One of the most influential Heavy Metal vocalists in history, Bruce Dickinson has been a major inspiration for musicians around the world since he joined Iron Maiden in the early 1980s. At the time, Heavy Metal was still relatively new and he was part of the second wave of British artists who helped shape and develop the genre.
Throughout his career, he has spoken about many vocalists he admires and were fundamental to the evolution of Metal. Two of them are Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Ronnie James Dio (Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio).
Bruce Dickinson on Robert Plant and and Ronnie James Dio
Like almost all Heavy Metal vocalists, Bruce Dickinson is a big fan of Robert Plant and Ronnie James Dio, who were major inspirations for musicians within the genre. Although they were very different kinds of singers, Dickinson has mentioned both as two of his biggest influences, explaining that there is a bit of each of them in his singing style.
“The early Robert Plant stuff. Really early Zeppelin was unbelievable. My favorite stuff from that era, they did like Danish TV shows and they did live. Wow, it is like completely unedited. Raw as it was and it’s just astonishing. It’s primal,” Bruce told Loudwire in 2015. When Led Zeppelin released their debut album in 1969, Bruce was only ten years old and grew up witnessing Robert Plant’s evolution as a frontman.
He believes that Plant, alongside Ian Gillan (His favorite singer) and Paul Rodgers (Free/Bad Company) are the basis of Heavy Metal singing. “There are basically 3 bases for the metal style of singing. If you join aspects of these 3 singers, you have everything.”
Bruce Dickinson continued:
“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,” Dickinson said in an interview with Metal Rules in 2000. Plant and Ronnie James Dio had the opportunity to meet and held great admiration for each other’s work.
Although the Zeppelin frontman is six years younger than the late Dio, the American singer achieved fame much later, in 1975, when he became the frontman of Rainbow, another band that greatly influenced Bruce. Since Deep Purple is Bruce’s favorite band, their original guitarist, Ritchie Blackmore also became his favorite guitarist. So when he left Purple to form Rainbow, Bruce quickly became a fan of the new group.
Ronnie was not part of the original group of singers who laid the foundations of Metal, but he later represented the evolution of the genre, becoming one of the greatest Heavy Metal vocalists of all time. “One of my favorite tenors (were) Ronnie Dio, (he) was kind of a hybrid. Obviously as he got older his voice was much more ‘robusto’ (robust). But if you hear him on some early stuff, particularly some of the stuff he did pre-Rainbow.”
“There was an album he did called Butterfly Ball (and the Grasshopper’s Feast). He was a guest on it and Roger Glover from Deep Purple wrote a lot of it and produced it. There’s a song on there called ‘Love Is All’ and his voice is like glass. It’s so transparent and it’s just amazing. I’ve always wanted to cover that song. Not necessarily on an album, but live,” Bruce Dickinson said in an interview in 2023.
Bruce Dickinson likes Led Zeppelin but prefers Deep Purple
Although Bruce is a big fan of Led Zeppelin and Robert Plant, when it comes to choosing between them and Deep Purple, he prefers the band fronted by Ian Gillan. Led Zeppelin were not always a Hard Rock or Blues Rock band, often showcasing their Folk roots on several of their albums throughout the 1970s. One example of this is “Ramble On”, which is one of Bruce’s favorite tracks.
“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 favourite Led Zeppelin songs. But that’s just me.” Bruce Dickinson said.
It’s curious that Bruce mentioned that particular song, because he told Classic Rock in 2024 that he really got into Zeppelin after hearing their second album released in 1969. “(The first vocalist that inspired me) One hundred percent Ian Gillan on Deep Purple’s ‘In Rock’. I bought a third-hand copy of it that was scratched to fuck. I knew every note and scratch on it.”
“After that I went straight to ‘Made In Japan’, which is one of the greatest live recordings ever. Then there was the first Black Sabbath album. I didn’t get into Led Zeppelin until later when I heard Zeppelin II.” Bruce had the chance to cover a Led Zeppelin song in 1990 when Iron Maiden recorded a version for “Communication Breakdown” for the b-side of “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter”.
Rainbow’s “Rising” is one of Dickinson’s favorite albums of all time
Rainbow’s second studio album, “Rising”, released in 1976, is one of Bruce Dickinson’s favorite albums of all time. He said that although it is one of the shortest records ever made, it is much better than many longer albums. It was after hearing “Stargazer” on the radio that he first discovered the band and 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 told Qobuz in 2024 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Bruce Dickinson and Nicko McBrain performed “Rainbow in the Dark” with Dio
Bruce and Iron Maiden’s former drummer Nicko McBrain had the chance to perform with Ronnie his classic Dio song “Rainbow in the Dark”. They joined him on stage in Belgium back in 2000.
Back in 2010, shortly after Ronnie James Dio passed away at the age of 67, Iron Maiden dedicated their song “Blood Brothers” to him. Before performing the song in Italy at the time, Dickinson praised the musician and said that he was a genuinely good person. “We want to dedicate this song to one of our adopted brothers who now sadly passed away. One of the greatest mentors of myself when I was a kid as a singer.”
“A truly, truly amazing human being, I wanna dedicate this song to the memory of the great Ronnie James Dio. If there is Heaven & Hell, I think he is probably sitting in the clouds. It might be very well a cloud of his own making. He did sing a lot of songs about the devil but there wasn’t a bad f*cking bone in his body, alright? He (also invented the horns hand gesture), he invented that f*cking thing, it’s his!
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