OCTOBER: BRUCE DICKINSON

The Iron Maiden legend put his life story down on paper

If ever the life of a rock’n’roll star demanded to be immortalised on the printed page, Bruce Dickinson’s rollercoaster existence is the one. This year, Bruce released his autobiography, What Does This Button Do?: a boisterous, revealing and hair-raising trundle through the life and times of a man who spends a lot of time either fronting the world’s most-loved metal band or piloting sodding great aeroplanes. Quite where he got the energy from is anyone’s guess. But, as you might expect, Bruce clearly enjoyed the process of telling his own story every bit as much as he seems to enjoy everything else.

“I wanted to write something exciting and fun – a romp!” Bruce says. “I had the title and I just started writing. I had a small notebook and I used to write one or two lines, so the first bit would be ‘Worksop, curtains, mangle, fishing, shed…’ and I’d just expand on those. I had some ground rules for myself, which were easy to stick to: no marriages, no births, no deaths. Once you open up that aspect of your personal life, you impinge on other people’s personal lives and what’s the point of that? It’s not a book about other people! Ha ha!”

What Does This Button Do? dispenses with salacious gossip in favour of honest revelations and detailed anecdotes: from Bruce’s childhood, to his turbulent time at boarding school, to his early days as an aspiring musician and – most startlingly – the full story of Bruce’s gig in Sarajevo, at the height of the Bosnian conflict, in 1994. However, it does contain plenty of intriguing insights into the singer’s early days with Maiden. What comes across most strongly is how Bruce simply knew that he belonged onstage with Steve Harris and co. and was fully prepared to embrace that opportunity’s life-changing potential.

“I saw Maiden and thought, ‘They’re already huge, so let’s make it even better!’ My horizons were strictly limited at that point. The biggest band I knew played at Hammersmith Odeon and that was as big as it got. I’d hardly been outside the UK. I went on holiday to Spain with my parents once, and to Jersey on a school trip, and a school trip to some mountains in the Ardennes, but that was it, my exposure to Europe! I’d never done a gig outside the UK. I had no clue about America. But I had a lot of self-belief!”

What Does

This Button Do?

topped the charts in the UK, which means Bruce can add ‘bestselling author’ to his already ludicrous CV. Of course, now that he’s had a taste of it, there may well be more to come…

“There’s currently 70,000 words sitting around on the cutting room floor and there’s loads of great stuff!” he declares. “I’m not sure what we’re going to do with it. We’d better see how this book works out first. You can’t really do a second autobiography… although that’s never stopped footballers! Ha ha ha!”

“i’d hardly been outside the uk and i had no clue about america. but i had self-belief!”