AIDEN‘s longtime manager Rod Smallwood of Phantom Music Management commented: “Nicko, and we all love you too!! Thank you for being an irrepressible force behind the drum kit for MAIDEN for 42 years and my friend for even longer. I speak on behalf of all the band when I say we will miss you immensely!

“Ever since Rock In Rio in 1985 we have had a special relationship with Brazil so to bow out of touring in front of 90,000 fans here in Sao Paulo over 2 nights is poetic and you are deserving of all the accolades I am sure these marvellous fans will give you on this last show.

“Phantom look forward to many more years of working with you on the projects you mentioned and I am sure we can find a few more special ones around the MAIDEN family and FC!

“The band and I all have a thousand great memories of the past 42 years, great gigs, copious platinum and gold discs and awards, love from the fans and one beer too many on too many occasions! Such a bond is forever! And, as Steve Harris says, ‘Nicko is and will always be part of the MAIDEN family’.

“P.S. MAIDEN always get their man and our already chosen new drummer will be announced very shortly.”

In January 2023, Nicko McBrain, who has been the drummer for the heavy metal band IRON MAIDEN since 1982, was at his home in Boca Raton when he suffered a stroke with partial paralysis. That was the beginning of a challenging journey of physical rehabilitation that followed rapid and precise treatment by stroke specialists at Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Boca Raton, Florida’s Boca Raton Regional Hospital, part of Baptist Health.

McBrain addressed his health issues during an appearance on a recent episode of The Washington Tattoo podcast. He said: “It happened on January the 19th last year. I was actually having cataract surgery that day. And I guess there was a lot of stress and angst, with somebody messing with your peepers. And I was getting them both done at the same time. In the old days, I’d do one at a time just in case it didn’t work. You’d be walking around blind in one eye, not both. And I had it on good authority that’s the only reason they don’t like to do, even today, both at the same time. But I had confidence in the surgeon, with the way they do it nowadays. And I said, ‘Oh, can I get done both at the same time?’ ‘Yeah, no problem.'”

He continued: “Anyway. So I remember I was watching some tennis on the telly. I was up at six o’clock in the morning, which is unusual for me, ’cause I get up about 7:00, 7:30 nowadays. And I got up and I was a little bit anxious. And I lazed on the chaise lounge, and I went to sleep. About eight o’clock I thought, ‘I’m gonna have a nap. I feel really tired.’ And I woke up about 45 minutes later, and I’d had this stroke. And I thought it was pins and needles, but I couldn’t feel the pins and needles. I picked my arm up, going, ‘What’s going on here?’ And I could feel (the arm) but nothing was happening… And I let my arm go and it just dropped, and I’m, like, ‘Oh, shit. Something ain’t right.’ And it didn’t paralyze my leg, although my leg was wobbly. Which is a good thing, because my foot still worked. At least one saving grace — God gave me my right foot. It’s not quite as good as it was, but… Anyway, I went to the doctors, or they took me to the hospital. I had a whole team of people work around me. It was like I was a superstar. And they didn’t even know who I was. That’s the sort of treatment that everybody gets when they have a stroke and they go to the Boca Baptist Hospital, (Baptist Health) Boca (Raton) Regional (Hospital). They have a crew of, like, 12 people around you instantly, no matter who you are. And so after the MRI — they did a CT scan, then I went to an MRI. And (when) I came out, (Marc A) Swerdloff, my neurologist doctor, he had a plethora of students around him, and he had about six kids, young ‘uns — I call them kids; they’re probably all in their 20s or 30s. Anyway, he goes, you’ve had a stroke, Mr. McBrain, I went, ‘Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.’ And he laughed. And he said, ‘It’s a TIA.’ I said, ‘Okay, so it’s not a major stroke.’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘We’ve got this drug called TNK (tenecteplase),’ which, what it stands for I’ve no idea. And he said it’s a clot buster, and it prevents any further damage being done to your brain that may have or that has already occurred. He said, ‘But there’s a risk.’ And I said, ‘What’s the risk?’ He said, ‘You could die.’ I went, ‘Okay. So what’s the percentage of failure from people (treated with intravenous tenecteplase)?’ It (was) seven to nine percent. He says, ‘So if you have it, we have to put you in intensive care for 24 hours and monitor you every hour.’ And I went, ‘Well, okay, let’s have it.’ He says, ‘Sign here.’ And I’m right-handed, so I had to put a cross. And he said, ‘Just make out as much as you can.’ I sort of squiggled my name on a line. He gave it to me outside the MRI. About three hours later, I’m upstairs. And finally, I could move my thumb a little bit — the first thing I could move. I was in for two nights, and the day after I got out, I went for therapy, and I had three physiotherapies a week and OT, occupational therapy. My scapula had dropped and apparently my face was down here, although I could talk. So the only thing I had was a paralysis.”

McBrain added: “The first three months of a stroke is where you have the most recovery. After that, the next three months, it’s a little less and then the three months after that, and so on and so forth. I’m over — almost a year and a half now, but it will be next week. What’s the date? Yeah, 10 days’ time. So I’m still not back to where I wanna be. I’ve probably got… I can’t do, I can’t do… So if this is a tempo, I can’t do a 16-note roll going into 32nd-note rolls anymore. What happens is I can play eighth notes, like that kind of groove. I can do doubles, but when I try and play that 16th at that speed, instead of going up and down, it wobbles from left to right, when I start playing fast, when I try to play fast. So I’ve had to adjust my fills now. I mean, I don’t play ‘The Trooper’ fill anymore because I can’t get it… It’s the speed of it. I can do everything slow, but I’ve had to make sure that as long as I can keep the groove of the song, which is normally…”

Elaborating on how his stroke has affected his playing, Nicko said: “We had the rehearsal (for the spring 2023 MAIDEN tour) starting in April (of 2023), end of April. So I had that three months — March, February, March, April. I had 12 weeks of recovery, basically, before I went and had rehearsal. And, so today my routine now is I do the eight on eight to warm up and try and get my fingers working, but they’re not… I’m at the stage now where I’ve peaked. I’ve noticed in some of the rehearsals — I play with the TITANIUM TART (side-project) band I’ve got, which are doing the same set that I’m playing with MAIDEN later this year; we’re doing exactly the same set. I’ve got a couple of gigs coming up this weekend. We rehearse once a week. I’ve got a rehearsal tonight and tomorrow. So, I’m allowed to be out to try these things out. And they’re not working. So, I’ve reverted back to what I was doing with the band last year, which was playing straighter on those kind of fills. (The song) ‘Fear Of The Dark’, I’m getting the triplets again and a couple of the hi-hats snap. Those kind of things. It’s all about the tempo of the songs. When they’re fast, I have a struggle. When they’re slow, I can do it.”