IRON MAIDEN Frontman Explains Decision To Play OZZFEST

July 16, 2005

IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson spoke to The Morning Call about the group's participation in this year's Ozzfest, which kicked off Friday (July 15) in Mansfield, MA. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

''This is probably the first and last chance that anybody will ever have to see IRON MAIDEN in America doing these songs, because there will be another IRON MAIDEN album out next year. We'll be doing some new stuff after that. There will be more tours subsequently, but we'll probably never again get a chance to play so many songs from the first four albums, and in particular from the first two."

On the group's decision to play Ozzfest:

"We didn't want to do a headlining tour to the same older audiences that show up every time we go into the sheds [the nickname for outdoor amphitheaters]. We wanted to get an audience that was going to be … basically 15-year-old kids with attitudes who are really into metal and keeping the music alive, as opposed to an audience who had been like that, but have now grown up, gotten respectable, and just remembered the band from the early days.

"In Europe we play mainly to audiences who are all under the age of 25. In America, I'd say the average age of the audience is 30-plus. That's not great for us. And it's also not great for young kids who come to see the band in sheds because they end up sandwiched between a bunch of fat old men drinking beer and eating hot dogs, and the kids are like 'Shouldn't we be really rocking?' So what we want is the Ozzfest vibe, which I think is much closer to the audiences we play to in Europe. That's the audience we want to impress, really."

On his new solo album, "Tyranny of Souls":

"I thought we could have a bit more confidence, that we could branch out a little bit on this album [and] still sound very heavy. That was the key. I had to wait until I felt confident about saying, 'Yup, this is what we're going to do on this new record,' rather than, 'Oh my God, I don't know what we're going to do on this record to cope with the legacy of 'Chemical Wedding'."

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