During an interview for the current issue of Metal Hammer, former IRON MAIDEN singer Paul Di’Anno has admitted that the band were right to fire him.
“I don’t blame them for getting rid of me,” Paul said. “Obviously, the band was Steve’s [Harris, bassist] baby, but I wish I’d been able to contribute more. After a while that got me down. In the end I couldn’t give 100 per cent to MAIDEN anymore and it wasn’t fair to the band, the fans or to myself.”
Di’Anno also said that he’s still proud of the two albums [IRON MAIDEN‘s self-titled debut and 1981’s Killers] he made with the band: “The two albums I made with the band were pivotal [to the metal genre]. Later on in my life when I met METALLICA, PANTERA and SEPULTURA and they told me that those albums were what got them into music, it made me incredibly proud.”
IRON MAIDEN is rumored to have completed work on a new studio album.
MAIDEN‘s last album, The Book Of Souls, was recorded in late 2014 in Paris, France with longtime producer Kevin “Caveman” Shirley.
Recently, Shirley offered a recap of 2019 on social media and alluded to a renewed MAIDEN collaboration, saying that he spent three months in Paris earlier this year “working very hard on an unnamed but not-very-secret project.”
“I finished with a loud ringing in my ears,” he added.
In May, Italian website, Maiden Concerts, speculated that IRON MAIDEN has already recorded their new album and is in the final stages of finalization.
Kevin Shirley has been signing all of the band’s records since 2000 and will be the sixth album since the group became a sextet with the return of Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith twenty years ago in February 1999.
There is no further information on the musical direction of the work, on the topics, covered and other aspects. What is known is that all the musicians, their wives, and the producer are at the same time in Paris, where Guillaume Tell Studios is located, where MAIDEN recorded Brave New World (2000) and The Book of Souls.
