The Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson joined the band in 1981 and a few months later recorded “The Number of The Beast”, his first album as their frontman, which also became their best-selling record. It was the beginning of a new big era of the band, which would still have other classic albums like “Piece of Mind” (1983), “Powerslave” (1984) and “Fear of The Dark” (1992).
Although they were essentially a Heavy Metal band, the musicians, including Dickinson, were heavily influenced by Progressive Rock bands as well. One of them was Jethro Tull, led by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Ian Anderson.
The Jethro Tull album that Bruce Dickinson said is his favorite
Bruce Dickinson and the band’s leader, bassist and main songwriter Steve Harris have always been huge fans of Jethro Tull. Over the decades they talked about the group many times and Bruce always said that his favorite album by them is “Aqualung”, released in 1971.
In an interview with Rolling Stone Indonesia back in 2011, reported by Gibson, the Iron Maiden frontman mentioned five albums which were some of his favorites of all time. One of them was, of course, Tull’s best-selling one. “Ian Anderson, ‘Aqualung’ was a big go to (album). What a great record, great lyrics. All those lyrics, he was a great storyteller with his lyrics. He had a kind of a Folk tradition thing going on in the background. Folk songs tell stories, they’re the original Rock and Roll storytelling,” Bruce told Loudwire in 2024 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
In the same year, when he was promoting his solo album “Mandrake Project”, the musician praised the album again, this time in an interview with Qobuz (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).“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’.”
Dickinson was right, Anderson’s ex-wife Jennie Franks, helped with some part of the lyrics to the track. Besides that song, other famous ones featured on the album are: “Mother Goose”, “Locomotive Breath” and “Cross-Eyed Mary” which was curiously covered by Iron Maiden. Their Metal version was released in 1983 as the b-side of the single “The Trooper”.
Ian Anderson and Dickinson performed together
Ian Anderson had the chance to meet and perform with Bruce Dickinson once back in 2011 at the Canterbury Cathedral. The Jethro Tull leader invited him to be part of the show. They performed the Iron Maiden song “Revelations” and Bruce’s song “Jerusalem”. Then he joined Jethro Tull in the end, alongside Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward to sing “Locomotive Breath”.
Formed in Luton, Bedfordshire, England in 1967, Jethro Tull released 24 studio albums so far. They have sold an estimated amount of more than 60 million records worldwide. Their most recent album is “Curious Ruminant”, released in 2025.
During his career, Bruce Dickinson released three studio albums as the vocalist of Samson. Then 13 with Iron Maiden and seven as a solo artist. The most recent one is “The Mandrake Project”, released in 2024.
