When people make a list of the greatest Heavy Metal singers of all time, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson is constantly featured. However, he wouldn’t have reached that status if not for the musicians who inspired him in his youth. He has many favorite singers, but Rock and Roll Garage selected those who influenced him the most and whom he has praised as some of his favorites over the decades.
The 4 singers that Bruce Dickinson said were some of his favorite ones
Ian Gillan
It’s no secret that Bruce Dickinson’s biggest hero has always been Deep Purple‘s vocalist, Ian Gillan. Over the decades, the Iron Maiden frontman has praised him many times and said he was his biggest inspiration as a vocalist. He once said that in his opinion, Ian was one of the bases for Heavy Metal singing.
Bruce had the chance to meet his hero when Samson (the band he was a member of before Maiden) was recording an album in the singer’s studio. However, Bruce was not used to smoking, and combining that with his nervousness, he ended up puking. It was Gillan himself who went to help him out. According to Bruce, every time they see each other, Gillan always brings up that story.
In an interview with Gastão Moreira in the early 90s for MTV (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage), Dickinson recalled that story. “Well, Ian (Gillan) drag me out of the toilet when I was about 20 years-old and I was in Samson. We had just recorded an album ‘Head On’. We recorded that album in his studio. It was before we went out on tour with him, after that, supporting him. He was like my big hero, you know. We were listening back to this album and Ian’s in there.”
“I’m like ‘Oh, it’s him!’ We’d been in the pub and we had a few beers. The engineer was rolling this big joint, so he passes the joint around and I smoked this joint and suddenly I felt really sick. Like I was gonna throw up everywhere and Ian is listening to the thing, he goes: ‘Who’s the singer?’ And I’m like (trying not to puke and raising my finger).”
Bruce Dickinson continued:
“(Then Ian says): ‘Cool vocals!’ I’m like ‘Thanks!’ (and I go to the toilet). I was so sick that I had my head down this toilet for about 40 minutes, I thought I was going to die. Finally he kicks the door in and I’m in just a disgusting state and there’s my hero looking down at me. I think my ex-wife has it, I kept the towel he gave,” Bruce Dickinson said.
Besides being Deep Purple’s vocalist, Gillan also had a solo career for a few years and was a member of Black Sabbath for a short period recording the album “Born Again” (1983).
Paul Rodgers
The Free and Bad Company vocalist Paul Rodgers is another vocalist who Dickinson loves. He even said once that in his opinion, Rodgers was one of the bases for Heavy Metal singing.
“Paul Rodgers. I just thought that Rodgers was just stunning, and I didn’t even really try and copy his phrasing because I thought you just can’t, it’s just he’s just so good,” he told Metal Hammer 2022.
The singers started his musical career in 1968 and first achieved fame as the frontman of Free, band which also had in the original line-up Simon Kirke (Drums), Paul Kossoff (Guitar) and Andy Fraser (Bass). After the group came to an end in 1973, Rodgers and Kirke formed Bad Company, which would also become a very successful and influential Rock band.
Later on Paul Rodgers was also a member of the Jimmy Page supergroup The Firm, pursued a solo career also touring and recording with Queen.
As Bruce told Gastão Moreira on the Brazilian MTV show “Fúria” in 1998, he didn’t have the same voice as Paul but he was influenced by him.
“I don’t have the same kind of voice like Paul Rodgers, but I used to look behind the voice of what was going on in guy’s heart and in his head, trying to say: ‘How can I take that part, that feeling and do it like my way.”
Robert Plant
The Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant also inspired Bruce Dickinson and he loved Zeppelin’s work, especially their live performances. Although he liked them, he was a bigger fan of Deep Purple.
“I was always a bigger Purple fan than Zeppelin. But I never saw either Zeppelin or Purple when I was a kid, when they were in their heyday. Zeppelin were adopted by American radio big-style. But I’ve got to confess that the thing I loved most about Zeppelin was their English folk roots. Not their copies of American blues tracks. ‘Ramble On’ is one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs. But that’s just me,” Bruce Dickinson told Metal Hammer in 2016.
Plant is another singer that Bruce said is one of the bases for Heavy Metal singing. Two of his favorite Zeppelin albums are the second and the fourth one. He had the chance to pay tribute to the band when Iron Maiden covered “Communication Breakdown” in 1990, being released as the b-side of “Bring Your Daugther to the Slaughter”.
Arthur Brown
Arthur Brown, the “God of Hellfire”, is the fourth singer that Dickinson likes and said that curiously was an inspiration as a vocalist.
“He has gotten the most amazing voice and I borrowed a lot of Arthur. Also a few things lyrically probably from Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull,” he told Gastão Moreira on the Brazilian MTV show “Fúria”.
Dickinson simply had the chance to see an Arthur show in his school when he was a kid. The Iron Maiden vocalist recalled that moment in an interview with Double J in 2018. “I saw Arthur at school. He wasn’t doing Crazy World, he was doing a band called Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come, it was pretty advanced for its day. I was 15 years old with my mind scrambled on Mars Bars and Fanta. I had a massive sugar rush.’
Bruce Dickinson continued:
“I’m sitting there, and the lights go down in this small Gothic Great Hall. Out comes Arthur, dressed in this Inca headdress. He stands before an altar. There’s no drummer in the band, just two keyboard players, a bass player and a guitarist. There’s a drum machine. This is in 1975 – a drum machine! And it’s played by Arthur. (…) But that voice came out, it was like the voice of God. He had an amazing voice, it was just spectacular. So I borrowed a lot of his phraseology and style. I loved the fact it was almost semi-operatic but kind of anarchic as well, what he did with his voice.
“As a frontman he was completely nuts. Arthur was a completely off the wall. He was a great English eccentric. The album that comes from is probably one of the first – if not the first – concept album. It was about a man’s descent into hell. Obviously when [‘Fire’] happens, he’s just got to the door of hell,” Bruce Dickinson said.
