Sep. 09, 2009 - Issue #725: Sex in the City 2009
Paul Di’anno
Running free: Iron Maiden's ex invades Edmonton
VUE WEEKLY: When you start out playing music as a kid, everyone around you is doing the same thing, but there comes a time when some people just fade away and stop playing for whatever reason, while others never give it up.
PAUL D'IANNO: Yeah, it's in the blood I guess. You hear the cheesy old chestnut, "It's the greatest drug in the world," and for me it probably it is. It's not about money or anything anymore—I've been there, done that one—it's really about genuinely just loving to go and play.
VW: Who's playing with you on this tour?
PD: You know what? I can't tell you. See, for me to keep ticket prices down and everything, we use different bands in different countries so we don't have to charge a fortune. We've got about 36 [bands that I use]. These guys from Calgary, I don't even know the name of the band yet—I'm going into rehearsal with them and we'll take it from there. They're all rehearsed up and it's like, "Surprise me." Sometimes that can fall flat on its face, but normally it's quite exciting getting to play with different musicians you haven't played with before. You get surprised, sometimes you get very shocked—sometimes they're awful. I mean if they're awful, I'm fucked.
VW: There are a lot of videos of you with various bands up on YouTube, and the one thing that's consistent throughout is that you're giving your all in every song.
PD: Well, if you're gonna do the job, you might as well do it all the way. It's not worth holding back. I've never done that in my life—even in rehearsals I sing just as hard as I will when I'm on stage. The thing is, every day there's something that will piss you off and it doesn't matter who you are. Something's really going to get you off through the day, so I just channel all that and instead of punching somebody out or shouting at someone, I do it on stage. I get rid of it and it's like therapy.
VW: There's one video out there with you singing in a group called Rockfellas and you're playing "Message in a Bottle."
PD: I like the Police. Rockfellas is a project we all put together last year and it's with some of the top musicians in Brazil: the bass player from one of Brazil's biggest bands of all time, Raimundos, and the guitarist from Charlie Brown Jr. and me and Jean Dolabella from Sepultura, and we did it for fun. It was a fun project and we didn't play that many shows, but it was pretty awesome and we might do it again—we're not sure yet, but we're thinking about doing punk covers this time.
VW: Do you listen to a lot of stuff at home that might surprise people?
PD: Bossa nova music. My girlfriend's a bossa nova singer. I love samba. I listen to classical music and stuff as well, and some stuff like Cat Stevens, but it's mostly punk with me—it always has been.
VW: With your own music, 2006's The Living Dead was the latest release?
PD: Yeah, we re-released it. It was called Nomad first of all and released in 2000, and it was released in Europe as The Living Dead because we'd shot a video for the thing. And when Megadeth was breaking up—apparently—the record company asked us if we'd do a tribute to them, like a one-song tribute, and so we did "Symphony of Destruction" and we liked it and Dave [Mustaine] liked it so we said, "OK, fuck it, let's put it on the album as an extra bonus track for the re-release in Europe."
I don't even know how well we did over there, I have no idea. All I was happy about was when we recorded the album I did all of my vocals for all the tracks twice in two days from six o'clock until 12 o'clock and I'm like, "Yeah, that was good." I was really happy with that—I went home with my kids and went back in about two weeks to mix it.
VW: Do you like to record quickly like that?
PD: I fucking hate recording. Oh, God, how the hell can you get out what I've written, whether it's angry or whatever, surrounded by four walls, no audience or anything? I find it really difficult to drag it out of me, so I just get myself all spoked up and pissed off and get into the studio, I go storming in there and, as I said, when we did Nomad I did the first track at six and finished the whole album by 12—that's every track plus the backing vocals, and I did it again the next day and said, "Ah, fuck it, that's enough. If you can't get anything off of that then leave it."
VW: When you have to get yourself into a certain space like that, it would be difficult to go into a studio for two months and stay there.
PD: Oh, half of these bands do this. That's what gets me down. It's not about the money. Some bands that go in there, the singer will come in and sing two lines or four words. Oh, God, I'd probably be in jail for murder because I'd shoot the producer for taking too much fucking time. I'd be going nuts, I couldn't deal with that. You must lose all the feel, all the energy must go. I understand that musicians might have to take a bit more time, but I don't play any of the instruments on the albums—I write the songs but I don't actually play them in the studio—I just do the singing part of it and I couldn't do that, man, I'd be going nuts.
VW: When something's done like that, it captures the emotion of the moment.
PD: Oh, yeah, I'm not supposed to be some opera singer reaching all them perfect notes. You have a go and if you hit or get it around that mark it should be enough.
VW: Are you working on anything new now?
PD: We did five new tracks in Germany last year—it's very industrialized—but we got in a bit of an argument with the record company and we told them to piss off, basically. So I kept them songs and a friend of mine where I am right at the minute in Salisbury down in Southwest England, has just handed me 16 pieces of music so I'm going to go away when I have a bit of time and see what I can come up with for that.
VW: You've been solo for far longer than you were with Iron Maiden, but those first two albums have stood the test of time and are a pretty solid foundation to be standing on.
PD: Oh, yeah. I think this year or next year is the anniversary of the first album and it doesn't seem that anyone's gonna be doing anything to celebrate it which is a bit of a shame, really. I don't really want to do that much, but then again, you look at it in another light and some of the Maiden fans of them first two albums, some of the younger ones haven't seen me doing the songs or they've only heard my versions of some of the Maiden stuff we put into the set which is a hell of a lot heavier and faster than the originals, so it could be interesting.
The Maiden songs I put in my set I keep saying never again, never again, and then when you get onstage and you see how much they're loving it then it's like, "Oh, shit, I'm never going to get rid of these songs, they're going to have to stay forever." But then again, I shouldn't knock it because they've given me a fantastic career. You shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you.
VW: Since Maiden, you've had a few bands of your own.
PD: Yeah, there hasn't really been that many bands. There was obviously Battlezone, but Battlezone became Killers. We had a few sort of lineup changes and then we changed the name because we got all this shit from the record company. That's the bane of my life: record companies. I seem to fall out with them really quickly because they want one album every three years and I'm like, "Fuck that, no, I'm touring." I don't write that quickly—I'm a little bit slow on that side of it—I can't write when I'm on the road, and I'm always on the road so I'm never home to write songs.
VW: Do you set time aside then to do nothing but write?
PD: Yeah. I'll have some ideas. As I say I've got these 16 tracks here and it's just fixing it all out. On a day off I'll have a listen to what he's done and if I like it I'll mark that one off as a keeper and once that's done I'll get on to writing lyrics then. V
Tue, Sep 15 (9 pm)
Paul Di'Anno
With Disposable Heroes, Order of Chaos
Starlite Room, $20
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