'Why Don't You Try Rapping?' - How Bruce Dickinson Reinvented Himself on 'Balls to Picasso' (Interview)

Rapping on a solo album? That's just one of the ways Bruce Dickinson reinvented himself on 1994's Balls to Picasso.

After all, Dickinson's never been one for sitting still.

The Iron Maiden frontman just wrapped the first leg of the band's Run for Your Lives tour and he'll soon launch his first North American solo tour in nearly 30 years in support of his 2024 album The Mandrake Project.

As he was jet-setting across Europe last month, Dickinson also released More Balls to Picasso, a reimagined version of the 1994 album featuring additional guitars, horns, orchestral arrangements and an explosive remix.

In a wide-ranging interview, Dickinson talked to Loudwire about the process of reimagining More Balls to Picasso, what fans can expect from his upcoming solo tour, his first forays into rapping and his bizarre experience playing for a bunch of "German cowboys" in the '90s.

I get the sense that you're a very artistically restless person.

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, if you look back, my modus operandi on the solo stuff that I've done, there's a lot of records that are never the same twice. It's not like, "Okay, yeah, that's that kind of style and they just do that and that's a slightly better version of that and that's a more modern version of that."

I mean, Tattooed Millionaire was a straightforward, kind of AOR, almost semi-pop-rock record, and then you go to Balls, which is much darker and more emotional. It should have been a lot heavier, which is why we've reimagined it — reinvented it in many ways — and now it's the album that it should have been 30 years ago and I think it sounds fantastically modern.

READ MORE: Why Did Bruce Dickinson Leave Iron Maiden in the '90s?

It's the same songs, but it is a brand new creation and in a brand new context. It sounds spectacular.

Yeah and it should have sounded like that when we made it [laughs], but I don't know why — but anyway, never mind. It sounds right now. And of course, we've been able to add in the orchestra and stuff like that on "Tears of the Dragon," which is immense now, it's huge. But all the guitars are just a lot heavier.

Philip Naslund, who's one of the guitar players in my solo band, he added a lot of rhythm guitars and stuff like that in there to just make everything more crunchy and heavier. And modern technology means you can just extract more sounds out of the sounds that are there. And Brendan [Duffey] is just a magician when it comes to mixing.

So it's fabulous, but we haven't fiddled with any of the vocals. We haven't redone anything or retouched it or Auto-Tuned it or done all this kind of stuff that people get up to these days. I don't believe in that. If it ain't real, it ain't there.

Considering that it came out in 1994, I don't hear any single, obvious analogy as far as what was happening in heavy music at the time.

No, we were either ahead of the curve or just in a different universe. And I think some people found, when the record came out — some people, not everybody — but I think some people found it difficult to listen to because I'd just left Maiden. And Maiden is ... for the people who are really, really, really, hardcore fans, it's such a tribal thing, you know? So I think they were struggling to go, "Even if I enjoy this, I can't, I shouldn't be allowed to enjoy this."

Well, now, hey guys, I'm back. Everything is cool. Nobody's going away. So sit back and enjoy the ride. Because, I mean, it's got all kinds of stuff in there. My intention was to make quite a dark record. "Cyclops" is quite a dark track, but with places of groove and stuff like that. Because I loved Faith No More, they're awesome. So there's a bit of Faith No More grooves in there. There's a bit of the darker side of Peter Gabriel stuck in there.

And then there's the big, operatic "Tears of the Dragon." There's the ballads and there's actually at least two bits of quite sustained rapping in there as well ["Sacred Cowboys"]. Actually, I use it as a device. They said, "Why don't you try rapping?" I said, "Oh, come on, me? Are you kidding me?" So anyway, I listen to it now and think, "Shit, man, that's pretty cool."

Listen to Bruce Dickinson's Reimaged 'Tears of the Dragon'

Balls to Picasso felt like an intentional downsizing of sorts. You weren't playing stadiums on that tour, but some artists have to do that and they don't seem happy about it. You seemed like you fully embraced that next chapter.

Oh yeah, you have to. Let's face it, you've got to be realistic about the world. But my view was that it was better to try and create something that was really new and different and just keep plowing that furrow and the universe would pretty quickly tell you, "Hey, you're in the wrong job, buddy."

And I'm stubborn as well, so I just keep on doing it. Even people say, "Hey, it's not working." I say, "Well, let's just give it some time, shall we? Let's see." And, you know, obviously after Balls to Picasso came Skunkworks, which was a completely different universe. I mean, I got hate mail and death threats from some metal people saying, "You traitor! You suck! It's grunge," and stuff like that.

To which I would reply, "So what?" What is grunge? It's something that you kind of invented, that you don't probably even understand. So don't criticize something you don't understand.

What other artists were you listening to at the time? Anything that really struck you as a fan or inspired you?

Oh my God. Well, I've got to say, I was a massive Chris Cornell and Soundgarden fan — massive. Alice in Chains as well. I mean, just great songs. So Alice in Chains and Soundgarden in particular. Soundgarden, to me, they were like a modern-day Led Zeppelin, updated and his voice was just the finest voice of his generation.

READ MORE: Bruce Dickinson's Favorite Storytellers in Rock + Metal

When you took Balls to Picasso on the road, you played all solo material, almost entirely from that album. Do you have any standout memories from the tour — how the setlist was received, how the performances went, etc.?

I think when we came over with it to the U.S., it was fabulous. The strange thing was one or two of the places that we played in Germany were a little bit weird.

We did a show for Lynyrd Skynyrd. We were a special guest of Lynyrd Skynyrd. And I have to say, they were lovely people, the band, very nice. The audience was just a little bit odd, because it turned out they were a bunch of German cowboys. So they all turned up in cowboy outfits and, like, Stetson hats and they all had their fake Harleys or whatever it was outside.

And as soon as we came on and started playing and played anything that was remotely not like country and western or country-rock, metal or whatever, half the audience actually turned their backs on us. I was just like, "Okay, this is like an episode of The Simpsons." So we had our ups and downs and our ins and outs and things like that, but we just had a great time when we were out on tour.

What can fans expect from your upcoming tour, be it The Mandrake Project or Balls to Picasso or anything else?

Obviously, we've not toured — with the exception of two shows at the Whisky and one warm-up at the Observatory in Orange County — we haven't toured any of this, Mandrake Project or anything, in North America. We've toured Europe and headlined and done great and festivals, we've done South America and stuff. So this is going to be the first sort of comprehensive tour that we've done.

So I'm going, "Okay let's try places that are like 1,500 to 3,000-seaters, wherever is appropriate. Let's just see what the heck happens." The band is the same that I toured [with] in Europe. The guitarists are the same guys that did the guitars on Balls. This band has written, with me, 18 songs and demoed them in April with me,and in January we are gonna go into the studio and record a live, with a real band, album, which we've all written together.

It's a real band. It's a rock 'n' roll band and we're out there, six of us — well, six of us plus a theremin — and we'll be out there onstage and we're gonna be doing stuff from Balls to Picasso, which we do anyway. We're gonna be doing some stuff from Mandrake. We do stuff from Chemical Wedding, so if you want to hear "The Alchemist," it'll be there every night.

We do change the set around sometimes as well — well, quite often, actually, because it's that kind of a band, that we can sort of go, "Hey, what should we do tonight? Let's drop this one in." So the core songs will probably stay the same, but we'll jump around a little bit.

And I'm gonna break with my tradition, basically because it's fun and I'm gonna do one Maiden song. And it'll be one of mine, so there'll be no argument about, "Oh, it's not supposed to be played like that." Well, I wrote the damn thing, so I'll tell you how it's gonna be played.

So for Brazil, I'm boning up on "Revelations." It's not a song we're doing on this tour with Maiden. And one other, which I will leave to your imagination. You'll have to guess. I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you, et cetera.

Thanks to Bruce Dickinson for the interview. See his upcoming North American tour dates below. For tickets and to purchase 'The Mandrake Project' album and comic series (released via Z2), head to Bruce Dickinson's website.

Bruce Dickinson 2025 North American Tour Dates

Aug 22 — Anaheim, Calif. @ House of Blues
Aug 23 — Las Vegas, Nev. @ House of Blues
Aug 25 — Phoenix, Ariz. @ Marquee Theatre
Aug 26 — Albuquerque, N.M. @ Revel
Aug 28 — Houston, Texas @ House of Blues
Aug 29 — Dallas, Texas @ House of Blues
Aug 31 — Pryor, Okla. @ Rocklahoma*
Sept 2 — New Orleans, La. @ House of Blues
Sept 4 — Fort Lauderdale, Fla. @ Revolution
Sept 7 — Sao Paulo, Brazil @ The Town*
Sept 10 — Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Brooklyn Paramount
Sept 11 — Boston, Mass. @ House of Blues
Sept 13 — Pittsburgh, Penn. @ Stage AE
Sept. 14 — Silver Spring, Md. @ Fillmore Silver Spring
Sept 16 — Toronto, Ontario @ HISTORY
Sept 18 — Montreal, Quebec @ MTELUS
Sept 21 — Louisville, Ky. @ Louder Than Life*
Sept 23 — Philadelphia, Penn. @ The Fillmore
Sept 25 — Detroit, Mich. @ The Fillmore
Sept 27 — Chicago, Ill. @ Riviera Theatre
Sept 28 — Minneapolis, Minn. @ Uptown
Sept 30 — Denver, Colo. @ Summit Music Hall
Oct 5 — Los Angeles, Calif. @ The Wiltern