In a new interview with Bryan Rolli of Billboard, promoting his autobiography, What Does This Button Do?, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson discussed beating cancer and having the time of his life. An excerpt is available below.

​Billboard:​  You’re still playing some of the best shows of your career with Iron Maiden. What made you think, “Now is the time to write a book”?

Dickinson:​  "The endpoint of the book -- in fact, the motivation for actually doing it, which is the question you asked -- the motivation for doing it now came largely because I had this diagnosis of throat cancer two-and-a-half years ago. I got clear of that, and that obviously makes you reevaluate quite a few things. People have been asking me to do a biography for the last 10 years, and I’d always go on, 'Maybe, but not yet. It’s a little bit too soon. I’m too busy.' I knew how much effort it involved, because I’d done some writing before."

"And suddenly, I got this diagnosis with throat cancer, and I got over it, and I thought, 'You know what, that’s a great endpoint for a book. Maybe I should do it now.' And really, it’s as simple as that."

Billboard:​  It’s great to see you beat cancer and have a new lease on life. That must make the book so much more meaningful for both you and the readers.

Dickinson:​  "Again, it’s a great getting-off point. There’s another 40,000 words that didn’t make the book that I wrote, that we edited out -- not because they weren’t good stories, but because the narrative of the book really kind of races along. It’s a real page-turner, and my editor at HarperCollins wanted to edit the book like it was a novel. So we spent three days editing. It wasn’t a very long edit, but we spent three days locked away with 600 pages, and we tried to get it down to 400 pages. So we were taking out great chunks of stories and anecdotes in their entirety. So we’ve got some great stories and anecdotes for something else later. But it doesn’t detract from the book as is."

To read the complete interview, visit this location.

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.