. Rather than being a grand design, the album just sort of unfolded, because it was done in dribs and drabs from 2013 and even before that. There are elements of that album that go back twenty years! So if ever there was a work that was brewing in your subconscious that you never knew you were making, that was it. And when we’d finally done it, we were pinching ourselves going: “What have we done?”
Meaning what?
It was just a weird feeling I had – like when Maiden did The Number Of The Beast. We – my solo band – all had this feeling that it was something really momentous. And obviously it’s not going to be as momentous as The Number Of The Beast. Nothing ever will be. But there was that same sort of feeling that this was something really special.
And then, lo and behold, it comes out and everybody got it. Well, maybe one or two people didn’t get it, but they didn’t tell me. So yeah, it exceeded all my wildest expectations. And it’s great for going forward into doing another album, but at the same time I’m just trying not to think about any pressure.
What was your mindset when you toured The Mandrake Project? You’ve performed without Maiden at various stages of your career, but was this time different?
The thing is, outside of Maiden this is my dream band. And I had the stage layout totally different to Maiden. We had the drums on one side, keyboards on the other side, and the performing space in the middle was a free-for-all. When I’m not there singing, anybody can be in that space. And it just refocuses everybody in the audience – like, okay, this is not Maiden. So you hang your Maiden hat at the door and take it for what it is.
It must be satisfying to have this solo project accepted on its own merits.
Exactly. And I tried to do that with Balls To Picasso [his second solo album, released in 1994 after he left Maiden]. But that album was weaker than it should have been. And not only that, the timing of it was crap. You’ve just walked out of everybody’s favourite heavy metal band on the planet, and then you ask people to listen to an album that’s really very different. People just found it unpalatable.
Speaking of Balls To Picasso, you’ve been working on a new version of that record.
We’re remixing my whole solo catalogue. I’ve done seven solo albums, half as many as I’ve done with Maiden, which seems kind of bonkers, really. With all the new technology, you can beef things up, and Balls To Picasso is the one we’ve done the most with. We’ve added more guitars, more keyboards, orchestration.
And the horn section on Shoot All The Clowns – wow! We found these guys, they’re Berklee music professors who happen to be trumpet and trombone maestros and also happen to be fans. With Shoot All The Clowns they said: “Can we just go to town and do the full Aerosmith on this horn section?” I went: “Good idea, boys!”
And oh my god, it rocks! All of this stuff brings out the colours of the songs so much more. So we’re going to retitle it More Balls To Picasso, just to differentiate it. That’ll be the first one to come out, next August. After that it will be Skunkworks and Tattooed Millionaire, then Accident Of Birth, and also Chemical Wedding which will have a few tracks that didn’t end up on the original record.
Your busy 2024 ended with the last leg of Maiden’s Future Past tour, which focused on material from the band’s most recent album, Senjutsu, and 1986’s Somewhere In Time.
There’s one song from Senjutsu which is in pole position for people taking a trip to the loo – which they don’t – and that’s Death Of The Celts. It’s a long song, ten minutes, with a lengthy instrumental part that’s five minutes and twenty seconds. I know that because that’s how long I’ve got to have a cup of tea in the middle. You get to the end of that song and you look at the audience and you’re like: “Shit, we didn’t lose them, right? They are with us! They are paying close attention.” That’s when you know you’ve really got something.
Somewhere In Time is almost forty years old. The songs from it have aged well.
Absolutely! And to put that album front and centre is great. Somewhere In Time was not exactly forgotten as an album, but somehow it always seemed to live in the shadow of what came before it – the Holy Trinity of The Number Of The Beast, Piece Of Mind and Powerslave – and what came after it, Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. But there are some cracking songs on Somewhere In Time. I fucking love Stranger In A Strange Land, it’s got such a great groove.
There’s also a lot of challenging stuff from that album in this Maiden set – not least the lyrics to the song Alexander The Great.
Ha! I mean, I challenge anybody to sing ‘Hellenism he spread far and wide’ and not lose their fucking front teeth!
Looking ahead to this year, Iron Maiden will be celebrating their 50th anniversary with the Run For Your Lives tour, performing songs from the debut album all the way up to Fear Of The Dark.
You want the greatest hits, right? Well, we can’t do them all, because we’re going to stop at a certain album. It’s the greatest hits up till then. But the production is going to be out of this world. And we’ve got a set-list that’s going to knock people’s heads off!
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