Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson opens up about his unusual skill

Frontman of the legendary heavy metal group has some interesting pasttimes

To Iron Maiden fans, Bruce Dickinson is the formidable frontman of one of the world’s biggest heavy metal bands.

On the side though, the Nottinghamshire-born rock star is something of a renaissance man: a skilled pilot, screenwriter, author, beer-brewer and, erm, swordsman.

Having trained with the British Olympic squad during the Eighties, Dickinson continues to practise fencing four times a week, he has revealed.

In an interview with The Times, the “Run to the Hills” rocker spoke about one of his many passions, joking that he quit training with the Olympians because he felt silly “fencing 18-year-olds”.

“Now I’ve switched from foil fencing, which is very fast, to épée, which is more tactical,” he explained. “I’ve found an amazing club in France, full of incredible fencers who all kick my arse. It gives me something to aim for — I want to get to the stage where only 75 per cent of them kick my arse!”

In the same interview, Dickinson spoke about his “decent second career” as a commercial pilot, estimating that he has done around 7,500 hours of flying.

“Though most of it was taking holidaymakers around and dropping oil workers off in Kyrgyzstan,” he said. “I’ve done 7,500 hours of flying in my life, but by the time you get to 65, you’re pretty much done.”

Bruce Dickinson boarding Iron Maiden’s Boeing 747-400 at the International Aerospace Exhibition in Germany, 2016 (AFP via Getty Images)

In 2008, Dickinson famously helped to fly Royal Air Force pilots home from Afghanistan, an experience he described in 2022 as “extremely emotional”.

“They had taken some casualties and they had lost some people, but they were all really cheerful – the best passengers you could ever have in the military,” he told his audience during his An Evening with Bruce Dickinson tour.

“As we were coming into land, we stopped and we blew the reverse thrust. We were looking out, and all really close to the runway were families, kids, all the families and wives and everybody of all the soldiers, and they were all [holding signs, saying] ‘You’re my hero, daddy’ and everything else.”

He continued: “We were both trying not to [cry]. I went, ‘Okay, we’re gonna stop. We’re gonna blow our noses, make sure we can see where we’re going, and then do the job – because this is really exceptional.’”

Bruce Dickinson performing with Iron Maiden in 2005 (Getty Images)

Of his time in Iron Maiden, Dickinson, who is married to French fitness instructor Leana Dolci, told The Times that “rock’n’roll madness gets old very quickly. Or it did with me anyway.”

“It lasted about a year,” he said. “Iron Maiden was never about a lifestyle — it’s always been all about the music. So I thought, if I’m going to stay with this singing thing, I’ve got to do something else just to keep my brain alive.”

Dickinson’s seventh solo album, The Mandrake Project, is out now. Iron Maiden are currently performing their Future Past World Tour, in support of their critically acclaimed 17th album Senjutsu. The tour is set to conclude this December after launching in May last year.