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Projecting Your Mortality With BRUCE DICKINSON · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:29
  A trick. Thank you. So I'm Bruce Dickinson from uh well just me
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  really but also obviously I have a day job with I made for the solo
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  record called The Mandrake Project and it's out on the first of the March.
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  You know it for Bruce. Thanks for joining us this evening outside this morning
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  your chimes. Yeah yeah, yet nine o'clock time. So's you say,
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  man, you will release your seventh solo album, The mand Rake Project,
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  on Mark First. You know, stranger to releasing albums, bro, But
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  at this stage of your creed, you're still get nervous about new ones coming
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  out? Or do you just finish them and put them to bed? Ah
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  nervous. I wasn't so much nervous about this one. It's just really excited
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  and frustrated because the whole thing is that we we spent like seven years making
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  this record because of COVID and all the rubbish and everything else of various other
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  things, you know, like I got sick for a year with throat cancer
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  and all that, all that, all that bullshit. But basically after seven
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  years we got back together and made the record and it's been ready for release
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  for about a year now. So people who have heard it a freaking out
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  about it, going, oh, it's amazing, it's you know, wow,
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  this is the best thing you have done. I'm like, yeah,
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  I wanted it released, but but the way of the world is you have
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  to wait. And because we're doing a you know, a lot of the
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  record is well, we're doing quite a number of vinyl examples of it.
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  It's a double gatefold vinyl, yes, and the the production stuff associated with
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  getting a vinyl record out there now like there's a world shortage of vinyl,
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  and like the cardboard and everything, and because it's quite a big package,
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  so that just moved things forward into like the following year, you know.
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  But anyway, hey, it's turned out okay in the end. It so
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  tell us me more about the album from a musical point of view and what
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  you're going for with it. Well, you know, obviously back in the
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  day looking at uh stuff I've dealt with with Roy Z, who's my partner
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  and the record is the producer, and you know, he co wrote probably
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  about two thirds of the songs with me. The rest of them are or
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  mine. So it's a mixture of songs co writes me and Roy and and
• 3:00
  just my own stuff. But we did uh h three really cool records.
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  Actually, the Birth, Chemical Wedding, which a lot of in the in
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  the back end of the nineties, a lot of people were like, hey,
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  that was a really influential record. And then we did Tyranny himself because
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  I was back in Maiden, so this was like unfinished business. You know,
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  there's that there's there's definitely another album here that we could do to kind
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  of continue the line, as it were, because we started to diversify a
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  bit on Tyranny. Uh, you know, Chemical was was was fantastically heavy,
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  and the answer is we we wanted to kind of go beyond both of
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  those albums, so have more diversity on this record, but also make it
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  like uh when it was heavy, it was like really heavy, you know,
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  uh, and and and things that you think we could do, for
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  example, in in the context of Iron Maiden, because Maiden's got its own
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  style and we've got gazillions and songwriters in May you know, so this is
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  very much stuff where you go, yeah, you know some of this you'd
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  say, well, you'd never hear that on a on a Maiden record.
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  In fact, one track you have heard on a Maiden record yeah, yeah,
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  so yeah, that was a basic idea with the basic idea with the
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  album and the obviously I do need to mention that, ah, it looks
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  like a concept album, but it's not. Right. So there is a
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  twelve episode comic that goes with well as a companion to the album, but
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  it's an independent, freestanding entity also called the Mandreak Project, and that's actually
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  first issue is released next week January seventeenth. Yeah, yeah, so the
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  Mindreak Project that's going to go on for the best part of three years.
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  So every three months we'll do a new episode to a thirty four page comic
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  and so end of this year will be like four issues. So that will
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  be the first book, if you like. So that will come out the
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  end of the year as a four complete issues and then we'll crack on,
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  you know. So that and the album combined looks like a concept and they
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  come from a presentation perspective, they are, but from an artistic perspective,
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  they're separate. They're like two free standing trees next door to each other.
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  You know, you can't see the connection, but it's there because you know,
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  the roots talk to each other, but the but that but that's what
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  that's in fact, what they are. If you listen to the album and
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  you never you never bother to have a look at the comic. Yeah,
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  that's just fine, and vice versa. If you read the comic and get
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  the music, that's equally fine. But if you if you dip in and
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  out of both, it's a lot more fun. So the overner that a
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  bit deeper. I noticed there isn't a song called the Main Break Project on
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  the album. So where does the title come from? Well, yeah,
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  that's that's quite interesting point. There's no there's no title track per se.
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  The original title of the album was going to be if Eternity should Fail,
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  which is actually pulled from a Doctor Strange episode, a comic episode. Uh
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  that got that song got pulled off and kind of I've done and uh played
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  for the Maiden on the Book of Soul's album. So I was like,
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  yeah, I'm cool with that. Yeah, great that. You know,
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  I'll repossess that song after, you know, when we get around to doing
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  the album, which of course we didn't for years after that because of all
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  the circumstances. But uh, when I finally came round to re record that
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  song, I actually changed the title to Eternity has Failed because I tweaked some
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  of the lyrics to reflect some of the story in the comic. There you
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  go, there's a little trees to trees connected by the roots again. Uh,
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  And I thought, well, I need a I need a title that
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  that sums up both the record and the comic and ties it all together.
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  And we've been and this is where the two things really start getting linked in
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  terms of a visual concept and things like that. So I had two pages
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  of scribblings of absolute normally absolute garbage, like silly names, you know.
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  I mean, I won't tell you some of them. And I just kept
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  churning out these names and going no, no, almost no, oh my
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  god, you know, go down the pub, forget about it, come
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  back and think about it later, you know. And then finally I just
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  I don't know why the word Mandrake popped in my head, and I just
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  thought, did a little search, But like, who else is called anything
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  Mandrake? I like Mandrake. I like the Mandrake Project because it sounds like
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  some secret government clandestine you know, like the Majestic Gwolve or something else like
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  that, like all the UFO conspiracy things and it sounds mysterious and you think,
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  well, what is that? You know? And I thought, well,
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  that's a really good name for an album because you know, you see
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  the man Break Project and if the first thing you think is wow, what
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  is that? That's a great intro to a world and so and that works
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  for the comic as well, because the Mandreak Project is the name of this
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  scientific organization that's kind of clandestine, which has developed technology to well effectively bottle
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  the human soul at the point of death and store it and then reintroduce it
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  into something else. So yeah, so that's why that's why I changed the
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  tong title to Eternity has failed Before I'm going to ask this question for Ossie
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  Fairs, are they're gonna kill me made? But what do we expect from
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  the Eye Made in til later this year when you come to Australia, Oh,
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  Death, Destruction and skullduggerymte. Yeah, it's going to be amazing,
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  No, it's going to be fantastic. I do forty shows solo starting in
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  April till the twenty first of July. Then I go lie down the darkened
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  room for two or three weeks and I wake up in Australia and we start
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  rehearsals in Perth for shows in Perth obviously, and then Australia. It's brilliant.
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  I'm really looking forward to it. We all are, I mean,
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  we love we love Australia, you know, so you know as a place,
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  as a concept of a country is the people who live there and everything,
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  you know, and so yeah, really looking forward to it. Going
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  to have a blast. And yeah, the only thing that I mean,
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  it's amazing that the only thing that would be like almost as good as touring
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  there we've made would be bringing this project back down down to us at some
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  point and playing some places. Obviously obviously we're not going to be doing like,
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  you know, like ten thousand seaters, but you know, you never
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  know, you never know. We're pretty we're pretty mobile, we're pretty nimble,
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  you know. We we'll fly for food, you know, hitting those
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  touts, beautiful pressor I'm all thanks very much for your time. I've been
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  an absolutely pleasure speaking with a litle Mandreat project is out March the first,
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  and I've been lucky enough to have listened to it and it's fantastic. Mate,
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  You've done a really good job. So congratulations. Yeah, thanks very
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  much. Yeah, Joe the rest of your day. Yeah, thanks man,