In a new interview with Vulture, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson discusses his new new memoir What Does This Button Do?, his time in and out of Maiden, and more.

A couple of excerpts from the interview follow...

Vulture: Early on, when you played in Samson, you’d already learned so many lessons before even joining Iron Maiden. Was that lesson in humility a good jump-start?

Bruce Dickinson: "Everything that possibly could go wrong did go wrong. To compound it, one of the reasons was that the entire unit was permanently chemically impaired. It’s goofy, but it was kind of endearing. Then, joining Iron Maiden was stepping up. It was like going from Little League to the Mets overnight."

Vulture: You mentioned that you didn’t know how Iron Maiden would sustain without falling into irrelevance. Why was that so important to you?

"You can’t do that. Plowing the same furrow would maybe be the term. The audience would probably be happy with that, although it would slowly diminish. The band would become less relevant and gradually turn into a blob with the rest of the metal community. That’s not what I wanted. I learned so much when I was out of the band. I was a way better singer when I came back to Maiden than when I left. Consequently, the album we did when I came back, Brave New World, I think is one of our classic records of all time. That was because all the energy was back. Everything in the band changed at that point.

"Before I’d left, there’d always been these little power struggles. When I came back, it was much more honest. People always say, “Maiden is like a family,” like a family is a good thing. But families aren’t necessarily good things. A happy family is a great thing, but families are just random events that happen. That organisms pop out of the same hole, that’s no reason why they should like each other, in truth. All this “Blood is thicker than water” … sorry guys, if your brother is an asshole, he’s an asshole!

"We’re probably more friends now than we ever have been. We’re a band of brothers born out of the same mother, which is Iron Maiden. The mother ship gave birth to our relationship. We all accept that now. My loyalty is not to Steve, Adrian, or Janick. It’s to Iron Maiden and on that basis we have a great relationship. It means that we forgive each other, all of our little trespasses, if you want to use the Lord’s Prayer. I think it’s the same for everybody in the band, like, “Nu uh, it’s about Maiden, stupid.”

Read the full interview at  Vulture.com.

Following the massively successful global tour of 2016/17 in support of their sixteenth studio album The Book Of Souls, Iron Maiden will take to the road again in 2018 with a series of arena and festival shows in Europe on the Legacy Of The Beast World Tour, opening in Tallinn, Estonia on May 26th and finishing at the O2 Arena, in London.

Tickets for all shows are on sale now and can be found here. A tour trailer can be found below.

Legacy Of The Beast 2018 tour dates:

May
26 - Saku Arena - Tallinn, Estonia
28 - Hartwall Arena - Helsinki, Finland
29 - Hartwall Arena - Helsinki, Finland

June
1 - Tele2 Arena - Stockholm, Sweden
3 - Dahls Arena - Trondheim Rocks, Norway
5 - Royal Arena - Copenhagen, Denmark
7 - Sweden Rock Festival - Solvesborg, Sweden
9 - Rockavaria, Königsplatz - Munich, Germany
10 - Expo Plaza - Hannover, Germany
13 - Waldbuhne - Berlin, Germany
16 - Firenze Rocks - Firenze, Italy
17 - Novarock Festival - Nickelsdorf, Austria
20 - Letnany Airport - Prague, Czech Republic
22 - Graspop - Dessel, Belgium
24 - Hellfest - Clisson, France
26 - Geneva Arena - Geneva, Switzerland
28 - Volt Festival - Sopron, Hungary
30 - Messegelaende - Freiburg, Germany

July
1 - Gelredome - Arnhem, Holland
5 - Accorshotel Arena - Paris, France
6 - Accorshotel Arena - Paris, France
9 - San Siro Ippodromo - Milan, Italy
10 - Hallenstadion - Zurich, Switzerland
13 - Altice Arena - Lisbon, Portugal
14 - Wanda Metropolitano Stadium - Madrid, Spain
17 - Piazza Dellã Unita D'italia - Trieste, Italy
20 - Rockwave Festival - Athens, Greece
22 - Hills Of Rock - Plovdiv, Bulgaria
24 - Zagreb Arena - Zagreb, Croatia
27 - Tauron Arena - Krakow, Poland
31 - Metro Radio Arena - Newcastle, England  

August
2 - Sse Arena - Belfast, Northern Ireland
4 - Exhibition & Conference Centre - Aberdeen, Scotland
6 - Manchester Arena - Manchester, England
7 - Genting Arena - Birmingham, England
10 - O2 Arena - London, England
11 - O2 Arena - London, England