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The two songs that define rock ‘n’ roll, according to Bruce Dickinson

Tue 15 July 2025 15:30, UK

When it comes to talking about the biggest icons of rock and metal, there aren’t many who had more of an impact on the genres during the 1980s than Bruce Dickinson did with Iron Maiden.

The band were an integral part of the rise of the new wave of British heavy metal that was established around this era, and not only helped to push the sound of metal in this country in a new direction, but began to spread their influence around the world in a way that saw their sound become adopted by metal acts across the globe.

Heavy metal had been around for most of the previous decade at this point, but what they were offering to the world wasn’t exactly a carbon copy of the foundations that Black Sabbath had laid down with their earliest material in the early ‘70s. In fact, because of all of the other mutations of rock music that had become popular over the course of this ten-year span, there were also plenty of influences that stemmed from the dawn of punk rock in the latter half of the decade thrown into their thrashy and DIY sound.

However, all heavy metal ultimately comes back to the roots of rock in some fashion, and according to Dickinson, there are two songs that epitomise rock and roll to the point that he would encourage anyone looking to explore the genre to begin at these points and then start to dig deeper. In addition to this, there’s little denying that these two songs are not just important to the history of rock music, but also helped Dickinson and Iron Maiden hone their sound and provided a basis for their own innovations.

While it’s perhaps the least beloved of the three albums by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold as Love is not short of standout moments, and Dickinson claimed that the brilliance of ‘Little Wing’ is something that makes him “want to cry”, according to a 2018 interview with Come Backstage. Sure, the track might not be as renowned as the likes of ‘Purple Haze’ or ‘Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)’, but it’s an important track in his catalogue that is full of bluesy flair and showcases just how much of a virtuoso guitarist Hendrix was.

Dickinson did, however, acknowledge the greatness of Hendrix’s debut album, Are You Experienced, during a broadcast of Masters of Rock on BBC Radio 2 when he ran through his favourite albums of all time, and there is little to be argued with in this regard, with the record remaining a mainstay of influential rock records to this day.

The other song that Dickinson said was a track that defined rock and roll was Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’, and again, with its chugging riff, it’s hard not to see this as a starting block for where Iron Maiden’s sound came from. In an interview with Metal Rules, he claimed that his love for the band largely stems from Robert Plant’s vocals, and that, alongside Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan and Free and Bad Company’s Paul Rodgers, they’re the basis of all metal singing that came afterwards. “If you join them in various combinations,” he explained, “They are the DNA of heavy metal singing.”

However, he would later acknowledge how it wasn’t just the heavy aspects of the band that caused him to fall in love with Led Zeppelin. “I’ve got to confess that the thing I loved most about Zeppelin was their English folk roots,” Dickinson told Metal Hammer in 2022. “Not their copies of American blues tracks. But that’s just me.”

As varied and versatile as they were, you can’t deny that without songs like ‘Whole Lotta Love’, there would have been less of a basis for metal to have evolved from.