Excerpts from:

A chat with Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden
Globe Hotel, Stockholm
31 OCT 1998




H= Henrik Johansson
B= Bruce Dickinson
M= Mattias Reinholdsson


M= Well, we thought, now you've had Arthur Brown on the record, the next thing would be, what, to co-write some lyrics with Peter Hammill?

B= Oh, no, no, no, you mustn't get into, no! I was talking about this with the manager of Entombed, Dave Thorne, who's a huge Van der Graaf Generator fan and we were talking about how amazing some Van der Graaf Generator songs would sound if a metal band did them. It'd sound really f***ing heavy... I mean, can you imagine "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" done by a real prog metal band, it'd be amazing.

M= Or "Scorched Earth"...

B= Yeah, it's f***ing great. I might get there before them... [laughter] Peter Hammill was one of my childhood lyrical hero's but, you know, you say "Peter Hammill" to most people and they go; "Huh?"... And it's such a shame cause they had so much more to them, I think, than Genesis. They were a bunch of pansies compared to Van der Graaf, really...

H= Alright... Total change of subject. News from Japan: Something about a Samson reunion?

Complete Interview was here:

DIFFERENT INTERVIEW FROM
28 APRIL 1996 STOCKHOLM

A lot of these technical bands like Nektar, Genesis, Yes and some of the more obscure Jethro Tull albums which were very technical. And to me all that stuff was just fiddling around. There's very little of that music that I find moving.

H: But I read somewhere that you were a fan of Van Der Graaf Generator…

B: Oh, yea, I love Van der Graaf cause they were a band that were on the edge, and although they had quite complex arrangements, they made some great sounds. An they were an incredibly depressing band, music to commit suicide to and that's why I loved it, because it was so out there.

You put Van Der Graaf on and you could clear an entire room of people and I loved it. I love music like that. It's the same thing with other bands like Magma these weird jazz rock bands. Arthur Brown too. There's moments of real genius in full clusters in various bits of their music, and I'm into those. I'm not into this "Vulgar display of power", to quote a famous band. The first time you see it, it may be cool, but the second time, it's just boring.

H: Yes. Well, I got this idea of thinking of Van Der Graaf when I read this line in "Solar confinement" saying: "Chaotic energy that sucks the life from H to He".

B: Yes, well spotted. There you go.
H: So you got the idea from there?
B: Yes, "From H to He who am the only one". It's the fundamental life force of the universe, it's what powers the stars.

H: And Peter Hammill lyrics, is that something that's influenced you?

B: Oh, yeah, when I was a kid I used to go through his lyrics with a microscope. Lyric wise I was really into Peter Hammill, Ian Anderson and Gillan. Gillan's lyrics I thought were pretty cool and they were very rock 'n' roll. Especially the early stuff from "Deep Purple in rock". I was never particularly into Robert Plants lyrics. They just never really got to me. I like them more now than I did then. In general I sort of appreciate Zeppelin a bit more now than I did when I was a kid. And Peter Hammill had some really good poetical lyrics which are very cool. I'd like to write more of them in the future.

H: So you write all the lyrics for Skunkworks?
B: Yes
M: And in Samson, did you write the lyrics too?
B: Yea

BORN: August 7, 1958, Worksop, England

Bruce Dickinson joined the popular London heavy metal band Iron Maiden in 1982.