What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography

by Bruce Dickinson

The biggest factor that changes ‘Saturday night out with the lads in a band’ to ‘every Saturday spent in rehab or therapy’ is money and drugs. Access to either can seriously damage your mental health.

Eddie is Iron Maiden’s mascot, monster, alter ego – call it what you will. Part supernatural, part primal, part aggressive adolescent, Eddie is a super anti-hero with no backstory. Eddie doesn’t give a fuck. He just is.

When people say ‘bad weather’ in Britain it usually means it’s wet. In North America ‘bad weather’ means you might die.

In the beginning, of course, it’s not like that. In the beginning it is awkward footwork, unsteady coordination, patient repetition, constant correction and constant frustration until the movements start to automate, and the mind can control the intention without having to worry about the act.

Be afraid and be scared, but panic will kill you, not fear.

The city that hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics had been smashed beyond recognition.

A commercial station could have achieved the same results out of two broom cupboards at a fraction of the waste.

I always regretted deadlines in interviews. I hated the pressure of time. People need space to breathe and relax. That is when the truth is spoken, and you find that it’s not the cardboard cut-out character that people expect.

‘Storm, I want to do an album cover based around a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and the design philosophy of Kelly Johnson’s Skunkworks.’

Even on tour, aviation kept popping up in unexpected places. A visit to Boeing in Seattle meant meeting my namesake, Bruce Dickinson,

There were a few more bookings until, one day, in Sweden, the light-bulb moment happened and IBM’s global conference gave me a standing ovation.

I suppose that, as the world turns politically correct shades of beige, there will always be a demand for oddballs who scream for a living and fly airliners.

On 12 December I was diagnosed with head and neck cancer and the world stopped dead in its tracks.