Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson To Perform European Spoken Word Shows In 2023
Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson will take his celebrated spoken-word performance ‘An Evening With’ out on the road in January 2023 for a short run of dates in Europe.
Dickinson is considered one of the world’s most storied musicians. Aside from decades spent delivering high-octane performances with his larger-than-life persona in Iron Maiden, Bruce has lived an extraordinary off-stage existence too. A true polymath, his accomplishments include: pilot and airline captain, aviation entrepreneur, beer brewer, motivational speaker, film scriptwriter, twice-published novelist and Sunday Times best-selling author, radio presenter, TV actor, sports commentator and international fencer… to name but a few.
So there’s plenty to be entertained by, throughout the evening’s cornucopia of fascinating tales and derring-do exploits, all delivered by Bruce with characteristically infectious enthusiasm and wry wit.
Split into two parts, the first section of the show sees Bruce taking a humorous and often satirical look at the world from his own very personal perspective, treating the audience to private insights into his drive and ambition, peppered with plenty of Maiden anecdotes, and a myriad of other experiences encompassing not just the giddy heights but also the extreme lows, as told first-hand in his inimitable anarchic style, punctuated with photographs, videos and sometimes even erupting into song a capella, to illustrate a point.
The final section of the evening is devoted entirely to the aforementioned question-and-answer session, with the opportunity to pose questions on any subject whatsoever. As Bruce’s answers will all be completely improvised — the more left-field and quirky the question, the more interesting and compelling the response is likely to be.
Dickinson told Pablo of the Minneapolis, Minnesota radio station 93X about his last European spoken-word tour, which kicked off in his native United Kingdom in August 2021:
“It’s hopefully reasonably amusing”, he said. “It’s a look at how a spotty kid from the middle of nowhere ended up being the singer in Iron Maiden wearing crazy trousers, and all points in between. And it covers the cancer thing. It covers a lot of the early-days stuff, like how I learned to sing, all the weird stuff that happened to me at school and what formed your personality [and] character — all done with a very dark sense of humour, I hope. And then we take a break, and then the last 45 minutes, one hour-ish is basically improvisation. And so what I do is I take cue cards from the audience they write on the night, and I arrange them into kind of an improvised script. Then I do that. That’s the show.”
Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album, Senjutsu, was released in September 2021. The band’s first LP in six years was recorded in 2019 in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by bassist Steve Harris.
Bruce Dickinson performs the following spoken word shows in 2023:
Jan. 12 – Sentrum Scene – Oslo, Norway
Jan. 13 – Forum Scene – Bergen, Norway
Jan. 16 – Gasometer – Wien, Austria
Jan. 17 – Lilla Cirkus – Stockholm, Sweden
Jan. 19 – Kulttuuritalo – Helsinki, Finland
Jan. 20 – Slagthuset – Malmö, Sweden
Jan. 22 – Poppodium 013 – Tilburg, Netherlands
Jan. 24 – Theatre Am Tanzbrunnen – Archdioces Cologne, Germany
Jan. 25 – Musical Theater Bremen – Bremen, Germany
Jan. 27 – Haus Auensee – Leipzig, Germany