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ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW:
AROUND THE WORLD! In thirteen months!
The world's biggest rock band is on vacation. A 13-month tour has ended. The results are on the new live LP. But in a couple of months they will go back into the studio and next fall we will have them here live. By H Holm
This is the third year that Iron Maiden has not changed a member. They have finally found a form that lasts. Steve has gathered strong-willed and energetic men around him. The Monster tour, which began in the spring of 1984, and reached Sweden in early November, has ended. The last gig took place under the open sky just outside Los Angeles in front of 18,000 spectators.
Since July, the group has been living in London and is taking it easy. They are moving into new and bigger houses, those with children are taking care of them and those with puppies (Bruce Dickinson) are taking care of them. We called the prospective kennel manager to find out how the boys were doing and how the tour was. Bruce is in a great mood. He is rested, sounds alert and also seems eager to get back. He trains fencing three days a week (yes, he still keeps a high standard) and he also trains boxing with the beefy Swede Peter Lokrantz, who is affiliated with manager Smallwood's company.
- Hey there, he shouts happily, what are we doing now? Well, we're taking it easy, except for me who is working.
- What am I doing? Ha ha, I'm doing interviews! I'll be doing that for three more weeks.
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| Backstage at Hammersmith Odeon |
We feel very grateful that we didn't have to wait three weeks. The poor interview victims don't usually sound so enthusiastic when they have to talk about the completed world tour for the 94th time.
He starts by saying that everyone is doing well and that as recently as yesterday they were out swinging a glass together. The friendship that holds this quintet together is obviously both shockproof and bulletproof. Not even 13 months together can make them long to be apart. That the evening was a success is evident from Bruce claiming to not be fully recovered yet... at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon. After having dealt with his health condition, he enthusiastically moves on to recounting concert memories.
We traveled from Scandinavia to Canada in mid-November. We landed in Wisconsin and we played for the first time the following evening. This time we played in many odd places too. A mining town in the middle of the wilderness and Chicoutimi for example. Chicoutimi is a lumberjack town located in the middle of the big forest, 300 miles north of Quebec. Almost at the Arctic Circle. A great gig, but afterwards some fans would promptly drag us around to a bunch of bars and pour us strange drinks...yuck!
It was also the middle of winter. An abnormally cold winter in America. With low temperatures even by Canadian (and Swedish) standards. The group made their way through the snow-covered landscape in a bus caravan, equipped with heavy snow chains. Traveling by bus through Canada is a sad experience according to Bruce, mostly spruce trunks to look at, mile after mile..
-In Winnipeg it was 26 degrees cold at its warmest and 38 at its coldest, he quickly adds. And it was storming the whole time. There was a three-centimeter thick crust of ice on the windows!
- But when we then turned south we thought everything would get better.
But there the boys were all wrong. It did get a little warmer, but there was no less snow.
- One night when we were driving through the Rocky Mountains, it was in January, we suddenly woke up to the bus skidding off the road, Bruce tells enthusiastically. Road and road, by the way, you could see nothing but masses of snow, and the road would be half a meter down somewhere. We had to call back some trucks and pull the bus back up the road.
It took Iron Maiden's caravan two whole days to get over the mountain range. And on the other side, more snow awaited, and states that don't usually like anything other than their own country music, Tennessee, Alabama and Texas.
- The audience is a bit calmer in Alabama and Tennessee, Bruce recalls. But then they also had snow for the first time when we were there. In Texas, on the other hand, they're wild. This year's arena is probably used for rodeos, it smelled of cow shit everywhere...
- Joking aside, we've always had a good time there. The Texas gig is one of the real highlights of the tours. And then there are the girls there, of course, notoriously beautiful and with notoriously long legs.
Bruce's voice takes on a quiet, dreamy tone here. You can tell that the memories of what girls in Texas look like are very vivid on his retina. He could probably imagine trading his two puppies for two of these Texas ladies.
While we're on the subject of the audience, Bruce says that the most aggressive audience is in New York.
- A lot of people in a small space, so that's how it is. We played for 42,000 people there. We did seven nights in a row at Radio City, a hall that holds 6,000 spectators. By the way, it was the smallest arena we played in the United States.
— Unfortunately, we had to cancel a couple of gigs in New York (the only ones during the entire tour!). We were forced to take four days of sick leave. In just one week, we traveled four times between Chicago, London where we celebrated Christmas, Rio where we did the Rio festival and Milwaukee. Back and forth between warm and cold parts of the world in a short time. We all got the flu.
Arriving on the West Coast, Los Angeles, and in March, the group recorded their live video (the snow had finally melted). At the same time, they took the opportunity to record the concert on tape.
- We had recorded the entire concert at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. The live album was also going to be called "Four nights at Hammersmith". But when we finished the L.A. recordings, it turned out that they were much better technically. So now three sides have been recorded in L.A. and the fourth side, with the old songs, has been recorded at Hammersmith.
The most beautiful experience of the tour was the concert at Red Rock in Denver. Red Rock got its name because the entire mountain massif consists of red sandstone. And when the sun sets and sends its last dying rays over the red land, everything starts to shimmer and shine in red. A magnificent light spectacle to play in, according to Bruce.
The last concert in the USA was held in Hawaii. They couldn't drag all their equipment to the tiny island, several hundred miles out in the Pacific Ocean.
- So we had to rent a lighting rig and PA there.
How does that work?
- Eh... barely at all, actually. It was a fantastic little facility, but it was fun. It felt like being back in the club and pub days.
Bruce laughs heartily at the memory of the cute little facility and continues:
- The audience was also good. In Hawaii, they're kind of starved for hard rock.
From Hawaii, the group flew to Australia, where their equipment had already been shipped. Kangaroo Island was gifted with seven concerts. Everyone succeeded according to Bruce, who thrives in the Australian atmosphere.
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| From the Japanese tourbook |
- Then we continued to Japan where we played 6 nights in Tokyo, among other things. Next time we'll take Budokan so it won't be so long. In fact, we lost almost 200,000 pounds (2 million kronor) on Australia and Japan. It costs too much to bring the whole facility. But we think that if you're going to do a tour, you should do it right!
Somehow people have got the idea that Japan would be something of a paradise for hard rockers to go and play in.
All self-respecting groups, including Maiden, have made a live album there. What's it really like?
- Well, yes, it's actually very good once you get used to the little quirks of the Japanese. All concerts start at six in the evening, for example.
What's the point of that?
- I don't really know. That's just how they do it. Then they don't rush to the edge of the stage either. They are a wonderfully enthusiastic audience, but they remain in their seats in the rows of benches and are enthusiastic.
- Then they have the strangest commercials in the world, so this far off the mark Bruce starts to sound very amused. They like Western girls, so the Japanese discos are full of Western girls who work as poorly paid models. And the commercials they make. Oh... they are idiotic.
- They have a Western girl with as little clothing as possible, who does as much as possible with as big a fruit as possible. Two girls playing tennis, with three-meter tennis rackets against two giant bananas, for example.
This vivid depiction of Japanese commercial TV is accompanied by a brilliant imitation of a Japanese's broken English.
Bruce also took the opportunity to practice some fencing with some successful Japanese fencers. And even though none of the group is a prominent baseball player, the whole group was tricked into dressing up in baseball uniforms and having their photos taken.
Baseball is a big sport in Japan, explains Bruce, who prefers Cricket himself. He is actually English.
Then it was time for the farewell concert and the group went back to the USA and Los Angeles. In the evening, they celebrated with a huge fireworks display and the entire area was fenced off with the flags of all the countries the group had played in. There were a lot of flags.
- It was actually a relief when it was all over, Bruce remembers. We had played over 250 concerts, 130 of which were in the USA, and at the end you felt a bit like a robot when you had to play the same songs for the 250th time. Next time it will be better. Then we will only be out for six months, but of course we will come to Sweden.
The group stayed in L.A. to mix the live album and cut the video.
- The guy who cut it for us loved to make lots of quick cuts, they usually do that. But you get dizzy watching a video with lightning-fast cuts for an hour and a half. So we said we thought the cut was crap and redid it ourselves.
In February the group's vacation is over and they're going back into the studio. Bruce is a bit tight-lipped about how it's going to sound and if they have any ideas for new songs. But you can hear in his voice that the guys know pretty well how it's going to be, they just don't want to ruin the surprise.
And so in September next year we will have them here in Sweden again. Too bad it's taking so long..
NOTE: The added prictures in the translated text was not from the original article.
