THE ART OF WAR
Taking care not to be observed by fellow guests at Reading’s Holiday Inn, Rod Smallwood ushered Bruce Dickinson into his hotel room. Earlier that same day – Saturday, August 29, 1981 – Iron Maiden’s manager had observed Samson’s 23-year-old frontman charm a rowdy Reading Rocks crowd eager for the arrival of Angry Anderson’s Aussie yob-rockers Rose Tattoo, and he grudgingly had to concede that the singer had something about him.
As darkness fell on the site, Dickinson, better known to fans of the NWOBHM stalwarts by his stage name Bruce Bruce, was backstage downing celebratory post-gig beers, intending to wander out into the audience to watch ex-Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan close out the weekender’s second day with his solo band, when he recognised Iron Maiden’s manager barrelling towards him purposefully. Aware that his presence backstage would generate some curiosity among the London music business ‘faces’ in attendance, and keen to avoid rumours being sparked, Smallwood asked Dickinson if they could go somewhere quieter to talk.
Once inside his hotel room, he wasted no time in laying his cards on the table: although their increasingly erratic frontman Paul Di’Anno had yet to be informed of this fact, he confided, Iron Maiden were soon to have a vacancy for a new vocalist, and bandleader Steve Harris wanted to know if Dickinson might care to try out for it.
“First of all, you know I’ll get the job, or you wouldn’t ask,” the singer remembers responding. “When I do get the job, and I will, are you prepared for a totally different style, and opinions, and someone who is not going to roll over? If you don’t want that, tell me now and I’ll walk away.”
For once, the louder-than-life Yorkshire-born, Cambridge-educated Smallwood was lost for words. thought it was probably best to go in there with all guns blazing,” Dickinson says today, laughing.
“I thought it was probably best to go in there with all guns blazing,” Dickinson says today, laughing.
That gung-ho energy remains an integral part of the singer’s ebullient character. Arriving for this interview on a bicycle, he’s barely affixed a padlock to secure it before enquiring if anyone from Maiden HQ managed to screenshot the moment when the video for the band’s new single, , hit 6,666,666 views on YouTube: “I wasn’t going
