Former IRON MAIDEN Singer PAUL DI'ANNO: 'I F**king Hate Recording'

Eden Munro of Vue Weekly recently conducted an interview with former IRON MAIDEN singer Paul D'Anno. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Vue Weekly: There are a lot of videos of you with various bands up on YouTube, and the one thing that's consistent throughout is that you're giving your all in every song.

Di'Anno: Well, if you're gonna do the job, you might as well do it all the way. It's not worth holding back. I've never done that in my life — even in rehearsals I sing just as hard as I will when I'm on stage. The thing is, every day there's something that will piss you off and it doesn't matter who you are. Something's really going to get you off through the day, so I just channel all that and instead of punching somebody out or shouting at someone, I do it on stage. I get rid of it and it's like therapy.

Vue Weekly: With your own music, 2006's "The Living Dead" was the latest release?

Di'Anno: Yeah, we re-released it. It was called "Nomad" first of all and released in 2000, and it was released in Europe as The Living Dead" because we'd shot a video for the thing. And when MEGADETH was breaking up — apparently — the record company asked us if we'd do a tribute to them, like a one-song tribute, and so we did "Symphony of Destruction" and we liked it and Dave [Mustaine] liked it so we said, "OK, fuck it, let's put it on the album as an extra bonus track for the re-release in Europe." I don't even know how well we did over there, I have no idea. All I was happy about was when we recorded the album I did all of my vocals for all the tracks twice in two days from six o'clock until 12 o'clock and I'm like, "Yeah, that was good." I was really happy with that — I went home with my kids and went back in about two weeks to mix it.

Vue Weekly: Do you like to record quickly like that?

Di'Anno: I fucking hate recording. Oh, God, how the hell can you get out what I've written, whether it's angry or whatever, surrounded by four walls, no audience or anything? I find it really difficult to drag it out of me, so I just get myself all spoked up and pissed off and get into the studio, I go storming in there and, as I said, when we did "Nomad", I did the first track at six and finished the whole album by 12 — that's every track plus the backing vocals, and I did it again the next day and said, "Ah, fuck it, that's enough. If you can't get anything off of that then leave it."

Vue Weekly: When you have to get yourself into a certain space like that, it would be difficult to go into a studio for two months and stay there.

Di'Anno: Oh, half of these bands do this. That's what gets me down. It's not about the money. Some bands that go in there, the singer will come in and sing two lines or four words. Oh, God, I'd probably be in jail for murder because I'd shoot the producer for taking too much fucking time. I'd be going nuts, I couldn't deal with that. You must lose all the feel, all the energy must go. I understand that musicians might have to take a bit more time, but I don't play any of the instruments on the albums — I write the songs but I don't actually play them in the studio — I just do the singing part of it and I couldn't do that, man, I'd be going nuts.

Vue Weekly: Are you working on anything new now?

Di'Anno: We did five new tracks in Germany last year — it's very industrialized — but we got in a bit of an argument with the record company and we told them to piss off, basically. So I kept them songs and a friend of mine where I am right at the minute in Salisbury down in Southwest England, has just handed me 16 pieces of music so I'm going to go away when I have a bit of time and see what I can come up with for that.

Vue Weekly: You've been solo for far longer than you were with IRON MAIDEN, but those first two albums have stood the test of time and are a pretty solid foundation to be standing on.

Di'Anno: Oh, yeah. I think this year or next year is the anniversary of the first album and it doesn't seem that anyone's gonna be doing anything to celebrate it which is a bit of a shame, really. I don't really want to do that much, but then again, you look at it in another light and some of the MAIDEN fans of them first two albums, some of the younger ones haven't seen me doing the songs or they've only heard my versions of some of the MAIDEN stuff we put into the set which is a hell of a lot heavier and faster than the originals, so it could be interesting. The MAIDEN songs I put in my set I keep saying never again, never again, and then when you get onstage and you see how much they're loving it then it's like, "Oh, shit, I'm never going to get rid of these songs, they're going to have to stay forever." But then again, I shouldn't knock it because they've given me a fantastic career. You shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you.

Read the entire interview from Vue Weekly.

Maidensp has uploaded a two-camera video mix (see below) of former IRON MAIDEN singer Paul Di'Anno's July 3, 2009 performance at Opera 1 in Curitiba, Brazil.

Di'Anno's backing band for the concert consisted of members of the Brazilian group SCELERATA:

Magnus Wichmann (Guitar)
Renato Osório (Guitar)
Gustavo Strapazon (Bass)
Francis Cassol (Drums)