Saturday,
September 20, 1997
By KIERAN GRANT -- Toronto Sun
Bruce Dickinson knows the iron-clad days of
heavy metal are all but the stuff of legend now.
He was there, after all, leading Iron Maiden -- a band named for a medieval
torture device -- through the dark ages of hard rock, the '80s, armed with
goth-gusto and sword 'n' sorcerer anthems.
So consider his new solo album, Accident Of Birth, a return to the days
of yore, a shot in the arm for musical metalurgy.
"The state of hard rock and metal at the end of the '80s was pretty
diabolical," says Dickinson, who plays the Warehouse tomorrow night.
"There were all these fake, poseur hair bands being signed by
middle-aged record company executives looking for a second childhood. It was
very undignified and had nothing whatever to do with why metal had gotten back
on its feet at the beginning of the '80s.
"Metal had lost its courage."
Accident Of Birth has no shortage of courage. Dickinson belts out songs
like Toltec, Taking The Queen and The Magician in his epic falsetto wail.
Metallic, but not ironic -- it's just uncool enough to work.
"It felt so right, and I had such a blast making it, that I just
didn't care," says the affable Dickinson. "Somebody's got to kick the
ball off.
"You have to take the chance of being accused of being medieval or
Spinal Tap-ish. If you do it well enough, it will just fall on the right side
of the line between what's really cool and what's a parody of itself. All great
rock music does."
He adds: "Quite often it does cross over, and eventually the bands
realize. But to be able to walk that line is what makes it so exciting to be a
part of this."
Dickinson left Iron Maiden amicably in 1992. It took two solo albums,
Balls To Picasso and Skunkworks, before Dickinson found his metal shanks again
on Accident Of Birth.
He even rushed ahead of the pack in '92 with an electronic album, which
he scrapped.
"Part of me felt like I was trying too hard to be clever," he
says. "Did I really feel like having electronic anvils, smashing lumps of
metal, hissing noises? Nah."
The singer says his new album was "written from instinct.
"Metal is irretrievably tied up with American music right now. The
Marilyn Mansons of the world have been sniffing around the edges of metal.
Soundgarden were a metal band but wouldn't own up to it because it was too
uncool. No one's come out and made an unashamedly heavy metal record and said:
This is not industrial, it's not hardcore, it's heavy metal."
Dickinson says that though he thinks hard rock went through a renaissance
in the first wave of "post-Nirvana alt-rock, it's been diluted to the
point where it's ludicrous."
He is a fan of artful rock bands like Radiohead and
Catherine Wheel. The latter are fronted by his first cousin, Rob Dickinson.
"I actually helped them get off the ground," he says proudly.
"I did their lights, actually, and engineered some very early demos for
them, very badly.
"I love what they're doing. Black Metallic, from their first album,
is one of my all-time favorite tracks.
"The only thing that sticks in my throat a bit is that rock fans
don't know as much about them as they should. That's a great, heavy rock
band."
http://www.canoe.ca/JamMusicArtistsD/dickinson_bruce.html