“I said, ‘Before we start, you know that if I audition I’ll get the gig. But be warned – I’m gonna be a pain in the arse!’”: Bruce Dickinson recalls his audition for Iron Maiden – and his crazy times with his previous band

In 1981, Bruce Dickinson became the singer in Iron Maiden – replacing the charismatic but wayward Paul Di’Anno.

It was a huge gamble for the band to change singers at a crucial stage of their career, with just two studio albums to their name.

But it was a gamble that paid off handsomely – and Dickinson, for one, never doubted that he was the man to lead Maiden to world domination.

In a new interview with Classic Rock, Dickinson recalls his audition for Maiden and the years leading up to it, when he fronted Samson, another band that emerged from the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal alongside Maiden, Def Leppard, Saxon, Girlschool, Diamond Head and many more.

Dickinson joined Samson in 1979 and was living in dismal circumstances in a deprived area of London.

“I slept in a squat in the Isle of Dogs,” he says. “That was where Maiden shot the video for [1984 single] 2 Minutes To Midnight. They wanted this grim location for the shoot and I said, ‘Hey, I used to live there!’”

Iron Maiden - 2 Minutes To Midnight (Official Video) - YouTube

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While guitarist Paul Samson was the band’s leading figure, drummer Barry Purkis, AKA Thunderstick, was a larger than life character who wore a balaclava on stage.

“The band had a lot of strengths but also a lot of weaknesses,” Dickinson says. “We had some interesting songs that sat slightly outside of the metal genre. But as players it was very hit and miss. Thunderstick’s drumming was – how do I put it? – somewhat eccentric.”

In 1980, Iron Maiden opened for Samson at the Music Machine in London. Watching Maiden for the first time, Dickinson told himself that he should be their singer.

It was also in 1980 that Samson’s album Head On was released – Dickinson’s first with the band.

Sadly for Dickinson and his bandmates, Head On made little impact in a year when so many great hard rock and heavy metal albums were released – including AC/DC’s Back In Black, Motörhead’s Ace Of Spades, Ozzy Osbourne’s Blizzard Of Ozz, Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell, Judas Priest’s British Steel, Saxon’s Wheels Of Steel and, of course, Iron Maiden’s self-titled debut.

Dickinson’s second and final album with Samson was 1981’s Shock Tactics, recorded at Battery Studios in London where, at the same time, Iron Maiden were working on their album Killers.

In the Classic Rock interview, Dickinson praises Tony Platt, the producer of Shock Tactics. “He pulled a big chunk out of my voice that I didn’t know was there. I hated it but everybody else loved it.”

During the recording of that album, Maiden’s producer Martin Birch invited Dickinson into their room to hear the first mix of Killers. “It floored me!” Dickinson says now.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to wait long to fulfil his destiny.

By the summer of 1981, Paul Di’Anno’s taste for the rock n’ roll lifestyle was making him a liability.

On 29 August, Samson performed at the Reading Festival.

Afterwards, in the backstage enclosure, Dickinson met with Iron Maiden’s bassist Steve Harris and manager Rod Smallwood. After a brief discussion, they withdrew to Smallwood’s hotel room to talk business.

As Dickinson recalls it: “Rod said, ‘We’re thinking of changing our singer. So we’re offering you the chance to audition.’

“I said, ‘Before we start, you know that if I audition I’ll get the gig. I want it. And it’s exactly what the band needs. But be warned – I’m gonna be a pain in the arse. I’m not a clone of the other singer, and I’ll have ideas of my own, ideas that Steve might not like.’ Steve just said, ‘Fine!’”

The audition was held in a rehearsal room in Hackney.

“We did three or four Maiden songs, but I’d learned all of them,” Dickinson says. “It felt very natural. But then I had to wait two weeks so that they could deal with Paul after the last gigs in Scandinavia.”

It was on 26 September 1981, in rock weekly Sounds, that Bruce Dickinson was announced as the new singer in Iron Maiden.

What he’d said in that hotel room in Reading was exactly how it turned out. And he never had to sleep in a squat again.