Adrian Smith reveals details about working with Bruce Dickinson

Adrian Smith, guitarist and singer of Iron Maiden, was asked about working with Bruce Dickinson on his solo albums “Accident Of Birth” and “The Chemical Wedding” in the late 1990s during an interview conducted after Smith/Kotzen’s March 5th acoustic performance at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles.

That was a fun, fun time. I had a project called Psycho Motel and did a couple of good albums, the grunge thing was happening everywhere. It was difficult. We were trying to put something together for a tour, and we were coming up against a lot of obstacles. Then Bruce just rings me up and says, ‘Hey, you’ve got to listen to this stuff I’ve been writing with this guy Roy Z over in L.A.’ He’d come around the house, and he played me ‘Accident Of Birth’. I was just blown away. It was really good. He said, ‘Do you want to get involved?’ I said, ‘Yeah, all right.’ My project was on hold, so next thing I know, I was on my way to L.A. Roy was the drop-D guy. I learned all these songs, but I didn’t know about the drop-D tuning, so I just tuned my guitar all the way down to D. It was like a banjo. He said, ‘No, no, no. I’ll show you how to do it.’ I’ve got to say, I learned a lot from Roy. He’s a guitar teacher as well; he was a virtuoso. He gave me a few pointers. What I love about working with different people is you learn stuff, and you grow. It was a fun time, and I’m proud of those albums, and we did a couple big tours as well. It was a good, fun time.

Obviously he also mentioned working with Dickinson in Iron Maiden.

I think I was the first one in Maiden to get a multi-track recorder in the ’80s — a little four-track thing,” he explained. “I used to start doing demos on that. When Bruce first joined the band, he and I used to hang out because we didn’t have regular girlfriends. I should rephrase that. After rehearsal, we used to go down to the pub and play pool. We started writing, because everyone else would just go home to their missus, and we’d hang out and write. That’s how it started. ‘2 Minutes To Midnight’, I had on this little cassette. I only write a lyric if I have to, because it’s a pain in the ass. You’ve got to do it, but Bruce just walks around with books of lyrics all the time. If you’ve got something [musically], he’ll have something very quickly. Sometimes, I’ll come up with a melody or a title like ‘Speed Of Light’ or ‘Writing On The Wall’, and that will inspire him. It’s back and forth.

We also know now what he did with his firs big paycheck.

I’m not really a car person, but I did buy an E-Type Jag — a roadster, which was a piece of shit. I forget which tour it was, because it was a few tours before we started making real money. [Management] said, ‘Well, you’re going home. What do you want?’ We’d been [on] the road for, like, a year or something, and going back to England, you need a car. I said, ‘Any type? A roadster,’ because I used to have a little toy one when I was a kid. I knew nothing about them, and I didn’t know these things needed a lot of care and attention. The first thing I did, I took my mum out in it as a treat, and we got, like, a hundred yards down the road and it stopped. I went, ‘I’m not really a car person.

And some sage advice for people starting out their projects.

Just do it, and enjoy it for what it is. There’s no guarantees that it could be a career. More fall by the wayside than make it. When I started in bands, from 15 to just before I joined Maiden, just playing everywhere, I had a great time. [I] didn’t have any money, but [I] just loved it. I had a great band – you’re good friends, and you become like brothers. But I don’t know if you should pull your eggs in one basket. Keep your eye on the alternative just in case.