IRON MAIDEN's BRUCE DICKINSON Talks About Security Concerns In Age Of Terrorism

IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson spent a couple of days of December 2015 in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This was his second visit to the city after 21 years. The first time he was there, Sarajevo was under the siege, cut off from the world, its citizens brutally terrorized by shooting, bombing and starvation with electricity and water supply being nothing short of a luxury. Bruce and his then-solo band drove through the frontlines and ultimately played a show for the people trapped in the city. What this gig meant to the people and how it changed Bruce and his band will be told in the documentary film "Scream For Me Sarajevo", which recently finished shooting. The film, written by Jasenko Pasic, is being produced by Prime Time Productions.

Radio Sarajevo show "The Aebyss" had the immense pleasure and honor to welcome Bruce in its studio, where they talked about the upcoming film, his impressions of the city today and, of course, the IRON MAIDEN tour in support of the band new album, "The Book Of Souls". You can now listen to the full interview below.

Speaking about what security concerns he might have in an age of terrorism when it comes to deciding which countries to travel to in order to play for the people there, Dickinson said: "Personally, yeah, I'll play no matter what. Your concern has to be, actually, for people who don't have a choice in the matter. I mean, it was my choice [in 1994] — actually our choice, collectively, 'cause we all, collectively, said, 'Yeah, we're all crazy enough to try and do this thing and drive into Sarajevo in the middle of a war and see if we can do and do a gig. And [laughs] we're not quite sure when we're gonna come back.' But those poor people that went for that [EAGLES OF DEATH METAL] concert at the Bataclan [in Paris, France] had no choice; they were completely, completely innocent in every possible way. And, of course, nobody knew that the place was gonna get targeted. So, unfortunately, there's a judgment call that people have gotta make, and you have to make it on the best information available — as to whether or not you're suddenly gonna get… If somebody says, 'We're gonna massacre everybody at a rock concert,' you say, 'Well, is it some lunatic, or is it genuinely credible that this might happen?'"

He continued: "You can't take the responsibility for what might be some lunacy, massacring people, just because you wanna be kind of 'macho man' and stand up and say, 'Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did this and people threatened us, but we were like macho men.' And that's great until one day it turns out that somebody does go and do [something like that] and then you have lots and lots of dead women and children, and you go, 'Maybe we shouldn't have done the show, because there was a credible threat.' So, unfortunately, you've gotta be grown up about it. But, at the same time, you still need to be able to offer people that hope and send that message out there. They can't stop… Real life just carries on. I mean, when the Irish Republican Army, years and years ago… when I was a kid, things were getting blown up left, right and center in the U.K., and one lot was blowing things up and horrendous things happened, and nothing stopped — people just got on with it and carried on. You don't stop. You don't back down from living your life. And that was the message in Sarajevo — that in all the craziness, this little bastion of rock and roll and kind of normality happened, for five minutes, in the middle of it. You know, yeah, you know what? There is light at the end of the tunnel there. So all those kinds of things are acts of defiance, but not involving guns or bombs or bullets and things like that."

"The Book Of Souls" was released on September 4, 2015 through BMG in the USA (Parlophone Records in the rest of world).

IRON MAIDEN announced in May 2015 that touring plans to support the album wouldn't happen until 2016 to allow Dickinson time to fully recuperate after his successful cancer treatment.