In an interview with Sweden’s Bandit Rock radio station, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden talked about the lack of new rock and metal bands reaching the arena level. He pointed to the shortage of festival headliners who can attract large crowds and blamed it on the big labels pulling the strings in the music industry.
To begin with, Bruce talked about a conversation he had with a promoter in Brazil and pointed out the lack of headliners in the rock and metal scene. He said:
“I was with a big promoter in when I was in Brazil last week. I was at Comic Con (CCXP23) in São Paulo launching ‘The Mandrake Project’…. So when I was there, one of the big Brazilian promoters was there and I was chatting away to him. And he goes, ‘It’s a real problem for us now, big festivals, promoters.’ He said, ‘There aren’t any headliners.’ You can count the headliners on the fingers of one hand”
He then explained how a band’s path to becoming a festival headliner should normally go. He continued:
“People who are capable of — you put them at the top of the bill and people say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll go and see that.’ And, unfortunately, the reason for that, I believe, is the big corporations took everything over, and they’re interested in making money, so they propagate the big headliners, but they don’t bring on the bands that create the drama to create the fanbase, to create the dedication to bring it up. Because you don’t become a headliner overnight. You become a headliner by doing loads of gigs at loads of places and fans and people follow you and all of a sudden you’re at Wembley Arena and you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, these guys are playing arenas. And the next step up from arenas is, ‘Oh, they’re gonna go and headline a festival. Oh, yeah, great. They’re a festival headliner.’ And at that moment you go take a step up into that world.”
Bruce Blames Record Companies For Exploiting Their Customers
Bruce has not been shy about criticizing the state of the music industry in the past. He believes that record labels had failed to adapt to the digital age back in the day. He accused the music industry of exploiting customers and being indifferent about the rise of downloading. He said:
“The music industry exploited its customers. The record companies were making a lot of money for not doing very much. They believed the downloading would just disappear. But it didn’t, and they didn’t do anything about it. They didn’t see downloading as being a great way to access their fans, their customers, if you like. But bands did — the bands were way ahead of the record companies.”
He talked about the complacency of record labels, giving the example of the large young listener community in Brazil. He mentioned that new technological developments that could have been used as opportunities were missed due to the ‘arrogance’ of record labels. He said:
“Brazil, for example, had one of the youngest audiences of any country in the world. And consequently, they had a huge uptake on Internet activity. So, for a band like Iron Maiden, who, we embraced the Internet very early on, we were making contact with people in Brazil directly. And that was great for us. But the record companies failed to understand that because they were too arrogant, they were too old, they were too slow.”
Dickinson Blames Napster Founder, Not Its Users
Bruce never hesitates to share his experiences and extensive knowledge with young bands. Yet he is also aware that the rock world is not what it used to be, and that changes are affecting rock bands just like everywhere else. One change he criticizes is the Napster incident of the late nineties. But his criticism is not directed at Napster users, but at its founder.
Again in 2018, in an interview with Comebackstage, he recalled the Napster troubles. He said:
“(New bands) have a tough job, actually, because digital downloading … Napster destroyed the concept of music having any value, which is terrible. I think the guy (who started Napster) should be locked up, and maybe he has been, he deserves to be. It was an act of pure, selfish destruction and what he did was he used the enthusiasm of the audience, because the audience is not guilty; they could get all this great music for free. Why wouldn’t they do that? They didn’t realize that what they were doing was destroying an entire culture.”
You can watch Bruce Dickinson’s full interview from 2018, in which he talks about Napster and physical album culture, below.
