Bruce Dickinson, the lead singer of heavy metal band Iron Maiden, is a talented fencer and a licensed airline pilot who has flown all across the world.
But is all just a covert way of covering up the fact that he’s really a spy? His good friend, director Sacha Gervasi, and podcast host Rich Roll evidently think so.
Dickinson sat down for a two-and-a-half hour podcast interview about his life, career and side hustles with Roll, who has recently interviewed the likes of Tom Holland and Orlando Bloom.
The singer talked about learning to fly, piloting his band around the world and the time that he was smuggled into Sarajevo to play a concert during the middle of the war.
Roll said, “The idea that you would have made for this optimal fighter pilot… in an alternate reality, or a parallel universe, or in some kind of sliding doors situation, are you not like a Special Forces operator? There is a sort of James Bond-ian thing around you with all of these different interests, fencing, flying these missions and you’re on these stages and traveling the world and all of that is… the ultimate undercover.”
“My personal theory is that Bruce is playing the role of Iron Maiden lead singer but he works for MI5 or MI6. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Singer,” added Gervasi. “Bruce is trying to distract us from the fact that he’s one of British intelligences leading assets, this whole Iron Maiden singer, he’s really studying nuclear facilities on these trips, he’s doing aerial reconnaissance.”
Dickinson did not confirm or deny the accusations, but leant in to the joke, saying that he was working for ZOWIE.
ZOWIE is the acronym for Zonal Organization World Intelligence Espionage, the shadowy group from 1960s action film Our Man Flint, which starred James Coburn as Derek Flint.
He added that United States Air Force Plant 42 is visible on his Skunkworks album cover, which also includes an image of a Lockheed SR 71 Blackbird, which was developed as a black project reconnaissance aircraft during the 1960s.
This comes as Dickinson and Gervasi are co-writing a scripted feature film based on his experiences in Sarajevo, which was also told in the 2016 documentary Scream for Me Sarajevo.
The film is being produced by Portobello Electric, Gervasi’s production company with partners Jessica de Rothschild, Jim Garavente and Hassan Taher.
