Bruce Dickinson is many things, but no one can say the Iron Maiden singer is dull, especially when it comes to this idea he has once Maiden returns to the road.
In an interview with Forbes, Dickinson was asked about Eddie wearing samurai gear on the cover of Maiden’s upcoming album, Senjutsu, and whether that means he’ll don similar gear or fight a “samurai Eddie.”
Clearly, this is something Dickinson has been thinking about, because he responded, “Here’s a weird thing. The International Fencing Federation, okay, the actual like Western fencing federation in particular, and this is kind of led by the French, now has internationally sanctioned competitions in lightsaber. I kid you not, in lightsaber. I’ve seen one or two of their training sessions and they actually have competition lightsabers and they are the coolest things.”
He continued, “I bought a couple of junior fencing lightsabers and they are just the coolest things on God’s green earth. It’s a full-on combat lightsaber. You can bash the s— out of it! It doesn’t break! I carried these once into a hotel lobby and we ended up having lightsaber fights in the lobby and nobody stopped us because everybody’s like, ‘That is the coolest thing we’ve ever seen.’”
Dickinson concluded, “So the idea of having like a lightsaber duel with a samurai Eddie on stage, oh yeah, bring it on!”
Unfortunately, fans are going to have to wait a bit to potentially see this lightsaber duel. Maiden is currently slated to return to performing in June 2022. The plus side? Maiden fans don’t have to wait much longer to hear Senjutsu, their first new studio album since 2015; the LP comes out tomorrow (September 3.)
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