In an interview on Late Motiv, Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson said that the band will never retire.
He said:
“As far as I’m concerned anyway, I don’t see any reason why we should ever retire. As an airline captain, I was always told that nobody ever dies on an airplane.
“Even if the guy’s head is severed from his body, he’s not dead, because if the boss, the captain… If somebody says, ‘The guy’s head has fallen off.’ ‘Well, is he dead?’ ‘Well, he’s not dead until somebody legally says he’s dead.’
“So, nobody dies until somebody stands up and says, ‘Yup. He’s definitely dead.’ ‘Ha! You’re responsible then. You killed him.’ So, it’s the same with rock and roll bands. We will never die. Even if we are actually dead, we will still never actually die.”
Asked about the claims that he was invited to join the British Olympic fencing team but declined due to touring commitments with the band, Bruce replied:
“When you’re a pop star, rock star, whatever, people like to make up stories about you that are not a hundred percent true. I was okay as a fencer.
“If you want the reality of it, I was No. 7 in the country. The Olympic team is No. 1, 2 and 3. No. 7 is not No. 3. So to say that I was gonna be on the Olympic team – no. It’s not gonna happen.
“Would I like to be on the Olympic team? Yeah. Sure. The blazers look really nice. The tracksuit is pretty cool.”
Asked about flying the group in its own plane, Dickinson replied:
“Everybody thinks that… When we had the big airliners with Iron Maiden, they say, ‘Where is the Iron Maiden plane today?’ And I say, ‘Well, we haven’t got an Iron Maiden plane.’
“There’s an expression: if it flies, floats or fornicates, rent it. And we rented it. We rented the airplane. And I worked for the airline for nearly 10 years that we rented the airplane from.
“‘Cause I worked as a full-time airline pilot. I had six and a half thousand hours of jet flying, taking people on holiday. They never came back. [Laughs]
“By the time I was flying the band around, I had already been flying lots of other people around. I flew the British government around, I flew the heads of various African countries around, I flew two hundred and 20 people on holiday going wherever.
“So if it was okay with them, it was pretty much okay with the band, I think. And it kept me away from drinking myself to death as well. Tea and coffee – that’s about it, really.”
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