The Flight of Icarus

Dear James,

I was watching some documentary on the telly with my mum a couple of years ago about the birth of heavy metal when Bruce Dickinson appeared.

"Oh, I've always liked Bruce Dickinson," says my mum.
"Eh?"
"Oh, I think he's a lovely boy."

I wrote to mum the other day to ask her about this.
"Bruce Dickinson, the airline pilot?" she asks. I google. Turns out he's a licensed airline pilot as well as the duke of darkness.
"Yes, the airline pilot too", I write back.
"I don't remember ever saying that", she replies. You can imagine the trouble I have writing the novel.

But I still stand by what I heard, and am starting to think Bruce Dickinson's been sending out subliminal messages to my mum. If you play this video backwards, at the start where he says "Scream for me Long Beach!" you can almost hear him say "Scream for me Susan!"

Maiden drummer Nicky McBrain (he has a side project called, wait for it... Brain Damage) once told a funny story on Raw Power about a performance of this song at the Hammersmith Odeon (Scream for me Hammersmith!) which went wrong. Now that I think about it, the story wasn't that funny. It's the way he tells them.