Iron Maiden Frontman Almost Slugged It Out With Band Bassist

ceedub13, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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As reported by Metal Hammer, the Iron Maiden frontman admitted that he “nearly came to blows” with band bassist Steve Harris soon after joining the band.

During one of Bruce Dickinson’s spoken word events, the Iron Maiden frontman was asked during a Q&A if he “had ever had a fistight with any band members?”

Dickinson replied with the following:

“Well, almost. When I first joined the band, I was a very different animal to the previous singer [Paul Di’anno].

“When I joined, I said, ‘I know I’m the new boy, but here’s the deal: when I sing, I kind of stand in the middle of the stage at the front, I do the singing bit, and then I go somewhere else… You can go anywhere you like, but when I sing, I want to sing in the middle.’

“So I’ve got my monitors down there and I’m singing away, and suddenly this maniac comes up and goes [mimes Steve Harris’s foot-on-monitor pose]. Fuck off!

“And then the roadies comes and they move my monitors off to the side. I’m, like, ‘Cheeky fuckers’. So I fucking move them back again. And this carried on for a while.

“In the end, what I did was I get and extra-long microphone stand… I had a microphone stand that was like a tank trap for bass players.

“And he’d jostle me – I’ve still got lumps out of my front teeth, and chips and cracks, of all the times he bashed my fucking mic into my teeth.

“So we nearly came to blows. But we came to an accommodation in the end. I sing in the middle of the stage, we just make the stage twice as big.”

Sounds like a tense moment, but at least the Iron Maiden frontman harbors no negativity towards Harris. In fact, during that spoken word event (which took place on March 12th), Dickinson got the crowd to sing-a-long to “Happy Birthday” for Harris, given that it was the bassist’s 66th birthday. You can find a video of that “Happy Birthday” moment below:

These spoken word events have been offering fans a lot of interesting inside details into Dickinson’s life and career. Recently, Dickinson talked about how he feels Black Sabbath don’t “exist at all now” and how he blames Sharon Osbourne for that.

Iron Maiden Frontman Says Black Sabbath Don’t “Exist At All Now,” Blames Sharon Osbourne

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Words by: Michael Pementel