Rock music should be gross: that’s the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.
Bruce Dickinson
Happy Birthday to Bruce Dickinson, celebrating birthday 62! Bruce Dickinson is a singer and songwriter with the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden.
The group had the 1982 UK No.1 album The Number Of The Beast, and the 1991 UK No.1 single ‘Bring Your Daughter … To The Slaughter’. Iron Maiden has sold over 100 million copies of their albums worldwide. He is renowned for his wide-ranging operatic vocal style and powerful stage presence.
His career started with fronting small pub bands in the 70s. In 1979 he joined the British new wave heavy metal band, Samson. The stage name he took with Samson was “Bruce Bruce” and he performed on two studio records.
He left Samson in 1981, succeeding Paul Di’Anno in Iron Maiden and debuted on their 1982 album The Number of the Beast. The band released a run of US and UK platinum and gold albums in the 80s.
Dickinson quit Iron Maiden in 1993 to seek a solo career, which saw him experiment with an extensive variety of heavy metal and rock styles. He reunited the band in 1999, along with guitarist Adrian Smith. Dickinson released five subsequent studio albums with Smith.
Since his return to Iron Maiden, he released one more solo record in 2005, Tyranny of Souls.
Dickinson has had a broad diversity of other activities outside of music. He undertook was a commercial pilot for Astraeus Airlines. This stint saw many ventures such as captaining Iron Maiden’s converted charter plane, Ed Force One, during their world tours.
Following Astraeus’ closure, he established his own aircraft maintenance and pilot training firm in 2012, Cardiff Aviation.
Dickinson gave his own radio program on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2002 to 2010. He has also hosted television documentaries, written novels, and film scripts. He also created a successful beer with Robinsons Brewery and has competed at fencing internationally.
