Bruce Dickinson - What Does This Button Do?

HarperCollins Publishers

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First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2017

SECOND EDITION

© Bruce Dickinson 2017, 2018

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2018

Cover photograph © John McMurtie 2018

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Bruce Dickinson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008172442

Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008172503

Version: 2019-11-13

To Paddy, Austin, Griffin and Kia.

If eternity should fail, you will still be there.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Foreword

Born in ’58

Life on Mars

If You Want Skool, You Got It

Angelic Upstart

The Kipper’s Revenge

An Unexpected Journey

Lock Up Your Daughters

Minibusted

Going to the Dogs

Dope Opera

A Heavy Metal Crusade

Ham of the Gods

Neighbour of the Beast

The Big Dipper

On the Bandwagon

New Battery

Organ Pipes

Powerslave

Iron Curtains

Snow, Leather and Bondage

The Boys from Brazil

Much Ado About Cutting

You’ll Believe a Drummer Can Fly

Double Dutch

You Cannot Be Serious

Moonchild

Slaughtering Daughters

Fault Lines

Wing Nut

Out of the Frying Pan

Into the Fire

Radio Pirate

Edison and the Light Bulb Moment

Brain Swap

Feet Wet in the Goose

To Fly, To Swerve

Black September

A Close Shave

The Spruce Bruce

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Bruce Air

Alchemy

Bitter Experience

To Ride the Storm

Fuck Cancer

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Picture Section

About the Publisher

I don’t keep a diary, although part of me thinks that perhaps I should. Anyway, I don’t. I’ve always found reading other people’s diaries becomes very tedious and seldom entertaining. I suppose keeping a diary can help future generations to assess the personal solar systems of the famous, the notorious and the merely self-important, but in the main I find diaries terrifically dull. More fool me for believing that they should be otherwise.

A brief extract from my life might read:

Monday 12 February. Answered the door. ‘No, I don’t want any fish, and I’m not in need of any hi-fi speakers, which you’ve obviously stolen and secreted in your anonymous white van parked where the CCTV can’t read its deliberately filthy number plate …’

One rather wished for a Jehovah’s Witness. At least I could have had a good argument, even though we wouldn’t have really got anywhere.

The cat has been shitting in the plant pot again. This accounts for the smell of crap that I mistakenly blamed on the drains. Not content with trying to drink the water out of the toilet, he now insists on presenting his bottom to me and puckering it like a sea anemone before taking his siege perilous on my chest and making biscuits with his claws on my T-shirt. This cat is by far the biggest rock star in the house.

This is the sort of stuff that diaries are composed of. I’m inclined to change the word ‘composed’ to ‘composted’ and suggest that this might well be the outcome most of them deserve.

It’s the mundanity of the diarist’s daily life versus their legend that makes me most wary of the genre. Richard Burton writes scathingly of his ‘underdone and dry halibut’, devoting several calories of effort to describing the undistinguished white wine that accompanied it; Joseph Goebbels finds time to comment on all manner of inconsequential family events while getting on with his role in launching and directing the Holocaust.

In spite of all these shortcomings, perhaps I should keep a diary for a bit – just to see what happens. It could even turn into a sequel to this book, although a second self-penned book about me sounds a bit suspect. In the meantime I’ve got 40,000 words of stories that for one reason or another never made it here: Ted Nugent discussing how to deal with a man holding a pointy stick; touring Scotland in a stolen car with a plastic goose on the roof; launching a practice thermonuclear strike from a submarine, only to fail dismally; the world of cross-dressing airline captains; disastrous flaming sambucas; the cultural insights gained from flying the Haj pilgrimage. These – and many others – are still to be revealed.

If the truth is ever told about my driving abilities then I might find it necessary to flee the country, although I’ll admit I did nearly kill Garry Bushell in Florida by accident in an incident that still divides public opinion.

Then there’s the whole world of public speaking, entrepreneurial enterprises, crooks and conmen that’s barely touched upon in this book. And, of course, there’s the not-so-small matter of an Iron Maiden tour on a 747, plus the tour that’s taking place as we speak.

So, it’s not that a little bit of water has passed under the bridge since 2015; it’s just that the equivalent of the Hoover Dam has built up in the interim.

‘Watch this space,’ as they say … whoever ‘they’ are.

I had been circling for two hours over Murmansk, but the Russians would not let us land.

‘Landing permission denied,’ said in the best Star Trek original-series Mr Chekov accent.

I didn’t know if this controller was an Iron Maiden fan, but he would never have believed me anyway; a rock star moonlighting as an airline pilot – incredible. In any case, I didn’t have Eddie on board and this wasn’t Ed Force One . It was a fishing expedition.

A Boeing 757 from Astraeus Airlines with 200 empty seats and me as first officer. There were only 20 passengers from Gatwick to Murmansk: lots of men called John Smith, close personal protection, all of them armed to the teeth. Not that Lord Heseltine needed it. He was pretty good at swinging the mace around when he had to. Then there was Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph . He was on board too. I wondered if the Soviet controller read any of his leader columns. I thought not.

‘What sort of fish are there in Murmansk?’ I had enquired of one of the John Smiths.

‘Special fish,’ he deadpanned.

‘Big fish?’ I offered.