Iron Maiden's singer also flies the band's jet and fences internationally
On Iron Maiden's world tours, the man belting out the choruses has often been the same man who flew everyone there. Bruce Dickinson, the band's operatic frontman, trained as a commercial pilot, captained their converted airliner Ed Force One, and later founded an aircraft maintenance business in Cardiff.
The singer arrived on 7 August 1958 in the Nottinghamshire mining town of Worksop, and his teenage parents married in a hurry. His grandparents, a coal-face miner and a housewife, raised him at first, a childhood he later sang about in Born in '58. His earliest musical memory is dancing to Chubby Checker's The Twist in their front room, and his first record was the Beatles' She Loves You. At six he joined his parents in Sheffield, where they prospered renovating and reselling property, and at 13 they sent him to Oundle, a Northamptonshire boarding school.
Oundle was rough; older boys bullied him relentlessly. He co-founded a wargames society, joined the cadets, and used their live ammunition to rig explosive booby traps. Hearing Deep Purple's Speed King drifting from another room changed everything: his first album purchase was In Rock, soon followed by Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull's Aqualung and Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Tarkus.
After fronting pub bands at school and university, he joined Samson in 1979 under the stage name Bruce Bruce, then replaced Paul Di'Anno in Iron Maiden in 1981, debuting on The Number of the Beast in 1982. A run of gold and platinum albums followed. He left in 1993 to explore varied styles solo, with Blaze Bayley taking his place, and returned in 1999 alongside guitarist Adrian Smith for six more studio albums. His solo work since includes Tyranny of Souls in 2005 and The Mandrake Project in 2024. Since he first joined, the band has sold well over 100 million albums.
Beyond music, he flew for Astraeus Airlines and set up Cardiff Aviation in 2012 after that carrier closed. He hosted a BBC Radio 6 Music show from 2002 to 2010, presented television documentaries, wrote novels and screenplays, created a beer with Robinsons Brewery and has fenced at international level. His cousin Rob fronted Catherine Wheel, his son Austin sang for Rise to Remain, and his younger sister Helena Stormanns is a professional showjumper.
Source: Bruce Dickinson
