Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson has confirmed that the band are intending to play last year’s acclaimed Senjutsu album in full on a future tour.
Speaking to Chris Jericho on the Fozzy vocalist’s Talk Is Jericho podcast, Dickinson said, “The plan we've got — it's not really a secret; I think everybody else has chatted about it — we will, I hope, we've talked about doing the entire album start to finish, but not this time around. And we all appreciate that that is something that really diehard fans will probably love and other people will go, ‘Hmmm, I'm not gonna go see that.’ So the answer is you play smaller venues so that they sell out with just your diehard fans. 'Cause it's a musical thing to do — it's a musical thing.”
Last year, Dickinson hinted to Classic Rock that Maiden were considering playing the album in full.
“Every song is Maiden at the top of our game. Every song could be a live favourite. We haven’t played a Maiden album from start to finish since [2006’s] A Matter Of Life And Death, but this album is so good that it could warrant being played in its entirety. Obviously, we haven’t finished the Legacy [Of The Beast] tour yet, but the thought of taking this album on the road is exciting to all of us.”
“Making it come alive onstage, with all its time changes and shifts of tone and mood, is going to be a challenge. But if I didn’t relish a challenge, I wouldn’t have joined this band in the first place. No-one is mellowing with age, we’re all committed to this, and taking on the world again after everything being on pause is going to be one hell of an adventure.”
In conversation with Chris Jericho, Dickinson suggested that, initially, the opening tracks on Senjutsu will be added into Maiden’s formidable Legacy Of The Beast tour setlist when, when the tour resumes in Croatia in May.
“People have all paid their money to see the Legacy Of The Beast show, with Spitfires and flamethrowers and Icarus and everything that goes with,” Dickinson says. “So they're gonna get all that. But the first three tracks are probably gonna be the first three tracks on the [Senjutsu] album. The Writing On The Wall they already know, so everybody should know the first three tracks.
"And I just think [album title track] Senjutsu is just such a great opening song… so dramatic. And then once you've done that - and we'll have a stage set to go with it - once you've done that, you're back to the kind of Legacy world at that point.”
