After names like Alex Skolnick called out the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for leaving out Iron Maiden and other metal bands, lead singer Bruce Dickinson had a chat with The Telegraph about the matter. He gave his thoughts on not being in the Rock Hall and talked about the disposition of his band’s work compared to pop music.
Mentioning his lack of interest in the induction, the vocalist said:
“I don’t want to be in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame because we’re not dead yet. Some people feel almost actively threatened by metal. Not by the nature of the music. But by the fact that it doesn’t conform to their worldview of what pop music should be, which is: pop music is disposable, darling. Well, we don’t make disposable pop music.”
After calling the Hall ‘an utter and complete load of bollocks’ during a 2018 speaking tour, The Air Raid Siren clarified this point to The Jerusalem Post. Claiming that his words were taken out of context to make him sound upset about his band’s exclusion, he went:
“I’m really happy we’re not there, and I would never want to be there. If we’re ever inducted, I will refuse — they won’t bloody be having my corpse in there. Rock and roll music does not belong in a mausoleum in Cleveland. It’s a living, breathing thing, and if you put it in a museum, then it’s dead. It’s worse than horrible; it’s vulgar.”
According to Dickinson, the arrangement of their shows play a part in Iron Maiden’s long-lasting career. While talking about the band’s Future Past Tour that kicked off in May during his recent interview, he claimed that the band decided to try and make their ticket prices lower than other bands of their status, despite the huge production values.
Nodding to why, after five decades, so many young people still come to their shows, the singer explained their choice by saying:
“This tour, we made a deliberate decision to play multiple shows indoors, rather than one big pay-day, outdoors, in a stadium. Why? The quality of the show is better. There’s a stadium down the road here that we played a couple of years ago to 40,000 people. We sold it out, and that was great. Two nights at the arena is almost the equivalent, but it’s a better experience.
That’s one of the reasons why there’s so many young kids at the shows; we try and keep everything under everybody else’s (prices). If a ticket for Maiden is £100, kids are gonna go: ‘I can’t afford that.’ But if you get down to £60, that makes a huge difference.”
The band opened their tour in Slovenia by performing ‘Alexander The Great’ live for the first time since its recording in 1986. Now, they have a performance waiting to happen in Switzerland in a few days and will continue touring in Europe, with eight arena shows in the UK, before heading to North America in September.