Bruce Dickinson made a recent appearance on the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast, hosted by FOZZY frontman Chris Jericho, where the IRON MAIDEN singer admitted that he still suffers from “stage fright”.
“I get nervous right before I go on stage with IRON MAIDEN, especially at the beginning of a tour,” he says. “Once you’re sort of, like, five or six, seven shows into the tour, you’re kind of back into the routine. So you kind of know what’s gonna happen. But the big fear, especially for a singer, is that you walk on stage and open your mouth and garbage comes out, or nothing at all. And that’s irrational, but it’s valid. So just own up to it. I mean, I keep a copy of the lyric sheet backstage. I never look at it, but if I knew it wasn’t there, I’d freak out. Then every tour, once I get to, like, six or seven shows in, the training wheels come off and I leave it in the wardrobe case. But the one-man show’s a bit different because it’s just you,” he said, referring to his current spoken-word tour. “And if you stop, it all stops. If I forget the words [while singing for IRON MAIDEN], the band carries on.”
Around two years ago, Dickinson made the following comments about vocalists who rely on teleprompters: “I don’t use an autocue on stage. A lot of singers now, they just have the words there: ‘Breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law.’ Breaking the what? ‘Breaking the law. Breaking the law.'”
IRON MAIDEN’s latest album, “Senjutsu”, arrived in September of last year.