“Everybody was down, and then suddenly we were all smiling and having a laugh”: Bruce Dickinson recalls his eventful Iron Maiden audition
According to Bruce Dickinson, the vibe at his Iron Maiden audition started out on quite a bum note.
Dickinson famously joined the band in 1981 after departing the band Samson, and elevated the English metallers to new heights after the dismissal of vocalist Paul Di’Anno. Featuring for the first time on the band’s third album, 1982’s The Number Of The Beast, Dickinson saw them achieve their first number one album in the UK.
READ MORE: “I was in a dark place with Bruce leaving and me going through a divorce”: Steve Harris on why this underrated Iron Maiden album was so “powerful”
However, in an interview with Classic Rock, Dickinson recalls that spirits were feeling a little withered when he rocked up to his audition in Hackney, London. He tells the magazine: “It was weird… I turned up and Steve [Harris, founder and bassist] wasn’t there, he hadn’t arrived yet, but everybody else was. And I looked around and everybody was just… not happy.
“Everybody was just down. And I was thinking: ‘This is going to be rough.’ But we started bashing through some songs that we knew, and it turned out we all knew half of every fucking rock song on the planet,” he shares. “We had a go at a bit of AC/DC, a bit of Deep Purple – Woman From Tokyo then Black Night – and so on. And suddenly we were all smiling and having a laugh.”
After Harris arrived, the band got straight down to business, which was a breeze for Dickinson, having already mastered all of the Maiden songs thrown his way. On drums was another recent addition to Maiden, Clive Burr, who had also played in Samson.
“Steve turned up. We went: ‘Right, let’s have a bash at some Maiden songs.’ We did three or four Maiden songs, but I’d learned all of them. Clive had been Samson’s drummer, so it felt very natural. But then I had to wait two weeks so that they could deal with Paul after the last gigs in Scandinavia,” Dickinson remembers.
These days, Dickinson is pretty outspoken on one matter in particular: his expectations for the crowd at Maiden’s live shows, and their use of mobile phones. In a conversation with Appetite For Distortion, the vocalist said: “It’s like some terrible disease, that people feel the need to look at the world through this stupid little device. It’s like a failing of humanity,” he explained. “You’re surrendering your senses completely to this little fascist in your hand.”
Iron Maiden continue their Run For Your Lives world tour in 2026, with the first date kicking off on 23 May in Athens, Greece. Find out more or grab tickets via the official Iron Maiden website.
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