Bruce Dickinson recalls playing to just one person

Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden recalls playing a show to an audience of one person. The gig took place when Bruce was fronting a band in his university days. He explains in a recent episode of Chris Jericho’s podcast ‘Talk Is Jericho’. He was asked how he deals with difficult audience members, Bruce said “I would insult them – either that or try and make friends with them, but in a very odd way.”

Dickinson recalled: “I had one show; I was in a band at university. In the old days, it would have been called a disco. Except there was nobody there – it was like the phantom disco, and there was like mirror balls and lights. And there was also the stage, and there was nobody there. But we were getting paid like 50 bucks to go and play.” Eventually “one person walked in,” appearing “a bit shocked that there was somebody actually onstage.” The man in question found himself a chair, “put it right in the middle of the dance floor and sat down.”

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He said: “I thought, ‘This is great!’ So I got off the stage, and I went up to him with a microphone. I said, ‘Excuse me, sir, I’ve to know: What’s your name?’ … I said, ‘Can I buy you a beer? Because we’re about to do this performance just for you. The least I can do is buy you a beer. You may hate it, you know what I mean?’ … We kind of relaxed and we actually had a relationship. We had an audience of one who didn’t know who we were. … Nobody cared, nobody knew. But we had a great time.”

The frontman added “a pet peeve of mine is when a band goes on in what’s obviously a toilet with two beer crates at one end of the stage. And they go on there, and they pretend that they’re in Madison Square Garden. It’s like ‘Hello, Cleveland!’ And I’m just like, ‘No, it’s not Cleveland – you’re in a toilet with two beer crates!’ If you just said to people, ‘Hey, we’re all in the toilet with two beer crates,’ everybody would go, ‘These guys are great! I love these guys!’ But instead, they go, ’Oh yeah, just a bunch of posers.’ So you’ve got to be real with it.”

Check out the episode below:

Talk is Jericho – An Hour with Bruce Dickinson