ON STAGE: An Evening With Bruce Dickinson
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: March 16, 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $51.25-$84.50 from or 250-386-6121
Father Time is undefeated. But when his opponent is Bruce Dickinson, don’t rule out a victory for the Iron Maiden frontman.
The outspoken singer was declared cancer-free in 2015, after a battle with throat cancer, and beat COVID-19 last year. He also tore an Achilles tendon in 2019, which required extensive rehabilitation, and had hip replacement surgery in 2021. After decades of traversing stages on a nightly basis and competing on a semi-professional level in the sport of fencing, he has earned his battle scars, to be sure.
Despite the setbacks, Dickinson is still out touring, criss-crossing North America at age 63 on his An Evening With Bruce Dickinson spoken-word tour, which stops tonight at the Royal Theatre.
No music will be performed at the event — which is Dickinson’s first official appearance in Victoria since 1982, when Iron Maiden opened for Scorpions at the former Memorial Arena — but it will have an abundance of eventful moments.
“It’s a sideways look, an amusing look, at how the kid from the middle of nowhere ends up wearing the world’s most ridiculous trousers and singing for a well-known rock combo and along the way becomes an airline pilot, having cancer, doing fencing, meeting Johnny Cash and all kinds of things,” Dickinson said during a recent interview with Los Angeles Daily News.
The evening is split into two parts, the second of which is is devoted entirely to a question-and-answer period. The format was designed to give some of the most dedicated metal fans in existence an opportunity to ask a living legend every type of question imaginable. Dickinson said he will respond to some of the stranger ones with equally out-there answers.
“I looked at some stand-up comics that I really admired, and I looked at the way they presented things [prior to this tour],” he said. “I don’t tell jokes, but I do ad-libs and the occasional side gags, but the stories are the thrust of the show.”
Dickinson could do this type of thing for years on end; he’s got not shortage of iconic stories. His own endeavours drive much of the dialogue during his spoken-word tour, but it wouldn’t be a Bruce Dickinson performance if Iron Maiden didn’t make it into the mix at some point.
The heavy metal group is one of the top British acts in history, with 17 studio albums and more than 100 million albums sold. Dickinson joined the group in 1981, and with his slightly operative voice, the group was catapulted to international fame on the strength of songs like Run to the Hills, The Number of the Beast, Aces High, The Trooper, and 2 Minutes To Midnight.
The band is also considered one of the greatest live acts in history. Dickinson brings a sense of supreme confidence to his solo tours, and with or without his Iron Maiden bandmates behind him, will deliver more entertainment per-minute than practically every one of his peers.
“In the first hour and a half, you won’t hear the words ‘Iron Maiden’ mentioned once,” Dickinson said of the three-hour show.
“And then it’s the world of Maiden with a twist and some really out there stories. It’s not like, ‘Oh then we went and made this amazing record.’ You can go read books about that stuff. What you want is the backstory, the color, the fun things, the crazy stories and I link that together with going into war zones and playing big shows, being a professional airline pilot for 12 years, and just when you thought it was over, here’s some stories about cancer.”
