There are bands whose fanbase preference is eternally divided between phases marked by two great vocalists. Black Sabbath fans are divided between Ozzy Osbourne and Dio; AC/DC are divided between Bon Scott and Brian Johnson; Van Halen’s are divided into David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar.
Iron Maiden is not one of those bands: although Paul Di’Anno and Blaze Bayley have recorded a couple of albums each, the overwhelming majority of fans have an undeniable preference for Bruce Dickinson.
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After all, it was with him that in the 80s Maiden became world famous with their most devastating sequence of albums: “The Number of the Beast” (1982), “Piece of Mind” (1983), “Powerslave” (1984) , “Live After Death” (1985) and “Somewhere in Time” (1986).
As published by Blabbermouth, in a 2005 interview with Jeb Wright (then editor of Classic Rock Revisited) Di’Anno compared himself to Bruce Dickinson.
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“Yes, I already admitted that Bruce is a better Maiden singer than me. […] My feeling is that I could never have made my mark on the Maiden albums that came after ‘Iron Maiden’ and ‘Killers’, because Bruce’s voice is much better suited to that material than my voice ever could be.”
“However, leaving that aside, I’m also not comparing our voices, because I think that, as much as I can’t sing Bruce’s songs in Maiden, Bruce definitely doesn’t have — and never had — the voice to replace me in both first classic albums.”
“[…] Bruce sounds incredible on many later Maiden tracks like ‘The Trooper’, ‘Number Of The Beast’ and ‘2 Minutes To Midnight’, but let’s face it (without wanting to sound arrogant here, I’m just saying what everyone already knows) when Bruce tries to imitate me on classics like ‘Remember Tomorrow’, ‘Running Free’, ‘Wrathchild’, ‘Killers’ or anything from the first two Maiden albums… he just doesn’t have the tools for the job, because the aggression isn’t there. there.
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“My voice is, and always will be, mega aggressive and that’s what helped make those first two classic albums what they are. On the other hand, the high and […] Bruce’s operatic playing is what helped give subsequent albums a different character.”
“Your voice can say a lot about your past. Mine shows the kind of rough, low-class background I had; Bruce’s voice gives the impression that he was a private school kid,” he concluded.
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