Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on Janick Gers

Since Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith returned to Iron Maiden in 1999, the band has three guitarists. Janick Gers originally joined in 1990 and has remained a member ever since but many fans have differing opinions on whether the band was better with two guitarists or its current three-guitar lineup. Over the years, the band members have been asked about the subject,and Bruce has also shared his opinion of Gers.

What is Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on Janick Gers

Bruce Dickinson had known Janick and admired him long before he was even considered for Iron Maiden. They grew closer in the late 1980s when they started working together, and the singer may have saved him from giving up on music. “I had known Janick from his days in a band called White Spirit, who were contemporaries of Samson. We were both Ian Gillan fans, and Janick clearly had quite a bit of Mr. Blackmore infusing his style, in particular the spectacular knee-wobbling lunges that would punctuate his dancing antics. Imagine a whirling dervish with a guitar being suddenly deposited onto a red-hot plate and it may give you some idea of the Geordie guitar jive that resulted.”

“We had, of course, kept in touch, and we kept bumping into each other as I scaled the height of Iron Maiden success and Janick passed through a series of bands. As we sat having a beer, he seemed resigned, somewhat depressed, about the state of the music industry, saying, ‘They’re more interested in your fucking haircut than whether you can play guitar.’”

He continued:

“Janick was selling his equipment: his old Stratocasters, Marshall cabs and vintage amps. He was doing a sociology degree and thought about teaching, or, well, anything except music. I admired his sincerity, but he was far too good to be wasted on teaching sociology,” Bruce Dickinson said in his autobiography “What Does This Button Do?”

Around that time, Bruce was offered the opportunity to record a song for the soundtrack of the 1989 film “A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child”. He decided to call Janick and invite him to be part of the project. “I phoned Janick. ‘You can’t sell your gear. You’ve got to do a track with me, and if you still want to sell it I’ll buy it off you and you can use it when you want,’” he recalled in his book.

The song was later reworked by Iron Maiden and included on their 1990 album “No Prayer for the Dying”, the same year Adrian Smith left the band and was replaced by Janick. Bruce thought Janick was a good fit for Iron Maiden, although he was a very different guitarist from his predecessor. That same year Dickinson also released his debut solo album “Tattooed Millionaire”, which also featured Gers.

The difference between Adrian Smith and Janick Gers according to Bruce Dickinson

“An essential piece of the Iron Maiden jigsaw was now missing, and the new piece, in the guise of Janick Gers, didn’t match the space. There is no reason why Janick should have sounded like a copy of Adrian at all. His style was clearly different, but we were bereft of the melodic duelling with Dave Murray’s more florid style.”

“Dave tended to fuse torrents of notes cascading over the solo sections, whereas Adrian always felt as if his solos were on the edge of a precipice, real cliff-hangers, so that you hung on every note. Jan’s guitar style and sound were more spiky and less processed, but I hoped that his arrival would see a bit more of the Janick that played on ‘Tattooed Millionaire’ start to rub off on the Iron Maiden sound. Caught up in the enthusiasm of a first album, it was too much to expect of him, but our next album, Fear of the Dark, was an opportunity to move things on in a world that was changing fast,” he said in his book.

When Bruce Dickinson decided to leave Iron Maiden in 1993, Janick Gers remained in the band and played on the albums featuring Blaze Bayley on vocals. When Dickinson returned in 1999, the band also brought Adrian Smith back to restore its classic lineup. However, unlike what happens in many bands, Janick, who had originally joined as Smith’s replacement, wasn’t let go. Instead, Iron Maiden expanded its lineup for the first time, adding a third guitarist. That’s how the band has remained for more than two decades. Janick himself once explained how the three guitarists divide their roles in the band.

Janick Gers said:

“I know I can play just by myself in any band, I know that Adrian can do that too. And I know that Dave would fit into any band as the main guitarist. So the first thing you do is throw your ego away. Then you start looking at how can we make Iron Maiden sound bigger and better. It’s a case of being very subtle, a way of playing between ourselves. Being able to step back and let other people move forward. Having like, just creating tapestries within the songs and trying to make songs sound better for having the three guitarists.”

“(..) There’s plenty to choose from between us three which one plays what. We never tread on anyone’s toes because there’s just room for all of us. We make the room by playing different themes and we all have such different styles. It makes the band sound bigger, it doesn’t squash it, you know. That’s the feeling we get on stage, whether that comes across in the mix is another thing. It depends on the guy on front.”

“But, no, I never feel, squashed. I’m quite happy to take a step back and push other people forward to make the band sound better. That’s the trick – it’s not guitar frenzy. We’re not trying to be the three best guitarists in the world. We’re trying to make Iron Maiden sound better than any other band,” Janick Gers said in an interview with Y’Know in 2011.

How Iron Maiden reacted when Steve Harris had the idea to have three guitar players

According to guitarist Adrian Smith, the band thought it was a weird idea at first when the leader Steve Harris proposed that they should continue with three guitar players. As he once recalled, the first band that came to mind was Lynyrd Skynyrd, who also had many guitar players. “Steve, he does come out with some whacky ideas that at first. You think they’re not going to work, so he suggested to guys, ‘Why don’t we have three guitars?’”

“You can imagine what the room was like when he said that. (Laughs) Probably Dave and Janick looked at each other, like, ‘What? ‘Lynyrd Maiden.’ But I joined up and we went down to Portugal to write some songs. I had the song ‘The Wicker Man’, I had the riff. Someone said, ‘Has anyone got any new ideas?’ I started playing that and then away we went. We never looked back.”

He continued:

“Well, put it this way: If we had three Yngwie Malmsteens or three Ritchie Blackmores, there would have been a fight after about five minutes. But because Dave is one of my oldest friends, we’ve worked together for years, we know the score. Janick is a lovely guy. But I have to say Jan wasn’t going to change what he was going to play.”

“He’s just very set in his ways. I sensed that immediately. So I started looking at different ways of doing things. I’ve been playing with drop-D tuning in Bruce’s band, so I got used to that. When we first joined up, we played ‘Wrathchild’, I played it in drop-D tuning. ‘Run To The Hills’ was in D. So again, I tuned it down. It gave it a slightly different sound. So I was bringing that in, playing lower octaves on the harmonies and stuff like that. I played a lot of stuff totally different than what I did when I was in the band before, which is quite interesting,” Adrian Smith told My Planet Rocks in 2020.