IRON MAIDEN Singer BRUCE DICKINSON: Entire 'HARDtalk' Interview Available

IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dicksinson was interviewed by Sarah Montague of BBC's television progam "HARDtalk", about his decision to launch an aircraft maintenance business, Cardiff Aviation Ltd, which will be based at the Twin Peaks Hangar at St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, United Kingdom. Dickinson, a qualified commercial pilot, and his company are leasing the 132,000 square-foot hangar from the Welsh government.

The full interview aired on May 28 on BBC World News and can now be seen in two parts below.

When asked what he listens to when he is not busy performing and recording with IRON MAIDEN, Dickinson said, "I watch speech and documentaries and things like that. Music, I try to avoid listening to music unless I really, really, really consciously want to listen to music. I've been listening to music all the time. I prefer to either think it up or create it or do it on a piano or something. Every now and again you hear something and you sort of go, 'Hmmmm… That was nice. Who's that?' So I have to ask my kids. 'By the way, who's that?'"

On the topic of whether he has ever felt that IRON MAIDEN should update its formula and mature its image, Dickinson said, "Mature our image? Why? Inside this 53-year-old exterior — 54 in August — is a 17-year-old. Actually, probably mental age, probably slightly younger. But that's the core of why you do this thing. When you're a kid and you experience something that makes you feel, 'Wow, walking on air.' The first song you write, the first experiences, you have to ringfence those and guard them against what I can describe as the cynicism of the world, because the world eats into people and destroys those hopes and those dreams and things like that. And it's those things that people call childish, those are the things, actually, that motivate us and that keeps our creativity precious; that's what's inside people, and they lose it at their peril. I've seen people that have lost it, and it's really sad. So when I say I listen to [talk radio channel] Radio 4, it's not because I hate the Western world of music, it's just because I've got the confidence that I've got this little thing inside me, and if I see something and spot something and go, 'That's brilliant. I love that,' I know it's real."