IRON MAIDEN's BRUCE DICKINSON Says He Will Be First In Line To Get Next Vaccine

IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson, who tested positive for COVID-19 last month after being fully vaccinated, discussed his battle with the disease in a new interview with Forbes. "I'm absolutely fine," he said during the chat, which was conducted in late August. "Literally, I'm just waiting for these little lateral flow test things that you have to do, self-testing. I'm taking those every day, I'm thinking of making a collage out of them or something at the end. I don't know. It's just going through whatever it is, the 10-day isolation at home because I did get COVID. I tested positive for it, just like a week yesterday, basically. And I've been absolutely fine. I have the same symptoms that you would get from like a... you feel a bit shitty for two or three days, you sweat a bit, you have a bit of a stuffy nose, a small cough in my case and my sense of smell kind of went AWOL, but it's kind of coming back now.

"I'm not particularly a vaccine skeptic in the slightest," he continued. "I've had both doses and if somebody wants me to have another couple, I'll be first in the queue because I think I would have been probably potentially a lot more sick had I not been vaccinated. Me and my partner, I had the Pfizer vaccine, she had the AstraZeneca, we both got sick. She's over it all. Basically, I'm pretty much over it now, I'm just waiting for my little test to go negative before I unleash myself on the supermarket.

"I'm absolutely fine, honestly," he reiterated. "Just about everybody I know who's been vaccinated and has had this has had really mild side effects. I know a few people that haven't been vaccinated and have had it and they're not so happy. Even if they haven't died — God forbid — but they've not been well for quite a long period of time afterwards. And that's not just people who are over 50 and stuff — this is young people, 30 and under, extremely healthy — just didn't happen to get the vaccine in time perhaps and got sick with it. They'd been out for two, three weeks. It's a nasty bug and if you can avoid getting it, I'd avoid getting it. And if you did get it, make sure you've had the vaccine when you do get it. And most of us may very well get it at some point."

Dickinson previously told Rolling Stone magazine that he doesn't personally believe that fans attending concerts should be required to get vaccinated, calling it "a personal choice," However, he said that he hopes everyone will get the shot. "Personally, I think people are just very badly advised if they don't go and get themselves double jabbed as quickly as possible, not for the reasons of going into concerts, but for their own health," he said. "Having said that, even if you've had a double jab, you can still get COVID, and therefore you can spread it to other people who might not have been vaccinated and they might get very sick and die. Now you cannot legislate against mortality. There are many things in this world that kill people and they're not illegal but are unfortunate. Cancer kills a lot of people. Heart attacks kill a lot of people. Obesity kills a lot of people. Malaria kills a shitload of people every year… So at some point, we have to just go, 'We're probably going to have to live with this. And if we're going to live with it, then you have your vaccination.'"

IRON MAIDEN's new album, "Senjutsu", will be released on September 3 via BMG. It was recorded in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by bassist Steve Harris.

The video for the LP's first single, "The Writing On The Wall", was made by BlinkInk based on a concept by Dickinson with two former Pixar executives. It followed a month-long teaser campaign and global "treasure hunt" for clues about the track title and concept.