Bruce Dickinson, legendary frontman of IRON MAIDEN, took center ice at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on October 7 to perform the U.S. national anthem ahead of the Los Angeles Kings’ home opener against the Colorado Avalanche. The performance marked the NHL’s first day of regular-season play and was broadcast nationally as part of ESPN’s triple-header coverage.
This wasn’t Dickinson’s first brush with American sports anthems. Just weeks earlier, on September 14, he sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Acrisure Stadium in Pittsburgh before the Steelers faced off against the Seattle Seahawks. That appearance had been teased during a candid interview with soprano Elizabeth Zharoff, where Dickinson revealed, “They’ve asked me to do this. I’m going to do it a cappella and stuff, and as long as you start at the right place, you’re good to go.”
His journey into anthem territory began on September 11 during a solo concert at the House Of Blues in Boston. Before launching into the song, Dickinson shared his nerves and raw honesty with the crowd: I’ve never done this before in my f**king life, and I’m trying to avoid the embarrassment of reading the f**king words off the back of my hand. Look, no writing on the back of my hand, or failure to read the auto cue because, f**k me, there is no auto cue, all right?! So because today is the kind of — it can’t have escaped your attention that today is 9/11, right? And on this day, on that day, I was in New York City and I witnessed all the s**t that happened.
“So normally I do a little bit of like an a cappella — that’s just me singing on my own — a bit of [the IRON MAIDEN song] ‘Revelations’,” he continued. “But I thought, with your kind permission, I would have a go at the American national anthem, because it’s the only f**king time I’m gonna practice it.”
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