Iron Maiden‘s first two records featured singer Paul Di’Anno, who died this Monday at the age of 66. He had a colorful life behind him. After mutual disagreements, his teammates replaced him with current frontman Bruce Dickinson in the early 1980s. Later, Di’Anno found himself in prison several times, in recent years he sang only in a wheelchair.
The British BBC reported the death with reference to the family. According to her, the singer died at home in British Salisbury. The members of Iron Maiden paid tribute to him in a joint statement. “Paul was incredibly important to us. He helped guide us on the path we’ve been on for nearly five decades. We and the fans will never forget what he did as a singer and frontman on the first two albums and live,” they said.
Bassist Steve Harris added a more personal condolence. “It is very sad that he is no longer with us,” he wrote. “At least he was performing until his last moments. It helped him survive, he didn’t miss an opportunity. We will all miss him. Rest in peace my friend,” added Harris.
Paul Di’Anno was born Paul Andrews in the London suburb of Chingford to a Brazilian father and an English mother. In his teens, he made extra money as a butcher or cook, but he also started singing as a teenager. He was close to punk, which was reflected in his voice.
In 1977, he befriended Steve Harris, who was looking for a new singer for his two-year-old Iron Maiden band. Di’Anno expressed interest and was accepted. “Maiden were really nice guys. You could introduce them to your nanny and she’d fall in love with them. But if she knew me, she’d fall for me in a minute. I brought madness to that line-up,” the British newspaper Guardian quoted the frontman at the time as saying.
At the end of 1979, Paul Di’Anno recorded the first record with the band, simply called Iron Maiden, which reached the British charts the following year and helped the group, for example, to participate in the TV show Top of the Pops.
Paul Di’Anno (pictured in 2022) spent the last few years singing in a wheelchair. | Photo: Profimedia.cz
The second Killers album from 1981 had an even harder sound. Both recordings are already considered the basis of the so-called new wave of British heavy metal music.
But after the subsequent tour, Paul Di’Anno ended up in the line-up. “I’ve always lived a pretty colorful life, but then I went too far,” admitted the musician in 2004, who developed an addiction to cocaine and often got into fights with bandmates. In another interview, he claimed that while he was a member of Iron Maiden, he lived from one party to the next and that it “wasn’t fair to the band, to the fans, or to myself”.
Paul Di’Anna was replaced by Bruce Dickinson, with whom Iron Maiden soon created the famous album The Number of the Beast and became one of the most popular bands in the world.
However, Di’Anno did not publicly criticize his successor. He also denied that he was underpaid for the first two albums with Iron Maiden. “Honestly, it’s nobody’s business, but for your information, I was paid very well. They took good care of me. I have nothing more to say about it,” he once stated.
He continued to pursue music, whether on a solo track or as a member of the groups Gogmagog, Battlezone, Praying Mantis and Killers. But he ruined his career with increasingly aggressive behavior. In the early 1990s, he was imprisoned in the US after attacking his girlfriend with a knife. “I regret the cases of domestic violence the most. I’m really ashamed of them. It wasn’t until I was in prison that I started to pull myself together again,” he admitted later.
An early version of Killers as sung by Paul Di’Anno with Iron Maiden in 1980. Photo: Harry Potts | Video: EMI Records
According to Di’Anno, he has “sent a few times for weapons and drugs”, as quoted by the Guardian. The musician was even banned from performing in the US for several years, and in 2011 he was again sentenced to nine months in Great Britain for receiving tens of thousands of pounds in social benefits, although he continued to perform around the world and collect royalties. He was released for good behavior after two months.
In recent years, Paul Di’Anno has been confined to a wheelchair due to serious health problems related to a knee injury. In 2022, fans begged him to undergo surgery in Croatia.
Even after that, he didn’t stop giving concerts, and according to the BBC, he sang over a hundred concerts between 2023 and 2024, including one last December in Cologne, where he filled the city’s public house there. From a wheelchair, which was brought to the stage by four men, he sang, among other things, early Iron Maiden compositions such as Charlotte the Harlot, Murders in the Rue Morgue or, at the end, Running Free, the Cologne-based Deník described.
It was at least Di’Anna’s seventh Czech concert. Between 2008 and 2012, he also performed at the Retro Music Hall in Prague, at the Masters of Rock Café in Zlín, in Pardubice, Pelhřimov or at the Basinfirefest festival in Spálené Poříčí.
Last month, the musician released a best of called The Book of the Beast, a documentary film about his life is to follow at the end of the year.
Iron Maiden with frontman Bruce Dickinson will return to the Czech Republic next year, performing on May 31, 2025 at the airport in Prague’s Letňany. They will celebrate their 50th anniversary with a tour called Run For Your Lives.
The band, which has sold almost 90 million albums and played over 2,000 shows, has been coming here since 1993. The last time it performed was last year in a packed Prague O2 arena, where its noisy production was applauded by almost 15,000 listeners. Many arrived wearing t-shirts featuring Eddie the mascot, who also appeared on stage during the evening. “Iron Maiden are one of the few bands that can turn the otherwise impersonal spaces of halls and stadiums into community gatherings,” Aktuálně.cz wrote about the concert.
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