“He sent me home in a taxi with a towel”: Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson once threw up on Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan’s shoes

Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson Reveals His Most Embarrassing Moment

Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson recently shared the most embarrassing moment of his life during a Q&A with The Guardian. The 65-year-old admitted that he once vomited on the shoes of Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan, whom he considers one of his vocal heroes.

“I once threw up on the shoes of one of my vocal heroes, the Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan,” Dickinson recounted during the interview. “He sent me home in a taxi with a towel.”

Dickinson, who fronted Iron Maiden from 1981 to 1993 and returned in 1999, elaborated on the incident during a 2021 BBC radio appearance. The mishap occurred in his pre-Maiden days when he was the frontman for London hard rockers Samson.

“We had done an album in Ian Gillan’s studio,” Dickinson said. “We’d all been up the pub and had a few pints. In walks my god, Ian Gillan, and goes, ‘Hey, what a great vocalist. Who’s the singer?’ At that moment, I felt the sudden urge to vomit.”

He continued, “I ran out of the room [and] puked up for about 45 minutes in the toilet. In comes my idol, kicks the door, and goes, ‘Come on, mate. Out you come. Let’s get you wiped down with a towel.’ He put me in a taxi and sent me home. I’ve never forgotten that – and he’s never let me forget it either.”

Dickinson’s admiration for Deep Purple and Gillan was evident in a 2022 Metal Hammer interview. “I cut my teeth as a kid on Purple,” he said. “It’s what I grew up with, what got me out of bed in the morning in terms of rock’n’roll music.”

Regarding Gillan specifically, Dickinson added, “Ian was a big vocal hero of mine. There was Ian Gillan, Arthur Brown, Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull, surprisingly enough, and a chap called Peter Hammill from Van Der Graaf Generator. They’re all in the same area of voices – they all had a ballsy sort of tenor, extended baritone thing to their voices.”

Currently, Dickinson is touring to promote his 2024 solo album, The Mandrake Project. He will tour Oceania with Iron Maiden in September, followed by a trek through the Americas from October to December. Recently, Dickinson played an Iron Maiden song live with his solo band for the first time in 22 years.