Bruce Dickinson may agree with some of your politics (mostly business related), but not all of it, he's a moderate. I don't think he would agree with your stance on Biden. Some food for thought:
That’s another thing that struck me about the book. In it, you describe visiting concentration camps, you visited Sarajevo. You were in a rock ‘n’ roll band during the Thatcher years. And yet, there are very few mentions of politics to be found.
There’s not really anything to say about politics during the period that hasn’t already been said by much more learned commentators than me. I’m a musician. Do I have political views? Yes. Is an autobiography a place to put them? No. What that does is that it attaches an inordinate amount of weight and self-importance to your own political viewpoint, which, if people want to hear your political viewpoint, then be a politician! Join a political party or do whatever. Stand up and say, “I think you need to hear my political views because I’m especially qualified to tell you why you should do what I think.” I don't have any of that special sauce. I’ve got no crystal ball. I’m no expert witness on stuff. If you want to hear about what I think about politics, I’ll tell you, but why does it matter? I’m just one citizen out of millions and I have one vote and so does everyone else. The fact that I’m famous for being a musician or doing whatever, sorry, it’s not enough reason other than salacious curiosity or an attempt to dig up a story which they can then immediately slap down. But I would fit somewhere. I’m right of center, but not very far. Put it this way. I’m not a socialist at all but I do believe in a nice humanistic approach to the way society should be run. I think there’s a difference between profit and greed. I think profit is a way of measuring how efficiently a business or a society is being run. Greed is just evidence of its corruption and fecundity. I’m not a fan of greed. For those reasons, some of the Thatcher years were appalling, but at the same time, what happened to the UK during those years was transformative. Because at the end of the 70s, we were toast. The country was washed up. At the end of the 80s, it was not. In between was a whole other thing, some of which I didn’t agree with, but every politician makes mistakes.
I guess to hear about your politics on a more personal level, you can just go to an Iron Maiden show. The last couple times I’ve seen you, you make a point of saying, “This is for everyone. Everyone is welcome, no matter what.”
Absolutely, but to me that’s independent from whatever political affiliation you have, left or right. When you get to the extremes, people exclude people. When you’re somewhere in the middle, people include people. I would agree with some statements. In America, I would be hopeless. I would have one foot in the Democratic camp and one foot in the Republican camp. Because I agree with some Republicans. I agree with some Democrats. Where do I fit? I’m a contrarian. I make up my mind on each individual issue what I think. That’s not necessarily in line with a political party, you know?
It seems a lot more difficult to hang out in the middle these days.
It’s a lot harder, but in the middle is where healthy societies belong. Occasionally when things fail, they need a bit of a shock. Hopefully, they will bring things back to the middle. What worries me as a guy who did history at college is looking at history and seeing how, when the middle disintegrates in different societies, how it has always led toward a polarization, which has in turn led to some unpleasant effects. It has happened in Europe on a regular basis. The one place it hasn’t happened, as a matter of fact, is the UK. We’ve had one dictator, Oliver Cromwell. He lasted longer than he should have done and we got rid of him, and we asked for the king to come back, which may sound strange. But when we brought the king back, we said, “You can be the king because we like you, but if we don’t like you, you can’t be the king anymore.”
We’ve had this weird checks and balances things for hundreds of years. The other thing we’ve never had is a written Constitution. As in written, set in stone. I get the impression that written Constitutions always end in tears because they have no possibility to change.It’s all written down and the way you change the Constitutions is so prescriptive and so prohibitive that it never changes.
It’s not a living document.
It’s not a living document at all. Its interpretive to an extent but nevertheless it’s still so prescriptive. To me, it feels like a burden.
You see how well we’re doing with it.
It becomes divisive because people become polarized. The NRA and all that stuff—it’s divisive. Some things belong in the middle.
How do you think we get there?
I don’t know. I’m not American. Not my circus. Not my monkeys [laughs].
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