Paul Bruce Dickinson (born 7 August 1958) is an English singer, TV presenter, airline pilot, radio show host, record producer, fencer, author, and songwriter best known as the vocalist of the metal band Iron Maiden.
Dickinson performed for some local bands including Styx (not the American band of the same name) in 1976, Speed, (1977-1978), and Shots in early 1979. He then joined hard rock band Samson later in 1979, where he gained some popularity. In this band he went by the name of "Bruce Bruce." He left Samson in 1981, citing musical differences. Shortly afterwards, in 1981, Dickinson was hired as Iron Maiden's new vocalist, debuting for that band with the 1982 album The Number of the Beast . During his time in that band, they issued a series of high impact releases, resulting in Dickinson gaining worldwide fame, and becoming one of the most acclaimed heavy metal vocalists of all time.
Dickinson quit Iron Maiden in 1993 in order to pursue his solo career, being replaced by Blaze Bayley. Dickinson's solo work ranged a wide variety of heavy metal and rock styles. Dickinson rejoined Maiden in 1999 along with guitarist Adrian Smith. Since then, Dickinson has only released one more solo album, Tyranny of Souls . He is the older cousin of Rob Dickinson, lead singer of British alternative rock band Catherine Wheel. In his personal life, he is known for his strict abstinence from drug use.
Childhood
Paul Bruce Dickinson was born in the small mining town of Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His mother worked part-time in a shoe shop and his father was a mechanic in the army. Dickinson's birth hurried the young couple into marriage. Initially, he was brought up by his grandparents; his grandfather was a coal-face worker at the local colliery and his grandmother was a housewife. This is referred to in his song "Born In '58" from the album Tattooed Millionaire .
Dickinson started school at Manton Primary. Soon afterwards, when he was six, his parents moved from Worksop to Sheffield and he consequently had to go to a new school, Manor Top, which Dickinson disliked. After six months, his parents decided to move him out to a small private school called Sharrow Vale Junior. Of this period, he recalled "I grew up in an environment where it struck me that the world was never gonna do me any favours. And I had very few close friends, because we were always moving. I think that's partly why I grew up feeling like such an outsider. I didn't have an unhappy childhood, but it was unconventional, to say the least". He also has a younger sister named Sonya who was born sometime during the years he lived with his grandparents. He tried to isolate himself from her as much as he could when he was young, supposedly out of spite because she, unlike him, was a planned pregnancy and birth.
Dickinson's first musical experience was dancing in his grandparents' front room to Chubby Checker's "The Twist". The first record Dickinson recalls owning was The Beatles single "She Loves You" which he managed to persuade his granddad to buy him. "I was only four or five but I really loved that scene, The Beatles and Gerry & The Pacemakers. ... I noticed they had B-sides, and that sometimes I liked them even more than the A-sides. That was when I first began noticing the difference between 'good' music and 'bad'." He believes that this marked the beginning of him thinking like a musician. He tried to play an acoustic guitar belonging to his parents, but it blistered his fingers.
By this time, Dickinson's parents were earning a good living from selling estate. A lot of Dickinson's childhood was spent living on a building site, until his parents bought a boarding house where his father sold second-hand cars off a forecourt. The income from their business success gave them the opportunity to give Dickinson—then 13 years old—a boarding school education and they chose Oundle, a public school in Northamptonshire. Dickinson enjoyed being away from home. "I didn't particularly enjoy being with my parents, so I saw it as an escape. I think it was because I hadn't built any real attachment to them when I was very, very young."
At Oundle, however, Dickinson was picked on and routinely bullied by the older boys of Sidney House, the boarding house that he belonged to. His interests at Oundle were often military. He co-founded the school wargames society with Mike Jordan, and he rose to a position of some power in the Combined Cadet Force.
Oundle was also where Dickinson became attracted to heavy rock. He has said :"I was 13 when I first heard Deep Purple's Deep Purple in Rock album, and it just blew me away! I heard this thing coming out of someone's room one day, and I went in and said 'Whoa! What's that?' And they just looked at me disdainfully and went 'It's "Child in Time" by Deep Purple. Don't you know anything?' But I was too amazed to care. The first album I ever bought was Deep Purple in Rock, all scratched to fuck, but I thought it was great."
Dickinson obtained bongo drums from the music room and practiced. Dickinson remembers trying to learn "Let It Be." Other than this tinkering though, he never learned an instrument at school, and as far as his contemporaries can recall, he could not read music. Any technical musical skills that Dickinson now possesses were acquired after his stay at Oundle. In an episode of BBC2's Seven Ages of Rock , Dickinson said in interview that, like Sinatra's "My Way", Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills" was based on "rising sixths". Whether or not his illustration was correct, it has to be said that Dickinson knew nothing about rising sixths when he left Oundle.
Dickinson was later expelled from Oundle for urinating in the headmaster's dinner. Neil Ashford, his co-urinator, was rusticated; that is, sent home for the rest of the term rather than being permanently excluded from the school, on the grounds that the contribution to the headmaster's beans had been Dickinson's idea. Returning home to Sheffield in 1976, Dickinson enrolled at a local Catholic comprehensive school, although not a practising Catholic himself.
In the summer of 1976, he joined his first band. He had overheard two other pupils talking about their band and that they needed a singer. Dickinson volunteered to do the vocals. They rehearsed in the drummer's father's garage and the band were impressed by Dickinson's singing. It was at this point Dickinson decided to buy a microphone. The first gig Dickinson's new band did was at the Broadfield Tavern pub in Sheffield. Originally called "Paradox," the band changed name upon Dickinson's suggestion, to "Styx", unaware of the American act with the same name. They made local newspaper headlines when a steel worker was awoken by their performance. Of the incident, it was said: "He bottled the guitarist and chucked the drums off-stage." Soon after, the band split up.
University
After leaving his school Dickinson didn't really know what he wanted to do. He joined the Territorial Army for six months, which he did not enjoy. As army life was not what he wanted, he applied for a place at University. He had met the minimum grades for getting in and read history at Queen Mary College, in London's East End. His parents wanted him in the army, but he told them that he wanted to get a degree first. "That was what they wanted to hear so that was my cover story. When I got down there I started immediately finding and playing in bands."
In college, Dickinson got involved in the Entertainments Committee. "One day you'd be a roadie for The Jam, the next you'd be putting up the Stonehenge backdrop for Hawkwind or whatever." In 1977, Dickinson met a guy called Paul "Noddy" White. He was a multi-instrumentalist and he had a PA and other equipment. Dickinson suggested that, along with drummer Steve Jones, they form a band together. This would eventually evolve into the band "Speed", described by Dickinson as sounding like a 'crossover between Judas Priest and The Stranglers with a Hammond organ on top of it.' Dickinson recalled: "It had nothing to do with taking speed, we were a completely drug-free band, we just used to play everything ridiculously fast. Like speed metal, but ten years too early." Dickinson was the vocalist and occasionally played guitar. "I got Noddy to give me guitar lessons and I ... started writing stuff straight away. He showed me three chords and I'd write stuff just from those three chords."
Speed didn't last long, but it encouraged Dickinson to continue to work to be a musician. Dickinson spotted an ad in Melody Maker with the caption "Singer wanted for recording project". Since he had never been near a recording studio he replied immediately. He "wailed, wolfed, hollered and made noises" onto a tape and with it went a note that read; "By the way, if you think the singing's crap, there's some John Cleese stuff recorded on the other side you might find amusing." They liked what they heard and Dickinson came down to the studio. The band was called "Shots" and were formed by two brothers, Phil and Doug Siviter. They were amazed by Dickinson's vocal abilities and they started talking about what music they liked. "I started saying Ian Gillan, Ian Anderson, Arthur Brown, and Doug goes, 'That's it! Fucking Arthur Brown, man! Sometimes your voice is a dead ringer for Arthur! We've got to form a band.' This guy's got a studio and he wants to form a band with me! I was like 'Yes'." A song "Dracula" from this session can be heard as the closing track on The Best of Bruce Dickinson , disc two. According to D
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