BRUCE DICKINSON Talks Bullying - "It Leaves A Permanent Mark On Your Insides"
November 19, 2017, 7 years ago
Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson's new memoir What Does This Button Do?, has debuted at the No. 10 position on the New York Times' Hardcover Non-Fiction Best-Seller list. He recently spoke with WPXI.com about the autobiography; an excerpt is available below.
While Dickinson conveniently excludes the dirt on his personal relationships and barely touches on band politics, he does reveal some personal demons, especially in a passage that chronicles being bullied as a child. Those bad experiences at boarding school had a lasting effect on him.
"A really nasty bullying experience, whatever, it never leaves you," he says. "It leaves a permanent mark on your insides and that manifests in different people in different ways. With me, it makes me very angry. I get really cross, you know. If I see somebody else being bullied, it makes me really angry. So it's a bit like Hulk. You don't want to see me when I'm angry."
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Heavy metal pioneers since their formation in 1975, Iron Maiden have sold over 90 million albums and played over 2000 shows in 63 countries, making them one of the most successful and globally influential bands of all time. One of the world’s most storied musicians, Bruce Dickinson has been the band’s internationally-acclaimed lead singer for more than 30 years, and quite aside from the decades spent delivering high-octane performances with his larger-than-life persona, Bruce has lived an extraordinary off-stage existence too. A true polymath, Bruce is, or has been, an airline pilot and captain, an aviation entrepreneur, a beer brewer, motivational speaker, film scriptwriter, twice-published novelist, radio presenter, TV actor and a world-class fencer.
Over the last couple of years, and throughout Iron Maiden’s The Book Of Souls World Tour, which has covered 39 countries and 117 shows since February 2016, Bruce has turned his unbridled creativity to writing his memoirs, longhand (in seven A4 notebooks no less).
In What Does This Button Do?, Bruce (a man who famously never gives interviews about his personal life) shares, for the first time, the most fascinating recollections, including his thirty years with Maiden, the early days, his childhood within the eccentric British school system, going solo, realising his dream of flying jumbo jets and his recent battle with tongue cancer. Bruce Dickinson is so much more than the frontman of one of the biggest bands on the planet. A rock icon, a true renaissance man, Bruce has been, and remains, a man of legend.
Bold, honest, intelligent and very entertaining, What Does This Button Do? is the long-awaited window into the life, heart and mind of one of our most adventurous and multifaceted sons. The global publication on October 19th will be accompanied with a commensurate international book tour. More details to come soon.