MTV: How did it feel to be in the studio again with these guys?
Dickinson: Well, the great thing is, the record was produced by Kevin Shirley,
and Kevin took the approach of using the strengths of the band, and one of the strengths
of the band is playing live. We'd never recorded an album live. It's insane, when
you think about it. The one thing the band does the best, we've never actually used
as an asset. So we went in the studio having prepared all the new material as if
we were about to go do a gig, having come off this really successful world tour last
year, and having written the material in the three months before that tour.
MTV: "The Wicker Man" was the first song that you recorded. What
was the feeling like then when you started working on that song, and you're all set
up and everyone is playing together in the studio, all within eye contact of one
another, and it all comes together? What was that feeling like?
Dickinson: Slightly bewildering, really, because you're listening to one of
the takes, and it sounds pretty much like the record because, of course, it's live.
I mean, there's a little bit of mixing, a little bit of tweaking here and there,
but basically it sounds like you're hearing almost immediately what the record is
going to sound like. It was strange.
The previous record had taken us about five months, because of technical snafus and
things like that. There was actually almost a period of depression that everybody
went through at the end of the first ten or twelve days when we weren't doing any
more tracks. We suddenly stopped and we went, "Oh, that's it." Then we
had to wait, because then the tedious part starts, which is going through all the
work that you've done and just picking it apart and trolling through it, sifting
through the bits and finding little pieces that don't quite work out, looking for
a section, maybe in another live take, that you can just steal and repair, and stuff
like that. That actually is time-consuming, and for a musician, pretty dull.
MTV: Were you at all surprised at how smoothly everything went?
Dickinson: That was great that that happened, and a lot of it as well goes
down to Kevin, because when stuff sounds great the first time out of the box, as
soon as you hear the thing back, everyone just breathes a huge sigh of relief. It's
like having a great goalkeeper, having a good producer. He's not dropped the ball.
When people start getting stressed out and frustrated, they start looking for people
and things to blame and everything, and that's when it starts getting messy. So if
you have a great producer, that keeps everybody happy, keeps everybody comfy.
MTV: What would you tell fans to expect from the end result of all this?
Dickinson: This is the album. This is the Iron Maiden album that you've needed
for twelve years, and it's also the Iron Maiden album that you don't quite expect.
I've heard lots of theories about what we should be doing on this album, ranging
from "Get with the program, get electronic," to "Oh, it should sound
like my solo records. Iron Maiden should do like a record that sounds like 'Chemical
Wedding.' That would be great." That's one version, and the other one is, "Oh,
they should remake 'Number Of The Beast." What we've actually done is none of
the above, to my great relief.
This sounds like classic, vintage Maiden, but it has a twist in the tail, which is
a whole kind of almost prog rock element to it that's come in on several of the songs.
That has been brewing for a while, and anybody that knows [bassist] Steve [Harris]
will know that he's a huge fan of that kind of music. The mix is so good, and the
sounds and everything are so good. It's hypnotic and it's captivating. That's my
take on it, anyway.
I think a lot of Maiden fans will be really pleased, because this album has been
built for a time which no longer exists. This album is completely out of any time
zone and current popular music culture. I mean, we know it exists right now, but
actually it could exist in 1975 as well, and it might very well exist in 2005 when
you come back to listen to it. It exists completely out of time. It's not dependent
upon fashion, MTV, radio, or anything. It's just its own entity.