Bruce Dickinson Regrets Calling an Iron Maiden Fan a “Greek C*nt”
Over the last couple years, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson‘s had some outbursts during shows that’s led to a lot of people online having opinions on the matter. From his being mad about weed being smoked during his show to his stance on Brexit, he’s been outspoken and at times gone off the handle. Yet after some self-reflection, it seems he’s taking a step back and calling at least one instance one of the dumbest things he’s ever done on stage.
During a recent interview with Kerrang!, Dickinson pointed to an incident that took place on July 16, 2002 in Athens, Greece. Maiden was playing the Olympic Stadium and jumping into “The Number of the Beast” when a fan lit a flare in the crowd. Within seconds of the thing getting set off, Dickinson went off, calling him out in front of everyone with a litany of… colorful words.
“‘Who is that Greek cunt waving a flare?’ In Greece. There was a degree of sympathy from people in Greece who said, ‘He shouldn’t have said Greek cunt,’ and yeah, maybe not, but he probably was Greek. And he probably was a cunt. But it really pissed me off. There I am, trying to sing, and there’s all these people waving these phosphorous naval distress flares, and nobody in the whole place can fucking breathe. I find it really, deeply inconsiderate. But I shouldn’t have called him a Greek cunt because I wasn’t sure of his nationality. I lost my rag and I shouldn’t have done.”
That’s not the first or only time he’s ever gone off on someone for potentially affecting his vocal performance. He’s done it a couple times since, with another time being when he got pissed off that someone was smoking pot during an Iron Maiden show. That led to people roasting Dickinson, not that he’s bothered by that at all. In fact, it even made Nickelback more relatable as Chad Kroeger said he encourages the ganja at his shows.
But I digress — in the aforementioned interview, he said he should have a least used different insults when attacking the guy.
Can smoke hamper a person’s ability to sing? Absolutely. Do you gotta be a dick about it on stage? Probably not. At least Bruce has realized that calling someone out is one thing and attacking them by using their nationality is another thing entirely.
