Life on the road can get a little one-dimensional. I didn’t want to reach 40 and have to say all I’d done was look out the window of a tour bus and get drunk.
Apart from death and taxes, the one thing that’s certain in this life is that I’ll never be a fashion icon.
The celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan – what’s she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair.
I shall refract myself, yes, I shall no longer be known as the prism.
I guess it was the first time I really thought about leaving. I don’t just mean Iron Maiden, I mean quitting music altogether. I just thought, ‘Nothing is worth feeling like this for.’ I began to feel like I was a piece of machinery, like I was part of the lighting rig.
Everything you need to know about Iron Maiden is onstage.
I’m very good at daydreaming. Ask any of my schoolteachers.
One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.
Some of Eminem’s rap songs kind of have the teenage love songs like the fifties love songs. It’s kind of like domestic drama set to music. He is really good storyteller.
Teachers need to be more inspirational. But it’s also up to engineering to make itself more interesting.
The more guitars we have onstage the better, as I’m concerned.
Rock music should be gross: that’s the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers.
I’m trying to be as green as I can. As an airline pilot, I have a carbon footprint that’s a size 10, so it’s pretty hard.
Iron Maiden is an institution, and I’m delighted that I’m involved in it, but there was a time that I wasn’t delighted so I quit.
I was an accident – my mum was only 16 when she had me.
The mystical poetry of William Blake’s artwork also forms the basis for the album cover.
My son is in a band, and he’s a singer, and his vocals they’re screaming-growling stuff and he’s got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I’m, like, ‘Hats off to you.’
Anybody auditions for X-Factor it’s because they want to be famous, not because they are artists.
When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky – they let me off.
I guess that the salary that they get when they are working with me is, like, it beats working at McDonalds, so it has got some things going for it.