BRUCE DICKINSON - "I'll Have To Kill You!"

This week, BRUCE DICKINSON gave BW&BK lessons on screaming his lungs out in South America as well as screaming alongside Steve Harris and Co. at an undisclosed location in Europe (rumoured to be Paris, France), rehearsing and now recording the forthcoming Iron Maiden reunion album. His head is abuzz from a long-winded Maiden band meeting, not that Bruce is ready, willing and able to disclose any information, with management ready to "cut his balls off if he says anything!"

But at the moment Bruce is reveling over his latest solo release, Scream For Me Brazil, a live firestorm of his solo classics, culled mainly from his last two records Accident Of Birth and the glorious Chemical Wedding, featuring the much-talked-about reunion with his former axe in crime, Adrian Smith.

While the squabble between Bruce and his 'former' label CMC has been well documented, you can only sit in awe listening to this thing, drowning in a sea of Brazilian metalheads swooning at Bruce and Co.

"It was just one of those decisions that had to be made that it wasn't going to happen," sez Bruce, explaining his absence from North America, "unless I wanted to blow a hundred thousand dollars for nothing. So I figured, with a hundred thousand dollars, I'll make a new album!"

And South America is not a financial strain to an artist like Bruce Dickinson. In fact, Bruce is just one of many that has found strange success in the topsy-turvey economies of South America. And it's a blinder why a tour can't be sorted out in what is supposed to be the money-making mecca of the world.

"We do pretty well in South America in terms of ticket sales, so the shows paid for themselves. We'd go to South America, do the shows, come back again and we don't lose any money. It pays for all the rehearsals and everything. All we really had to pay for was the cost of hiring the mobile and the mixing on the truck. We mixed back in Los Angeles and Roy (Z - guitarist) did a fantastic job. I said to Roy that 'I really want the album to be recorded as if you were the singer.' In other words, I mixed the album as I hear it standing on stage. So in between the songs, I hear the audience and when the audience gets loud during the songs, I hear the audience and the rest of the time I hear the band. So pretty much you're hearing the mix that I hear standing on the middle of the stage. So you're on stage with the band as opposed to standing in the middle of the crowd. I wanted to catch the excitement that we feel on stage and I felt the only way to do that was to mix it the way we hear it as musicians. We get the excitement from the audience and you can hear that coming over, but you can hear really clearly the interplay between everybody and the magic that's on stage. It's incredible."

Joined onstage with Adrian, guitarist/comrade in arm Roy Z, bassist Eddie Cassillas and drummer Dave Ingrahams, SFMB's material "excludes anything that Roy, Eddie and Dave didn't play on in the studio. All the Maiden stuff we played and all the Tattooed Millionaire stuff, we just went, 'Very nice, but let's keep it to the stuff the band played on.' Out of respect to the guys in the band, I felt it was important to have some integrity to it and also, I didn't want to go around reproducing Maiden material that's been reproduced many times before."

So what's your relationship with the lads since you've taken another path.

"Very good. I speak to Roy all the time and in fact we're collaborating on a few other little side-projects at the moment anyway. We are going to work together again on another solo album, probably for 2001. Next year, we're planing to release an album called Catacombs, which is going to be unreleased stuff from the whole ten years. Next year is going to be ten years since I've been releasing solo albums."

As for a firm tracklisting for the rare and unreleased Catacombs, Bruce states that "I haven't gone into it in any sort of detail yet. I have a rough idea of a half a dozen tracks I'd like to go on it, but I'd have to have a really hard listen to them before I make final decisions. For example, there's songs like 'Wickerman' from the Accident Of Birth sessions that nobody's ever heard. A couple of acoustic things off of Chemical Wedding that nobody's ever heard, the original version of 'Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter', which was released in such small quantities that very few people have it. It will have some very cool rarities. Also some of the stuff off of the Lost Album, the Keith Olsen album (eight tracks in total). For example, the original version of 'Tears Of A Dragon' in its entirety; nobody's ever heard that. There's two or three tracks off that album that I released as b-sides, but they were very limited in quantity. There's also 'Slow Garden' (from the Skunkworks era) that has a slow and dragging kind of BLACK SABBATH feel. There are still a number of Skunkworks b-sides, those more or less unplugged numbers that I wrote together with Roy. There's an awful lot of stuff, in fact there's enough for two full albums."

In the meantime, the world is waiting with baited breath at Bruce's new focus and lifeblood, Iron Maiden. And with tongue firmly in cheek, he begins with the blanket of secrecy.

"Well, I would love to tell you all about the great stuff we're doing with Maiden, but I'd have to kill you. We just finished rehearsing songs today (November 4th) and we start recording on Monday (November 8th). And it's going to be a great fucking record. And it is going to be a very surprising record and that's all I can say. It's going to be really, really cool."

Is it still with Kevin Shirley? "Like I said, I'd have to kill you if I say anything about anything. I know nothing. I am merely a clod of clay," he giggles evily to himself.

Are you recording in England? "I can definitely tell you that we are not recording in England... or Scotland or Ireland. We are recording somewhere in France," as he bursts out with more laughter. "I don't think I'm giving away anything there that hasn't been given away somewhere else. We're lurking somewhere in France."

How long will the lurking occur? "Well, it's kind of open-ended. You know... until it's done. When it's done, we'll be mixing in New York."

Is the writing done? "Oh yeah. Oh my god yeah."

And the songtitles are done? "Umm, yeah mainly. We've got a couple that we're thinking we may change the songtitle, but we're not going to change the song."

And that would fall into the "I would have to kill you" category to find out song titles? "Oh yes, definitely!"

And no album title? "No way Jose!"

Is there an album title? "Yeah, we do have an album title."

It's going to take a long night in a pub in downtown Toronto... "Oh boy, not even! I'm normally much more careless than this, but not today."

Iron Maiden has been mentioned as taking over the European Festival circuit next spring/summer. "Possibly," he laughs. "Effectively, what's happening next year is we're going to come out in early summer and we'll be doing all the European Festivals, so you can pretty much guess which festivals we will be doing. We'll not be doing all of them, but a majority of them. And we'll be headlining. The plot is to do South America enroute to North America."

With 2000 being billed as the year of the Maiden, Bruce isn't losing sleep with all this armageddon chatter. "Oh no, I don't give a shit, nothing's going to happen. I've got the inside track. We had a great meeting and we're getting along fucking amazing. The only barrier between me and the rest of the guys is I get to rollerblade during rehearsals, cuz I've got the radio mike. When we're rehearsing all these songs, we have this huge rehearsal studio. It's like a sound stage and it's got this big flat floor and the band is right at the other end. So I have my rollerblades strapped on and throughout the whole rehearsal I can sing and rollerblade at the same time. I have this slalom course set up and I've got Maiden playing in the background. I'm rollerblading to Iron Maiden and singing at the same time. It's fucking cool. And Janick and Steve are absolutely busting a gut to get on skates, but they're like 'fucking hell, we'd get so much shit if we got on skates and broke our wrists or something and fucked ourselves up for the album.' If I break my fucking leg it doesn't matter, I can still sing."

And what about dear ol' Eddie?

"Eddie, Eddie, let me see if I can remember who Eddie is. It wouldn't surprise me if Eddie featured pretty prominently. You'll just have to wait and see."

Bastards!