Iron Maiden at Barclays Center
Photo by Greg Cristman

Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson tests positive for COVID-19

Earlier this month, Iron Maiden‘s Bruce Dickinson announced that he was postponing the final two dates of his UK spoken word tour after “a member of Bruce’s immediate household” tested positive for COVID. Those dates have been rescheduled for October 16 (in London at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire) and October 17 (in Birmingham at The Alexandra), but Bruce has now revealed that he also tested positive for COVID. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Bruce, who is fully vaccinated, said how he began experiencing symptoms not long into going into quarantine, following the positive case in his household. A lateral-flow test he took then came back positive.

“I thought, ‘Oh well, shit,'” he told Rolling Stone over Zoom. “I was kind of sneezing a bit. For a couple of days, I felt a bit groggy, kind of like the flu, and that was it. And I’m 63 years old. I’ve pretty much got no doubt that had I not had the vaccine, I could be in serious trouble.”

Bruce told Rolling Stone that he thinks “the jury’s out” on whether concert attendees should be required to prove they’ve been vaccinated, calling it “personal choice.” However, he is in favor of vaccination, telling Rolling Stone, “Personally, I think people are just very badly advised if they don’t go and get themselves double jabbed as quickly as possible, not for the reasons of going into concerts, but for their own health.”

“Having said that, even if you’ve had a double jab, you can still get Covid, and therefore you can spread it to other people who might not have been vaccinated and they might get very sick and die,” Bruce continued to Rolling Stone. “Now you cannot legislate against mortality…So at some point, we have to just go, ‘We’re probably going to have to live with this. And if we’re going to live with it, then you have your vaccination.'”

Read the interview in full on Rolling Stone.

Iron Maiden’s first album in six years, Senjutsu, arrives on September 3 (pre-order it on deluxe heavyweight 180g triple vinyl).

Meanwhile, we’ve teamed up with Rob Halford of Judas Priest for an exclusive repress of his 2000 album as Halford, Resurrection — which features a duet with Bruce, “The One You Love to Hate.” It’s pressed to 180g cobalt and silver swirl double vinyl, limited to 300 copies and due out on October 15. Pre-order it in the BV store.

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