Paul Di’Anno: the singer fired from Iron Maiden and who almost died in Argentina is still rock

Paul Di’Anno, the former lead singer of Iron Maiden, has a fantastic life story, although it would hardly serve as an example. Discoveries, excesses, drugs, prison, loud music, accidents, falls, recoveries; It contains the essential ingredients for a story on a streaming platform, and in fact he himself is collaborating on a documentary that he says can be seen in May.

“I don’t take anything away,” says Di’Anno, “because life is as it has been, with its triumphs, its failures, its sadness and its joy.”

Logically the four years in which Di’Anno was the lead singer of Iron Maiden between 1978 and 1981 They will be very important in the script because it is what attracts, what brings people to the cinema, and also what makes tickets cut at the shows he gives in Europe, but especially in South America, where he has many fans where he has been. the task of cultivating and fascinating, tour after tour, show after show, even at the risk of his life.

“I almost died in Buenos Aires! -Remember-. I was already returning to England, but my fans kidnapped me for ten days, so I did another ten shows without knowing that I had a serious infection, which made everything worse. By the time I got on the plane I had already gone into sepsis and When I arrived in England I had about 45 minutes to live., that I used them to go to the hospital, get antibiotics and start recovering. “I didn’t realize how bad he was, but today I look at the photos and it’s clear to me how bad he was.”

Di’Anno comes with a vengeance to Buenos Aires as the headliner of the “From Hell Fest” festival, a four-date festival that will begin with Di’Anno this Friday, February 2 at Arena Sur (Av. Sáenz 459, CABA) with other metal bands .

The name of Di’Anno’s tour is not an exaggeration: “The Resurrection Tour” comes from hitting Chilean soil, where he played four sold-out dates, with a list of songs that gives fans what they expect they will search for: the repertoire of the first two Iron Maiden albums. Pure heavy-metal in a prodigious throat, which despite health problems has not suffered any decline.

The latest shows with Maiden themes?

“It’s a way to thank the fans and give them what they want to hear. Maybe it’s the last time I do a whole show with all Iron Maiden songs. In honor of the truth, I’ve tried a repertoire without Maiden songs with other bands, but the fans want to kill me. Ozzy Osbourne also has to sing seven Black Sabbath songs in his shows. There is no option.”

Paul Andrews, like his original name, grew up in an England that experienced Beatlemania and an unparalleled rock flowering. But he was very young, so when he woke up to music, it was glam-rock that was in fashion.

“I was in my room and I mimed to the singers who were on television. So I could sing imitating David Bowie, I could imitate Marc Bolan of T. Rex, or the singer of Slade (Noddy Holder), but I didn’t realize that I could actually sing until a few years later, when the punk wave arrived, which given everyone permission to try. I did it and that’s when I discovered I had a good voice.”

And he continues: #There is an old saying: ‘if you weren’t there it can’t be explained’, but the second half of the 70s was a period in which all the previous years of music were discarded. There were the Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, we had the legacy of the Beatles, and all those musical cycles still come and go.”

Despite punk’s permission to discover his voice, Di’Anno finally ended up joining a nascent heavy rock band in a year when the term heavy-metal wasn’t formally used.

Today, Iron Maiden is synonymous with those two words that define a genre that continues an audience happily captive of the distortion, volume and expressive rhythms of the speed of the train.

“At that time, in 1978, Iron Maiden was a hard-rock band that had a half-punk singer who I discovered was me. Plus we had long songs, with changes of pace, so it was difficult for the press to give us a label. Until Iron Maiden’s first album came out in 1980 and they invented the New Wave of British Metal and took us there. We were like ‘what is this shit?’ (series). Later other bands like Def Leppard followed the trend, but they were very different from us. The only thing like it that had come before was Judas Priest. I think the fact that they couldn’t tag us turned us into something different and exciting.

Fired from Iron Maiden

Paul Di’Anno parted ways with Iron Maiden when they finished touring in support of their second album, Assassinsfor reasons that have to do with customs that are not very friendly to health and They replaced him with Bruce Dickinson.

Paul didn’t let this hold him back from music and continued to join or create bands such as Di’Anno, Battlezone and Killers, among others. Me toon got into trouble with the law and spent a few months in the shadows in the United States. His spirit remains irreducible and it is his legend that walks three steps ahead in his shadow, making him one of the most experienced soldiers of heavy-metal, a condition that makes him much loved by fans of all latitudes.

“The shows in Chile were crazy, it’s the craziest audience there could be, like the Argentinians to whom I want to thank for so much support and loyalty. For me it is an honor to be able to sing for them, and also to be able to play in so many places (I will visit Rosario, Córdoba, Mar del Plata, General Roca, Chaco, Mendoza and Salta, among other locations). .

Also known as “the beast”, Paul Di’Anno does not seem to have foreseen an early retirement from the scene (he is just 65 years old), but admits that now his steps will be less reckless. He has pathologies because for some years he has been forced to sing in a wheelchair.

“And it doesn’t get easier with time, believe me. I am already doing physiotherapy, which will allow me to walk again, which is what I want most. I wasn’t created to be in a wheelchair. I am in the final stage of my recovery and I also hope to be able to race. “I don’t think I’ll play a season for West Ham, but I think I’ll be able to get back on my Harley Davidson and that’s what really matters.”