In 1993, Bruce Dickinson announced his departure from Iron Maiden. His decision to leave the band was a shock to everyone involved, from bandmates to fans. He had been the band’s singer since 1982 and was well and truly established as the voice of Maiden. In many people’s eyes, he was Iron Maiden. He was seen as irreplaceable.
From the outside, the move seemed sudden and very unexpected, but in reality it had been a long time coming.
The seeds were sown as early as 1986. The band had come off the gruelling World Slavery Tour in support of their fifth album Powerslave (1984). The band had spent a record-breaking 13 months on the road, touring the world twice in the process, covering as much ground as they possibly could. It was a very long slog, physically and mentally demanding for everybody, but especially so the vocalist. “It was the best tour we ever did and it was the worst,” said Dickinson. “And it nearly finished us off for good.”
Dickinson came off the tour close to burnt out, feeling empty and in need of a change. Before too long it was time to contribute material for the next Maiden record, and it became clear that the singer was in a different headspace than the rest of the band. He wanted the band to make a totally different album than the last one.
“If I had my way, [Powerslave follow-up] Somewhere In Time would have sounded very different,” Dickinson said in the liner notes for that album’s 1998 reissue, adding that he envisaged more of an acoustically rooted album. All of his new material was written to fit his new vision, which he has described as folk with proggy tendencies. However, bassist and band leader Steve Harris was not keen on this stylistic change and none of Dickinson’s material ended up being used. Somewhere In Time did not feature a single Dickinson writing credit.
Dickinson later said about Harris: “Steve is not that flexible a personality, it’s just the way he is, you know. He knows pretty much what he wants, and I think he tends to exclude a lot of options.” In the singer’s view it was unlikely that he would succeed in pulling Maiden in any kind of adventurous direction. This clashed with Dickinson’s desire for Maiden to emulate the radical stylistic experimentation of classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin, for whom it was perfectly fine to release an acoustic album in the middle of two heavier ones. Similarly, Dickinson felt Maiden could be more adventurous and do more than what they were doing.
“Maiden occupies such a unique space in the pantheon of rock bands, because it’s not just about music, it’s almost like a social phenomenon,” Dickinson told Metal Hammer. “Steve sees the identity of Maiden as really important. To me, the identity of Maiden is, ‘If we do different kinds of music, it’s still Iron Maiden, cos we’re doing it.’ Which is probably naive.”
Solo albums can provide an outlet for material that does not fit the main band. Dickinson released his first one in 1990, but in spite of his adventurous ambitions for Maiden, Tattooed Millionaire did not see him stretch his wings too far. Dickinson wrote about this in his 2017 autobiography What Does This Button Do?, saying “A lot of people were under the impression that Tattooed Millionaire had been a serious attempt at a solo record, when in fact it was just a bit of fun, well executed and with a lot of record company enthusiasm behind it.”
Even so, it was probably refreshing enough for him that it stayed within a more basic, straightforward hard rock formula than the last few Maiden albums Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.
As Maiden strode into the 1990s, something was amiss in their camp. The albums No Prayer For the Dying (1990) and Fear of the Dark (1992) signalled some levels of musical stagnation and had the air of Maiden-by-numbers about them. Audiences agreed and album sales and concert attendance dropped significantly. In his autobiography, Dickinson would muse that Maiden had by this point “fallen under the spell of papal infallibility.” In his opinion, Maiden were now going along with whatever Harris wanted because he had a proven track record of leading the band to incredible peaks in the past. “Why is the Pope always right? Because he is the Pope, and can never be wrong,” Dickinson wrote. He thought in retrospect that Maiden were becoming a band of yes-men that always deferred to Harris, and ultimately stagnated through not questioning their own complacency.
At this point, Iron Maiden were recording their albums in Steve Harris’ own Barnyard Studios north of London. Dickinson would be outspoken in his criticism of the Barnyard, later saying that “there were big limitations on that studio” and suggesting that their long-time producer Martin Birch and other unnamed people did not dare “to voice their unease.” He saw it as a set-up that inevitably put Harris even more in charge of Maiden’s productions: “Fear Of The Dark was recorded in Steve’s studio because he wanted it to be. He’d bought it and he’d paid for it and the band were gonna pay him back for using his studio.”
With Dickinson apparently the only remaining dissenting voice (Adrian Smith having left in 1990 due to disagreeing with Harris’ vision for the coming album), recording of what would be his final Maiden album for a while went ahead in early 1992. After working closely with Birch for many of the previous Maiden records, Steve Harris would now officially share the production credit.
In the spring of 1992, after finishing his vocal duties for Fear Of The Dark, Dickinson started work on a second solo album. He stated that “the next record, for me, had to be something much more serious, and what I didn’t want was a ‘same old, same old’ rehash of seventies hard rock.”
Initially, Dickinson was steered in the direction of working with a traditional metal band called Skin. This was in the erroneous belief that he wanted to make a sequel to Tattooed Millionaire in the same vein. Dickinson did not and wasn’t happy with the style of the effort. After much mulling over the situation the sessions were scrapped. But what to do?
Dickinson relocated to LA to work with producer Keith Olsen at Goodnight LA Studios, where they spent a lot of time sifting through the enormous backlog of tapes and rough mixes. The songs that were kept got new treatments. Some tracks from these sessions have been used as bonus tracks on remastered deluxe editions of the album, and include titles like Over And Out, Tibet, Cadillac Gas Mask, No Way Out…Continued, and Tears of the Dragon. A version of Man of Sorrows (re-recorded for Accident of Birth) was also attempted, but that version has not yet been released.
Insiders referred to this version of the album as ‘the Peter Gabriel album’. “I wanted a dark and emotionally jagged album,” Dickinson wrote of this second attempt in his book. “One of the albums I referenced was Peter Gabriel’s third album, which I regarded, and still do, as a masterpiece.”
Olsen imported session musicians to work with Dickinson, which the singer felt were ”fascinating, but artistically barren.” The level of technical expertise in all of them was astounding, but they were smooth and effortless. It wasn’t what Dickinson wanted his music to be like. The feeling of unease was not subsiding.
One evening, Olsen’s engineer Shay Baby suggested that Dickinson should come along and see his buddies in the band Tribe of Gypsies. He did, and his mind was blown. The evening did not just rekindle his faith in music, but provided him with a musical compass that he would follow for most of the coming decade. Dickinson met with the band, invited them to work on stuff together, and ended up working with them on his coming album. Most of the material would be freshly written alongside the band’s main writer and lead guitarist Roy Z.
“He was embarrassed to ask if we could write together,” Dickinson remembers, “assuming that the mighty Bruce Dickinson wouldn’t be interested. I was equally convinced that Roy didn’t need an old crock like me making suggestions when it was manifestly clear that his band was sensational.”
Back in the studio with Olsen, Dickinson was halfway through his second attempt at the solo album when he realised that the work he was now doing with Roy Z and the Tribe of Gypsies (which also included Eddie Casillas (bass), David Ingraham (drums), Doug Van Booven (percussion), and Dean Ortega (vocals)) had made everything else obsolete overnight. He was going to have to start again. “To scrap one album is understandable,” Dickinson said, “to scrap two is careless; to scrap three is just creative payback for 10 years of making music in the same silo.”
With the Gypsies on board, Dickinson was soon well on track to deliver his third attempt at the album. He was determined to finish it in the UK, with Shay Baby in charge of production and using elements of what he had recorded at Goodnight LA Studios. He brought over the Tribe of Gypsies to West London where they finished things up at the Power House Studios in Stamford Brook.
The album would be called Balls To Picasso. The big track on the album was without question Tears of A Dragon, which had found its ideal form after the Gypsies came on board.
“I didn’t feel any closer to a new beginning,” Dickinson recalled in his book, “except when I worked with Roy Z, who enabled me to be myself as opposed to overthinking who or what I should be. Gradually, the pendulum was swinging back to more conventional rock’n’roll, but I loved the rhythmic nuances that Roy and the Tribe offered, the sheer groove that was available.”
One thing was clear to the frontman: the word cathartic was starting to apply to the entire process. For a long time, he had carried music within him that he had not been able to get out. As a member of Iron Maiden, which is only a democracy up to a point, you can end up being a cog in a machinery – and he was not feeling great about the machine at the time. Tears of A Dragon in particular seemed to sum up a lot of the thoughts he had around his situation.
For too long now
There were secrets in my mind
For too long now
There were things I should have saidIn the darkness
I was stumbling for the door
To find a reason
To find the time, the place, the hourWaiting for the winter sun
And the cold light of day
The misty ghosts of childhood fears
The pressure is building and I can’t stay awayI throw myself into the sea
Release the wave, let it wash over me
To face the fear I once believed
The tears of the dragon for you and for me
Most of the track was recorded at Goodnight LA studios. The final version ended up going back to its acoustic origins, kept more or less intact during the verses. There were also electric movements, especially the solo section which gets a full-tilt metal treatment before it quieting down again for a reggae-inspired bridge leading back into an acoustic verse. A further full electric band moment builds ahead of the song’s final choruses, adding a lot of pathos to the end section. In the end, the song ends up being extremely dynamic, going from quiet to loud and back to quiet several times, just as the emotions in the words ebb and flow between pensive reflections and grander statements.
The musical origins of the song stretched back to 1986 and the time a burnt-out Dickinson had brought largely acoustic-based tracks and ideas to Iron Maiden for consideration. “There was one idea that I had, which actually turned into Tears of the Dragon,” Dickinson told Metal Hammer. “That was one of the rejects.”
It might have been rejected once, but this time around, the song would not be denied. It was there from the get-go, and was in fact the one song that survived all three album attempts and made it onto the final release. It did however change on each album, as evidenced by the Keith Olsen-produced First Bit, Long Bit, Last Bit version of the song that was released as a bonus track on the 2005 extended release of the album.
The track is emotional and somewhat melancholic, summarising the feelings of a man in turmoil as he is facing groundbreaking change. A lot of people took the lyrics to be autobiographical, describing Dickinson’s feelings about his situation in Maiden and about leaving that band. When he sings “Where I Was / I had wings that couldn’t fly” in the song’s second verse, it seemed to fit the creative frustrations he had talked about. At the same time, throwing yourself into a solo career and leaving the gigantic safety net of Maiden’s huge organization can be scary (“I have no power over this / You know I’m afraid”).
No doubt the lyrics are personal to Dickinson, but he has always maintained that they are not specifically about Maiden. He has also admitted that he isn’t sure what the song’s title refers to.
When asked about the song in a 2024 interview with Revolver magazine, Dickinson said “I do know what it’s about. It’s about abandonment, not being abandoned, but abandoning yourself to the universe, to whatever is gonna come next. But I still don’t know why it is ‘the tears of the dragon’. I’ve never figured that out. It works and it means something, but I don’t know what it is. And that’s why it’s great.”
Everybody was extremely happy with how Tears of the Dragon came out, but in hindsight, the album gives its creator mixed feelings. “In retrospect, Balls To Picasso should have been a much harder and heavier album,” Dickinson writes in his book. ”Much of this could have been achieved if Roy Z had produced it, but out of caution Shay Baby was given the honours. It was a little too early to throw Mr Z into the pot headfirst. I think Maiden fans were variously angry, confused and many other emotions as well over my departure.”
Speaking of said departure, the decision to leave his main band was made towards the end of the LA sessions. Dickinson was discovering what music could be like and feel like, but that other situation weight on him. “I spent my days in a strange mixture of euphoria and uncertainty,” he writes in his book. “One morning the LA Times lay strewn around the floor, most of it disposable advertising supplements, and I managed to locate the bits pertaining to actual news and opinion. ‘Thoughts For the Day’ was a feature I seldom noticed, but on this day I read it. It was a quote from the writer Henry Miller: “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.” So at that moment I decided to leave Iron Maiden. You can blame Henry Miller.”
Rather than disappearing from the Maiden fold straight away, Dickinson agreed to complete a final tour with Iron Maiden in 1993 to fulfil contractual obligations and give the band some time to regroup, but it didn’t become the grand farewell it could have been. It felt more like a wake. Everybody knew Dickinson was leaving and fans felt sadness about the whole situation. Even the band felt it was a strange time. It felt like the end of something, and the shows had a sad air of finality about them.
When Bruce Dickinson emerged as a solo artist with Tears of the Dragon as his first solo song in 1994 later on, he looked energized and like a new man. His new song was universally seen as a song full of references about his Maiden situation and his newfound solo career. At the same time, most of the questions he was asked in interviews were at least as much about leaving Iron Maiden as about the new material. The song and his newfound solo situation became linked in people’s minds.
The music video which was played quite a bit on MTV also seemed to signal rebirth, with Dickinson literally acting out the chorus lyrics by throwing himself into the sea, waves washing over him.
Tears of the Dragon was released as the first single from Balls To Picasso on 28 May 1994. It got a lot of attention as Dickinson’s first musical activity after leaving Iron Maiden, but also garnered a lot of praise as a magnificent track. The 1990s were strange and difficult times for bands and musicians from prior decades, but the song managed a peak position of #28 on the UK Singles Chart, as well as #36 on the US Billboard Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks.
The album would follow on 6 June, performing respectably (#6 in Finland, #8 in Sweden, #21 in the UK, #25 in Japan, #26 in Austria, #29 in Switzerland, #46 in Germany and Hungary, and #185 in the US).
Would it have done better if it had been given the heavier production and mix that Dickinson feels it should have had? Who knows, but thoughts about the album’s production has clearly lingered in Dickinson’s mind, and has led to steps being taken to remedy the situation. During promotional interviews for his 2024 solo album The Mandrake Project, he told Goldmine Magazine: “We’re remixing Balls to Picasso to make it the record it should have been. There’s guitars missing on Balls to Picasso that Roy did that never made it onto the record because the producer kind of wanted it to be middling, middle of the road. I’m determined that that record should sound like we really wanted it to sound. But Roy and I had only just met; I was just getting to know Z.”
Tears of the Dragon is easily Dickinson’s most popular solo track, with over 50 million plays on Spotify (more than five times the number of any of his other solo songs on the platform).
It is also Dickinson’s personal choice for the greatest track he’s ever written. When asked during the Revolver interview, he said “I would say Tears of the Dragon. I don’t know what [the title] means, but it means something. That song really affects people. It affects me.”
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