(Part II)

E - You've been busy with toys, Maiden, solo stuff & radio show. What is a typical day like consist of for you.

B - For example, Monday [ed - March 18] I had to go and record two three hour radio shows, which I did during the morning and evening. Then Tuesday morning, which is the morning of the show day, was run the kids to school followed by digging out all of my stage clothes. Then I had some domestic stuff to do like bills, chores and check the e-mails all that kind of stuff. Then I had to do a face to face interview in the BBC with the band Vex Red and interview them. It was a half-hour segment for one of the shows later on. Then I hoped on the subway, oh that's what I had to do on Monday as well is go fetch my car from the garage where is was getting a new radio put in it. Then go down to Brixton on the subway. Got to Brixton did the show then went straight home and went to bed.

E - No big after show party?

B - I was pretty acutely nervous about the gigs. I haven't done this in 14 months. It all very well rehearsing but rehearsing is not like doing the gig. You hammer yourself a lot more when you're doing shows. Trying to be fairly cautious about what goes on.

E - So it seems like a typical day is pretty busy.

B - Yea. What did I have down there? Monday was 1-8pm pre-record the BBC. Oh yea that's it, 9 o'clock in the evening I went down to Brixton to do the sound check for two hours and got home about midnight. Tuesday morning I did the school run. Ahh yea, that's what I had to do, then I had to go down to Gatwick airport at 11 o'clock in the morning and meet somebody for lunch for about three hours, drove back into town and did the this interview for the BBC then left for the show. Then did the show and went home to bed. Then Wednesday I did nothing except the show in the evening. By Wednesday, I stayed in bed all morning. I just kept quiet, rested my voice, did the show in the evening and went home to bed. Following day I went out and did Top of the Pops in the morning then went to Brixton and did the shows with the webcast and everything and then got absolutely hammered at the party afterwards. I thought well I can now. The following day I had to be at the BBC from 12:30-2pm to go and pre-record two new segments and then from 2 o'clock until 7pm I was at Virgin Radio with Masa Ito doing live Japanese radio and TV interviews. Then on Saturday the 23rd, I had a meeting at school for the kids from 10-12, then at 1 o'clock I did a one-hour segment for the BBC interviewing Jake Burns from Stiff Little Fingers. Then on the 24th I flew to New York to do interviews. My weeks have been pretty busy since January. The week before it was photo shoots. Monday was do the school run, turn up to the network launch of the radio thing for breakfast followed by a photo shoot, followed by three hours of promo, and liquid news with the BBC in the evening. Tuesday was recording two shows all day at the BBC. Wednesday was rehearsals and the school run. I went off and went fencing in the evening, as well. The 14th I went investigating some strange property, so I drove 600 miles to kormel and back then had a launch party at 6 Music in the evening. Friday morning I did the school run and rehearsing in the evening and another photo session. Basically it was all kids time Saturday and Sunday except for a radio interview, which I took the kids to that and said I'm being interviewed live for this Iron Maiden thing come see the day job [Laughs]. Rehearsals on Sunday evening were cancelled because Nicko got sick. So that brought me to the previous week. Those are my days and in between you slot in all the normal stuff.

E - From what I heard on your interview on the Al Handleman show you mentioned a box set coming out later this year.

B - I've got to say I am the world's worst at plugging retrospective Iron Maiden releases because I do tend to concern my self principally with a new live album or studio album. Retrospective stuff I'm like well, I guess it's coming out. Not being a massive collector of minutia even my own. I've discovered occasionally will pitch up and suggest I do a track that I forgot I ever recorded. And I go; I remember that one oh yea, hmm that would be kind of cool. I play pretty fast and loose with things like that [laughs]. But I have seen slip cases and jewel cases, and rumors flying around the office. There are these live albums out there, as well. They are going to get released possibly towards the end of the year, which will be a great thing because they are really cool, especially the Hammersmith Odeon one.

E - Are they just two from 1982 or from the whole career?

B - One of them was recorded for the BBC, A Reading Festival with Paul Di'Anno, from the Killers Tour. There's another one that was The Number of the Beast Tour at Reading Festival and there's another one, which is the Hammersmith Odeon show.

E - So we are just talking those three. Nothing from Somewhere in Time or Seventh Son?

B - No, don't think so.

E - With Brave New World you entered the Billboard charts in the mid thirties. Overall were you and the rest of the band pleased with the sales of Brave New World?

B - I think when I went into doing it my most optimistic I thought it might go gold. It didn't but it certainly didn't do the contrary. It sold somewhere about 250,000-300,0000, in the states. That actually is remarkable compared to the derisory figures that any of our contemporaries are selling. We were out selling them by 10 or 20 to one and then looking at other comparable new bands and existing metal type bands are doing in the states they are still good figures. So actually I was thinking wow 300,000 is really fu**ing good. In the rest of the world and in Europe it was extraordinary we were pretty much back up to mid-eighties type figures.

E - It's safe to say that Brave New World put Maiden back on the map.

B - Absolutely, no question about that.

E - So the pressure for the new album is pretty big.

B - Yes. But then it always is if you care about it. So that's nothing new. I'm not worried about that actually because there is a lot of material kicking around. I think we need to make sure we focus it the right way. Brave New World, eventually with the cover we ended up with was great. There were so many problems getting that cover together because nothing we did seemed to quite click. And in the end we all saw this picture of the landscape and the Brave New World thing and we were like, yes that's it, brilliant. It summed it up. So you've got to get everything right so that you get the message of the music is reflected in every little cell and atom of the packaging. And that's when people get it and understand it. That's going to be one of the challenges and that's something I going to scratch my noddle and see if I can plant a few seeds in people's heads.

E - The setlist. It seems like what people want to hear songs like "Children of the Damned" not necessarily "Run to the Hills" or "Two Minutes to midnight." Is that something you guys are aware of?

B - It something we are aware of and its something we stubbornly refused to exceed to. We took a pretty hard line on it. In fact we only made the decision to play "Run to the Hills" the morning of the show. I think the decision has been vindicated by the response to the album. You've got to go out and commit yourself to a new album and you've got to go out and play it and really be committed to it because otherwise people think yea it's a nostalgia band with an album tacked on. And there are too many of those kicking around. If the purpose of what we do is going out and just making money out of doing concerts then effectively what we become an Iron Maiden covers band. If that's what we want to do then that's one possible option but that's not an option we wish to pursue. If on the other hand we say what were all about is new music and fresh music then there's no choice you have to commit yourself to a new album at the risk of pissing off some of your nostalgic fans. Some fans may say I'm not going to see them again. We say ok. For every guy that doesn't want to come see us again you know what we got 16 year olds coming to see us who have never seen us before and they take what we do a face value. They might say we love that "Brave New World" song or we think that "Wickerman" song is cool. They don't know that there were 10 albums before it. They may discover it later. The new fans are equally as important and they are the people that have the new record.

E - Was Roy ever considered to produce Brave New World?

B - No.

E - Did you ever want him to produce or is it to close to home for the rest of the guys?

B - It would have been too close to home for the rest of the guys. I don't think Roy would have wanted to do it [laughs]. Maiden can be a very strange animal to work with. It works quite unlike any other band anywhere on the planet. A curious mix of personalities and strangely conservative at some of the things and strangely fast and loose with some of the other things. It just a strange odd ball mixture.

E - Time for a quick quiz on your recollection of you solo lyrics. I'm going to read you a couple of verses and you finish off the next verse.

There on a lonely desert hill-top the pilgrims huddle closer," What's the next line?

B - Umm, not a clue. It's from "Arc of Space."

E - I'll give you half credit. The next line was, "waiting for a sign, the coming silver shrine." All right, next one.

"Victim gravel on your knees Victim of your own disease"

B - ughhh…

E - This is a B-side.

B - Is that "Headswitch?"

E - No. "Armchair Hero."

B - Ahh, gotcha.

E - "Make my day why don't ya…"

B - "Make my day why don't ya from your armchair your're a hero."

E - I'll give you half credit on that one.

"I'd strap my DNA to it A living device, the light of my life"

B - Well, that's "Inside the Machine." But no, I can't remember the next line.

E - "Strange face of beauty, that's my machine." Another half credit on that Bruce [Laughs].

B - I just kind of dig them out and sing them. I actually had to bring all of the Maiden words with me to rehearsals because I thought how does "Number of the Beast" go? Now, is it torches blazed first or is it the other way around. I don't know let me have a look. I don't have an auto queue and s**t like that. I do have to just have a quick mental refresher.

E - Last song. If you have gotten those I don't think your gonna get this.

"Senator husband going for broke. I've gotta prove I'm not a joke"

B - ugh… "We smoked the stuff in '69. Now it's different It's a crime."

E - You got it. "Lickin' the gun."

B - I couldn't remember the title of the song but I could remember the lyrics.

E - I'll give you a passing grade I'll give you a B minus.

B - I thought those lyrics were quite surprisingly good. I'm thinking did I write that S**t [Laughs]?

E - The Aeryon. There was a lot of controversy. Was it a serious consideration you were giving it?

B - It wasn't going to be a Aeryon project. What is was going to be was a song writing collaboration. He sent some material over on CD and I was listening to it and I made a couple of comments and said send me a stuff a bit more like this track or this track and will see if we can do some writing. With a view to potentially doing a project. All the time it was a fairly sensitive issue because I was going to be working with Roy and we were going to be doing a new solo record and I didn't want to not do a solo records with Roy. Well, all of a sudden it's all over Aeryon website that he's doing an album with me. Then I stared getting flaming e-mails from Merck and from Rod saying, who is this bozo? I was like awww, strange how this has happened. Apparently he had sent an e-mail out to his fan club saying he was working with me and we were going to do an album together. Well, DUH!

E - So, basically if he had kept his mouth shut then perhaps something would have happened?

B - Quite possibly.

E - But the fact that he spilled the beans ruined everything.

B - Yea, basically because what happens is that between himself, Sanctuary and everybody else everybody else feels stupid and it's very hard to retrieve that situation. Then all these letters and big pronouncements came out and I was like the wheels have fallen off the bus here. This is not going to work out at all. Working with Roy all these years nobody has gone and sent e-mails out saying we are working on these great two songs that nobody knows about that we are gonna release on an album that you don't know about. Nobody's ever done that who I've ever worked with. Especially not anything where I work with the guy on one song and thought this would be an interesting experiment let's see what happens type vibe and if great stuff happens then maybe. It turns into I'm working with Aeryon. Cynical old me didn't look and think wow this is going to be some pretty good publicity for ol' Aeryon to anybody in the world who's never heard of his project. Now it's maybe me be over cynical it may have been Aeryon being over zealous. I can't believe it was just an error of judgement. It's not something you do. I know, if I have a lot of songs I've written with Steve and we're going to release them next month and nobody knows about it the last thing I'd do and imagined it could get kept secret would be to send an e-mail to all the members of my fan club.

E - I want to jump to September 11th. You were there in New York City. Where were you when everything happened?

B - I was on the roof of the hotel sun bathing. People were wondering on the roof and peering downtown. You couldn't actually see anything. I asked what's everybody looking at and they said there's an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center and I'm thinking a little Cessna or something. So I went back and lied down again. I thought there's obviously been a few people killed and I don't want to rubberneck and that's that. Next thing I hear is two F-15's going down the Hudson [River] low and I'm thinking that's not right something's weird, what's going on? The next guy that came up I asked him what type of plane crashed into the World Trade Center? He said it was an airliner. I went, Oh s**t! So that's me off the roof. I watched it on TV like everyone else. I got a couple of phone calls out straight away to the office in London saying, please phone everybody on your address list who knows me including wife and everybody incase I don't get anymore phone calls out of New York cause this looks like this is major. I'm not gonna get out of the city and they may shut the phone lines down I don't know what's going to go on and in fact that's what happen. When the Towers collapsed I guess it screwed all of the telecommunications. I was glad I got the phone call out. Of course the cell phones were jammed as well. You could barely use cell phones either cause all of the circuits were busy. So I managed to get phone calls out to London saying that I was ok. Cause they were watching it on TV, as well and they went "Where's Bruce?" "Oh, he's in New York." And everybody thought that everybody was in it for a while. That day and all of the following day I just walked around the city. I must have walked all the way down to 14th street, all the uptown again, all the way down, all the way across town. I just walked and walked and walked. It was just strange. There was no panic everyone was real quite and everyone was real calm, kind of dazed. I went back the following day in the afternoon to stand in line to give blood. They told me to go home. They didn't need any they had more than enough. So I just sat on my hands an waited. I managed to get out Saturday morning on the first or second flights to the UK.

E - Being that you're a pilot does this altar your feelings on flying since you have family.

B - I actually have a fair amount of confidence in the security procedures on board airliners. I am far more worried about for example, the captain keeling over in the cockpit of a heart attack. That's much more likely than a terrorist threat and in fact people are trained for the captain keeling over in the cockpit. Pilot incapacitation is far more likely to happen than a terrorist threat. There are many more ways of things happening in airliners that happen. Air traffic control mistakes things like that. Those are far more likely to happen than terrorist outrages and even though they are so unlikely to happen that it doesn't worry me. In fact last year, even taking into account the jetliners that were deliberately crashed and the loss of life last year was the safest year for air transport in the history of air transport. Even taking into account the 4 jetliners that were deliberately crashed. That's actually a remarkable statistic. If you take out the deliberate crashes and you then take out the old Soviet Union and some dodgy places on Asia and you take out those accidents, then you get an accident record, which is virtually nil. You are so much more likely crossing the street or in a car crash. In Europe everyday there is the equivalent of a full jumbo jet of people dying in flaming wrecks on the roads. If there were a jumbo jet crashing every single day loaded with passengers, nobody would ever get on an airplane again. We regularly get in out cars and do just that and we think we're safe. There's this guy in England, an international cricketer Ben Holyoke who died. He drove down an off ramp, in a Porsche wasn't going to fast, there was a patch of oil on the road went straight off the road hit a concrete wall and dead and his girlfriend severely injured. What did concern me and what I had to deal with, after September 11th, was the kind of velocitiness in terms being a pilot. I could not believe that these people had so deceived all of the people around them in order to effect this mass murder. To me being a pilot was always about being a pilot first and foremost whether you flew jet fighters or whether you flew little ultra light micro lights or whatever you did it was just the joy of flight. It was about the living of life and not the taking of life and that I think really shocked me.