This is PART 1 of a long interview of Bruce at KEGL studios in Dallas/Fort Worth, Friday, April 28, 2000. I don't know how many parts it will be composed of since I'm not finished with the transcription.

R - Robert, KEGL Jock
B - Da' Man himself!

(end of Metallica song)

R - That is Metallica! Man those guys totally ripped you guys off!

B - (Silence)...Ha, ha, ha, ha! (evil laugh)

R - You just got it.
Oh, that was cool man (referring to Bruce's laugh I suspect)! Check it out. This is the M and M nooner we're doing Metallica and another band called "Maiden" and I've got here in the studio with me, please welcome one of the most respected recording artists of our time, the voice of Iron Maiden as well as many successful solo albums and not to mention a darned good fencer...

B - Oh! Hello!

R - Mr. Bruce Dickinson! (small applause)
B - Oh. The sound of one hand clapping. Yeah!

R - How are you doing sir?
B - I'm doing great, I'm bushy-tailed and everything else..

R - Bright-eyed.

B - Yeah! All that stuff. No, I'm enjoying life, it's great. A new record and everything. I'm back with Maiden and we're doing very, very good.

R - Now uh. First off, welcome back to Iron Maiden...We missed ya!

B - Yeah! Did you see us down at the Bronco Bowl last year?

R - Yes I did! Oh yes I did!

B - Did it rock? Did it rock?

R - Oh it was amazing! Yeah!

B - Exactly!

R - Now I heard a rumor man, you brought up the big show, I heard a rumor that you like it kind of hot when you do a show.

B - Uh, yeah. I like it temperate, warm, warm.

R - Do you ask for like a certain temperature? Is that what you request?

B - Uh. I just hate air conditioning. You know that kinda like Vegas thing? Whenever I went to rock shows as a kid we never had air conditioning and somehow the whole thing about being there and being part of a big , sweaty mass. I like G.A. shows. I don't like guys with little red coats shining torches into kid's faces saying "Sit down, sit down, the person behind you cannot see!" I mean it's lame! It's not Vegas. It's a rock and roll show. It's not a musical, it's not Les Miserables or Cats. It's not so much we want to turn the place into a furnace but at the same time we want to lose ourselves on the stage. In the music and the whole thing and if everytime you get

hot and sweaty you suddenly get a blast of freezing cold air down your neck. It's like "Huh!" Yeah, exactly, too civilized.

R - Well, you don't have to worry about the Bronco Bowl next time because the air conditioner doesn't work anyway.

B - Yeah? Well, I don't think we're going to be doing the Bronco Bowl next time.

R - That's right!

B - Something a leeetle beeeger I think! (comic voice)

R - Bigger and better things, it was a great show thank you very much for stopping by.

B - Yeah. Okay. See you later, I've got to go. (Laughter, confusion)

R - Actually... Did you enjoy your banana?

B - I enjoyed my what? Is it in existance any longer? Did you even see it go down? "Shooonk - Gone!"

R - Quick story now. Any time you big rock stars come through we say "Hey, anything I can do for you? Any requests?"

B - I was considering asking for all red M&Ms or something, or a shark, or a small submarine perhaps but no. I just asked for a banana and a cup of coffee and I specified "one" banana because normally people over here feel embarrassed if you ask for "a" something. So they give you like 50 of them. So you ask for one banana and you get a bunch. You know. Like 20 bananas. You ask for "some fruit" and you get 20 lbs of fruit.

R - You get a garden.

B - I'm like...Thank you very much but uhh! Anyway the one banana was great and it even had a little sticker on it. I was impressed by that.

R - That was one of our limited edition "Eagle" bananas. (KEGL The "Eagle")

B - That was good. I'm about to drink the aresenic flavored coffee in a moment. So in a second the interview will be terminated by the sound of AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!

R - The station that killed Iron Maiden.

B - Yeah, that's right! Well Metallica have been here before so I know that they probably put something in it.
Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha!

R - Those guys. Ripping you guys off like that!

B - (Low evil voice) We're not scared!

To be continued

Bruce at KEGL studios Dallas/FW Friday April 28, 2000 Part 2.

R - A quick question before we do some more music. Now, you're back with the band, just describe the events that led up to the reunion.

B - I was in the management company's offices, pit, shed, trailer home, whatever. We share the same management and we have done so since I joined Maiden and everything so that when I left Maiden it was kind of like splitting up with your girlfriend but sharing the same bathroom for the rest of your life.

R - Oooooh!

B - No. It was okay 'cause it was like a personal thing. I was just kind of bored and I wanted to try and do a few things a little differently. So getting back together was not nearly so traumatic as everybody on the outside seemed to think it was going to be. Like "Oh my God! What did you talk about when you first got back together?" And they just said "Well, why did you want to come back?" And I said "Well, because I think we could be the biggest and most kickass heavy metal band on the planet again and I really believe we could do that. I really believed we could make a great record." And they went "Well, okay. That's what I would do."

R - That's all there was to it?

B - That's all there was to it. And we just started off from the word "go" with that mentality in mind but this was all about the record, this was not about some, you know, BS "reunion" type thing. You know, cheesy, let's go and grab some cash and let's do it again next year and say "We really are going to say farewell this time." We're not saying farewell. We are not saying "farewell." We've never said that. This is not some last ditch tour ore something. This is the beginning of a while new..chunk of things and the new album is designed to establish that. We did that short tour last year. A lot of people said "Why was the tour so short?" and it was deliberate. We didn't want to go out and, as it were, waste our energy on too much touring. We'd proved what we needed to prove with that tour. We had already written the songs for the new album and we wanted to take the energy from the tour and turn it directly into live energy on the record. And, in fact, the record was recorded live. So there are very few bands who record anything live.

R - Yeah! Didn't you get the memo? Nobody does that anymore.

B - Yeah! Somebody told us that and actually we're doing the whole thing kind of ass-backwards because we never did that before.
All the early records, well, all the Maiden records, were always recorded in sort of traditional fashion where, yes you play the stuff but the drummer goes andgets his parts right then everybody else goes in and they play their bits over the top and you build it up in layers. On this occasion, because we used a producer, a guy named Kevin Shirley and the reason we got around to using this guy was that he was the one producer who basically came up with the attitude that, well, we said "What are you going to do with our sound?" And he said "I'm not going to do anything with your sound. Your sound's great!" He said "It's just that your sound has never sounded as good on record as it has live." He said "I was there the other night and you sound great! So all I'm going to do is stick you in the studio and put mikes in front of you and let you do what you do best."

R - Make it sound live!

B - Yeah! And we were like "Ohhh? Well. Nobody else ever thought of that, huh?"

R - Well, you guys have brought the brand-new Iron Maiden album. It's called Brave New World.

B - Yeah! We've got some of it. Some of the tracks, yeah. We've got some of the cuts.
Brave New World, May 13th.

R - May 30th the release date. We're going to do some brand-new Maiden very, very soon and right now let's do some old stuff.

B - Very well!

(song starts)

R - Oh everybody knows this one, It's "Run to the Hills" It's Iron Maiden.

End of Part 2.

Bruce at KEGL studios Dallas/FW Friday April 28, 2000 Part 3.

("Run to the Hills" finishes playing.)

R - The M&M nooner. Metallica and Maiden! And we've got Mr. Bruce Dickinson here in the studio.

(Clapping)

B - Helloo! (Cheers, clapping)
There's more people here. Ya! Ya!

R - We had some stalkers make it into the studio.

B - People are gathering. Yeah!

R - Alright Bruce. Well, we took a call. A nice young lady was just..bagging on the old Maiden lineup and I was kind of curious. What are your thoughts and feelings on ol' Blaze?

B - Well, you know. I think Blaze honestly gets a bit of a bad rap from people. I mean uh, there's no point in me commenting. I mean people have their own opinions about the albums and things like that and they really...I was out of the band and the world has enough music critics and everybody knows what they think. So me making comments on it. It's just not helpful basically but as far as Blaze is concerned, I got a lot of respect for a guy that..goes out and works his butt off trying to do..all the stuff that's required of Maiden. It's a very tough, tall order and what I can say about Blaze is that he's done a...He did it with all his heart and soul and that's all you can really ask of anybody. The other strange thing, well not strange thing, the other good thing is that he's just done his own solo record: Silicon Messiah and ... and it sounds great! He's got a really cool little title cut "Silicon Messiah" and everything and he's sounding really happy and confident..He's got a great band so I think he's in a very good space now because..there was so much pressure being put on him and there was, you know, frankly a lot of abuse being chucked at him and all he did was accept the job. He took the job. It's like somebody offered him the job. It's like well...That's like umm...That's like if somebody from some big corporation is out trying to do a job for the corporation and everybody rags on the guy that's trying to dig the hole. Rather than go and do the people that ordered him to dig the hole in the first place.

R - Right! It's a tall order a replacement.

B - It's a tough call so, you know, so umm. Anyhow that's in the past and alot of people when they talk to me they kind of preface "I saw Maiden with blah, blah, blah." and I'm like "I know what you're going to say but you don't have to say it in order to say that you like what we're doing now."

R - Right.

B - The fact that you like what we're doing now is enough. You don't have to rag on the fact that you didn't like something in the past as a compliment. That's kind of like a negative compliment. You don't have to do that kind of stuff just say..if that means that you love the new record that's great!

R - You know, it's so cool that you're very cool about it because there are other bands that have replacements and whatnot that can't think of anything good or even... You know what I mean?

B - Yeah. Well some bands have replacements, some bands have prosthetics.

R - (Laughing)

B - (Laughing)

R - Well, I'll give it up to Blaze for having enough cajones (balls) to even join the band to begin with. That's a big one to try and do. (Bruce saying "You know? You know?" at the same time.)

B - And again. What's the guy going to do turn it down?

R - Right.

B - (Laughing)

R - And you mentioned his new thing. If you go to your website IronMaiden.com there's actually information on Blaze.

B - Yeah! Silicon Messiah. It's a cool record.

R - Alright. Let's go and do some of this brand-new Iron Maiden. The forthcoming album: Brave New World in stores May 30th. Is that what you said?

B - May 30th. Yeah.

R - First single it's called "The Wicker Man." Let's do it right now it's new, it's Iron Maiden, it rocks, it's the Eagle.

(The Wicker Man plays and kicks ass.)

End of part 3

Bruce at KEGL studios Dallas/FW Friday April 28, 2000 Part 4

("THe Wicker Man" finishes playing.)

R - It's ninety-seven-one "The Eagle." It's the rock station. Brand new me-tal..Maiden Hell!! I love sayin' that!

B - You like that huh?

R - I love saying that all the time. That's Iron Maiden - "The Wicker Man" featuring Bruce Dickinson back on the vocal thing. Good stuff!

B - You love that tune huh?

R - I love it.

B - Splendid.

R - I love it every minute. I can't wait to hear some more tracks. You brought the uh.

B - Yeah we got the little sampler there of two or three songs. There's a title cut on there and there's a song called "Ghost Of The Navigator" which, uh, which rocks as well. There's some great stuff. The album actually is in some ways, well, when people hear it they'll figure this but in some ways it has a big, kind of almost "progresive" element to it. I mean there's like, uh, four seven, eight, nine minute songs on it.

R - Ooh!

B- You know. So...I mean this track is, whatever it is, four and a half minutes, four minutes twenty seconds or something, you know. That's like the shortest track on the record. Uh, and everything else is five, six, seven, eight, nine minutes or something.

R - Those are the ones the real Maiden fans love. Those long ones.

B - You know what, I mean we, we, uh...We didn't actually consider doing any edits or anything on them anyway but um.. we've had no adverse reaction whatever from.. you know, labels and record companies and things like that everywhere because everybody seems, everybody's like, well hey, it's Maiden and this is what people expect. In fact somebody, somewhere needs to take a , you know, a lead here because otherwise the whole world is going to turn into a bunch of people, you know, yelling and screaming and with no tune.

R - Um Hmm.

B - And uh, I mean. The whole thing about metal is that you can do it with a tune and with musicians and with a storytelling thing and everything else and that's what Maiden is good at and we're very proud of that.

R - Now you just used the word "metal" I was kind of wondering this myself. Do you get tired of being labeled "metal" or do you?

B - No. Because I think, you know. There's always going to be like a word game going on, you know. What kind of category is this band in and everything else and that's just um... That's just kind of the "rules of the game" that you go with. Maiden fans.. know what the band is. They know what the identity of the band is. They understand that when you do "Rime Of The Ancient Mariner" there's lots of atmospheric passages and things like that in it and if you brought in somebody from the planet Zog who thought that metal was lots and lots of people going OOoooAAAaaHHhhGggg!!! the whole time he would go "Oh! This isn't metal! This is kind of tuneful and stuff like that you know." And they would say "No, no, no. You need to go and read the Christian Science Weekly because they think they're sacrificing goats and pigs and burning virgins at the stake." He says "No,. This is kind of storytelling." And that in fact is what Maiden is. Maiden's heritage is a combination of kind of brutality and storytelling. You know, because we've got these brutal riffs and stuff. I mean, there's a track on here, umm, on the sampler actually. Well, there's two songs I mean. "Ghost Of The Navigator" and "Brave New World." Both songs about six minutes long. Both songs start out with like quiet, atmospheric bits and have quiet passages in the middle and, well "Brave New World" in particular. They both have light and shade. It's like, you can't have anything good unless there's bad to measure it against.

R - Um Hmm.

B - You can't have anything really heavy, consistantly without having the daylight at the end of the tunnel to measure it against. That's one of the things that we feel when we listen to alot of new music is that it's good for a couple of tracks but for a whole album you need more than just kind of clichéd... You need more than just testosterone and agression.

R - You mentioned new music. I kind of wanted to ask you what kind of new music you're into but don't answer right now because we gotta take a little break here. Pay some bills.

B - Oh. Okay.

R - We're gonna come back. We'll do another track. Which one did you want to do?

B - Oh, let me see. Umm.. eenie, meenie, miney, moe, min, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, biddy, ..biddy.

R - Do you know what's on here?

B - Uh. Yeah, I do unfortunately.

(Both laugh)

B- Uhmm. Let's try..umm (stalling) ..let me see. What day is it today. It's uh. That looks pretty.. (stalling) I can see a part of the new album cover out there (web-cam??) so let's say uh, let's say "Brave New World" which is the title cover.

R - Alright. So that'll be the title track. We'll do "Brave New World" next. We'll talk more to Mr. Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. First we gotta pay some bills. Alright, it's "The Eagle."

( Brave New World plays. )

End of Part 4.

Quite a bit to go even after this folks so hang on!

( Brave New World finishes playing. )

R - It's ninety-seven-one "The Eagle"." It's The Rock Station. Alright there you go! It's over. Right?

B - Yeah that was the title cut. "Brave New World."

R - Man. That was some good stuff there. Iron Maiden "Brave New World" title track the forthcoming album May 30th in stores.

B - Uh, May 30th indeed. Yeah, and we'll be here in August. We hope. Yeah.

R - Oh! Maiden. Back in August.

B - Oh yeah!

R - Man. I can't wait for that. That was a great song. "Brave New World." Good stuff there. The title track. Any...On the album. Any kind of theme or concept there going for you?

B - Um. In terms of the songs being linked together basically. No. (Laughs)

R - Just a bunch of killer tracks.

B - It's really easy. We don't have to explain ourselves then. I mean, it's only really with "Seventh Son" that we started doing that kind of thing and linking things together. "Piece Of Mind" for example. There was no central theme although everybody thought there was because the way we do the album covers is we tend to put themes that run through the album covers that run through the songs and things like that so it always looks like there was a great conspiracy theory. So conspiracy theorists have a field day with Iron Maiden album covers and things so like (conspiratorial voice) "Ah yes. So in fact the seventh album... You really planned it from the word 'go.' You've been planning this for fifteen years." We're like. "No. We only thought of it yesterday."

R - (Laughing) Well you try real hard to put anything together and you can make something fit.

B - Yeah. The thing is. When everybody's...What's the expression? "When everybody's reading off the same page" things just happen and everybody's thinking in the same direction. And this album was like that. I mean. Uh...We would find that in fact we have far more material than we recorded. It was so obvious that the ten songs we were going to do were going to be right. Umm... That we didn't persue developing loads of other great ideas that were there. Some writing ideas. 'Cause we basically didn't want to develop the songs and then have to kind of junk them. Not have room for them on the album and have these great songs sitting around unrecorded. Because we knew then that they would just kind of be, you know. We'd be fed up with them by the time we came around to let's say, to doing the next album.

R - Um Hmm.

B - Better to just leave them in the refrigerator as it were.

R - Right!

B - Undeveloped and then bring them out later on and when we can get excited about them. Because so much about it is about excitement you know. When you put the record down.

R - They might even change or progress.

B - Yeah! Exactly! I mean that's the thing. If you've got great ideas. Great ideas, it's good raw material. You can't beat that.

R - Now you said you were comin' back in August. What's going on with the big tour? We got any ah.. you know.. stage show planned? Any kind of..?

B - Oh yeah! Oh yeah. (emphasis) Oh yes! June the second we kick-off in Europe. And I'm going back home the beginning of next week to start rehearsals and we're doing I think June the second we kick-of in France and we do basically the whole of Eastern and Northern, Southern Europe. The whole deal. We're doing anything from 30 thousand up to 100 thousand seat places. 100 thousand is the biggest. It's a big festival. And indoors the smallest is 20 thousand. And we've got everybody supporting us out there from Korn to Slayer to Nine Inch Nails.

(Both laugh.)

R - Very, very nice!

B - And the whole thing so that'll be kind of interesting. They can have their big chance to blow us offstage. (Evil laugh.) Ah, ha, ha, ha!

R - Any word on who you're going to take with you out here in the states?

B - Not! What? Sorry! Umm.

R - Any word?

B - Ah. Well. There's a few possibilities. People have mentioned MotorHead and that would be kind of cool. The other guy who's done a great record at the moment is Rob Halford. And, Uh... He's done with "Two" and he's done with "Fight" and he's done a record which a friend of mine played to somebody the other day and they went "Wow! This must be the new Priest! Ah! Thank God they've gone back to sounding like the real classic stuff and blah, blah, blah!"

R - Ah, cool!

B - "And he's got a great new vocalist." And I was like "Actually that's Rob Halford's new record" and he was like "Whoa!!"

R - I heard that there was a little guest appearance in there maybe.

B - I did a duet. We did a song. We did a song. 'Cause my mate Roy Z who did "The Chemical Wedding" and "Accident Of Birth" with me and everything. Roy produced the album. Actually he's in Europe right now producing the new Helloween album. And anyhow. So he did the Halford record and I called him up about it and I said "What's it sound like?" And he said "Oh. You can't beleive how good this guy is singing and it's all like classic "Screaming For Vengeance" stuff and everything.

R - Cool!

B - So um. We had this song lying around that I was going to use for a new solo record. Which we're gonna do next year sometime. It's called "I'm The One You LOve To Hate." So That'd be real funny. Because both of us left the bands and when we left the bands we were both like reviled. And then all of a sudden, you know, when things started picking up with my solo career all of a sudden it was like, you know, I could seemingly do no wrong, you know. And we were

getting all of these great revues. It was kind of ironic. So I think Rob's career is going to go the same way. And so hence "I'm The One You Love To Hate." So we're both in the studio side-by-side me and Rob.

R - I'm looking forward to that one. That's gonna be killer.

B - (Screaming evilly) "I'm the one you love to hate!" You know. And he's doing all the screaming and stuff. It's great!

End of Part 5.

Part 6.66.

R - I'll tell you what. Speaking of your solo stuff now. I gotta say a little part of me was disappointed because I got the uh. When I heard you were back in Maiden I just got "The Chemical Wedding."

B - Oh yeah and you dug it. (Laughs)

R - Oh! It was just the best thing I'd heard in so long! and then I hear "Oh, yeah Bruce is back in Maiden. He's not touring with it." I was like "Whaaat!"

B - Oh well then. I'll tell you what. The reason I wasn't touring with "Chemical Wedding" was not because I was back in Maiden.

R - Huh?

B - It's because CMC wouldn't give me money to do tour support. (Laughs)

R - (Gasps.) Hate to hear that! Aww. I'm so sorry to hear that.

B - I was so sorry to hear that too. I gotta tell ya. 'Cause I had shows booked. It was gonna be me, Anthrax and Three Colors Red. I think it was.

R - Oh! I don't want to hear this now! This is..! (Laughs.)

B - And we had shows, we had dates booked and everything and I had to pull the tour. You can't... I mean I was, you know. And I even offered. I went out and said "Hey! You know. What about I put up the tour support? I'll pay. You just put up the money to take "Chemical Wedding" and take it to radio stations and see if you can get them to play it." And they went "Ah. No. We can't aford it. We'll never do that either."

R - Such a good record man. I'm sorry to hear that.

B - (Sighs.) I know. I was gutted. But I mean... In the long run a good record.. it'll.. it'll just keep on. It'll keep on motoring. We did "Scream For Me Brazil." We went down to Brazil and did the live shows in Brazil. And recorded a live album. And alot of the stuff on that album is from "Chemical Wedding" and "Accident OF Birth." So.

R - I've gotta get that.

B - It's a cool live record. "Scream For Me Brazil." It's got a fish on the front.

R - I'll look for it.

B - (Laughing.) Don't ask about "The Fish!"

(Both laughing.)

R - It'll sell because of the fish there.

B - "The Fish! The Fish!" "The Fish" has a whole uh.."

R - Alright. We're talking to Bruce Dickinson. We're talking to Bruce from Iron Maiden. We got the new album here and we're gonna do some more new stuff here very soon. We've gotta take a... Actually we promised to play some Metallica so let's do some Metallica.

B - Go play some Metallica! Play the competition.

R - Alright! We'll do it!

B - Let's see what they can do! (Song starts.)

R - I'm not going to say anything derogatory.

B - (Laughs evilly.) You don't have to!

R - It's Metallica! Cindy's going to talk to Metallica later this afternoon sometime between four and six. Right now it's all about Bruce Dickinson though.

( Clapping. Cheers )

R - Alright it's Metallica. More new Maiden on the way. It's "The Eagle." It's "The Rock Station." End of Part 6.66

Bruce at KEGL studios Dallas/FW Friday April 28, 2000 Part 7.77 .

( "Can I Play With Madness?" finishes playing.)

R - Ninety-seven-one. It's "The Eagle." It's "The Rock Station." That, of course, is none other than Iron Maiden and "Can I Play With Madness?" We've got Mr. Bruce Dickinson live in The Eagle studioooo!

B - Helloo! Helloo! Helloo!

(Applause.)

R - Nothing like the old stuff too. Gotta do that.

B - Absolutely.

R - So umm. You just broke out the uh.. the uh.. official Bruce Dickinson laptop here.

B - Ah Ha! (NOT "aha!" )

R - And... (Laughs) You got the album art with ya.

B - Yeah. On the laptop. Yeah.

R - Oh! That is some killer stuff. I... I asked off the air. I was like "Hey Bruce! Do you mind if we put it on the web-cam for everybody to see and what did you... He threatened to kill me!

B - Yeah. I said that "You're leaving. Pick a window."

R - (Laughing.) Oh man! Yeah. Now that I think about it... Bad news.

B - Do you like hospital food?

R - You know. If somebody would hack up there and would just start printing stuff out. You know. It would just... Man!

B - Yup.

R - You guys had someone. Umm... Didn't someone in Europe actually.. claiming to be selling your new album or something?

B - Yeah. There.. was.. well.. a completely fictitious album.

R - Right.

B - Right. Which was... Umm.

R - Majesty of Gaia.

B - Yeah. That's it. Majesty of Gaia with a track listing and everything. And these cheeky uh.. umm.. yeah. These cheeky.. uh people.

R - Bastards!

B - Yeah! I was going to say that word.

R - (Laughs.)

B - Yeah. I didn't know if I could say that word on the radio.

R - I guess so. I hope so! (Laughing.)

B - Yeah. Okay. These cheeky bastards! They uh... I feel better about that now. They were going to charge people money for it too.

R - Umm.

B - So I don't know if anybody did but I mean we had all the lawyers onto it and everything and if we found any kids that had shelled out money for this completely... Pile of crap... You know. We were gonna sue their ass and whatever. Bury them.

R - That's the bad side of technology you know. The internet's a good thing you know and...

B - It's generally a good thing. But it's got a whole bunch of things that need to be figured out and people are only really finding out about them now and that kind of thing. How are we going to figure all this out?

R - You were almost venting about Napster. We were talking about... You know.. uh.

B - Yeah I mean. (Sighs.) It's kind of... As an ar... As a quote, unquote "An Artist." You know. And as a guy who makes his living out of making music and having people buy it. You know. I have no desire whatever to restrict people's access to music and I don't care if they want to go and buy bootlegs and stuff like that and share... You know. Share stuff that they've got that's old, that's rare or whatever that we don't have out and stuff. People have always done that with casettes. What I think makes everybody paranoid is if it turns into an entire industry whereby you only sell one CD and the whole world just decides "Oh yeah, well I'm just gonna like uh... Copy it for free." Why will anybody bother making music? You know? Why will bands do it? I mean they'll just stop making records and maybe just go out and play live. The small bands it's not... You know. No small band could ever make a living doing that. So what it'll do. It'll basically just like stop the music industry.

R - Um Hmm.

B - And we'll be forced to listen to uh.. classic rock for the rest of your life.

R - Whoa! (Both Laugh.) (Shouting.) Let's play some Skynyrd man! "Freebird!"

You know. I think the internet's a cool tool to, you know, sample... Hear what's coming up you know and...

B - Yeah! No. Absolutely. I mean I'm not like some guy that's going... You know... Some Luddite that says "Ah, you must smash all the machines and go back to posting letters" and things like that. Homing pigeons.

R - Well, like we were just saying though. There's a whole, special thing about buying the album and seeing the album art. You guys put so much obviously into your album art and it's just... Who would want to forego that? I mean really. Really, that's what it's all about man. Getting the music and...

B - We were having this conversation on the plane here. That uh. Hey! Maybe music will just be worthless but you'll have like a fifty dollar T-shirt.

R - (Laughs.)

B - I mean... Isn't that crazy?

R - Yeah.

B - The whole cool thing about this is that it's... The music is the thing that matters and the music. If you're going to pay for anything you should pay for the music and for the.. creativity and the effort that went into it... You know, we've got to pay our studio bills and everything else, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everything else. But you know. It's a sign of a very strange world, you know. Umm. But at the same time I've got a feling things get figured out because the cynic in me tells me that you know... Uh... Napster is free right now and there's a reason for that.

R - Um Hmm.

B - Because at some point in the future it'll be like "KER-CHING!!"

R - Yeah. Right.

B - Napster's not free. Subscribe to Napster for only ten dollars per month. You know they've built all that in there already.

R - Oh you know I've got a bootleg of the new Maiden CD did you know that?

B - Did you really?

R - (Laughing.) My friends over at Napster. No, actually you brought it in. Thank you very much Bruce Dickinson for bringing it in. We're talking to Bruce and we're gonna take another break 'cause we have to do that. It's radio. We're gonna come back and play another song off the brand-new Iron Maiden CD "Brave New World." Which one do you want to do next?

B - Umm... Let's do uh... "Ghost Of The Navigataaaaah."

R - "Ghost Of The Navigator" next. Brand-new Iron Maiden and we'll talk to Bruce once again. It's "The Eagle."

End of Part 7.77.Bruce at KEGL studios Dallas/FW Friday April 28, 2000

Part 8 - The Final Episode!

( "Ghost Of The Navigator" finishes playing. )

R - It's Ninety-seven-one. "The Eagle." It's "The Rock Station." Brand new Iron Maiden!

(Applause.)

B - Yeah! You like that huh?

R - I love it!

B - Yeah! It rocks!

R - Ah. That is the good stuff man.

B - Yeah, really. I mean we are not just back. I mean it's back and it's bigger and better than it has been for fifteen years. I mean we really, really...

R - That's not just talk man?

B - No, no, no. I mean I made the whole Muhammad Ali predictions you know. When we got back together and stuff when we were in England and somebody said, you know. I said "We're going to be the best heavy metal band on the planet." They went "Ah, ah, oh yeah. What about Metallica?" "Well, we're gonna kick their ass." They went "Aaagh! Whoaaaooh!! You said that??!!" I went "Yeah. 'Cause we're better than they are." They went "Huh! You can't say that!" "I just did and we are so..."

R - (Laughing.) I love it!

B - And it's just like well, you know, it's kind of like the truth. Because we can play better than they can play. And it's like, sorry, it's not like saying they're bad people and stuff. It's just fact. And people say "Ahh, errrr, ah!" Of course we've gone out and we did the tour last Summer and in Europe this comment got really big publicity and stuff well... Nobody so far has thrown it back at me.

R - Um Hmm! There you go!

B - (Laughing.) So I'm waiting.

R -Alright. The song there was Iron Maiden. The song was called "Ghost Of The Navigator" on the new CD "Brave New World" in stores May 30th. We saw the artwork! (Laughing.)

B - Yeah. We did see the artwork and that's very cool too. Isn't it yeah. Ancient and Modern.

R - You guys have got umm... I saw you website IronMaiden.com. There's some like Wicker

chicks up there.

B - Wicker chicks? Yeah!

R - You've got the video there.

B - Wicker chicks. Yeah umm... The nymphs... (Comic voice.) The naked nymphs.
Actually they weren't naked they had like body stockings on and they... We did the video and it was freezing rain and hail... In Los Angeles.

R - (Laughing.)

B - Right?

R - How often does that happen?

B - I mean it was like, what kind of... God's like obviously not smiling on us today 'cause we did it in March, the beginning of March and we did it in this gravel pit. Funny enough, the new.. the old Flintstones movie was filmed in the same stuff and the old Flintstones set was still up there and everything. They wouldn't let us take pictures you know. Weenies. You know. I mean, you know, it's copywrite.

R - Right.

B - So anyhow we're down there doing this video and it was freezing. It was like, you know, forty degrees and it was an all-night shoot so we were up for twenty-five hours straight filming this thing. And these girls were out there just freezing their butts off, you know, umm... One girl was uh... She was very funny. She was like into the whole pagan thing and the whole wicker

thing and everything and she was standing out there in the freezing rain and it was hailing on her and everything and she stood there going "I feel my internal fire from within."

R - (Laughing loudly.)

B - And I was like... (Laughs.)

R - This is a video lady.

B - I was like... Yeah. I ate chiliburgers I feel the internal fire from within too but I'm feeling it from within the Winnebago, you know. (Laughs.)

R - Well you can check out some footage of the new video IronMaiden.com . All kinds of great stuff. And they got some stuff from your solo...

B - Uh huh.

R - And what Blaze is doing these days.

B - Yeah. Iron Maiden.com and there's a whole little chunk in there that connects to all the other bands that are on Sanctuary and there's a link to my solo site which is BruceDickinson.com as well so you can go...

R - Well, we appreciate you joining us. Is there anything else we've got to plug real quick before you go?

B - Just the record and we'll be coming here in August... Date to be determined but, yeah, obviously we're going to do Dallas. It's going to be the back end of August. May 30th is the album "Brave New World". And it's just great to be here! And I just figured out that you're down the street from Addison Airport! I got my instrument rating here. Years ago. Nineteen ninety-three, four, five or something like that whenever it was so. Excellent! I feel right at home.

R - You guys also got that Ed Hunter greatest hits CD-ROM thing out now.

B - Ah... Yes we do. That came out last Summer and that's... If you like point-and-click shoot 'em up games and you're a fan of the artwork then I'd say, you know. Go get it.

R - And you re-recorded "Wrathchild" and put that on there like a little.. hidden track right?

B - Uh. Yeah! 'Cause it was like a talking point. It was a suggestion so yeah, why not.

R - Well that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna leave you on that note. Thank you very much for stoppin' by.

B - Bysee-bye! ("Wrathchild" starts playing.)

R - All right! (Shouting.) Mr. Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden!

(Applause.)

R - This is "Wrathchild 1999." It's "The Eagle." It's "The Rock Station."

(Song finishes.)

B - I'm still here! It's still me!

(Applause.)

R - We're talking. We're having a good time. Alright we've gotta take another break. Thank you once again man for stopping by. Looking forward to the big return of Iron Maiden.

B - I'm going I really am!

R - He's really leaving this time! Stop! Stop hounding him stalkers! Alright we'll take a break. It's "The Eagle. The Rock Station."

End of Part 8. End of Interview.

( Cthulhu collapses into a lifeless lump, his tentacles twitching. )