Bruce Dickinson Is Fine With Iron Maiden Being ‘Dinosaur Rock’
Bruce Dickinson says he has no problem with Iron Maiden being perceived as “dinosaur rock” in terms of how the band makes albums.
With the group's 17th album Senjutsu just having been released, the singer was asked by Sirius XM’s Eddie Trunk why the NWOBHM icons kept returning to work with producer Kevin Shirley, who’s now taken part in six of their studio projects.
“Kevin's a very good producer; a very good, knowledgeable, technical producer,” Dickinson said. “But we are difficult to work with. I haven't worked with that many bands, but I've worked with a fair number of musicians, and I know in general how people tend to work. Nobody works like we do. We are definitely a one-off.”
He added that Maiden had gathered a number of “eccentricities” when it came to creating music, and suggested that other bands who’d achieved notable longevity had done the same. “I’ve done solo albums and things… and you work in a more kind of traditional way,” he continued. “But we, as a band, need to get together and play in a big room and actually make a lot of noise… I mean, it's old-school stuff.
“And when people say, ‘You’re kind of like dinosaur rock,’ I'm like, 'Yeah. Yeah. It's good.' And that's not a bad thing. How many dinosaurs are there left in the world? If you're gonna be a dinosaur, you wanna be a T. rex. What do you feed a T. rex? Anything it wants. And it's kind of like that with being a producer of Iron Maiden— you’re part of the team but you’ve got to play by our rules. And there's a lot of producers that couldn't cope… they would rapidly come up against a brick wall with some of our opinions and practices in the studio.”
Listen to Iron Maiden's 'Senjutsu'