Former IRON MAIDEN singer Paul Di'Anno spoke with Edmonton's Vue Weekly recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Vue Weekly: You've been solo for far longer than you were with Iron Maiden, but those first two albums have stood the test of time and are a pretty solid foundation to be standing on.

Di'Anno: "Oh, yeah. I think this year or next year is the anniversary of the first album and it doesn't seem that anyone's gonna be doing anything to celebrate it which is a bit of a shame, really. I don't really want to do that much, but then again, you look at it in another light and some of the Maiden fans of them first two albums, some of the younger ones haven't seen me doing the songs or they've only heard my versions of some of the Maiden stuff we put into the set which is a hell of a lot heavier and faster than the originals, so it could be interesting. The Maiden songs I put in my set I keep saying never again, never again, and then when you get onstage and you see how much they're loving it then it's like, 'Oh, shit, I'm never going to get rid of these songs, they're going to have to stay forever.' But then again, I shouldn't knock it because they've given me a fantastic career. You shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you."

Vue Weekly: Since Maiden, you've had a few bands of your own.

Di'Anno: "Yeah, there hasn't really been that many bands. There was obviously Battlezone, but Battlezone became Killers. We had a few sort of lineup changes and then we changed the name because we got all this shit from the record company. That's the bane of my life: record companies. I seem to fall out with them really quickly because they want one album every three years and I'm like, 'Fuck that, no, I'm touring.' I don't write that quickly—I'm a little bit slow on that side of it—I can't write when I'm on the road, and I'm always on the road so I'm never home to write songs."

Vue Weekly: Are you working on anything new now?

Di'Anno: "We did five new tracks in Germany last year—it's very industrialized—but we got in a bit of an argument with the record company and we told them to piss off, basically. So I kept them songs and a friend of mine where I am right at the minute in Salisbury down in Southwest England, has just handed me 16 pieces of music so I'm going to go away when I have a bit of time and see what I can come up with for that."

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