Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson: The Metal God On Piloting 757s Through War Zones, Surviving Cancer, Olympic Fencing & Why He Could Be A Sleeper MI6 Agent

26:04Did this get tracked back to you or did you get away with that? No, because I mean it's a standard authoritarian response, you know, collective punishment. So the guy stood up at dinner and said, and he actually had this weird voice. He said, this afternoon, some wag thought it would be very funny to dump two tons of shit on the front of the house. Well, I thought it was bloody amusing. Of course, I'll thrash him for it. But if that person doesn't own up, then there will be no electricity for the house, for the next whatever, which no electricity meant no music and music was the only escape that you had from this institution.

26:45So everybody's like, Everybody, it was me. So everybody looked at me going, well. I was like, yeah, okay, go on then. Guilty as charged. So I turned up, knocked on the door and said, hi there, it was me. And he went, oh, yes, Dickinson, I thought it might be you. And he said, it's very funny. He said, of course, I'll thrash you for it later. I went, oh, thank you. So they had corporal punishment. So beating and stuff like that. by, um, so, uh, so about nine o 'clock that evening, you know, I hear this squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, coming up in this, at my door. And he goes, I'll see you now.

27:25I went, oh, here we go. So I look, and it's extraordinary. He'd actually changed his clothes into like, like tennis sneakers, like hot pants and like a skimpy top. And, um, I'm following this guy going, this is really bizarre. So I go in there and then he's, you know, he rearranged all the furniture in his study. There's a chair, so you have to bend over the chair. He's taking the cushion out, so you have to bend over so your butt is sticking up. He then squeezes the cheeks of your butt, ostensibly to make sure there was no protection there. And then he has a selection of canes, ranging from about four foot long to a bendy one with nobbles on it.

28:10and then he beats you six times until you're, well, until it's bleeding, basically. Wow. And that was that. And then you go back upstairs and everybody knows you've been beaten. So you drop your pants and they shine a torch on your butt going, yep, hmm, oh yeah. Number four was a bit low, yeah. You know, not bad grouping there, you know. And so. Savage. Savage. Horrible. Savage, horrible, yeah. All of which is a long way of saying, like, you had to develop, maybe like your ability to trust other people, not so hot, right? Developing this resilience and this like sort of sense of self. Like you're the only, the buck stops with you.

28:48Like your future is completely dependent upon. Your reaction. You can't rely on anyone else. Yeah, by and large. But I didn't take that as being a negative. It was just a reality. That was just reality. That was life. People were just like that. And some people might not be like that. but some people might be like that it's just the way they were, are, whatever so can I ask a question? going back to the earlier childhood stuff where your grandfather who obviously had a tremendously close bond with brought you up and then when you introduced your parents and they moved in when you were four between the ages of four and twelve when you went off did that develop the relationship with the parents was that a positive cushion after that or a positive thing or were you still trying to figure out what the hell's going on here?

29:37No, I mean, looking back, I realized that basically what I was doing, I was effectively being a secret agent in my own house. I was like living a complete double life. How do you mean? Well, I mean, I just, whatever I was thinking, whatever I was feeling, my parents never knew. Because it didn't feel safe? Well, yeah, because I was just like, I'm really not sure. I mean, I used to argue with my dad a lot. I used to play chess with him, you know, and then one day I beat him and then we never played chess ever again. Like searching for Bobby Fischer. And he tried the best he could, but he looked at me and had no clue what to do with me.

30:19He did not understand what was going on with me at all. Over his lifetime, did that change? Was it ever a positive or a connected relationship in some sense? When he died, he died of lung cancer. So he was in Germany and I went to see him. And he was just, I was like, you know, you could forgive him for being grumpy. Because you're dying of lung cancer, it's not very nice. Of course he denied he had lung cancer, of course he did. All the doctors were wrong, he didn't have lung cancer. He was obsessed with, there was a window that looked out, and his room looked out on a clock. and he really liked the clock, town clock.

31:06And he looked at the cranes, the building cranes, and he would always talk about the cranes because it represented the future. It represented, I think for him, some kind of continuity with the past and the future. His dad was a builder. He'd done a lot of building. I'd helped him build houses and stuff like that. But we were never really that close. So, you know, in terms of a father figure, I've got my grandfather who kind of exited my life as that, really, when my parents took over. Did either of your parents ever see any of the success that you had? Oh, yeah, and they loved it. Oh, no, they loved it.

31:44No, don't get me wrong. That part came around. Like your mom, because she had a certain trajectory and was headed towards, you know, ballet, and you interrupted that, like was there like residual like resentment that spilled out of her that made you feel like unwelcome? No, no, not at all. But she was so young when she had me, absence of physical contact, physical, like, I mean, not like kids. I mean, you know, my kids. It's like basic emotional needs. You want to kind of mangle them, you know, like, but there was none of that, you know. And actually, my father had a nasty streak to him, in truth.

32:35And there was always that side to him. So I don't know what went on in his life, if that's repetition of a pattern and stuff like that. He wasn't a stupid man. He was an intelligent man. He was resourceful. He was a successful businessman. He loved mechanical things. He's one of these guys that had a complete understanding of anything mechanical. He would just look at it and he would go, oh, I know what's wrong with that. Hang on a minute. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And bang, it was fixed. I always felt like whenever he looked at me that, you know, I had like two, I was a two-headed baby plague, you know, like what, you know, like he was looking at me through a magnifying glass going, what's going on?

33:27You know, and I'm like, well, I'm not telling you. You know.

33:36After hosting more than 900 episodes of this podcast, I have noticed a pattern. And that pattern is that the highest performers don't buy into the latest trendy hacks. Instead, they obsess on what actually works, which is always the unassuming basics. And there is nothing more basic than hydration. But here's the kicker. Your body can't hold onto water without the right minerals. Without them, water is just like this temporary visitor. But Element has cracked the code on this, which is why I've been using it religiously for years. Zero sugar, no artificial junk, just sodium, potassium, and magnesium in the ratios that actually work.

34:17And look, I'm not exactly crushing ultras right now, healing from this surgery, but in some ways I need it even more. In order to properly recover, I need to treat my body even better than ever so it can heal properly and expeditiously while also maintaining my focus and my energy levels to rock out all of these podcasts, write a book, be a husband and a dad. And I gotta say, Element keeps my brain firing in a way that water alone can't. Their new sample pack features their most popular flavors, citrus salt, raspberry salt, watermelon salt, that's my favorite, and orange salt. Eight stick packs total, perfect for finding your favorite or sharing with a friend.

35:00Get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinklmnt.com slash richroll. Find your favorite Element flavor or share it with a friend. We're brought to you today by the wonderful folks at Go Brewing. Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, this guy Joe Chura rings me up out of the blue, and he asked if I'll fly out to Illinois and speak at this event that he was hosting called Go, which ended up being this really incredible weekend oriented around taking inspired action. Joe and I hit it off, but, you know, that was kind of that. And it wasn't until I ran into him a couple years ago at Jesse Itzler's Running Man event that I realized that he had taken inspired action himself by creating this new enterprise that was also called Go.

35:48Go Brewing, in fact. which from Go has grown into what it is today, one of the most exciting revolutions in craft brewing. One of the many things that makes Go Brewing extraordinary is that they don't outsource like most companies. They handcraft everything from scratch in small batches. In fact, this commitment to quality has fueled their growth into one of America's fastest growing breweries, now in over 5 ,000 locations across 20 states and available online. The Salty AF Chilada earned the untapped number one non-alcoholic lager in the United States, and they're constantly creating bold new flavors almost every month that push the boundaries of what non-alcoholic beer can be.

36:29Double IPAs, mouth-watering sours, all with zero added sugars and none of the junk. Hear that? Incredible stuff. The non-alcoholic revolution is here, people. I am proud to help champion it alongside Joe. So get on board by getting with Go by going to gobrewing.com, where you're going to use the code RICHROLL for 15 % off your first purchase. Go.

37:01When it comes to health, sleep is a big deal. And there's just so much science out there to back up the role that it plays in every facet of well-being, from heart health to mental health, recovery, cognition, and just being able to show up as your best self. Getting a quality eight hours per night is a personal non-negotiable that I go to great lengths to ensure. It's sort of a commitment not only to myself, but to my career and to those that I love that all begins with what I'm sleeping on. Now, I've tried many mattresses, but the one that's really won my heart is Birch. And there's many reasons for this, all of which boil down to the simple fact that Birch just does things right.

37:41In addition to being incredibly comfortable and cool, helping you regulate temperatures at night, which are essential for quality rest, Birch mattresses are also firm in all the right places and all their materials are sustainably sourced, including organic fair trade cotton. And also everything is hypoallergenic and toxin-free, meaning no harmful off-gassing typical of most mattresses. Birch is so confident in their product They're offering both a 100-night risk-free trial as well as a 25-year warranty. Plus, they provide free delivery right to your door in a conveniently sized box-up. And so I want to offer all of my listeners the chance to enjoy a deep and restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch.

38:28So right now, you can get 27 % off site-wide plus two free EcoRest pillows with mattress purchased. Just go to birchliving.com slash richroll.

38:46So you have this love of music that you're developing and throughout adolescence, you're in a couple bands initially as a drummer. Your influences are these prog rock bands. But at what point do you discover like the voice? Like the voice is the thing with you that you have this like talent. Okay, well, this is a really weird thing. And I think this is worth touching on for people. Normally in people's lives, there's a little moment, and it can be tiny, but it's like throwing a pebble into a pond. You don't know where the ripples are going to go. Before I went to boarding school, I went to a day, perhaps called private school, if you like, for three or four years.

39:32Before that, it was just like a regular school. But my parents thought, you know, they're going to sort of like make sure that I didn't have to work like they had to work. Because they worked really hard. I can't deny that. You know, we had a little hotel that they ran. And Dad ran a garage and a maintenance business and a building business as well. And we all lived in a basement. You know, I would walk myself to school every morning or get a lift from neighbors or whatever it was. So they were never around for that because they were too busy cooking breakfasts for the guests in the hotel and all that stuff.

40:05Whilst all this was going on, I started this thing with music, basically.

40:17So with music, theatre, it was just a life of the imagination. and I didn't start really getting into music until I was properly, until I was like 13. But when I was at this prep school, we used to have to sing. So we would, we had to go to church and the head of religious teaching was this guy. What's his name? His name was the Reverend B.S. Sharp was his name. so everybody used to call him Batty. He was Batty Sharp, and he was completely deaf in one ear. I think that somebody had blown up in the war and, like, blown his eardrum up. So he could only listen to you with one ear, and we went to his church.

41:09There was a place in Sheffield called Gleadeless, and he was the vicar of Gleadeless, so we went to his church, the school, we were all sitting there, and we were all singing these hymns, you know. And he's walking up down the aisle, listening with his good ear like that, cocking his ear to one side. And so I thought that instead of like mumbling, like everybody mumbled, you know, when they hear... I would just yell at the top of my voice and, you know, basically take the piss. So I did. And he came up and he went, you have a very good voice, boy. And on and off. And I was shocked. I was like, do I?

41:57And that was it. That was the moment that just, that was the pebble that dropped in the pond that four or five years later, when I was unsuccessfully trying to be John Bonham on the bongos, and somebody said, why don't you give the lead singer a hand because he can't hit the top notes? I went... Can I? And that was it. And I opened my mouth and this noise came out and people went, oh, wow. Yeah, bass player, you're no longer the lead singer. Boom. And then we split up artistic differences. But I mean, you know. Right. But those little comments you might have dismissed that end up making all the difference.

42:36I think that people's lives are changed. Sure. Not changed by big things. They're changed by small things if they notice them. You have to accept it and notice it and go, wow, really? And then you have to go for it. Then you have to throw yourself in the water and see if you can swim. Right. So from that comment, fast forwarding to Iron Maiden, 130 million albums sold at this point. A lot, right? Like maybe even more T-shirts. Like there's the whole merchandising thing. This is a nation state, Iron Maiden, right? And there's that sort of famous comment by Rod Spalwood, like distinguishing like what you guys do from like disabusing people that like you're a cog in the music industry.

43:29Like you're not in the music industry, you're in the Iron Maiden business, right? And this is like its own thing altogether that has continued to like flower and be successful for over 40 years at this point. Yeah, we are outsiders in terms of the music industry in a lot of senses. There are bands and there are bands and there are bands and they're just bands. I mean, you might like them, you might not like them, they might be successful, they're not successful. But Maiden is somehow more than that. Maiden is part of the core existence for a massive number of people. an unlikely number of people from all kinds of walks of life and avenues, you know, from CEOs to special needs people.

44:24I mean, the whole gamut. And everybody seems to get something out of the band. And I don't analyze it or question it. It just is. And it's a combination of, it's a product, rather, of who we are when we get together. it's a strange chemistry because it's manufactured. As in, I would never have met Steve Harris and Dave Murray in the normal course of my life ever if they hadn't gone, hey, we want a singer for Iron Maiden. And now what we have in common is Iron Maiden, is that music. And of course, we've all got to know each other. And one of the reasons I think the band has survived is because we have grown into each other over the years as people, but at the same time, the music is always sacrosanct when I had throat cancer.

45:32And the last thing on my mind was, would I ever sing again? the first thing on my mind is am I going to get through this and be alive and the last thing on my mind was would I ever sing again and I thought well we'll get to that stage when I'm done and we start trying to sing and I was quite prepared to accept that I might not be able to sing with Iron Maiden again I might be able to sing, I might be able to vocalise I might be able to sing in a different way but if I couldn't sing the way I have to sing with Iron Maiden, I'll help them find a great replacement because the music is sacrosanct.

46:18Meaning like the idea of Iron Maiden transcends you and the role that you play. Absolutely, absolutely. This is something that's very special to a lot of people. You don't try to deconstruct it but I would imagine on some level you have a sense of why it is so important to so many people. And if I had to guess, it has to do with authenticity. Like you said, it's manufactured, but it's also not manufactured. It's like an organic expression of who you are and staying true to what you have always been from day one. The manufactured bit comes from only in the sense that we didn't all - It's a construction of these people coming together.

46:53We didn't all grow up in the same street. And the actual fact, bands that all grow up in the same street together you know, that's sometimes a bit of a recipe, or families that play together, that could be a recipe for implosion, you know. I mean, I know Oasis have just gotten back together and doing it, but oh my God, how difficult was that? You know, the two brothers and, you know. So we all get together, but the music is the single point of contact that is the most important thing for all of us. If I couldn't do it, if I couldn't do what I do now, effectively, I would be the first one to say, you know what, it's time I retired from singing for Iron Maiden and did something else, Stack Shelf, something, you know, because I have too much pride on the line to go out there.

47:48And people said to me, oh, you know, I was speaking to somebody, to a fan the other day, and they said, oh, it's great, you guys are all still back together, you know. I said, yeah, we're all still back together because we're fierce and the music is still as good, if not better in some respects, than we played it 20 or 30 years ago. Can I say that actual point, because I wanted to make this point, that when I first saw you, it was November 1982, I'm remembering Hammersmith Odeon, and there was however many, 6 ,000, 7 ,000 people. The show, as a 16-year-old, it was just, I mean, first of all, they are a very tight, intense, fierce, and also loud, impressive band, and the stage or whatever.

48:26I went to see you guys on this Tuesday night, three days ago at the Forum, which was completely sold out. And the band sounded better than 42 years ago. And I struggle to find another band that I've seen that is able to maintain that level of... It's like, you have to, you know, next time... You told me like Tom Morello said to you the other day, like that 30 years later, like better than ever. Yeah, that's what we had this conversation. And then you sort of passed like the fact that you had throat cancer and, you know, very well could have gone a different way. And for you to come out the other side of that and maintain this extraordinary operatic voice with this unbelievable vocal range is like kind of an amazing thing.

49:11Well, I'm grateful that it worked and that the cancer was where it was and wasn't actually associated with my vocal cords or my larynx. It was in the base of my tongue and in my lymph node. So, you know, the radiation and chemo at the same time and everything, that just kicks the crap out of your body in general. But the voice seemed to come back. In fact, some of the top notes were better than they were before, probably because there wasn't a golf ball living in my throat. But on that point of the standards that we set ourselves in the band, very rarely do we all come off stage and go, yep, that was it, fantastic, nothing to say about that.

50:08All of us could point to, yeah, that song in the middle of it, Yeah, I wasn't too happy with the tone on that, on the voice. You're just always tweaking it. I mean, we're perfectionists. And so we still play all the songs in the original key. We don't detune. We don't do anything like that on any of the songs. And this guy was saying, he said, oh, yeah, but he said, you know, you've been going around for years. You know, I mean, all these bands now, they all detune, you know, and they all use backing tracks and they all use. I said, okay, stop right there. No, we're not going to do that because it's not authentic.

50:46It's not real. You know, that's just, you're starting to get into the world of Disney World now. So no. And if I can't do it, if I can't do it the way I should be doing it, I shouldn't be doing it at all. I have a very good friend called Ryan Holiday, and he writes all these books about stoicism. He hosts a podcast called The Daily Stoic. He's your number one fan. and he's always wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt. I told you about him once. He goes to millions of concerts. He's written extensively about all the life lessons that he's learned from paying attention to your example and deconstructing the whole Iron Maiden thing altogether.

51:26And he's come up with a variety of principles to help understand kind of what you've done. And one of those that I think is really potent and powerful is like, you guys understand what business you're in. There's this saying that this technologist, as Kevin Kelly always repeats, like it's this idea of a thousand true fans. Like if you just have a thousand true fans who love what you do, like you can build a career on that. And Iron Maiden is really like that at scale, right? Like you have these fans who are so devoted to what you do that they will follow you everywhere and have for decades at this point.

52:01But that really is a function of you understanding and appreciating that. Like you're in the service business, right? You're there to serve these fans. And I've heard you talk about the importance of eye contact, whether you're playing in front of 300 ,000 people or one person. You are there for that person to give them that experience that they paid for. There's two areas there. The first one is live. So live, absolutely. I try and, you know, honey, I shrunk the kids. Honey, I shrunk the venue. So I try to turn the forum into a club. Don't ask me how I do that. I have my own theories on how it works, but a lot of it is about eye contact.

52:43And eye contact and reaching out and projecting to the person who's 50, 60 yards away, halfway up the seats at the back. And eye contact is an amazing thing. Human eye contact. You know, I mean, try this experiment, and, well, not too often because you'll probably get arrested. You know, when you're on the beach, and, you know, try and find some male or female, as is your wish, and stare at them from 100 yards away. Stare at them. And you wait, and you will get the most withering. What the are you looking at? The energy, yeah. You can feel it. Because that's what human beings are built for. We're not built for much that's really any good physically, you know?

53:33I mean, you know, human being versus tiger. Tiger wins. human being versus fish, fish wins, you know. But in terms of checking each other out, our whole visual apparatus and auditory apparatus is designed for Congress with other human beings. It's what we do. And we are constantly scanning for eye contact, body language, everything else like that. So if you can project that to somebody a long, long way away, that person then notices that and then everybody around that person notices that. So they're going, he's looking at, hey, that guy there. He's looking at him, him, he's looking, and now he's, now everybody's connected.

54:25You've just connected a couple hundred people. Now move your gaze, do it somewhere else. So I'm doing that during the show. I'm literally, I don't know if you've ever driven a steam engine, like a steam locomotive. No. Really cool. That has not happened in my life yet. Maybe Saturday. I recommend it. I did a steam locomotive driving experience and I'm on the footplate, you know, with the driver and the fireman, the guy that... Loading the coal. Loading the coal and actually does a whole lot more. He's really driving the engine. All the other guy does is press go. right but anyway he opens the fire box and there's the fire this is an analogy i'll get to the point in a minute so he says yeah shovel some coal in i said what what i just chuck it in he goes no no no no he said look for the dark spot he said there's a dark spot over there so put a couple of lumps on there because we need to get an even fire over the whole fire box i went that's exactly what i do the audience.

55:29I look for the dark spot. I look for the bits that need...

56:02jiving up, you know, is connected physically in the human being web of eye contact and body contact and all those sensations and getting their arms up and singing and joining in and all that. That's what we do live. Recording, on the other hand, I mean, a record is exactly that. It's a record of where a band was at, mentally, emotionally, musically, at a given moment in time. And that's why records sound different from, you know, they don't sound, every record doesn't sound the same, hopefully, because you move emotionally as you move through. Now, our first, you know, four, five, six records were when we were in our 20s.

56:49And then we, people had kids, they moved emotionally. So now Senjutsu, you know, we got, we're much more proggy. But we haven't, I mean, yeah, there's some sort of like grumpy people who want us to stay exactly how we were in, you know, 1981. But that's not stopping people coming in, hundreds of thousands of people coming to our shows now. So I say really what we're all about is one, our fans understand that our music is a journey. And it's a journey that's our journey, not their journey. Their journey is to be on the journey with us. So we don't go, what should we play for the fans? We do, what should we play for us?

57:38And then the fans can have their opinion. And they'll discuss it. And they respect that we do what we do. And they literally follow that. And that hopefully entertains them. I mean, some of them go, I don't like that album. I love this album. People are discovering us on albums that we've done in the last, you know, 10 years. Well, the album we did 30 years ago, they're like, oh, what's all this? Back catalog stuff. And then they rediscover all the early stuff. So your analogy about a thousand people, you can base a career, kind of. I say that our fans are, my maiden analogy for our fan base is like this table.

58:24which I assume underneath the lamination is made of plywood. And our fans are like a plywood table. We lay down a layer of wood, and then the next year we lay down another layer of wood, and then another, and then another, and we just try not to lose anybody. So by the time you've got to 40 years, that's an awfully big table. Yeah. And also the other thing of the show I noticed the other night It was, you know, original fans from 80, 81. Their children are there and their children are there. There were, you know, eight, 10-year-old kids. And I think even your friend Ryan Holiday is bringing his kid to the show tomorrow in Sacramento.

59:06Yeah, yeah, his young son. So, you know, people are bringing their kids now. It was astonishing. It's hard. Intergenerational. It's hard. But fundamentally, like, I'm trying to understand what you're saying. So there is the idea of, like, reverence and respect for the fans. But ultimately, the role of the artist is to express themselves in the way that feels right for them. Not to be like, well, fans want this, so we're going to do this. No, I'm the artist. We decide the way in which we want to express and what we're going to express. And that is the crucial point that our fans accept. I mean, one or two of them might not, but the vast majority of them accept that.

59:43Now, when we go out live, we go out live to do the best show we can possibly do with the material that we're doing. If a song is particularly difficult, you know, so it's a song that, you know, might be particularly lengthy or something else like that. Some fans will love it. Other ones will go take a toilet break. But you're not afraid to challenge them. No, absolutely not. And that's the reason why, I mean, for example, when we did, I think it was A Matter of Life and Death, that album, we did the whole record. We went out and we played a whole new record. In order. I can't remember if it was in order, but we basically did the whole record start to finish.

1:00:23And we had some people in America, like vocal people on the internet, spitting tacks, going, oh, I paid money to go and see this rubbish where it was run to the hills, you know. And it was like, okay, buddy, right. And people were going, yeah, I can't believe they're so arrogant as to do this, yada, yada, yada, yada. And next year we came back to America and guess what? Double the number of people turned up. Because... And you make of that what? You make of that that some of the most vocal people on the internet are not what people are really thinking and talking and saying to each other in the real world, you know?

1:01:01And fans respected it. Then they went, I saw Maiden the other night. Man, you know, you should have been there. Oh yeah, but I heard they were doing this matter of life and death. Oh my God, it was incredible. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You've got to go see him next time. And lo and behold, everything we've done has built and built and built and built. And it's all old-fashioned word of mouth. Word of mouth, I think, is, yes, internet, social media, everything else. But it's organic. It's still real. It's real. And that's why some people in the music industry don't understand it. because it actually is quite, to do that requires dedication, long-term commitment.

1:01:46You're playing a very long game. We're playing a very long game. The music industry is not about that. It's about, you know, how can we get billions of streaming things on TikTok about which nobody gives us stuff in five minutes. It's tissue paper to the flame. Five minutes time, it's gone. You know what I mean? So we just don't do that. Our numbers on things like TikTok are probably almost irrelevant. Yeah, what's interesting is that amidst this 130 million album sales or whatever the number is, at the same time, you don't have breakout singles or consistent classic rock radio play. No, no, no, never.

1:02:25And although in the United Kingdom, you're like an institution. I'm sure you can't walk down the street without people stopping you and your own postage stamps and stuff like that. But in other parts of the world, like you can kind of, you know, wander anonymously. No, not true. Not true? Not true. Okay. It's the other way around. Disabuse me. No, it's the other way around. Yeah, this is my naive, like not metal, you know, kind of like fluent. It's the other way around. We were driving to the airport or something and I was chatting with the driver. And we were talking about self-driving cars. You knew sort of like self-driving Ubers and things like that, you know.

1:03:01And I said, yeah, I said, you know, because driving's not really, honestly, it's not really that much fun. It's kind of like a waste of your life, really. I know you have to have a car in LA. But I said, I mean, back in London, I don't have a car. I don't own a car. You take the tube quite a lot. Yeah. And the guy went, how do you get around? I said, I have a bicycle. And I go on the subway, sometimes take the bus, walk. Right. And the guy was like. I mean, can you imagine Bono or Chris Martin or somebody like that? Chris Martin, yeah. Absolutely. Chris is quite low-key. And his face is so recognizable.

1:03:36Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, but honestly, I mean... But can I say one story, though? When Bruce and I were working together on this project in my office, which is on Portobello Road, we were taking a break. We decided to go down and get coffee at the Greek coffee shop. Oh, the Greek place. So I go in. I said, let's go get a quick coffee. So we went in there. I noticed one of the Greek owners just picked up the phone. Literally before our coffees were delivered to us, 60 Greeks just came in. and like he was mobbed and I was like, Bruce, what the fuck is going on? And then you told me, you know, Maiden in Greece.

1:04:08Right, so the salient point, you're in London but it was because of the Greek audience. The Greek thing and I had to pull him out of the crowd. And the same thing, I mean, I don't frequent Harrods, but I can't remember why, but for some reason I got out of the tube station and I was walking past the front of Harrods and walking to go somewhere else. And there was a bunch of Brazilians waiting to go in. And I'm sort of like, oh, no. And I don't know. So, and then, of course, one night I'm on the tube. And I've got the, what's the local paper? The Evening Standard. I'm just like sitting there reading the paper, like typical, you know, English grumpy tube person, you know, roster your paper, not talk to anybody.

1:04:56And I see this guy looking at me. and he's looking at me, he goes, are you, are you Bruce? And I just put the paper down and said, who? I mean, oh, sorry. Oh, poor guy. No, but, you know, but I was just like, see if I can get away with it. The key to being, there's some places you can't be anonymous, like Brazil, I mean, forget it, I am a prisoner in the hotel room, or, you know, I've been smuggled into more kitchens and out of more underground kitchens in hotels to go and do stuff. But not in London. No, absolutely not in London. Unless it's Brazilians or Greeks or, you know, or India or Korea or Uruguay.

1:05:41I mean, it's truly global. But even in, I live partly in London, partly in Paris with my wife. And so, you know, in our local neighborhood, I mean, the French, they don't really hassle you in the same way as some other countries. They're a bit more volatile, should we say. So they ask sort of politely or nod. I mean, we went down to Australia. So we were in Perth for three weeks rehearsing and we went down a bit early to go and hang out. and nobody was, in fact, they went out of their way to apologise, to sort of go, look, we know you probably want to be left alone but can I just say that we're really big fans.

1:06:37I said, yeah, of course you can, yeah, let's sit down and have a cup of coffee and blah, blah, blah, and they go, yeah, we don't want to trouble you but that was it. That was the only thing that happened to us down there. People were just chilled out, everything. So it's a cultural thing But yeah, we are more well-known now. And obviously, after being on this podcast, there's no escape time. Oh, it's only going to change now, Bruce. It's all about the Rich Roll podcast.

1:07:05I own a bunch of spectacles. And I made the grave error the other day of donning a normal non-Roka pair on my indoor trainer when I was riding my bike indoors. And I got to tell you, it was a disaster. Every three to five seconds, I had to take my hands off the handlebars and push my glasses back up my nose until I got so frustrated I just tossed them aside. This is the dilemma of every active but optically impaired person I know. And as someone who has relied upon eyewear every single day since I was five years old, it is also the source of endless aggravation. thankfully now eradicated thanks to Broca, the stylish performance eyewear company founded by two former Stanford swimming teammates of mine who have gifted everyone like me and quite frankly, the world with their fashionable line of super lightweight prescription glasses and sunglasses with patented no-slip nose and temple pads that are just impervious to sweat.

1:08:08And no matter what you do remain locked on your mug no matter how intense your workout. Without the dork factor, these things go everywhere with me from the trail to the dinner party. Put them on, feel the difference, and wear without limits. Unlock 20 % off your order with the code RICHROLL at ROKA.COM. That's R-O-K-A dot com.

1:08:40There's a great book called Range by a guy called David Epstein. Have you read this book? No. It's a really interesting kind of deconstruction of all these high performers in a variety of fields. And we have this idea that the people who are the very best at what they do are the ones who have blinders on and they just do that one thing and they blot out everything else in their life so that they can be the most elite they possibly can be. When in truth, the fact is that that most of these high performers are people who have a wide variety of interests and have studied many different things and have tried lots of different things.

1:09:15And it is only later in life when they realize like all these, this myriad of experiences kind of congealed to create a situation that allows them to kind of be the best at what they do in ways they couldn't have imagined. And when I think about you, I mean, you are a true polymath, you are a modern day Renaissance man, you're a commercial airline pilot, you're a aviation entrepreneur, or you write novels and screenplays and comic books and children's books. And you have a beer company. And then there's the fencing. And then the fencing, right? Which maybe we can start there. But I wanna kind of dive into, you know, the plethora of other interests that you have and kind of the relationship between curiosity and, you know, passion and how all of these things kind of influence what you do in your main gig, being this front man in one of the most iconic bands in the world.

1:10:07Okay, so the earlier guy that you talked about, Mr. Epstein and his book, he's not wrong about you have to take a deep dive into something and almost be a kind of like maniac in terms of dedication, but not all the time. So to be a really successful sportsman, you need to basically just be, there's no other way to describe it, just selfish. You just have to think completely about you, your performance, your sport, yourself, and everything else takes a backseat, family, kids, everything. And I think most sportsmen, people go through a phase of their lives where they do that in order to almost brainwash themselves into the level that they need to succeed.

1:11:07Now, once you've had what psychologists sometimes call a peak experience, in any area of your life, it transfers. So like a muscle that suddenly gets awakened that you didn't know you had that muscle, and suddenly it awakens and you get stronger and stronger and stronger and you could feel your body, your psyche, squeezing it when you attack a problem. You have to have that initially in one area of your life. But then you can transfer that feeling, and it is a feeling, but it's an emotional thing. It's not a, you know, I'm going to, for me anyway, it's not something you measure on a tape pressure or, you know, on the Richter scale.

1:11:59It's an emotional feeling, but a focus that you can apply. Like, yeah, like when you switch the lights on in a room, it's a general wash, and you can see sort of most things, you know. But then you turn it down to like a real tight laser cone and you look in great detail at one thing. That ability to focus is something that you have to train on something. On something. You have to take a big deep dive into something and make it a part of your entire being. But then once you've done that, you can apply it to other things. It is an emotion, but it's also a set of skills, right? Knowing like, okay, I applied myself in this way to this field.

1:12:51I improved, achieved some level of excellence, and now I know I have like a sense of, you know, the tools that I have in my toolbox that then I can take over here. Well, then you have more tools. But you have to have the emotional piece, which is the enthusiasm and the curiosity. Oh, yeah. That has to be an authentic source of inspiration. Absolutely. That's got to be there. So I have a lot of friends who play golf. I do not play golf. But I accept it's a very difficult game. I accept you could spend your entire life practicing it and never know it all. So in that respect, it's very similar to a lot of things I've done, like flying or like fencing or like, you know, you can never know these things completely.

1:13:33The same thing with music. You can never know these things completely. But golf has eluded me. I have no passion for watching it, for, you know, I've tried. I mean, I've gone on putting greens and people have gone, oh, that's really good. I'm like, I don't get the feeling that, wow, I really want to spend my life doing this, hitting a ball on a driving range. I'm like, no, it does nothing for me. It's like gambling. Some people love to gamble. I just go, it's a waste of time. Why am I wasting my time and energy and money? I've tried. But aviation being different, right? Like a lot of people get their pilot's license but there's a difference between that and being sort of a pilot hobbyist and piloting 757s and basically going on missions at the behest of the british government to retrieve you know troops in conflict zones like these are these are like worlds apart yeah but when i was a kid growing up with my grandfather um didn't really have child care back then.

1:14:38And he was working a night shift or whatever. So during the daytime, I was sometimes sent around to my great uncle and my grandfather's brother. So he was in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, 200 Squadron on Liberators and Venturas, Lockheed Venturas, sub-hunting around Europe and then West Africa. I used to sit with him and he would just tell me all these stories and we would make model airplanes together. And my heroes when I was a kid were not, when I was a young kid, I'm talking, I was born in 1958. So I remember quite clearly, you know, Yuri Gagarin, first man in space, Russian guy.

1:15:25I remember the headlines in the newspaper, because I could read by then, whenever that then was. I think it was in 62. I can clearly remember that. So my heroes up to the age of 10 or 11 were test pilots and astronauts. You know, I followed, I mean, Apollo 13. I mean, I wish I could find the notebook. I filled a notebook when Apollo 13 was happening with the disaster, with all the notes and everything else. But at school, I had no interest in mathematics whatsoever. I hated mathematics. I mean, I could add up and things like that, but equations and trigonometry, what the hell use is that, right?

1:16:05And the same, funnily enough, with physics. So fast forward, I was going to join the army when I was in 15, 16. Why? Because I was angry and grumpy and had the shit kicked out of me and I wanted to fight people. Stupid, but kind of understandable. Army had a lucky escape that I didn't join. but the people say well why didn't you join the air force i mean because i was rubbish at maths and physics and they'd never have accepted me absolutely wrong as i subsequently figured out later on having met people in the royal air force and everything else it is the best probably the best educational system on the planet the military because they don't leave anybody behind, first of all.

1:16:57Everybody has to achieve the standard, otherwise they're pretty useless to be working with, right? And the other thing is, is that if you have the right character for doing the job, they'll teach you everything you need to know, including the maths and physics that you need to do your job. So I didn't find that out till later, so I didn't do that. And I I always wondered about flying because I loved airplanes and jets. And then I took a trial lesson when I was in Kissimmee in Florida on holiday. It's just kids to Disney World. And I went off and took a trial lesson at$30 for 25 minutes in a little Cessna 152.

1:17:44And I remember walking up to the airplane and touching it and looking at it and going, I know a surprising amount about this airplane. I know what that is, I know what that is. Wow, I'd forgotten that I knew all this stuff. There's an awful lot of stuff I didn't know, obviously. But we got in the plane and we got off the ground and as soon as we left the ground, I was just like, I'm not happy about this. And the further we got away from the ground, the happier I became. Then we're about 1 ,500 feet above the sunsets and I can see in all dimensions. So I'm living in three-dimensional space now.

1:18:26Not only am I living in three-dimensional space, but I can see a possible future, a navigational issue. Where are we going to go in three-dimensional space? How do we stay in three-dimensional space? What's keeping me alive? I shouldn't be here. What's keeping me alive? Answer, well, the power plant at the front. I answer the instruments in front of me. I answer this little cocoon that I'm surrounded in. How do I know what it's doing? What is it thinking? What makes it tick? What makes it go? And suddenly I saw an external and internal world expanding in all directions to infinity. And that's why I fly.

1:19:09A light bulb moment. Yeah, a light bulb moment. You knew in that moment you were going to be... And I didn't know I was going to be... Digging into this world. I didn't know. I thought, I am 28 years, 29 years old. And literally just one thing led to another until I got to the point where I went, well, I wonder what it's like to fly a jet. I really liked the idea of flying for a purpose with a mission. to actually do, not just to go up and tootle around, you know, on a Sunday afternoon and burn fossil fuels for a$100 hamburger, you know. I thought, I love mission-orientated things because it gives you something to judge yourself by, you know.

1:20:04How good are you really when the chips are down? Can you really cut it? So I became a flight instructor. So I used to teach flying. and then gradually did all my exams. I mean, I've got a full set of American licenses that I've done over here in the USA and then I've got another full set of licenses that I did in the UK and Europe. They're two separate sort of systems. When I quit Iron Maiden, which I did for six years or so, something like that, I thought, well, if this solo career of mine doesn't work out, what am I going to do? I thought, you know, I don't know. Unemployed rock star seeks gainful employment.

1:20:48You know, going and stacking supermarket shelves is an option, you know? I mean, you've got to do something to feed the family and work and stuff. So I'm, you know, not scared of that. But I thought, you know, I mean, maybe, you know, world needs pilots. Maybe I could do this. So I started doing the exams to go and do it. And then at the moment that I got the job to go back to Iron Maiden. They said, do you want to come back to Iron Maiden? So I said, oh, yeah. This was like 91? Yeah, something like that. And I went, damn, well, there goes any chance of flying a jet because I'm going to be busy, busy, busy.

1:21:26You know what I'm going to do? Screw it. I'm going to buy an airplane. So I bought from Santa Monica. There was an airplane sitting out there, a little eight-seater, an eight-seat airplane with a pressurized cabin two piston engines in it it was a Cessna 421 and I thought you know what, I've done all these flying exams I'm actually I'm going to just go and fly myself around the world doing gigs in this thing so I did an American tour like 50 shows and then there was a European tour beckoning so I thought well I'll do the European tour so I flew it across the Atlantic got there and did the European tour then we had another American tour so I Flew it back the other way.

1:22:12Had a few adventures along the way. Did the US tour. Got back to Santa Monica. And this guy who was at the airport there said, do you want to sell a half share in that airplane? I went, yes. I go back to Europe. And Maiden had like about a six or eight month break. Very rare, but we had a break. my buddy who I'd gotten into flying was actually almost qualified as an airline pilot and he phoned me up, he said, look, I'm in a simulator because I've got a job interview coming up and they're going to give me a test in a simulator. A buddy of mine's in the back, he's a trainer and he's going to walk me through a few bits.

1:22:59Do you want to sit in the other seat and just operate a few of the knobs and switches? I went, yeah, great, sure. So I turn up and I thought, you know what I should do? I type out the CV, put it in my pocket, and I sit in the other seat. The guy does like 20 minutes in the sim. And the trainer in the back says, tell you what, take a break for a sec. He said, you're a pilot, aren't you? I said, yeah. He said, you have a go at the same profile. I went, okay, sure, fine. And I did it. And he said, do it again. Do I do it again? and as we came into land, it was a 737, it was a simulator. As we're coming into land, we land.

1:23:42I think we're a pretty good landing. And then the guy collapsed the main landing gear on me. And I come to a stop like, oh, wow, what was that? I think the gear's collapsed. He went, yeah. He said, I couldn't let you get away with the landing that good. He said, considering you've never done this before. He said, so I collapsed the gear, screw you. But he goes, he said, so where'd you learn to fly like that? I said, well, I've just been flying around the world, flew across the Atlantic a couple of times in a single crew, twin engine, pressurized airplane with no autopilot on it. You put your hours in.

1:24:17You put the hours in. It was the hours, but it was the level of raw flying that was there. And he said, well, he said, you'll be giving me your CV next. I went, funnily enough, here it is. And this is what led to you basically being employed as a commercial airline pilot. So he then said, come on, let's go for a beer. So the three of us went for a beer and we were talking about flying and about experiences and about stuff. And I said to him, I said, do you always do your job interviews in the pub? He said, yeah, usually. He said, you find out a lot more about people when you're sitting here to talk to them.

1:24:52He said, what do you want to do? I said, look, I said, I would just love to fly a jet. I'm not John Travolta. I can't afford my own. So I figure it would be cool to get a job. But I don't want to be a pilot for life. I have another job. It's a pretty good one. But I figure that the industry is cyclical. You need pilots that you can get rid of in the winter. When the loads are flying in the summer, in the winter, and then they come back the next summer. He goes, you're absolutely right. We do. He said, but you need to get a certain minimum level of experience before you can jump in and jump out.

1:25:27I went, okay. He said, but let me think about it. He said, I'm going to join a new airline as the head chief pilot. Yeah, let me see what's going on. So I phoned him a month later and I said, hey, any news? He goes, yeah, he goes, there might be like a half a line, like half a job going this summer. I went, yeah, wow, great, I'm in. He goes, let me work on it. Then he phoned me back. He said, you know what? It might only be a quarter. It might only be a couple of hundred hours of flying. I went, look, I'm game. And then two weeks later, the phone rang. And he said, hi, it's John. Listen, what are you doing on Monday?

1:26:12And I said, you tell me. What am I doing on Monday? And he said, can you start full time at British Airways, type rating on a 757, first officer? I went I mean this is typical Bruce Dickerson if you're a passenger and you're boarding the plane and well that's happened I know that's happened wait hold on you're a pilot and also I love your albums yeah no that has happened multiple times I didn't realize it was BA there was this other airline I know no no no so the training was done by BA I see so the training so I was trained by British Airways on their type rating on the 757 and the simulators, but I was going to be joining another airline.

1:26:59But in the meantime, when you're your first jet that you ever fly, you have to do a minimum of 40 sectors before you can be assessed for a line check. At that point, they take the training wheels off and you're a regular pilot. So a sector is a takeoff and a landing, basically. So you've got to do 40 takeoffs and landings in various roles. So because the airline that I was going with had only one 757, and most of the time it was flying night flights to Africa, it was going to take me an awful long time to get 40 sectors. So they did a deal with BA, whereby I would fly 20 sectors with BA as a first officer, Because they could do a lot of short flights in Europe.

1:27:53So I did my 20 flights with BA and then rejoined my airline and went straight off on a night flight to Sierra Leone in the middle of a war. Not your first flight into a war-torn place. Oh, it was? Ah. Not your last is what I meant to say. No, no, it wasn't my last. We were flying into Sierra Leone and the war, there was still a curfew because there was still... The war was still officially not over, so they still had curfews and stuff like that. So we would fly in and land at like around about 7 in the morning overnight, and then we'd disgorge our passengers, and then a few of them, we couldn't stay there, so we had to fly on up the road to the Gambia, which is just a couple of countries up.

1:28:45We'd stay there for 12 hours minimum rest during the daylight hours, hours, then get back on the airplane at midnight, fly back to Sierra Leone, where the passengers had traveled there outside of the curfew hours. They'd been waiting a couple of hours. We'd pick them all up, and then we'd fly back to Gatwick and get there at God knows what hour in the morning. And you're doing all of this while fully employed by Iron Maiden at the same time. So at the time, I had six months to get all this done. Now, 9-11, I'm in New York I've got a simulator ride coming up with the airline that I was working with because I've now qualified as a first officer I've got two little stripes not three, just two junior first officer one of my first simulator checks coming up so I'm sat on the roof in the hotel just by Central Park on Iron Maiden business I'm supposed to be doing something with MTV that day and I've got my manuals out and I'm doing a bit of homework on the aeroplane and all these people are coming up.

1:29:52I'm sitting on the roof and there was a pool and it used to be called the Park and Meridian, this hotel, so there was a pool on the roof, so I'm sat there, you know, and this woman comes up and says to the pool attendant, has anybody heard anything about an aeroplane crashing into the World Trade Center? And I looked up, I went, now I happen to know that it's not uncommon for airplanes to crash. I mean, the Empire State Building has had several airplanes crash into it over the years. I'm thinking it's some guy. Tiny little plane. Tiny little plane, Cessna or something. You know, I think, oh, that's unfortunate.

1:30:29That's weird. And then more and more people come up on the roof and they're looking downtown. And one of the guys comes out. I said, what kind of airplane was it? Do you know? And the guy goes, it was an airliner. I'm like, oh, shit, airliners don't crash into skyscrapers. This is weird. So I went on the roof and had a look, couldn't see anything. It was too far downtown. And then I heard military flying low down the Hudson, unmistakable, like, military jets. And I'm thinking, I'm going to get off the roof and go down and see what the heck is going on in the world. And I went down, turned on the TV.

1:31:12One tower was down. The other one was sadly well on the way. And I thought, oh, wow. So I was supposed to be flying out that night. Out of JFK? Yeah. So I phoned down to reception. I said, hello, I'd like to extend my stay if that's possible because nobody's going to go anywhere tonight. And then I tried the cell phone and to my surprise it worked because I thought the next thing is going to shut off all cell phones. but they hadn't done it yet. So I got a phone call through to my airline operations in London. And I said, hey, it's me. You're obviously watching what's going on. I'm not going to be back on Monday.

1:31:56But I am safe. Everything is fine. If everything gets cut off, can you call my wife and let her know I'm fine if I can't get through? That's it. And I was there for three or four days, walking around in that strange, strange, strange atmosphere. It was awful, just odd. Like you were in another world, Twilight Zone. On the topic of flying for a purpose, at what point do you start doing these flights in conjunction with the British military? I know there was one flight where Sasha was telling me you took Jamaican gangsters back to Jamaica? Yeah. Like you started doing kind of these, they're sort of like missions, right?

1:32:44No, it's what the airline did. This is part of the airline's business. We had 11 airplanes, we had five 757s, five 737s and a spare Airbus in the end. That airline that was in on 9-11, that went bust two weeks later. 9-11 paid to everything. And then three months later, this other airline started out of, literally out of the ashes of that one. And they found me up and said, do you want to come fly a 737? So I retyped on a 737, went flying a 737, and then they got a 757. They went, hey, you're already qualified on that. So then I went back on the 75, which is my favorite bird. I love that airplane.

1:33:26But anyway, that's another story. You retrieved stranded tourists from Egypt. Just a job. Retrieved troops from Lebanon and Afghanistan. I did 6 ,500 hours of heavy jet flying in 10 years, including the well-publicized Iron Maiden around the world trips. Sure. Ed Force One. Ed Force One. That was maybe around the world. That trip in my logbook was total maybe 50 hours each trip. That's all. So all the rest of that flying, those 6 ,500 hours, was some days you would turn up in a company like EasyJet. they would rent our airplane for the summer and we'd be flying to wherever EasyJet flowed to. BA would be short of an airplane, they would rent us and we'd fly to regular runs to Bulgaria.

1:34:16We were in and out of Iceland as a low-cost airline and we were flying to Newark, Boston, Winnipeg and Florida. But you didn't keep the Iron Maiden logo on during this? Sometimes. No, sometimes. Where is it? For people that don't know, 757 says Iron Maiden, you know, in gigantic typeface. That was one of them, yeah. Where is that plane now? Scrap. It's scrapped. Yeah. Well, we had two. I forget which one is. One of them is flying for FedEx or somebody like that as a cargo airplane. The other one we used, that went to scrap. and the 747 that we ended up, the very last incarnation of it, the fourth round of the world, was a 747.

1:35:05So I had to join the airline that operated that aircraft, Air Atlanta. So I had to join Air Atlanta as a captain. So I did the type rating, their type rating, and then do my 10 sectors of line training as a captain before I could be officially let loose on it on my own. that was an ex Air France machine. Very nice airplane. Very nice airplane. It is unfortunately also at the scrappers at the moment. But yeah, it's really well documented in the film Iron Maiden Flight 666, Sam Dunn and his partner. It tells the story of one of those incredible tours with Bruce taking the band Iron Maiden and all their equipment and flying to places that the band hadn't necessarily played before and couldn't get to.

1:35:51Was that the concept? Well, yeah, we had this idea that it would be great to do, you know, a place like India, South Africa, and Australasia. And the accountants were like, you know, you can't afford to do that, guys, anymore, because, you know, all this gear you've got to take, and, you know, the transportation costs and things like that, you know, just do, like, North and South America and Europe. And I thought, well, that's a shame. So I did a bit of thinking about it. And the economics of, I mean, you can rent airplanes. You can rent airliners. Any airline, if they've got a spare airplane, will rent you their airplane for a price to do whatever you want it to do with a crew and everything else.

1:36:36So how much does it cost to rent an airline or an airplane? Well, the answer is, you know, how much is the price of fish? If there's a lot of fish, the price goes down, you know. So with airplanes, where my airline was, our peak season in the northern hemisphere is the summer. Everybody's going on holiday. So consequently, renting an airplane is very expensive in the summer because you can't get them. In the winter, airplanes are sitting on the ground. It costs half a million dollars to park an airplane for a month on the ground. That's what it costs. So any money you can get, whatever, to offset that is great.

1:37:17So airplanes in the winter are cheap. Where were we proposing to go? We're going to go in the Southern Hemisphere. Well, our winter is their summer, which is exactly where we wanted to go. So you can see here, I joined up the dots. Yeah, this is the entrepreneurial Bruce at play. And I said, and I went to the chief pilot and said, I've got an idea where we could do like two months of work on one of the airplanes going around the world with our crew. And you just have all the equipment, all the crew, everything in that one plane. In that one plane. Now, the problem is it won't fit in the hold. I said, so could we turn the last one-third of the airplane into a combi, turn that into a cargo hold temporarily and then put it back at the passenger afterwards for the summer?

1:38:04He went, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, we used to do that on the old DC-3 with a net. I went, okay. So that's how we started. And of course, it was a hell of a lot more complicated than that, which involved doing like stress analyses. Because actually, we took out a space that normally would have 60 passengers, and plus the seats, plus the galleys and all the rest of the gunk. And the equipment that we put in there weighed maybe five and a half tons. So we were basically replacing like with like. Volumetrically, we had much more volume than we did weight. So the airplane was never overweight. Because in the front, we had probably a maximum of 50 or 60 people.

1:38:50And the airplane's built for 220. So we were never going to be overweight. You could fill the airplane up and just shut the doors and off you go. but the certification of all of that work and everything and also the issues of making it into a fire-resistant compartment, all kinds of technical things, putting in plumbing and smoke detectors, cameras, everything else like that, you know. It was a bit of faff, but it was quite an adventure. It was so successful that we did it three times. Maiden did it three times around the world. Has any other band emulated that? Because it seems like a model that could be replicated.

1:39:28Well, not too many other singers. Well, they could get a different pilot. Seven or seven pilots, yes. But they could mimic that. Well, that speaks to the question I was going to ask you. How was it like flying 10 hours, unpacking and then doing a show? Oh, yeah. And then, I mean... No, you're not allowed to do that. So what was the... Did you have to wait a day or two? No, but luckily there's a raft of impenetrable legislation governing when pilots are allowed to do things and what they have to do after they've done flying before they can fly again. So basically, because we were governed by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, and they're quite strict, which is good, good to know, I said, well, basically, if I do a gig, we should really treat that as if I'd done a flight, a pilot sector.

1:40:17The rules say you have to have 12 hours minimum rest. So when I'm off stage at 11, back to the hotel for 11.30, set the clock. You have 12 hours before you can get back on the plane. I can't do anything for 12 hours, which includes turning up to prepare the flight. So if we were departing at midday, I can't do that because you'd need to turn up an hour and a half before. So what I tended to do was when we had a day break, I tended to do a lot of the long-haul flights, you know, five, six hours, the overnight bits and things like that, which was fine. You know, I mean, it wasn't like I needed loads of flying hours and stuff like that.

1:40:59We did have one or two, well, not amusing moments. I mean, we went to India. So we refueled in Baku and then finished up in India, as you do. We ran out of beer. I remember trying to negotiate with the Baku authorities to get cases of beer loaded onto the plane while we were refueling. With the skipper, you know, which didn't work because they wanted something like$200 a case of beer. It was like the hands-up deli, you know. I get to India, and then from India we're going to Australia, going to Perth with a fuel stop in somewhere just south of Denpasar or something, just south of Singapore. So we do the gig in India.

1:41:42It's great. We're leaving the next day, so I can't do the flying, so I'm in shorts, a T-shirt, get on the plane, sitting up front and was like a glass of white wine? I went, no, no, no, just have a coffee, you know, hey. Who knows what could possibly happen? And we've got my two buddies up front, two skippers, and stick my head in the cockpit. Everything okay, guys? Yeah, great. Bang. Sit back. And about three hours into the flight, they said, could you come up to the cockpit? I went, yeah. What's wrong? I'm going, you need to come up now. So one of the captains has just turned green because he ate the breakfast sausage in India.

1:42:30These things happen. Which is why we always carried a spare pilot. In which case, in this case, the spare pilot was me. So he went down the back and basically continued to turn green and emit various multicoloured substances from all orifices. And, yeah, I sit in the seat, you know, my shorts and T-shirt, we land it, refuel it, then we fly into Perth. We get to Perth and it's whatever time it is. Actually, it was a nice sunny day when we get to Perth. We land at like 7 in the morning. I'm still in my shorts and T-shirt. I'm just going to get high-vis on. And everybody's gone. The band have just, band crew, they've all disappeared.

1:43:14The gear's been unloaded. And I'm still sitting there with the skipper, who, funnily enough, was the guy that gave me that job in the first place. John. John. John Moran, yeah. So we're sitting there, and I think, shit, how do we get to the hotel? And the customs guy comes on and goes, Hi, mate, all your mates have gone home. I said, no cars. No, mate, no cars, no nothing. They've all gone. I went, oh, nice. Oh, well, that goes with the job, I suppose. The perils of command. I said, well, but mate, I'll tell you what. He said, I've got the guy to open up the VIP suite for you and we'll try and get you a car.

1:43:54I went, oh, very nice of you. So we go to the VIP suite in Perth Airport. And it's about 11 in the morning now. So I go in there and we're the only people there. I said, John, good night's work. It was, yeah, I think so. I said, beer? He goes, absolutely. Right. So we open the thing, a couple of VB bitters, down we go. So we sat there and we hear this voice coming down the corridor going, Hope there's no bloody musicians in there. I don't like bloody musicians. No spirits, one beer each, mate. That's bloody hell. Then we come in. He goes, who are you? I said, we're pilots. He looks at me. I said, no, no, really, I'm a pilot.

1:44:31Honestly, look, high-vis everything. It's my bloody pilot. Yeah. You're not musicians, are you? I went, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. No, I don't like bloody musicians. I had that sting in there once doing some eco-bollocks. You know? I was like, welcome to Australia. Oh my God. When I think of aviation, I think about checklists and, you know, being very detail oriented. It's one side of the brain, right? Yeah. And then you have, you know, the artist Bruce, who's deploying a very different side of the brain, creativity and, you know, being an artist, all of that. Like, what have you learned from aviation that has informed your creative life or vice versa?

1:45:16Or do these things just kind of live independently of each other? They kind of live independently of each other, but they meet, they intersect at the level of performance. And by performance, I don't mean showing off. I mean getting the job done. So flying an airplane is an internal performance. Nobody knows what you did. They just get on the airplane, they get off the airplane, and it's just like another boring day. So nobody knows if you saved the world in the cockpit or if it was, in fact, just another boring day. The only guy that knows that is the person sitting next door to you in the seat and the rest of the crew.

1:45:58And so my performance is purely gauged by how forgetful people are of that flight. A successful flight is one where people don't even remember it. exactly the opposite to my performance in Iron Maiden, where my performance is gauged on everybody remembers it. And I'm just, everything is external. Wow, look at me, look at this, look at that, look at the other. And so I find both of those things intensely satisfying. That's so interesting. So let me tell you an interesting thing about my, the way my head works, or I think it works in some respects. So when I was 25, up till 25, I started fencing when I was 14, 15 years old.

1:46:45And I trained right-handed. And I was not too bad right-handed, you know. I got to 25 and I changed hands. And I started to fence left-handed. I got all my best results left-handed. I still fence left-handed. I write right-handed. Whoa. That's unusual though, right? Like people don't normally switch their dominant hand in fencing. It's weird. I'll agree with you on that. It's a little bit strange. In fact, everybody thought I'd gone completely mad. And what it was, I wondered, because I kick a football left-footed, right? I favor my left foot. I look at it. If I'm going to shoot at something, I actually close the wrong eye.

1:47:29So I shoot with my left eye open, but I shoot right-handed. That's weird. and I'd wondered about that for a while. Now, my dad is left-handed but ambidextrous, but I'd injured my neck headbanging, right, in Iron Maiden. Of course. So I herniated a disc C45 in the middle of a tour, on the Number of the Beast tour, and basically lost the use of my left arm on the tour. So there was nothing you could do about it. I was just wearing a neck collar and toughing it out until I could get the tour over and done with and go see a therapist, osteopath, whatever, on a regular basis to try and fix it. And that prevented me from using my left hand a lot.

1:48:17So I continued fencing with my right hand. But I was curious. So there was a professor, Professor Hans Heisenk, did a whole load of books on intelligence and IQ. And he did a book called Left Brain, Right Brain. and it was a series of questionnaires on left brain, right brain. How left-brained or right-brained are you? Most people being dominant in one over the other. I'm exactly in the middle. I use both sides of my brain equally, apparently, all the time, which makes it difficult for me sometimes to communicate with some people. so I have to think how they think before I talk to them. That is fascinating.

1:49:05So if I see somebody, I know they think a certain way, I realize there's no point whatsoever in talking to them with the other half of my brain. I have to talk to them with that side of my brain. It became very useful in the cockpit because you'd get in with people who were intensely left-brained, very disciplined, ordered, detailed, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. and you go, okay, there's no point whatsoever talking to this person with allegory or anything else like that. Or about like art and music and things like that. None whatsoever, you know. And other guys were the other way around, you know.

1:49:41Anyway, because I was bang in the middle, I thought, maybe, maybe I should be lefty. Maybe, I don't know. Because the other thing that happened was when I was in competition, I would get really angry. Like, unnaturally angry. Like, angry like I actually wanted to physically kill the opponent. And not joking. And I thought, this is weird. This is wrong. This feels wrong. I can't go around in this state. This is nuts. What's going on? It was like just something wasn't working. My coach at the time was the Olympic, still is the Olympic fencing coach, Zamyk Wachowski. He's a Polish world champion.

1:50:24and I was having lessons with him, like one-on-one, and I went up to him and said, Jamek, listen, you're going to think I'm nuts. I think I might be left-handed. He went, oh, okay, all right, fine, okay. Put the weapon in your left hand, no jeopardy. Just stick your arm out, hit me, okay. Now stick your arm out and just step forward and hit me. Okay, let's do that a couple of times. yeah he said you're immediately better with your left and how long had you been 10 years 10 years so he said now do another little he said let me try this now he said okay he said so here's a piece of paper here's a sharpie with your right hand draw an irregular polygon four or five sides however whatever shape you want just draw it now look at it now close your eyes take the pen in your left hand, and now draw it again with your eyes closed.

1:51:23And I drew an exact mirror image in the same dimensions, not even, you know, as that. And he went, well. Have you had like an MRI? Like has anybody studied your brain for this? No. Is this an abnormal thing? Are there other people who are equally balanced between the hemispheres? I have no idea. I have no idea. So I then sort of went and said, I must be probably left-eyed. So I'm assuming I'm now left-eyed. So fast forward. So now I'm fencing and my left arm was pretty useless. So I thought, well, that's one way of doing rehab on it. It's getting it back to strength. My left arm will never be as strong as my right because I've used my right my whole life and obviously had this problem with the nerve and stuff.

1:52:11So I've lost a bit of muscle. But nevertheless, when I started fencing with it, it was a completely different game. They were a completely different game. I'd never understood timing before, like the timing being the space in between movements that didn't exist with my right brain, with my right hand. In most combat sports, they think a one-two, whereby you do a feint with one fist or whatever it is, or a sword. You do a feint, you wait for the opponent to react, and as he goes to block it, he opens himself up and boom, and that's when you hit it. I'd never understood. I'd done them frequently in lessons, but it was monkey see, monkey do.

1:52:54I wasn't waiting to see the space. I wasn't waiting like McEnroe when he does the ball toss to wait until the last possible moment to return that ball.

1:53:10So this was fascinating. And as I said, I've got all my best results left-handed. I still fence left-handed. And I assume, therefore, I must be left-eyed. And then when I go for my airline pilot medical, the very first airline pilot medical you do, they send you down to this big center in Gatwick, and they basically give you the full works. And it's the only time you'll go down there, and then after that you just get your local aeromedical doctor to give you the once-over. So they gave me a full eye test, And they give you a thing called an eye balance test, where they show you like a vertical line, and you say, oh, yeah, tell me when it's in the middle, and then a horizontal line.

1:53:55So what you should be seeing, just bash your microphone, is something that looks like a telescopic sight. And that's, you know, that's the combination of both of your eyes saying that's where the focal point is. So we got done with that, and I'm in like my early 30s at this point. And the guy went, well, he goes, you're very unusual. I said, why? He said, you have no dominant eye. I said, what? I said, I thought of left eye. He said, no, you're bang in the middle stereoscopic. Both the same. I said, is that good? He said, well, you made a hell of a fighter pilot. And I went, that's a trip. I was just like, now you tell me.

1:54:42It's so interesting. I've never heard of anyone who had no dominant side and can toggle in between. But the idea that you would have made for this optimal fighter pilot, like Bruce, like in a alternate reality or like a parallel universe or in some kind of sliding doors situation, are you not like a special forces operator? There's a sort of James Bondian kind of like mythos around you with all of these different interests, You're fencing and you're flying these missions and you're on these stages and traveling the world and all of that. It's very rich. But remember, special forces. Maybe he is, right?

1:55:20No, no, special forces never tell you. It's the ultimate undercover. Here's the thing. Special forces never tell you they're special forces. Sure, of course. My personal theory is that Bruce is playing the role of Iron Maiden lead singer. This is my point. But he works for MI5. That is my personal point. No, actually, I'm six. No, no, no. He's ambidextrous. Five and six. There's a very, you know, kind of Tinker Taylor soldier spy. Tinker Taylor soldier singer? Yes, there we go. That's the title of the podcast. I'm working for Zowie. He is working for Zowie. I'm working for Zowie. So I was watching on one of those retro shows this morning was Our Man Flint, right?

1:56:02James Coben. And Zowie is the, whatever the acronym is. And what made me laugh was I now know where Marjorie Taylor Greene gets her information because the plot was that there is a secret organization controlling the weather. So James Coburn knew about this and Zowie all those years ago. Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood. Maybe she's been watching Iron Man Flint and thought it was real. I don't know. Here's what's happening. Bruce is trying to distract her from the fact that he is one of British intelligence's leading assets. This whole Iron Maiden singer fencing. I know. Do you know what he's really doing?

1:56:47He's studying nuclear facilities on these trips. He's doing aerial reconnaissance when he's teaching. This is the real movie. I know you're working on the Sarah Havo story. We're going to talk about that. But here's the real movie, Sasha. He is. He's first desk. Well, if you look on the cover of the Skunk Works album. Right. And Skunk Works, you see, was named after Skunk Works, Kelly Johnson and Skunk Works, and his design philosophy, which people absolutely didn't get. That's his solo album. But I didn't really care. You're feeding this method. But here's what's happening. That is what's called a non-denial denial.

1:57:23He's basically telling us that what we're saying is true. So Plant 42 in Carndale, California. He's still on it. Plant 42, there is part of the album cover is actually the NOA airport chart of Plant 42, Palmdale, Lockheed's manufacturing plant is on the album cover. And if you look at the figure that's on the inside, you can see it's actually unmistakably based around the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. So what are we supposed to make of this? It's just a really good thing. What you make of this is that Storm Thorgerson of Hypnosis and I had a blast doing that cover. All right. Before we get off fencing, you were like seventh in Great Britain?

1:58:11At one point. Yeah. And what did they take? Two or three for the Olympic team? Three. So pretty close. And then you were saying before - Close, but no cigar. I know, I know. But like, just for context, like you're not fucking around. Like you're for real with this. And you were sharing before the podcast that you competed in the Commonwealth Games even just a couple of years ago. Is that in Masters or is that for everyone? I mean, you're 66 now. That was Masters, yeah. Masters, okay. There's a big Masters thing now. I mean, you know, world championships and European championships and all kinds of stuff, you know.

1:58:42But you're still in it, right? I know, like, you went and played a show and Sasha called you the next morning and you were out at 6 a.m. I'll tell the story. The story is that last, there was a thing called Power Trip. Iron Maiden played with Guns N' Roses. And so I took my friend Atticus, who's part of Nine Inch Nails, a great composer, a friend of mine, introduced him to Bruce. Bruce said, meet me in Burbank. I think we flew on the jet, we flew into India, got in these little carts. Bruce came out with Iron Maiden, played to about 75 ,000 people. We got back in the carts, back in the plane, we got back to the airport in Burbank, and Bruce said, can I give you chaps a lift home?

1:59:17And the next day, remember, in the Mustang. Was it the Mustang? Yes, you had the convertible Mustang. Oh! Was it the Mustang? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so he drops us, having played to 75 ,000 people, he drops us off at the house and then I call the next day to say Bruce that was incredible thank you and I get his tremendously charming wife Liana and I said can I just I just was calling to say thank you is Bruce there I'm sorry but he left to train fencing at 6am I'm like this is amazing what like most people would be sleeping for a week after this is what I'm here for I was like yeah of course anyway but it was an incredible that was an incredible experience just those few hours coming with you watching the show coming back and then getting dropped off home, both of us, by Bruce at like three and four in the morning.

2:00:04Well, my cousin was with us as well. That's right, Rob Dickinson. He's also a singer. Your two sons are singers and your cousin is the lead singer in this alt-rock band, right? He was, right. I don't know. Yeah, so my eldest, Austin, who's the screenwriter, he was in two bands. He was in Rise to Remain. I had a couple of albums out and then he did As Lions. and he had a top 10 radio track with them, you know. But the label were kind of rubbish. As labels are. But he's just had his first film made. He is just, yeah, and I'm in it for three minutes. And he's doing a cameo. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called Bjorn of the Dead.

2:00:46It's a very, very funny, funny film. Very script. You've read it, haven't you? Yeah, it was great. It's a great script. Bjorn of the Dead. It's about a failed Abba tribute band. I think they're called Abattoir yeah, yeah, Abattoir so they're on their way and one of the reasons they're a failed Abba tribute band is they don't play any Abba material that'll do it so anyway but it involves, they're on their way to a tribute band festival in Hull in England which is going to be their last ever show but little do they know that it might be their last ever show on earth because what they end up with is a room full of the undead it's very it's like sure that that means mural wedding mural's wedding which is brilliant it's really a brilliant clever script so speaking of uh filmmaking um i watched the uh scream for me sarah havo documentary last night and i know that this event um is sort of what reunited the two of you right like didn't you you saw the movie and you guys reconnected briefly i met bruce as a fan when I was a kid.

2:01:51It was a very brief meeting. And then we reconnected around the time I made this film Anvil and Bruce and I kind of connected and hung out. And that was the time when we had that incredible dinner with James Caan. And I had to try and explain Iron Maiden to James Caan, which was just like uh-huh, uh-huh. James Caan had never heard of Iron Maiden? Well, he didn't really understand anything that was going on. I happened to know him and I was working with him at the time. Why was he at the dinner? Because I was working with him at the time. And so Bruce happened to be in town and we all had dinner together.

2:02:17And it was like Bruce Dickinson and James Caan, a pretty good fucking dinner i have to say because james khan was completely clueless about anything but it was really we had a wonderful wonderful night and we kind of reconnected then but then some years later this incredible story of bruce's solo band and their show at sarajevo sort of at the height of a of the scene it was it was made into a very good documentary called scream for me sarajevo and it was on bbc and i hadn't seen bruce for a while and i just thought oh fuck i I wonder if his email works. And I emailed him and that was several years ago.

2:02:48And we're now sort of, we've spent a little bit of time working on it. You know, everyone's busy doing crazy shit, but it's a really, I think a fantastic project. So basically creating a narrative feature film based on this extraordinary story in which you and your bandmates visit Sarajevo in 1994 in the midst of the war to perform this concert that like basically unites the city and creates or sort of creates hope in a very hopeless situation for a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, and I was... nothing to do with it. I mean, in terms of the documentary. So the first thing I knew that they were even making a movie was I was in my pub in Chiswick in London and this girl comes up with a laptop and says, oh, you're Bruce.

2:03:35I went, oh, my God, what's this? You know, help. You know, I just want to have a quiet beer. And she goes, no, and she opens the laptop up and says, I'd like you to see this. I'm from Sarajevo. I went, okay. And it was the raw footage of the interviews. with the guys who get interviewed, who were there at the show, and about how it changed their lives. And I went, this is amazing. What is this? She goes, oh, we're making a documentary. You know, would you be interested in being interviewed? And I said, well, of course I would. I said, but who's doing this? You know, and she goes, well, Adnan in Sarajevo is doing it.

2:04:12He's a local film director. I went, what an amazing project. I mean, my God, what else stuff have you got? And they've got so much stuff. So I was a passive contributor to that. But you kind of come on as an executive producer or whatever. No, I just said, look, I'll help in any... That isn't executive producer, but I mean, look, no. I said, look, I'll help in any way that you need, you know, for this. Just tell me. It's your film. It's your city. It's your country. It's not mine. We did something that was actually far more dangerous than all of us realized. and having done it, we thought, wow, that was a pretty stupid thing to do.

2:04:53Well, basically it gets sort of offered to you and you're like, I'm in, maybe without fully thinking it through. And before you know it, you and your bandmates are like in split expecting these helicopters to kind of take you into Sarajevo. The helicopters don't arrive. And that's the moment where perhaps most people would have said like, all right, we're going back home. And you were like, we're going in, and we're finding a way to get there. No, no, no. Is that wrong? No, no. The UN told us to go back home. So the UN, we were supposed to be there sponsored by the UN, but when we got there, and there were the UN blue helmets and the flak jackets and all sitting there, they were for us.

2:05:31But this guy came up, he said, oh, you're the band for Sarajevo. Yeah, I said, okay, here's your boarding passers. He said, the plane that you came in on, that one's going back in about an hour, so you're going to be on that plane, and the next one is not for a week. So, yeah. Anyway. And what was it in you that said, no, we're going to figure this out? The UN negotiator, whose name was Akashi, frankly didn't cover himself in glory in several ways, but they didn't want to upset the Serbs, the opposition as it were, because they thought they would be upset if somebody went in and cheered people up.

2:06:08What we didn't know was that the Serbs had just shot down one of only two seeking helicopters in the theatre. They'd just shot it down with the commander-in-chief, Sir Michael Rose, on board. It had done an emergency landing into Croatia, into Kislyak, its base, but it took a half a dozen.50-caliber anti-aircraft rounds in and out of the fuel tank and hit one of the main rotors. So the pilot did an amazing job. That would have derailed the peace process. Shooting down that helicopter would have derailed the peace process overnight. Because Carter was supposed to come in a month or so after we left.

2:06:53I think it was after Christmas or something. So it was just before Christmas. We didn't know any of this at the time.

2:07:01So we were sitting there going, oh, that's a bit of a blow. Wow, gosh. And there was a cameraman there from Reuters and he was a local guy from Sarajevo. So he came up and said, oh, this is bullshit. I said, there's a tunnel. We can get you in. I went, whoa, what are you talking about? There's a tunnel? He goes, yeah, there's a tunnel. We used to resupply the city. We'll get you in. We can get you in through the tunnel. I went, okay. Well, how do we get permission? He goes, well, I'll call the president. He's a mate of mine. I went, what? You're going to call President Izmbegovic? He went, yeah.

2:07:43I went, well, go ahead. So he goes in the payphone. He's got a payphone booth. And he's putting money in. To call the president? And he's talking away and talking away, right? And we were going, he's calling the president. Shit. And he comes out and I said, well, what did the president say? And he goes, he wasn't in.

2:08:11I left a message on his machine. I was just like, oh, my God. I said, okay, look, we've got like... This is the scene in the movie, obviously. Well, that's a great scene in the movie. So I said, okay, look, guys, we've got like 10 minutes to decide. Should I stay or should I go? Next flight back, is it a week? The beer is cheap. The weather is nice and split. Maybe we can find a cheap hotel motel. We can stay here for a week. If we get in, we get in. If we don't, no jeopardy. We'll find somewhere. We'll find some pub and do a gig to the hell of it, you know. But I don't know. Otherwise, we all go home.

2:08:48If anybody thinks it's too risky, then we all go. We all go back home. It's as simple as that. And nobody's going to think any of the worst for anybody for saying that because I completely understand. And we had a publicist there, a guy called Roland Hyams, who's passed away now, sadly. And Roland was like, and I said, Roland, if you want to go home, you can go home because we don't need you. You know, if you want to go home, I said, you know, I said, well, I'm fine, I'm fine. I went, okay, fine. What I didn't know is that Roland had a huge piece of dope in his mouth at the time that he'd brought in on his cheek.

2:09:24And that's why he didn't want to go back. Oh my God. So that's turned into apocalypse now. So we said, and everybody said, yeah, go on, then we'll stay. So I gave the boarding passes back to this guy who was a volunteer reserve officer from, he was a teacher in Manchester, normally. And he was working for the UN. He was working for the British Army. British Army. Representing the UN. So then I gave him back. I said, no, we decided we're going to stay. He went, right, in that case, You are no longer anything to do with the UN. I went, correct. He said, in that case, you must therefore be guests of the British Army.

2:10:04I went, I see where you're going with this. He said, so in that case, we should take you down the mess, give you a cup of tea and see how we can get you into Sarajevo. Fast forward to you in the back of a truck with sleeping bags. Pulled up at midnight, the Unimog truck driven by a 17-year-old architecture student, volunteer, with Felix the Cat, Asterix the Gaul and Roadrunner painted on it and painted bright yellow. I went, who's going to shoot at that? Giant moving dog. Right. Yeah. So we drove for seven, eight hours through the fog and mist in winter into Sarajevo, over a 7 ,000-foot mountain, through the end of an active firefight.

2:10:46And, I mean, I know what starshells are because we were down the bottom of this mountain. I went, those are parachute flares and starshells. there's some shit going on the top of that mountain. Is that where we're going? Yeah. Right. Okay. So we got there, got to the top, and it was freezing cold and storm was coming up. Incredibly beautiful. Incredibly beautiful terrain. I remember driving through it and thinking what an amazingly beautiful place this mountain was and how completely fucked up it was that they were all fighting. As you do. and then we got to the road that goes down into the city and it was like a road on the side of...

2:11:27It was like a dirt track going down the mountain and they wouldn't let us down initially. The idea was that the UN armored personnel carriers were going to come up, pick us up, put our gear in the back and then they were going to go down the track. But the Bosnian guys wouldn't let them up and then they discovered there was a Reuters film cameraman in the back and then they definitely weren't going to let them up. So we had to drive down. So we drive down this ravine. I'm looking over the rear. Wow, there's a firefight going on. No, no, no. It was gone. It was absolutely quiet now. You couldn't see Sarajevo because the mist was in and it just looked like a big top of a cappuccino.

2:12:07I mean, it was beautiful. Sun was coming up, you know. And I'm looking down in this ravine and there's all this twisted metal, you know, and I'm thinking, they're terrible drivers here. Well, no, this was the stuff they'd blown off the road because the whole of the rim surrounding Sarajevo was basically Serb territory. The only bit that was accessible was over the top of Igman and down this road. So you were like in a barrel and potentially fish. The only way in and out. Yeah, and so you're surrounded by potential... So we're driving down this ravine. I'm in the front seat because I'm thinking if anybody gets it, it better be me because I've got them all into this bloody mess.

2:12:44And coming the other way, the most surreal thing is a Coca-Cola truck. I'm thinking, hold on a minute, there's a war. Coca-Cola gets everywhere. And of course, it's a single track road, so we have to stop and we have to back up. So I get out and I'm like, okay, so yeah, back up, back up, back up. And I just couldn't get the image out of my head of the Gary Larson cartoon with the deer with the big target on his chest saying, hey, bummer of a birthmark, Hal. so we get in and we drive down the bottom we put our stuff in the armored personnel carriers and they take us through the city which was harrowing and finally we we get to our sandbagged concrete sandbagged uh bunk for the next few hours before the gig that night we're there for i don't know three three days four days but it felt like a lifetime compressed into four days you can imagine I can see how people who were there for six months, the effect it would have.

2:13:50Because I came home, eventually got home, kind of long story short, though. And we came home on a Hercules RAF transport, got home, and then we got on the train to London. And we're sitting there on this train on Sunday night, going, I've just been, and you're all getting ready for Christmas, and you're all drunk. and I've just been, where? Then we get to the end of the line at Paddington and I went and I sat on a park bench outside the train station. It was freezing cold and I sat there going, this is not real. That's a traffic light. Traffic lights just looked absurd to me. People are living their lives by traffic lights in this road.

2:14:42they stop at a red light and they go at a green light that's absurd where i've been in sarajevo aren't no traffic lights it just might be a bullet that's the red light and they and they went into the middle of a war zone at the height of the war to do this show and in fact when they heard that bruce was coming a lot of soldiers came from the front line one of them did yeah several of them did you know they came back to see this show because it was a sort of single point of hope, of something to believe in, in the middle of this. They shut the schools. They shut the schools so kids could make their way to the show, because they couldn't go all at once, because if they went all at once they were a target for the snipers.

2:15:25So they could go in dribs and drabs and get there and the place was full by the time we got there. I don't know how many, but six, seven, eight hundred people or something like that. I'm not sure. The documentary has this shifting perspective. You kind of experience it through the experiences of the band members. And then there's the people who live there and the anticipation of this event happening. And they're like, Bruce Dickinson? Bruce Dickinson? There's like whispers and people are like starting to freak out. And there's this tension between, you know, you mentioned your publicist, like you need to kind of get the word out, right?

2:15:58You got to let people know that this is happening. But if you don't do it the right way, then you're going to notify the opposition and then you become a target and becomes even more dangerous than it already is. So I was just hoovering up all these stories of experiences of other people, you know, that I'd had before and after the show while we were there. And then when Sasha and I met up and we said, you know, that would be a great thing to do a movie. I said, you know what, it would, but I do not want to do the movie about the rock star that went into Sarajevo. No, it's from the perspective of the people there.

2:16:34I said, we need to follow the journey of somebody who, a local person who makes the journey, it's the road movie, his road movie of getting to the show and everything else. So our representation in it is incidental, almost. There is another subplot which is based around the hideous... The snipers. Yeah. So basically, people were selling tickets in USA for people to go and kill people in Sarajevo. This is a real thing that is just... You can't believe it, but it's true. Wait, explain that. I don't quite understand. Well, if you were of a certain ethnicity, you could pay to go shoot people. To be on the top of that rim of the mountain with a gun literally picking on you.

2:17:26Well, no, you were in the block of flats. In the block of flats. Block of flats opposite. I mean, one of the best snipers on the Serb side was a female who had been in the biathlon event in the Winter Olympics. In the Olympics, yeah. In Sarajevo. It was her town. She was shooting her own people. Wow. Yeah. So that is another... Wow. So that's an amalgam. We're not trying to do a historically correct... No, I understand. But that like raises the intensity. Yes. Well, it falls under the world we live in right now, whether it's Ukraine or obviously the Middle East, which is an expanding and explosive and seemingly limitless war now.

2:18:09But it's speaking to the madness of war in this specific instance, but it applies to just another story about these unexpected things. And I really related to that thing you said when you came home and you just sat on a park bench and you were like, that traffic light is ridiculous. Because when you've been in that kind of situation, which hopefully we can take an audience into, they will have that experience of these two worlds living simultaneously that don't even make sense. Like with sitting here now, we can't, I'm sure, compute what it would be like to be in the Middle East or in parts of the Ukraine or whatever.

2:18:43but you've sort of been there in that experience. And you, I mean, that's why it's so interesting working with Bruce on the project because it really is being in that perspective, which we can't imagine. And funnily enough, I mean, I can't be there because I'm in Brazil and coming back from Brazil. But on December the 14th, I think it is, it's like 30 years or something else like that. So they've got the big anniversary there. the guy that was our security guy there in Sarajevo, Trevor Gibson, who was working there. He really wasn't exactly a spy, but he was something akin. Someone who works for Bruce.

2:19:31Yeah, so Trevor happened to be in Japan on holiday when we were in Japan recently, and he was there with his wife. So the four of us, Leanna, myself, and Trevor and his wife, all went out and had a dinner and a reminisce, and he's going to the event. To the 30th anniversary. But his, I mean, some of his stories are incredible, as in the movie, for detail and additional strands to the lunacy that take place. And some of the funny things that take place. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing. It's the way you've described it for people who haven't seen the documentary. Like it's dire, it's super intense, it's tragic and all of these things.

2:20:14But there is a levity to it because these guys in Sarajevo are like funny. They're characters. And that kind of speaks to your style as a writer also, like finding those really rich personalities in the midst of very difficult circumstances. But what about the clowns? There was something about the clown circus. I can't remember. Oh, no, no, no. So the truck that took us in to Sarajevo was part of a group, an NGO, non-governmental organization. And they were founded by a New Zealand, it's like a hedge fund activist, whatever guy, made a load of money and thought, I'm going to do something with this money.

2:20:57So he bought a bunch of old trucks and they were called the Sirius Road Trip. And the Sirius Road Trip went where the UN said it was too dangerous to go. and they delivered the aid and medical supplies and everything else. They're all volunteers. One of the things they did was buy a London bus, paint it up as a clown school and drove it in the middle of no man's land on the front lines and had kids from both sides learn to be a circus. Oh my God. Wow. I mean, yeah. The serious road trip is in the documentary but not that piece. Yeah. Yeah, well, because that piece is not necessarily relevant to the documentary.

2:21:44However, I mean, artistic life. That's incredible. God damn it, what an image. There's a traveling clown school in the middle of a war. And children from both sides are learning how to be clowns. I mean, it's just so rich and completely insane and totally real. And it's the reality of it, I think, that lands. Well, I got to let you guys go. you've been more than generous with your time, but I can't let you go, Bruce, without closing with a few thoughts about, you know, this incredible life that you've lived and, you know, the kind of lessons that you've accumulated along the way. Like, what is your message to the aspiring artist or the person who's trying to build something, you know, from the heart?

2:22:26Like, what have you learned that you could share that might be helpful to somebody who's trying to think about their way forward with their own voice? just be authentic and that's really hard to do it's really hard to be authentic because there's so many pressures that people put upon themselves you know commercial pressures this pressure just think whether whatever it is that you're trying to do whether it's a painting if it's a play if it's a screenplay if it's music it's whatever it is does it actually represent you? what part of you is in that? piece. And really, it should be a piece of you is in it.

2:23:07Maybe not all of it, but some of it has got to have a piece of you in it. And that's its meaning, if you like. That's it. And if that's there, it will have a force and a power that people can detect, because it will be unique, because every person is unique, you know, despite the efforts of AI and the internet to make us all homogenous with, you know, J-Lo's butt and somebody else's mouth and everything else. No, even in our desire to disfigure each other, we're still unique. And so that level of authenticity is really important. And the other one is actually a quote from, do you know the artist, Damien Hirst?

2:23:52Yeah, of course. So I do a podcast with my psychologist, Dr. Kevin Dutton, called Psycho Schizoespresso. He's an expert in psychopaths. So we interview a lot of doctors. Not joking, we do interview a lot of doctors. But Damien Hirst is a buddy of Kevin's, and we were discussing over dinner one day definitions of art. because obviously some people's definition of art, a banana stuck on the wall, other people's is whatever. And Damien Hirst has a very simple definition of art, which is art is anything that is done well. I went, yeah, I can't, that's as good as you're going to get, you know, without getting into massive detail.

2:24:42Anything that is done well is art. So as your music, your painting, your whatever, has got a piece of you that's authentic, do it well. It's like make it personal, make it excellent, basically. Make it uniquely you and authentic to who you are. Because you may only have one life to live. We don't know. I really hope I'm surprised. But in the interim, live this life. you know life is better than all the other options you have so live it squeeze it until the pipsqueak you know um because that's what we're here for uh and um let a little bit of joy into other people's lives with what you do that's it beautifully put bruce i think you landed uh today's uh flight on the 757 i don't know where we took off from and where we landed but it was Definitely a journey.

2:25:42But what we did, we discovered one major thing, which is it's very clear that Bruce Dickinson is Britain's most important leading intelligence asset. I just would like to say that. Yes. He's been blown. I don't know what happens. Cover blown. But we'll leave him to deal with the repercussions of that. I'm secretly a member of Zowie. There you go. I didn't even get to one 100th of the many things that I wrote down that I wanted to talk to you about. I would love to hear more about Psycho Schizo Espresso. We're going to do a new one. No, we're doing a new one. We're going to do a new one. We're doing a new podcast.

2:26:17We will be doing a new podcast. And when we do it, I'd love to try and get Kevin on here because you and him would just, boy, you know, me and him. But we're going to call it, we're going to call the podcast. So we've already got it down. We're not going to call it Psycho Schizo Espresso. When we go back down the track, it's going to be heavy mental. That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What better place? I mean, come on. He landed that shit. Yeah. He landed that shit. Now we've officially landed, right? You're an absolute legend. I just want to acknowledge the incredible gift that you share with the world.

2:26:51It's a beautiful thing. And again, I'm really touched that you would come here today and share with me and us and everybody who's listening and watching. Well, I'm up to Sacramento tomorrow to insult people. I know. Yeah, there you go. You boring bastards. Yeah. All right. Peace. Yeah. Thanks, man. Thanks, Rich. Yeah.

2:27:23That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment.

2:28:02This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake.

2:28:44Portraits by Davey Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. And thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love. Love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. plants. Namaste.