Journalist Joe Shooman has spent the last year researching and writing a book on Bruce Dickinson. A few months ago "Flashing metal with Iron Maiden and Flying solo", an unauthorised Bruce biography, was published and is the first ever book on the subject of the Air Raid Siren that has ben released in the western world. Shervin Siami wrote the book "Tears of the dragon" in farsi which was published in Iran in 2003.
The Wellbeing Network sent a few questions to Shooman to get a bit of background on how he came upon the idea of writing a book on Bruce and what he thinks of it in retrospect. The interview can be found here.
Below is an excerpt from Chapter six "Shock Tactics? You Don't Know The 'Arf Of It, Guv" page 64, where Thunderstick relates an an episode from the recording of Bruce's second Samson-album "Shock Tactics":
"There was huge amounts of competition between the [bands], of course. Maiden were in the other studio so there was all the usual banter going backwards and forwards. All the way through the session there were these big sheets of paper on the wall and we used to cut bits and pieces out of magazines and newspaper captions. And this collage grew over the period of making the record. We'd got all sorts of comments about Maiden stuck on the wall, and somebody told us they'd done the same about Samson on their wall. Certainly from the Samson side it was quite friendly, but who knows from the Maiden side of things?""We nearly got chucked out of that studio," laughs Thunderstick, "because Bruce let a powder fire extinguisher off in that studio as well; it used to be his thing – it went everywhere. You can imagine a powder fire extinguisher inside a recording studio! Fortunately it was not in the control room, it was in the actual studio but – Jesus – it was all in the piano and everything was covered in white."
How many studio albums has Bruce Dickinson released, as a member of a band and solo,
if we count the originally released versions of the albums?
Send an email with your answer and your street address here
A winner will be drawn among the correct submitted answers. Competition!
We are running a competition where the winner will get a copy of the book. Just answer this easy question:
Competition closes on November 16.