Bruce Dickinson Quotes

Nothing in childhood is ever wasted.

Bullying happens because weak people need to prop up their ego by beating up or humiliating others.

The lions of hard rock, guys like Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Brian Johnson, Rob Halford, these monsters feel completely timeless, iconic, eternal. They simply shall not, will not, do not die. It's almost impossible to imagine a musical world without Robert Plant. No metal fan of any stripe can imagine a day when, say, Iron Maiden shuts it all down because Bruce Dickinson turned 85 and suddenly can't remember the lyrics to "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Metal revels in the raw energy and unchecked phantasmagorical ridiculousness of youth. It is all fire and testosterone and rebellious fantasy. It doesn't go well with reality. So it is for hard rock and a guy like Dio, an elfin titan with an undying love for lasers and sorcery, dragons and kings. The man wrote some terribly corny metal songs, but he sang every one with a ferocity and love and total honesty. He also wrote some of the finest hard rock melodies of all time, sang them with a precision and love unmatched by any hard rock singer since. It's a rare thing to give metal some heartfelt props. It is time. Raise your devil horns and salute.

If you dream something, it might happen. If you never dream it, it will never happen.

Rock stars, of course, have long had the capacity to act like babies, but have not had the sense to sing like them.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.

Life is too short to do things we don't love doing.

In later years I discovered the Japanese expression often used in schools to describe an individual who was overly individualistic: ‘The nail that stands up is always hammered down.

I had memorised Deep Purple’s Made in Japan note for note. Every drumbeat, every thud of Ian Paice’s bass-drum beater, I had tried to replicate. Ditto the first Black Sabbath album, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, plus my eccentric collection of Van der Graaf Generator albums and treasured copy of Wild Turkey’s first offering.

I began to think of school as a prison camp, and my duty was to disrupt, subvert and/or escape. But, of course, there was no escape. I felt I should make some kind of statement. I decided to deliver two tons of horseshit to my housemaster. Just one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas that comes with no logic in tow, but a great deal of emotional momentum.

We wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus'. It's a Fable... It's about this bloke named Icarus, right, and one day he goes "'Ello, I think I'm gonna fly about!", so he builds some wings out of wax and feathers, right, and he goes flying about like a cunt through the air, right, and he goes up to this ball of fire called 'the sun' that hides obscured by the clouds over the UK, right... So he goes up to the ball of fire and the wings melt, 'cause they're made out of wax, right, so he goes plummetin', plummetin' down to the earth, and he fuckin' dies, right... alright, so we wrote this song called 'Flight of Icarus', right, and it's basically sayin' "Hey man, wake up! Don't go flyin' about near the sun unless you're in an airplane," right, 'cause the wings are metal, right, and they won't melt, right... So, here's a song that's workin' on two different levels at once, right... 'cause the wings of the plane are made out of metal, right... and we play Metal music, right... two dimensional, see? So Maiden's always thinking... Always thinking.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went. During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time. Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A

Los seguidores de Iron Maiden están bastante acostumbrados a involucrar sus cerebros.

Nothing lasts forever but the certainty of change.

Eddie is Iron Maiden's mascot, monster, alter ego - call it what you will. Part supernatural, part primal, part aggressive adolescent, Eddie is a super anti-hero with no backstory. Eddie doesn't give a fuck. He just is. Eddie also gets us off the hook as individuals. Eddie is far bigger and more outrageous than any badly behaved superstar. Eddie makes rock stars obsolete. This comes in handy when you get to your late fifties and rather fancy a quiet night in after playing to 25,000 screaming metal fans.

Die meisten Rockstars mögen zwar auch im Erwachsenenalter noch in der Lage sein, sich wie Kleinkinder aufzuführen, sind aber leider unfähig, auch so zu singen.

A family trip to Jersey – that’s the Channel Islands, not New Jersey, folks – netted brand-new gatefold editions of Van der Graaf Generator classics H to He and Pawn Hearts. (The latter was such a manically depressive record that you could actually empty a room with it after a couple of minutes. On the other hand, I could listen to it for hours on end in solitary confinement, probably because I am not a manic depressive.)

- To kiedy wesele? - odezwał się. - Wtedy, kiedy będziesz poza Warszawą, żeby nie ryzykować, że swoją obecnością spierdolisz nam najważniejszy dzień w życiu - odparła Chyłka. Kordian posłał jej niepewne spojrzenie. Jeszcze rok lub dwa lata temu takim dniem byłby dla niej ten, w którym Bruce Dickinson usiadłby na kanapie u Kuby Wojewódzkiego. Lub, w którym jej nazwisko znalazłoby się na szyldzie kancelarii. - Dajcie spokój, znamy się przecież tyle lat - powiedział Żelazny i popatrzył na Joannę. - Pamiętasz jak... - Pamiętam, jak cię poznałam, Artur. I pamiętam też pierwszą myśl, która przyszła mi do głowy że chcę spędzić całe moje życie jak najdalej od tego człowieka.

I was out of my comfort zone, a fish out of water. My life has been a continual succession of 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' moments. Deep down, I think I probably enjoy it. You are never so alive as when learning something new and overcoming adversity.

How long before I recover?' Amen gave a good think to that one. 'I had an RAF fighter pilot sitting where you are now, with exactly the same tumour. It was 12 month before he was fit, fat and healthy again.' Twelve month? That was too long. I would be bored by then. 'I'll beat that,' I declared.

I'd barely considered the question of whether I would sing again, which surprised me. I realised that I loved life above all else, and if singing was the price to pay then so be it.

- Naprawdę udzielałaś porad prawnych w centrum handlowym? - Oczywiście. Co w tym dziwnego? - Jakoś nie wyglądasz mi na osobę, która dobrze by się tam odnalazła. - Jestem społecznikiem, Zordon, pomagałam ludziom za pięć dych. - Dobrze, że nie za uśmiech. - W szczególnych przypadkach byłabym nawet gotowa to zrobić. - Chyba tylko, jeśli Bruce Dickinson by się do ciebie zgłosił. - Wtedy rzuciłabym tę robotę i wyjechała z nim na niekończącą się trasę koncertową. Up the Irons!

I had been asked to add a further three-hour rock show, but I protested that there wasn’t enough quality new music to sustain six hours a week.

the BBC were obliged to play short extracts of the song through gritted teeth. It’s a shame they weren’t paying more attention to Jimmy Savile instead of writhing on the hook of a tongue-in-cheek horror-movie soundtrack.

started to read the excellent biography of Blake by Peter Ackroyd. I think it is one of the best of his books, the other being London: The Biography. I got the feeling that Ackroyd was almost channelling the spirit of Blake to rise from the pages and speak directly to the reader.

The voice is a precious instrument, an emotional instrument. There is nothing between you and your audience. There is no guitar plank to hide behind, no giant stack of keyboards, no battery of tom-toms. There is nothing and no one to blame except yourself, and an audience will murder you and dance on your grave in a heartbeat if you let them.

It was a heart-stopping moment, and Donington’s collective jaw dropped. Grown men fought back tears. It was a Griffon-engine Spitfire, which has a distinctive growl, as opposed to the whistling howl of the supercharger on a Merlin engine. No one will ever forget that moment. It upstaged everything.

.I caught a very frail Peter grant shortly before his death. He was in reflective mood, and not at all the monster people portrayed him during his seventies heyday. I always regretted deadlines in interviews. I hated the pressure of time. People need space to breathe and relax. That is when the truth is spoken, and you find that it's not the cardboard cut-out character that people expect

Where have you come from?’ she asked. ‘Sarajevo.’ ‘Why were you there?’ ‘Hey, we had a gig. We’re a rock band.’ ‘Sarajevo is a dangerous place. Never come back.