On "Two-Fingered Piano Playing" And Recovering From Cancer

The call from Iron Maiden's office arrives during an eight-hour interview day for vocalist Bruce Dickinson. Audibly in positive spirits, the singer, pilot, fencer, author and ale aficionado enthuses that doing press is, "good when you've got a good record to talk about. If it was a shit record I wouldn't like doing it".

The Book Of Souls is the metallers' 16th full-length and first studio double-album. The English sextet began work in 2014, recording at Guillaume Tell Studios in Paris, where they'd also crafted 2000's 'reunion' affair Brave New World. However, its release was delayed following the discovery that Dickinson had a cancerous tumour on the back of his tongue and also another lump in his neck.

The frontman was ultimately afforded the all-clear earlier this year. "I got diagnosed in December and the doc sat me down. It was, 'How long 'til I'm feeling better?' He said, 'It's going to be about a year.' I went, 'Well, I'll beat that,' being competitive and all the rest of it. He said, 'You might by a month or a couple of months maybe, but there's some stuff that needs healing up on the inside that will take a while.' Of course he's the doctor, and he's right," Dickinson admits with that distinctive chuckle.

"There's so much stuff out there that is shallow and forgettable that's got very little future, let alone a past and a present."

"But I am, in his words, way ahead of the curve in terms of recovery and getting better. I'm jumping around all over the place and have been for a while now. So I'm really just waiting for the inside bits to fully get themselves back up to speed and then I can start having a bit of a sing and a wail again."

The Book Of Souls boasts 18-minute Empire Of The Clouds, penned solely by Dickinson, whereby the frontman makes his piano debut. It's an epic befitting of recent progressive leanings, but perhaps not one some could have envisioned appearing on a Maiden record decades ago when 'The Air-Raid Siren' and bassist/leader Steve Harris possessed opposing viewpoints regarding the band's creative direction.

"The Bruce of 25 years ago would have thought this song was indescribably cool, and how did he manage to do that?" he laughs. "That one was a bit of a journey, which involved an awful lot of two-fingered piano playing. 'Cause I'm not in any way, shape or form a pianist, but I happened to write the song on piano and so there was nobody else around to play it."

Fellow new cut If Eternity Should Fail "was actually the title track of what was going to be another solo record". As for the greater number of solitary Dickinson songwriting credits (two in total) compared to recent releases, he points to a prolific '90s solo career. "That really translated directly into Brave New World, which obviously came out of the blocks and everybody went, 'Wow, what a good record.' I thought it was a fantastic record.

"Of course, we're back full circle in the same studio, similar kind of vibe. But we've moved on, done a bit more of the proggy type thing since. This album really I think has been able to breathe, because it wasn't restricted by having to learn everything as if it was going to be live before we played it live. So we could learn things and do it bit by bit, and that's a luxury you can only get when you're in the studio. So I've written a bit more or a bit less on various things. Sometimes it's just the way the cookie crumbles when everybody comes steaming in, jumps in feet first and goes, 'I've got two songs for the new album,' and you think, 'Oh well, I won't bother then,'" he jokes.

As for representing the record live Down Under, the screamer is amusingly cagey, while essentially confirming it. Mere days later however, it's official; Maiden will return in May, as part of a 35-country jaunt in 2016. Dickinson will pilot the biggest-ever Ed Force One, a customised Boeing 747-400.

"This record is such an outrageous record. It's so good, and my next thing I'm thinking about is the tour. I'm very excited to get back on the stage. As of last Christmas, I wasn't sure whether or not I was even going to be on the fucking planet, let alone on the stage."

Aside from successful retrospective-themed tours, Iron Maiden have typically displayed great credence towards fresh output within the live environment. "Loud and proud, new material. That's why we've got a lot of young fans. It's not because we're a bunch of old codgers playing karaoke stuff; it's because we're doing new material and they discover it, and that's in a way what makes us, still I think, kinda cool at the ripe old age in my case at 57. So how does that work with a bunch of 15 to 24-year-olds? The answer is it works real well, because there's so much stuff out there that is shallow and forgettable that's got very little future, let alone a past and a present."