Bruce finally has broken the silence he decided to keep since the Ozzfest incident and talked about Sharon Osbourne when a Swedish journalist asked him about her. Here are his words:


Immediately after Iron Maiden's triumphant show at Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg on July 9, 2005, Dickison told Kerrang! magazine, "I'd like to go to America and say 'You're very good, but you're not as loud as 56,000 fucking vikings in a football stadium.'" The following week, the band went to America to play at Ozzfest, but the outspoken vocalist didn't have a lot of nice things to say about it...


"It was my usual love/hate relationship with corporate America," says Dickinson. "Ozzfest is a corporate rock event at which they sell the front 10-12 rows to corporate seats and not to kids. Most of the bands pay a lot of money to be on the Ozzfest, they get paid next to nothing. The whole way it's being portrayed as being some kind of altruistic holiday for all the bands is absolute nonsense, it's complete bullshit. Most of the bands are there because they paid to be there. That's the way it's run. We went out and we were like, 'Okay, why aren't there any people down the front?' Well, because it's restricted seating and because they don't have tickets. 'What?!' That's fucked, so we said so. I said so every night. Some fat cunt with greasy hair sat eating his hamburger with 50 seats empty all around him. Where are all the kids? They're held behind the barrier and they can't get any closer, because that's the way the venue is run. That sucks."


Close-Up: Did you expect Sharon Osbourne to take the measures that she took?


Bruce: "No, I think they were extraordinary, weren't they? Childish and uncalled for, and quite dangerous, really, when you consider there could've been a riot among the rest of the audience. Extraordinary! She is obviously completely mad!"


Close-Up: You kept quiet. Weren't you dying to fight back in the press?


Bruce: "There's no purpose of starting a soap opera. I mean, she IS a soap opera. That's what she does, that's what 'The Osbournes' is, that's what this 'X Factor' and all this reality TV bullshit is. IRON MAIDEN is IRON MAIDEN, we don't participate in that kind of crap. We don't do [MTV show] 'Cribs' or the celebrity garbage that is everywhere, that pervades people's lives and they think is important. We don't do 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here', 'Big Brother', or any of that shit. So doing any more than stating the facts and let people make up their own mind is just playing to the press. It's just gonna create more crap. There was so much stuff on the Internet, there were so many people who saw exactly what happened. Let the people tell the story, we don't need to say anymore than 'Okay, this is what happened. If you don't believe us, you can find out.'"


Close-Up: An hour ago I was surfing the Net and did a search on Google on "IRON MAIDEN + Sharon Osbourne" and this comment from Blabbermouth came up: "I fucking hate IRON MAIDEN, but fuck Sharon Osbourne." You must've loved the aftermath of the egg incident. All of a sudden everyone, even people that weren't into IRON MAIDEN, were rooting for you.


Bruce: "I see what you mean. I think the key is that this was a collision between two completely different worlds. The world that Sharon lives in is of world of... She goes to fashion shows and her daughter is the new face of whatever it was, some make-up bullshit or something you put on your face. Vogue magazine and all that kind of crap. She's put herself in that world and done that by choice. And lots of people do [that] and they're supermodels. All those people have their picture taken on red carpets and appear in fashion magazines. That's not our world, that's not my world. I don't ever go to places like that. I'd rather have all my teeth pulled out and have nails hammered into my gums than go there, to a fashion show and hang out with supermodels!


"What we do is we are a heavy metal band and what we care about is our fans. That's it. So our strength comes from that simplicity. You know, what do I care if I never appear on reality TV? 'Fucking great, thank you! Can I have it in writing?' But in her world, that's really important. In her world, it's really important what you look like. In her world, facelifts are really important. In my world, I don't give a fuck. I get old and I get wrinkly. Who gives a shit?"



In a recent interview to Revolver magazine, Bruce spoke about some of his favorite songs on the new Iron Maiden album. Here's what he said:



"These Colours Don't Run":


Bruce: "It's about what motivates soldiers and what they fight for. Some of them have a big flag tattooed on their ass and genuinely believe all the patriotic stuff, and they'll get their heads blown off for Uncle Sam. But I think most of them fight because if they didn't, their buddies would get killed.'


"The Longest Day":


Bruce: "It's about D-Day and the kind of ordeals that 18-year-old kids were put through to accomplish what they did that day. It's something that we're not exposed to now. Yes, there are people who go and do extraordinary things and wrestle hand to hand with Taliban guys in Tora Bora armed only with a knife. But we don't know how they do it because it's hidden. Most of these kids on D-Day were 18, and they had six months to be turned into these fighting machines. So the song is a musical version of 'Saving Private Ryan', in a sense."


"Brighter than a Thousand Suns":


Bruce: "I spent most of my adolenscence under the shadow of the atomic bomb. I was brought up in a generation that was led to believe that a claxon siren would go off, and you'd just have four minutes to kiss your ass goodbye. This generation has a different paranoia. Today, it's all about terrorism. We just thought we were going to get wiped off the face of the earth. So the song looks at how you reconcile building something as destructive as the bomb with sleeping at night."


"Lord of Light":


Bruce: "Just imagine there was a whole range of places between Heaven and Hell and that you got to pick, and that Lucifer is, in fact, the 'lord of light' downstairs, which is kind of what his name means. And all this stuff about the vengeful, eternal God wagging his finger and punishing you is all just a load of PR nonsense."


By the way, the new album has leaked on the internet and I now have it. It's bloody brilliant. The guys keep impressing me through the years.