Jason Nahrung from Australia's The Courier Mail spoke to IRON MAIDEN vocal legend Bruce Dickinson recently about a number of topics including the much-anticipated Somewhere Back In Time tour. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

Dickinson says next year's tour – the band's fourth visit to Australia, and first since 1992 – should satisfy decades of badgering from fans wanting to hear Maiden's hits live Down Under, but doesn't seek to replicate the Powerslave tour's past glory.

"We're not trying to rewrite the tour. It won't be Live After Death word for word. I won't be wearing my jocks on the outside of my Spandex. We'll be re-creating the cool bits, but the main thing is the music. We don't want to look like our own version of an Iron Maiden cover band."

The tour focuses on Maiden's peak years in the 1980s, when Beast, Piece Of Mind and Powerslave helped push it to the top of the metal ladder, further bolstered by hits from Somewhere in Time (1986) and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988). Maiden has remained an inspiration to bands and has enjoyed a resurgence of support in recent years thanks to solid studio albums and live performances.

Says Dickinson of the band's enduring popularity: "Maiden is a unique band. You could say we're one of the last of the originals. If anything, the fan base has regenerated. There's a whole new generation – two new generations – of kids turning up. We played Sweden and filled 50,000-seat soccer stadiums. We never filled a soccer stadium in the mid '80s. You look now and the first 50 rows are 16-year-olds. On our last tour we were able to play a new album (the 80-minute A Matter Of Life And Death) in its entirety, and still sell out a worldwide tour of arenas. The fans are attracted to us because we are still an active musical force."

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