Bruce Dickinson Says Iron Maiden Planning Tour of Smaller Venues
Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson said the band was planning to arrange a tour of smaller-than-usual venues where they’d play their latest album, Senjutsu, in full.
He accepted that some fans wouldn’t be interested in attending the performances, which is why they wouldn’t try to perform in places where they might struggle to sell out.
“The plan we've got — it's not really a secret […] we've talked about doing the entire album start to finish, but not this time around,” Dickinson told Talk is Jericho (available below). “And we all appreciate that that is something that really diehard fans will probably love, [while] other people will go, ‘I'm not gonna go see that.’ So the answer is you play smaller venues so that they sell out with just your diehard fans.” He added: “It's a musical thing to do; it's a musical thing.”
He went on to reassure ticketholders that Maiden’s upcoming Legacy of the Beast shows would be loaded with classic tracks, just like the previous shows.
“[P]eople have all paid their money to see […] spitfires and flamethrowers and Icarus and everything that goes with,” he said. “So they’re going to get all that. But the first three tracks are probably going to be the first three tracks on the album […] [E]verybody should know the first three tracks.” He added: “And we'll have a stage set to go with it. Once you've done that, you're back to the kind of Legacy world at that point. But I think ‘The Writing on the Wall’ is going to be a great … crowd singalong song. You can imagine that. It'll be fantastic.”
Dickinson’s comments came in the light of Maiden’s 2006 A Matter of Life and Death tour, which upset some fans because the band played the full LP and omitted many classic tracks the audience expected to hear.
“Nobody has to buy a ticket,” the singer said of the planned Senjutsu tour. “If you don't wanna go, you don't buy a ticket. It's going be plain as the nose on your face: This is going to be what they're going to do. So given that, don't complain that they did what they said they were going to do.”
Listen to Bruce Dickinson on 'Talk is Jericho'