Bruce Dickinson is one of the most influential Heavy Metal vocalists of all time and has played an important role in Iron Maiden’s success. Like his bandmates, he was inspired by many different bands while growing up, and there are albums he always goes back to and listens to. In a 2006 interview with Metal Hammer, he listed six of those records. Rock and Roll Garage looks back at what he said about the albums and the bands over the years.
6 albums Bruce Dickinson said he couldn’t live without
Deep Purple “Made in Japan”
“My Recollections about Deep Purple ‘Made In Japan’. It changed my life, it blew me away. (Beecause) I wanted to be everybody in that band, everybody. I blew up the speakers on my parents stereoggram playing that record, I knew every note on it. I actually used to jump around on sofas with a shitty guitar, trying to be Ritchie Blackmore and doing what I imagined he did on stage.”
“(So) I tell you, what a revelation. I think it is the greatest live album, the greatest Rock live album ever made and still is. I also had the privilege to work with Martin Birch, who told me all the stories about how it got made. That’s another story, but anyway, congratulations on having made it and still being here,” Bruce Dickinson said on Deep Purple’s official Youtube channel (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Curiously, Deep Purple’s vocalist Ian Gillan, who is Bruce’s biggest hero doesn’t like the record. “It was a real statement, a live double, like the ones we all loved when we were growing up. My favourite live album is Deep Purple’s ‘Made In Japan.’ But I recall reading Ian Gillan saying, ‘I thought it was a piece of shit, I sounded crap on it.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no. You’re wrong!’” Bruce Dickinson told Classic Rock in 2022. Released in 1972, the album was the follow up to “Machine Head”, Purple’s best-selling album. So it was the first time fans had the opportunity to listen to classic songs like “Smoke on the Water” and “Highway Star” on a live record.
Black Sabbath “Black Sabbath”
Black Sabbath was a huge influence for Bruce Dickinson in the early days when he was discovering Heavy Metal. He even said in an interview with Eric Blair, that alongside Deep Purple they were his favorite Metal band. Their debut album is one of his favorite ones as he told Gastão Moreira on MTV. “Oh (it was) awesome (to hear it for the first time). The rain in the beginning and stuff, and it was (released on) Vertigo (Records) as well. Because it was on a record you looked to the middle of the (LP) and you would go ‘Wow’.”
“I used to play it when my parents were out because I used to blow up their… In the old days they used to have these pieces of furniture called a stereogram. It was like a fucking couch, it was six-feet long and it had two pathetic speakers. They used to have drink babinets in it and it had the record player hidden somewhere. So you would go there and was like ‘Ok, they’re gone’, put the record and cranked the thing up the speakers would (not work properly anymore),” Bruce Dickinson said in 1998. The singer has also praised other albums by the band, such as “Vol. 4” (1972), “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” (1973) and “Born Again” (1983), the only one featuring Ian Gillan on vocals.
Feud with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne
However, a feud involving Ozzy Osbourne began two decades ago when, according to Sharon, he mocked Iron Maiden during the band’s performance at Ozzfest. That led her to hire people to throw eggs at Maiden while they were playing. Maiden’s manager Rod Smallwood said at the time that he had never seen something so unprofessional and disgusting. Steve Harris went on to apologize to Ozzy for Bruce’s behavior. Sharon Osbourne later said that she respected the members of Iron Maiden because they are nice guys. Dickinson is the only one she doesn’t like, saying he has a “chip on his shoulder”.
Led Zeppelin “Led Zeppelin II”
As Bruce once recalled, “Led Zeppelin II” (1969) was the album that got him into Led Zeppelin‘s music and he has always been a fan of Robert Plant. Curiously, he preferred their acoustic songs to their heavier ones.
“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 said in an interview with Metal Hammer in 2016.
In his view, Plant is one of the foundations of Heavy Metal singing. “There are basically 3 bases for the metal style of singing. If you join aspect of these 3 singers, you have everything. These 3 singers are Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin), Ian Gillan (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath) and Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company). If you join them in various combinations you have everyone was always talking about well,” Bruce Dickinson told Metal Rules in 2000. Besides “Ramble On”, other famous tracks of “Led Zeppelin II” are “Whole Lotta Love”, “Thank You” and “Moby Dick”.
Rainbow “Rising”
Ian Gillan wasn’t the only member of Deep Purple Bruce was a fan of. He has also said that Ritchie Blackmore is his favorite guitar player. So when he first heard “Stargazer” on the radio, he instantly recognized Blackmore’s guitar playing and was mesmerized by the powerful voice of the then-unknown singer Ronnie James Dio.
“For me, that was the record where I discovered Ronnie Dio on vocals. I was like: ‘Who is that voice?’ I was like 16 years old and go ‘What the hell?’ That’s Ritchie Blackmore and I didn’t know that Rainbow existed. It was on a little transistor radio in a garage. So I went ‘That sounds like Ritchie Blackmore’.”
“I waited till it finished and the guy said that was Rainbow and ‘Stargazer’. (I went) ‘Aaah oh my God!’ It’s one of the shortest albums ever made, you know. It’s like 35 minutes long, the whole album, but it’s a classic. I’ll take that over a 90-minute long boring yawnfest. Six really incredible songs that changed the face of music. It really did, that was a game changer. It gets not enough respect from people outside the metal world,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview with Qobuz in 2024 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). Besides “Stargazer”, Rainbow’s second album also had tracks like “Starstruck”, “Tarot Woman” and “A Light in the Black”.
Even after Dio left Rainbow in 1979, Bruce continued to be a fan of the band, having praised “Down to Earth”, the only Rainbow album to feature Graham Bonnet on vocals, many times. He recently teamed up with the British singer, duetting with him on “The Fifth Force of Nature”, a track on Graham’s 2026 album “Circuit Breaker”.
Jethro Tull “Aqualung”
Like his bandmate Steve Harris, Bruce Dickinson is also a big fan of Progressive Rock music and he praised Jethro Tull many times. His favorite album by them is the classic “Aqualung”.
“Oh ‘Aqualung’, fantastic. The old overcoat and everything. I didn’t realize until I read the credits that his (Ian Anderson) wife, his first wife, wrote the lyrics to ‘Aqualung’. But yeah, it’s an amazing album. It’s almost, for me, it’s his most perfect album, you know. I love a lot of his records but ‘Aqualung’ for me, probably, because it was in a way my first (of the band),” Bruce Dickinson said.
Bruce had the chance to perform with Ian Anderson back in 2011 at the Canterbury Cathedral. They performed together Maiden’s “Revelations” and Bruce’s song “Jerusalem”. In the end of the performance Dickinson returned to the stage alongside Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward to sing “Locomotive Breath” with Anderson.
Bruce Dickinson “Chemical Wedding”
The final album listed by Bruce was his fifth solo one, “Chemical Wedding”, released in 1998. Curiously, the title of the album came from a screenplay he co-wrote with his friend and filmaker Julian Doyle. “The guy who directed this video was a friend of mine called Julian Doyle, he is a filmaker, he was the film editor of ‘Brazil’ (1985), ‘Time Bandits’ (1981), ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ (1975), ‘Life of Brian’ (1979). He was basically the the mentor of the Python’s in terms of the film world and Terry Gilliam.”
“We were actually doing a movie script together, which we sold to America, called ‘Chemical Wedding’. (It was) about the old English black magician Alesteir Crowley. The movie never got made (It was finally made in 2008), the title-track got used on the last album ‘Accident of Birth’ (1997). The title of the movie was sitting around and I thought: ‘This is such a great title. I’m gonna use it as the title of the album. So lo and behold, when the time came to do the video, I called Julian and said: ‘Ok, we’re going to do these two videos. We don’t have a great budget, can you do some guerilla movie making here?” Bruce Dickinson said in the interview with VH1 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
That album also had songs like “King in Crimson”, “The Tower” and “Jerusalem”. The film was finally made in 2008 and Bruce even appeared on it as Crowley’s landlord and as a blind man. Besides the track of the same name. were also included on the soundtrack Bruce’s “Man of Sorrows” and Iron Maiden songs “The Wicker Man” and “Can I Play with Madness”.
I'm a Brazilian journalist who always loved Classic Rock and Heavy Metal music. That passion inspired me to create Rock and Roll Garage over 9 years ago.
Music has always been a part of my life, helping me through tough times and being a support to celebrate the good ones. When I became a journalist, I knew I wanted to write about my passions.
After graduating in journalism from the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais, I pursued a postgraduate degree in digital communication at the same institution. The studies and experience in the field helped me improve the website and always bring the best of classic rock to the world!
MTB: 0021377/MG
