The Deep Purple album that had Bruce Dickinson “hooked” on metal
The wailing metal frontman is an image all music fans are familiar with. Possessing an elemental, operatic range, long flowing locks, and often a love of double denim and studded wristbands, this character has regularly cropped up across popular culture, bolstered by media such as Guitar Hero games and Tenacious D. In the real world, a select few helped erect this stereotype, with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson being one of the most notable.
With lyrical takes encompassing themes about the Devil, mythology and other fantastical elements, this, when fused with the power of his voice and renowned stage presence, assembles one of the most significant metal vocalists of all time, alongside other pioneers, Ronnie James Dio and Judas Priest’s Rob Halford. Putting real drama into the form, Dickinson was influenced by previous melismatic heroes such as Arthur Brown, Peter Hammill and Ian Anderson.
Yet, there was another who came before Dickinson, who not only instituted the concept of a metal frontman for future generations – alongside Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne – but directly influenced him and changed the course of his life. This was Deep Purple’s long-haired powerhouse Ian Gillan, a man so inextricable from the world of metal that he even had a short-lived stint in Sabbath years after Osbourne’s first departure.
From ‘Smoke on the Water’ to ‘Black Night’ and beyond, Gillan helped establish the notion of a metal frontman with his arresting, otherworldly vocal range, lyrics, and aesthetic. His distinctive style was perfect for a genre that was breaking off from rudimentary rock and moving into something much more bombastic. This would later produce more ridiculous moments such as Dragonforce’s ‘Through the Fire and Flames’ and late acting legend Christopher Lee’s ‘The Bloody Verdict of Verden’.
As such a formative influence on Bruce Dickinson, Gillan’s spirit is heard coursing throughout his work. Like many metal lords, one album first introduced him to the nascent genre: the London band’s 1970 release Deep Purple in Rock, the record that produced the indomitable ‘Speed King’. It had him “hooked” after he first encountered a fellow student listening to it when in school.
When speaking to Double J in 2018, the Iron Maiden frontman recalled the moment his journey to becoming an iconic frontman started with Deep Purple. He said that one day, when he was aimlessly wandering the corridor at boarding school, he heard “this racket coming from behind a door”.
Possessing a naturally enquiring mind, the young Dickinson knocked on the door, only to be met with a senior student sneering at him. When he asked who it was, he was told, “Oh, it’s Deep Purple, if you must know, ‘Speed King’.” The door was promptly shut in his face.
Despite the rudeness of the older boy, Dickinson’s life changed from that moment on. He continued: “That was that, I was hooked. We used to have little auctions in the boarding house. People would be short of money and wouldn’t have enough money to have enough to pay their bill at the school shop. So they’d auction their stuff off. LPs got auctioned quite regularly.”
The first Deep Purple record Dickinson got his hands on was a scratched version of In Rock, which he played to death. He added: “I think I might have blown up my parents’ stereogram with it.”
