In a new interview with Barry Robinson of Classic Album Review, former IRON MAIDEN drummer Nicko McBrain, who is currently promoting his autobiography, “Hello Boys And Girls!”, spoke about the five-year period when the British heavy metal legends were fronted by Blaze Bayley. Singer Bruce Dickinson exited MAIDEN back in 1993, paving the way for the Bayley era and a string of four solo albums from Bruce. Blaze was considered an odd choice to replace Bruce considering that Blaze‘s singing voice is quite clearly a baritone in contrast to Bruce‘s tenor/alto range. Bayley fronted IRON MAIDEN from 1994 until 1999. The two MAIDEN albums he appeared on, “The X Factor” and “Virtual XI”, sold considerably less than the band’s prior releases and were their lowest-charting titles in the group’s home country since 1981’s “Killers”.

Asked if there was any resentment in the MAIDEN camp surrounding Bruce‘s departure and whether he feels, in hindsight, that the singer’s exit could have been “handled better”, Nicko said: “Oh, yeah, without a doubt. I was the most outspoken one of the guys, out a lot of them, about the way that all went down with Bruce. And there was a lot of bad blood in as much as I thought, well, why didn’t he wait till the end of the ‘Fear Of The Dark’ tour? Why did he have to say he wanted to leave halfway through it? And my take was, why do I wanna… And I’m gonna be a bit rude here. I mean, it’s well documented, but you’ve asked the question and I’ll answer it. I felt, why do I wanna look at his sorry arse on stage every night and I know he doesn’t wanna be there? It was a very personal inward thing for me. Then I’m thinking, ‘Well, what about the fans? We’re not giving them a subpar performance,’ ’cause he didn’t wanna be there. And all this kind of stuff, this malarkey was going through me noggin. But when he came back, we had a meeting in Brighton. Janick (Gers, MAIDEN guitarist), Bruce and myself drove back to London for last orders at the local pub in Chiswick that Bruce and Janick used to go to. And we talked about it, and I said to him, ‘Bruce, I can’t take back what I said and how I felt about when you left the band five years ago, six years back,’ I said, ‘but I love you and I’m glad you’re back in the band.’ And he looked at me and he put his arm around me. He says, ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way, Nick. I love you too.’ And we’ve never spoken about it since. And that’s so good, because we put it to bed.”

When Robinson noted that MAIDEN‘s first post-Blaze album with Bruce, 2000’s “Brave New World”, was an “impressive comeback” effort, Nicko concurred. “Absolutely,” he said. “Well, we went to Paris. We made the album at William Tell Studio, or the Guillaume Tell Studio. And, of course, we had the wonderful dynamic with producer Kevin Shirley twiddling the knobs. It was a new driver for us, sitting back there in the control room. And Kevin was great to work with. As you know, he’s done every album with the band since, going forward. So there was that dynamic of the band being back together. You know, ‘Oh, we’re putting the band back together.’ (Laughs) It’s the old BLUES BROTHERS scenario. We had that, the excitement of being in Paris and doing it in this wonderful studio, and having Kevin. And it’s a stunning album. And the sound was completely capturing the essence of the band, and I think Kevin has done a great job ever since with that, in that respect.”

After Robinson pointed out that it must have been “tough” for Blaze to replace Bruce, Nicko said: “It was, honestly. Oh, and, of course, when Bruce came back, we had Adrian (Smith, MAIDEN guitarist) come on board. And Adrian was such a key instrumental part in the meteoric rise of the band. He was more of the commercial writer in the band. Well, he wrote most of the singles that we took off albums over the decades.”

Nicko continued: “To be fair to (Blaze), we didn’t transpose the songs. We should have gone down a note. We should’ve stepped it down half a step or a full step, because trying to sing that range that Bruce had, and Blaze was a totally different… Bruce is soprano, almost, and, (Blaze is a) baritone — there was a difference in the timbre of each of the voices. And I think it was very hard for Blaze towards that. ‘Virtual XI’ tour was really tough for him. And I think we really should have helped him out by transposing the key of the songs for him. But we didn’t, and it was a tough time. It was like a dark cloud for me, that period of my life. And I know it was affecting just the general vibe in the band. And, obviously, when it was discussed to have Bruce come back with Adrian, that’s when we had to say, ‘Okay, Blaze, we’ve got Bruce.’ And the wonderful thing about Blaze is not only that was he — I was like a mentor to him. I took him under my wing, being the granddad of the band, right? (Laughs) We used to hang out a lot, and I was his confidant. He’d talk to me about, what would Steve (Harris, MAIDEN bassist) think if I did this? What did he … Da, da, ya, di, da. Anyway. So it was very hard at the end of the day to feel a little disappointed in the performances that he was coming up with. And finally, when we had the meeting with him, all of the band were present, and Rod (Smallwood, MAIDEN‘s longtime manager), and he took it on the chin, as they say. And he turned around, he said, ‘MAIDEN is too good not to carry on, and you’re gonna carry on with the best.’ And that is still his attitude today. Although he was kind of disapp(ointed) — obviously, he was disappointed to not be the singer in the band anymore. But he was very, very gracious. Very gracious. And I love him for that.”