Henrik: Why did you decide to release a Best Of-album at this point?
Bruce: Cause there's an awful lot of Iron Maiden fans who doesn't have anything. There's 1 million Iron Maiden fans buying Maiden records in Europe and 200 000 copies of my records being sold. That's 800 000 people that potentially would like to get one. The last time I released something that was relevant was "The Chemical Wedding" or possibly "Scream for me", but that was before they had seen the Ed Hunter tour, before they'd seen Brave new world. Actually, at first I was dead against the idea of doing a best of album.

Mattias: Who suggested it?
Bruce: Rod Smallwood did.

Henrik: But this goes way back to the "Catacombs" idea doesn't it?
Bruce: Totally, but Rod didn't like the "Catacombs" idea, you see. He was dead against that. He didn't like the word catacombs, and I said "What's wrong with Catacombs?" I could not understand. But if it said 'from the vault'... then he's say, "Yeah it's great" and I thought "What's the difference?". Anyway, what this is is that it is a combination of both which suits me fine. CD 2 is pretty much Catacombs. The only difference is that after a decent period of time it will be withdrawn. But that's not a problem because all the fans who are interested in it are gonna get it so I'm happy with that. It keeps the record company happy because they're gonna get their advance sales up, it keeps fans happy because they don't get ripped off, and also they don't have to pay a double CD price. (At least I hope not) Then there's also two new tracks on CD 1 so when someone comes to by the Best Of-album and it only has one CD they're gonna get two new tracks and probably a whole lot of tracks that they haven't necessarily heard before.

Mattias: How was the selection made?
Bruce: I did it on instinct but with a bias towards, what I would describe as being the heavier end of what I do. This is a best of album more for metalheads than it is for people who want Bon Jovi type bullshit, which I'm not anyway, but I could have put a lot of sappy shit on here like "All the young dudes" or something. For example, "Killing floor", was the first single of "The Chemical Wedding" but "The tower" is a much better track in my opinion, so "The tower" went on there. But I love the video for "Killing floor". I think the video for "Killing floor" is better than the track. You know, the food fight and everything...

Henrik: Yeah, and it has Adrian Smith on violin in it as well...
Bruce: Exactly.

Henrik: So that's why there's, what I would call, an overrepresentation of "Accident of Birth" and "The Chemical Wedding" on there? I mean there's still tracks from each of the albums...
Bruce: There's only one track from "Skunkworks". I would have liked "Inertia" to be on there but we were stuffed with time really. I wanted "Born in 58" on there because I think it's the best song on "Tattooed Millionaire". It's the most personal song on there. There's only one song off "Balls to Picasso", "Tears of the dragon". "Laughing in the hiding bush" is from "Scream for me Brazil".

Mattias: Why didn't you pick anything from "Alive in studio A"?
Bruce: I didn't pick anything from Studio A because I didn't think it sounded that great alongside the other tracks there. But also because everything on Studio A was available somewhere else. There was nothing new on Studio A. I picked "Back from the edge" because I couldn't make up my mind of what I thought was the best track off of "Skunkworks" so what I did was I picked a track which was one of the best and also stood a fair chance to get people interested to go and look up the record. "Back from the edge" is sort of catchy and I think it fit's in the context with the rest of the album as well. The album hangs together really well in terms of a little story and so, funnily enough, does CD 2. When we were mastering it and I brought in all these DATs and cassettes and all these various different media, the mastering engineer was shaking his head going "I don't know how the fuck all his is gonna fit together". Again I just said "try this one and this one next" and he was going "are you sure you didn't record these all at the same time for an entire album?" and I said, "No they're years apart" but they kind of worked. There's only one bit of a lull in the middle of CD2 with the "Midnight jam".

Henrik: Where does that song come from?
Bruce: Well, you see, there's stuff on there that you haven't heard at all. [laughter]

Henrik: There sure is. I've heard about "Dracula" but I haven't heard the song...
Bruce: Have you heard "Wicker man"?

Mattias & Henrik: No.
Bruce: "Real world" you've probably heard, the Japanese single track. Most people have it. You probably have it.

Mattias: Yeah. "Acoustic song" is also one of the unheard songs...
Bruce: Yeah, you haven't heard that song,. That's the one where the phone goes at the end of the song and we can't get rid of it. It was recorded by Roy in his bedroom with a nylon acoustic guitar and he was just fucking about one night and put this two track thing down, and I heard it and said "That's really nice" and I put a vocal on it. So then we went into the studio where we added a bit of Mellotron and a solo. The thing was that the nylon string guitar part was so nice but then the phone rang right at the end while he was playing it. And we couldn't get rid of it so we kept it.

Henrik: And the "Midnight jam"?
Bruce: Well, after we had recorded the backing tracks for "Taking the queen" we were having a conversation, after a few beers, of what happens the other side of the fade. You know you listen to a track and you turn it up and turn it up but it must go somewhere. Where does it go? And what happens the other side of it? So we went, "what a fucking crazy idea". Let's put a lot of candles up and let's do "the other side of the fade". So we called it the "Midnight jam"... I just had a microphone and we just went in there, you know. I don't know what it sounds like. It's kind of Jim Morrison, Doorsy, you know, no real beginning, no real end, just a jam that fades in and gets spooky and fades out.

Henrik: Sounds quite interesting...
Bruce: Yes, interesting is the word I'd use. You're either gonna get it or you're not gonna get it but it's on there.

Mattias: Which version of "No way out" is it that's on there?
Bruce: That's the Keith Olsen version, the one with the keyboards. What I was gonna put on there was the track called "Original sin", which nobody's ever heard, of the Keith Olsen record, but I can't find it. We can't find the master tapes to it.

Henrik: You don't even have a rough mix or something on a cassette?
Bruce: No, I don't have anything. What I've got is the 48-track master tapes. You know, you can't believe the bullshit we had to go through to get half this stuff together. It all exists but the archive system is in chaos at the moment. It took us days of sorting through tapes, and me getting sent the wrong tapes and things, and getting sent stuff from the wrong studio, and I'm going "What's this? This is not right".
Henrik: Is all this stuff that you own and have the rights to?
Bruce: Well, this is one of the problems as well, you know, all this stuff has come in from four different record companies, you see. So you've got all these different record companies... Sanctuary records, Metal-Is or whatever it's called, has all of it now, which is great, but everything is in semi-chaos. Even the Maiden stuff, because they've moved all the master tape archives from on place to another place. There's boxes everywhere and nobody knows what's in them. So this guy is going through them slowly, making a catalogue of what's where and everything.

Mattias: So you helped him out a bit?
Henrik: Or did you just confuse him?
Bruce: I totally fucked him up... [laughter]
Henrik: It's nice to see you've picked "I'm in a band with an Italian drummer" because it's the only song on there which you didn't write at all...

Bruce: Nothing to do with me at all, no...

Henrik: ...but still a brilliant piece of music history.
Bruce: Exactly, that's why its' on there.

Mattias: And "Jerusalem" is the live one that didn't fit onto "Scream for me brazil"?
Bruce: Exactly, yeah.

Mattias: What about this "Interview with Bruce" that's on there?
Bruce: Well, I sat in front of a microphone and talked for ten minutes about each song, when it was recorded and why...

Mattias: A bit of "Listen with Bruce"...
Bruce: Yeah, exactly. I thought I'd do it like that rather than have all these boring liner notes... Some people might read them but I normally find them really hard to deal with cause they all sound so self important and pompous. It's only a rock and roll album, for Christ's sake.

Henrik: But there were a lot of notes in the draft of the booklet...
Bruce: Yeah, but this is the biog that was sent out with the advance CD. It just talks of what was going on roughly and it's just the basic information about each album and who played on it and if anybody different played on the live stuff, like the Guru. What I did for the special CD 2 was this four page booklet. I went to Starbucks and got myself a big coffee and wrote a short story which is The story of Crube, the troubadour [Bruce points at a cartoonish figure with his own head on]and Sreg [Janick Gers], King Dor the imaginary [Rod Smallwood, manager] and Prince Harry [Steve Harris]. And this will only be available with CD two so this will also disappear.

Mattias: And you are still friends with those persons?
Bruce: Yes... [laughter] So that's the deal...

Mattias: That's the story of the Best Of album...
Bruce: Yeah.

Mattias: What about the future of your solo career... You're going to make another studio album with Roy?
Bruce: That's the plot, yeah. Roy is with Halford at the moment until Christmas, maybe early January.

Mattias: But what direction are you going in? What do you see happening with the music?
Bruce: We don't want to lose the people that loved "The Chemical Wedding" and everything but we don't want to just copy "The Chemical Wedding" either, cause that would be a bit of a disappointment. We want to move on a little bit. We did that track "Broken" and I'm not sure the record will be as 'commercial' as that song although it should be as heavy as that song. I really have no plans to tour with the next record. I'll do promotion and stuff but there's no point in me touring. I'm gonna make a Maiden album next year and I'll be touring with Maiden in 2003. I don't have a band, they've all disappeared, they've all got jobs, so getting a band together would be a pain in the ass. And I'm not sure I would sell any more records by doing a tour. All I do is wear myself out.

Henrik: Yeah, surely, but don't you have any other new musical areas you'd like explore? I mean, really different things...
Bruce: Well, there's things with Roy... Me and Roy are working on a few things that I'm quite interested in. Funnily enough, when we get together I always go "Wow, great, let's so some 14 minute thing" and Roy is going "We're gonna have four or five rockers on there as well" and I'm like "Why don't we do, like, one huge 30 min song" but Roy always says "we've gotta have some rockers on there" so anyway... We do actually have two or three fairly lengthy tracks that are pretty cool and we've got another six or seven ideas, or songs in fact, demos, that are OK but we think they could be better. You know, nothing wrong with them, but we're just looking for some really good stuff. At the moment Roy is tied up full time with Halford and when he gets to the end of it he's gonna need a bit of time to chill out before starting writing. I hope we're gonna get this new album done before the spring which would mean that we could release it, say, in the autumn. And that would be about the same time that I'd be going in the studio with Maiden having written over the summer. That's in an ideal world. Anything can go wrong, you know... Halford could put the album back, they would have to remix it, Roy is tied up until February or March, all kinds of stuff could happen between now and then.

Mattias: But let's go back to your musical direction. The reason I am asking is that, now you're back in Iron Maiden playing traditional Heavy Metal, and "Accident of Birth" and "The Chemical Wedding" were also metal albums, though heavier than the Maiden stuff. We were actually discussing this the other day and it's how "Balls to Picasso" came to be such a different album when it's still written with the same guy?
Bruce: "Balls to Picasso" is really diverse.

Mattias: Exactly. Wouldn't you want to explore that side of your collaboration more?
Bruce: Well, to be honest with you, there's a whole range of possibilities, none of which I'm gonna pay too much attention to until next year. I can guess a different direction everyday, but until I sit down and find out emotionally what works I won't know. I don't know what's gonna work until I sit down and work with Roy, what kind of feelings that are going to inspire me. It won't necessarily be mad and heavy and stuff but some of it might be.

Henrik: But how about your other projects. What's happening with the "The Chemical Wedding" movie?
Bruce: Oh God, it's still sitting there with Terry Jones and Messiah pictures. They're eating their fingernails to the bone for the moment trying to make their cowboy movie, a movie called "Das Cowboy" and they're right on the edge of making this thing. The only two scripts they have is "Das Cowboy" and "The Chemical Wedding" and if they get "Das Cowboy" made "The Chemical Wedding" is the next one.

Mattias: So it has not been canned or anything?
Bruce: Oh, no, no, it's just sitting there. I call Julian every two or three weeks and asks what's happening and he says "Well they're still waiting for this bloke in America or they're still waiting on this...", you know.

Henrik: Has it been revised or reworked from the original script or ideas you had earlier?
Bruce: I can't remember what the original ideas I had was the last time I spoke to you [laughter]... No not significantly, I think, though...

Henrik: So you will still be using "Man of Sorrows"?
Bruce: Oh, Christ, I don't know if we'll still be using that, probably not. I think we'll try something a bit more updated. In fact the demo of "Man of Sorrows" which is on the Best Of CD is with Janick Gers on guitar with a drum machine and it's done in a more gothic dramatic style. I think I might have still been in Maiden when I did it.

Mattias: You were, you told us that before, you can check our archives...
Bruce: Yeah, I think I was still in Maiden.

Mattias: Talking about other old stuff, there's been another re-release of the Samson albums.
Bruce: Nothing surprises me...

Mattias: ...with bonus material...
Bruce: Really? [And nothing surprised him???]

Henrik: So this has been done totally without your supervision?
Bruce: Yes, I released the Airraid things and along came Sanctuary and said "Would you like to sell your half of Airraid records and I went "How much for?" and they told me and I went "OK".

Mattias: OK, then you won't have too much to say about them, cause it's Sanctuary that put the CDs out.
Henrik: How come you have co-written a track on the new "Warrior" album? Was it something that you and Roy had been doing?
Bruce: No, they had been in the studio... They guy that owns SilverCloud is the guitarist in Warrior. He was writing and demoing stuff and I was just around in the studio and I sang some stuff and wrote some words just for the hell of it because it was a fun sort of thing to do.

Henrik: So it was nothing that was really arranged or anything?
Bruce: No, we were chatting away and he played me something and I thought "Cool, hang on a minute" and then when the singer came in I said "I kind of did this, if you want to use any bits of it just do what you like with it, you know".

Henrik: OK.
Mattias: Back to the Best Of. As you have carefully selected songs for your Best Of album, have you, in the process, thought of what songs that are never going to be on that album? We had a few suggestions, but you first...
Bruce: Oh, God, let me see... "Zulu Lulu" and... I forgot the name of the track...

Henrik: "Lickin the gun"?
Bruce: Oh, "Lickin the gun" maybe, I forgot that one, and what other tracks... Hmmm... Well, there's a few tracks on the other albums, bits and bobs that would never go on there...

Henrik: But isn't this something that you would go out to play to people, having revisited your own back catalogue as a solo artist?
Bruce: With who? I don't know that many people who I'd like to play with who would want to do this stuff. It's not that easy to do this stuff, you know... To find a guitarist to do Roy's stuff is tough. I mean, for "The Chemical Wedding" tour he coached Guru. He sat down and gave him lessons for weeks and weeks and weeks of exactly how to do each bit. And when we went into rehearsals the first time with the Guru I panicked. It wasn't Roy.

Henrik: But I think he managed really well...
Bruce: I tell you, by the time we got out on the road, after about a week on the road, it was to the point where I was like "You know this is a great with the Guru" so I was really proud of him. He did a great job. But that was such an exception because he was prepared to go with exactly what Roy told him to do.

Henrik: And he had the ability to do so...
Bruce: Yeah, he had the ability...

Mattias: But wasn't it hard for you when you had done the "Balls to Picasso" album and had to put this completely new band together? I mean, Alex and Roy are not really the same type of guitarists...
Bruce: Not the same type of guitarists but Alex is a fucking great guitar player. But he pretends he isn't. If you listen to the "Blue Ice-cream" solo on the first Sack Trick album where he's just sitting there and just wailing away on guitar just plays like a fucking demon and then says "Oh what a load of shit that was" and walks out. But that's Al. But he's a great guitar player and in his own way he's every bit as talented as Roy in a different area, a different style. He has the same thing with tunings and stuff. There's lots and lots of very strange tunings on "Skunkworks" which a lot of people don't fathom until they try and play the tracks. Then they go "How the fuck do you do this?"

Mattias: I have a quite silly question but I'll perhaps ask you anyway. Who of your Iron Maiden colleagues, if they ever made solo albums, do you think has the potential to make an interesting and, from a Maiden point of view, diverse album?
Bruce: Dave Murray. Nicko doesn't write as such, in terms of melodies and such but he would probably come up with a really cool sounding jazzy rock sounding album, cause he has some great friends who are amazing players. And when they get together and have jam, they come up with some really really good stuff.

Mattias: Yeah, we've heard about it but not heard the music.
Bruce: Oh, I did some tracks with them at the International Music Fair in Frankfurt where the musical manufacturers get together and do their trade show and everything. Anyway, Marshal had a stand there and they had a band with Nicko on drums and they do standards and things and I got up there and we just had an afternoon just doing "White room" and things like that. It sounded absolutely blinding, and there was a plot, which didn't come to anything, that we were maybe gonna do a tour of European capitals or something like that as a covers band with all the musical stuff supplied, so Nicko would do some drum clinics and the guitarist would do some guitar stuff and I'd go on and we'd do half an hour - forty minutes of songs. It would just have been a good evening of music but it didn't happen, but it's a nice idea.

Henrik: Sounds really interesting.
Mattias: Yeah. But Dave Murray was the answer to your question.
Bruce: I think so, because I know what Adrian's record would sound like. Big melodic things, sort of ASaP stuff. You know what the stuff he's written sounds like.

Mattias: But the stuff he's done with you are the really heavy songs...
Bruce: Yeah, some of that is my prodding. But when I've written with Davey, I mean, the songs we did didn't make it onto the record but he has got some great music inside him.

Mattias: It seems he has to work with someone to get his things together.
Bruce: Yeah, I was amazed at how easy it was to work with him and get ideas out and it sounded great.

Henrik: OK, that's all, I guess.

Special thanks to Suzan Kverh at Playground music for making this interview happen.