“Yeah, I’m a warhorse, a survivor and I’ve gone through millions of things. I’ll tell you what somebody said. I mean, I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but they say what you’ve gone through, most people wouldn’t survive it. They’re pretty much right, actually, so yeah, I’m an old warhorse. In some ways. Keep plugging along; never surrender.”
Those are the words of Iron Maiden legend Paul Di’Anno, as he celebrates the release of his first album in nine years, with his Croatian compatriots Hrvoje Madiraca and Ante Pupačić, both on guitars, along with Becky Baldwin playing bass on most tracks and Petar Šantić playing drums on most tracks.
What they’ve come up with has turned out to be a spirited pure metal record touching down on power metal but also your favourite moves and motivations going back to the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, a “genre” that Paul commanded with authority as part of Iron Maiden. It’s out now on BraveWords Records and it’s an inspiring work of chugging, mid-paced metal magic, due to the writing of his team but also the energetic, mad thespian vocals of Paul.
Asked about the current state of his pipes, Di’Anno chuckles, “I sounded like a squeaky little kid on the Maiden stuff. Obviously my voice has matured a hell of a lot. Which is not surprising with the amount of touring I do. We’d done 36 shows in Brazil alone last year. Nobody’s ever done that. We broke the record. No one’s ever played that many shows over there. And then we had like other parts of South America. But I’m sorry, I’m not really that with it today. At the moment, I’ve been really bad. I caught pneumonia; so it’s affected the voice at the moment.”
Yes, an ongoing issue with Paul has been his health. Just after his meeting with Bruce Dickinson, which has been all over the internet, he had a show to do but only managed a few songs. “I was holding me chest at that gig chest because it was difficult to breathe.”
Paul is still based in England, “just outside of Stonehenge,” but I was speaking to him in Croatia where he’d been getting treated for his ongoing ailments. Asked when he envisions getting out of his wheelchair, which he says he’s been in for eight years, he figures, “Yeah, I will be, in about six months or so. I’m unfortunately really suffering it out today. It’s raging hot over here. Yeah, sepsis is a fucker. It ripped the hell out of me. Destroyed all my tendons and all my bones have got prosthetics, in my kneecap and all kinds of shit going on down there. It’s just getting my body stitched together. We keep breaking off to go on tour. I’ve been here for about three or four weeks. Made a lot of progress, actually, at the moment.”
It's somewhat coincidentally where he made Paul Dianno’s Warhorse, but that was a long time ago now. “You know what? I’m still trying to get attached to this record because I never wrote anything on it; all I did was sing on it. I did it with a couple of musician friends of mine here in Croatia, Hrvoje and Ante. They’re quite well-known here, play in a band called Rapid Strike. So they asked me to help out and I did. That was it. I went away from it, and then the guys took so bloody long to mix it. They’re basically studio rats, not used to doing live stuff too much. They were mixing for about a year. Oh, come on! (laughs). So I sort of forgot all about it. And then BraveWords decided they were going to do a record label and we are one of the first ones on there.”
Indeed, the album has a NWOBHM sound, but what does that even mean?
“The sound? Yeah, very difficult to put your finger on it, really. As I said, I always say the sound of British heavy metal is Iron Maiden. I mean, all these other bands had albums out before us and we were the new thing. We got labeled New Wave of British Heavy Metal because they didn’t know how to pigeonhole us, right?”
Weird question, but I asked Paul if back in 1980, Angel Witch seemed like fair competition. “They all played the local pubs and in the same areas. I still talk to Kevin Riddles and his wife Julie. He’s trying to get his band Baphomet going. It was a good era. It wasn’t all, oh, I hate your band, no, I hate your band. We were all struggling and trying to get on.”
But back to the new record, “It went all right, actually. Did it in Zagreb, spent a little time over Christmas there and then came back to England and then went on tour again. So it’s a good place to come to. It’s a bit more relaxed, to do your vocals and play music in general. It’s a beautiful country, great people.”
Contrary to the headlines around the summit with Bruce, it wasn’t the first time the guys had ever met. “No, that’s bullshit. That’s the press again; see, there you go. We’d met, obviously, when he was with Samson and stuff like that. Obviously, we’ve all met, but the thing is, our paths don’t cross that much. But it was a cool thing; it was all right.”
How about those guys? Was Samson a threat back in the old days? After all, Shock Tactics, 1981, was an absolute stormer.
“No band’s a threat—not to Iron Maiden. Come on,” laughs Paul. “No, they were never a threat. Obviously, there’s friendly rivalry and all that stuff. But these days, it’s amazing, you know? But then, you had all these great bands around that you’ll never see the likes of again. There was room for everybody on there. A few years before, Motörhead was going and then Def Leppard was going. It was just a great time for music. See, that’s the thing. I mean, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and everything, when we came out with this so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal, we must have been a threat to them. Because you know, they were threatened by punk and then we came right after.”
Then there was the meeting with Steve Harris back in 2022, which also was all over the internet—fans couldn’t get enough of checking in on Paul, and still can’t, obviously.
“Again, the press came up with all this shit for that one too. For one, it’s none of their fucking business. But number two is me and Steve talk a lot. You know, we’re always on sort of WhatsApp and stuff, but they’re mostly about West Ham football and stuff like that. He called me up a couple of years back, when he was over in the Bahamas. And I was freezing me balls off in England. I go, ‘Where you calling from?’ He goes, ‘I’m in the Bahamas.’ ‘Oh, fuck you’ (laughs). But we keep in touch a lot and to meet up with him was absolutely brilliant. I enjoyed it. I hope he did too (laughs).”
But if it seems like Paul’s been a social butterfly, he really hasn’t. As it stands… “I’m in Croatia just for treatment because you can’t get anything done in bloody England. Unfortunately. They don’t even do lymphatic drainage in England. Our health systems is broke to pieces. I’ve come over to pay for it privately. But basically, when I got sick, they said in England I had to sit in a wheelchair until I died. Cheers. You know, eight years sitting in a wheelchair and I said I’m not doing that forever. So I got it together, came over here, found a great surgeon. As I said, I’ve got a false knee but I’ve also got a false bone in me shin, my fibula or tibia or whatever—that’s prosthetic as well. So I did it all in one go.”
It seems also that Paul’s famed love of reading has taken a hit. “I’ll tell you what; I was talking about this yesterday. I am absolutely disgusted with myself. Because you know since the internet and Netflix and all that, I haven’t picked up a book in about two years. And I’m actually gutted about all that. But I’m working on a book, trying to get something together myself at the moment. The internet makes you lazy. I used to read about two or three books a week.”
Yes, you heard that right. Paul is writing a book, along with new music with his other band. “Me and my writing partners in Monterrey, Mexico, we got four tracks down, but I haven’t done the lyrics yet. I just want to get all this stuff out of my head and get myself up on the feet. So that’s my number one goal. Over the last ten years, I’ve been trying to do this book about the Crusaders (laughs). I know it’s all been done before, but there was a sect of Jewish knights who sort of supported the Crusaders, but they all had leprosy. So they’re like the leper knights of Jerusalem. I’m trying to ease myself back into that. But as I said, I haven’t done anything for a couple years. It’s really difficult. I just want to concentrate on my health at the moment, so the book has gone by the wayside. Plus to do it right and get the right historical references, I’m gonna have to go to Israel. I really need to do that. I want to go and see all my family over there anyway, so that’d be awesome. I’ve got a lot of it done. I just had to step away from it when I got really sick. I’m just gathering information, getting it all together. It’ll probably be the biggest book in history, bigger than bloody Tolstoy (laughs).”
In tandem, Di’Anno seems to have had it with England. “If I’m not there, I’m in San Paolo; those are my two homes. But I feel like that’s it for me. I’ll be leaving England again soon and going back to Brazil for good. But as I say at the moment, I’ve got to concentrate on my health without any interference. Any interfering with that is going to screw my head up and I’m just trying to get my head together as it is. I’ve been… You have no idea how depressed I’ve been. I’ve been almost suicidal a few times with all the bullshit that’s going on. It’s been dragging on forever.”
At which point I assured him that on this Paul Di’Anno’s Warhorse, album he’s sounding bold and boisterous of voice, nailing the notes but more importantly, imbuing these almost Paul Di’Anno’s Battlezone-styled songs with personality and a sense of history. In fact, I told him he should be essentially singing the phone book while he can, recording and recording some more.
“No, I like playing live, mate (laughs). Look, playing live keeps me alive. Sitting around your four walls, you can’t bloody get into that. It’s weird. I don’t really react to four walls. You can’t react without an audience. It’s fantastic.”
So you feel like you need that socialization.
“I certainly do. I’ve been isolated for eight years, number one, and number two, it gave me the strength to carry on and do what I’m doing, even though I’m going through all this shit at the moment.”
