Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson Speaks Out on HPV-Related Cancer Battle

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(photo: Neil Lupin/Redferns)

Bruce Dickinson, frontman for the legendary British metal band Iron Maiden, is in the news this week, not just for Maiden’s newly released 16th album, The Book of Souls, but for his battle with head and neck cancer – and the fact he says he may have caught the disease via the sexually transmitted virus HPV.

“I think that when I discovered the hard lump, I sort of knew what I might be up against,” Dickinson tells Yahoo Music. “But the reality of it is there’s an epidemic of this stuff in men over 40 who never smoked and are reasonably healthy. Every now and again I see that somebody else has got tongue cancer or tonsil cancer or, effectively, the same thing I had. And most of it is Human Papillomavirus-related. It’s something guys need to know about. If you’re over 40 and you get a lump in the side of your neck, go and see the doctor. Get it checked out. Keep in mind that 80 percent of the population will have been exposed to HPV some time in their life, and they get rid of it. But it can persist in a certain portion of the people and nobody knows why. And that’s when the virus can do its nasty stuff.”

When Dickinson felt that rock-solid lump in his neck, he knew that swollen lymph nodes are a symptom of cancer, so of course he was alarmed. But since he didn’t feel sick or especially fatigued, he convinced himself that the bump was probably a benign cyst or, at worst, an indication of a minor infection for which he might need to take antibiotics. So he shrugged off his fear and made a mental note that he should see a doctor after the band finished The Book of Souls.

“I self-diagnosed when I first felt the lump and I was spot-on, but then I chose to ignore it so I didn’t have to interrupt making the album,” Dickinson says the week of The Book of Souls’ release. “As soon as we were done, I saw the doctor and right away I was on the slab getting a CAT scan, an MRI, and biopsies. And a week later, I was in front of the oncologist who said, ‘Here’s your treatment plan. You start getting chemotherapy on Jan. 5, and the same day you start radiation for 33 sessions.’”

Dickinson was diagnosed with head and neck cancer, a condition that affects more than 50,000 people in the U.S. every year and accounts for about 3 percent of all cancers in the country, according to the National Cancer Institute. Even though six weeks passed between the time Dickinson first noticed the lump in his neck and the moment he became a cancer patient, doctors caught the disease at an early stage and were able to effectively remove a golf-ball-sized tumor from Dickinson’s tongue, and the aforementioned walnut-sized growth in his neck, before the cancer spread throughout his body.

“I have no idea how long the tumor on my tongue had been there,” Dickinson says. “Clearly, it was there when I was singing on The Book of Souls and I was singing just fine. I do have a big lump that’s obviously missing that was previously present, so I think one or two of the muscles in my throat are a little bit confused as to where it has gone.”

Dickinson says enduring a regimen of chemotherapy “wasn’t great” but that he “tolerated it,” and adds “the radiation was quite unpleasant for the last three or four weeks.” Despite the discomfort, Dickinson’s recovery has been remarkable, and at his last checkup doctors said all signs of the cancer were gone. Dickinson’s doctor will continue to monitor his health on a monthly basis. “All in all, I did quite well,” he says. “A lot of guys lose the ability to swallow and they have to be fed by a tube inserted in their stomach. I was determined that was not going to happen. It was an interesting and very illuminating experience – not one I would wish to repeat.”

While he was being treated, Dickinson was concerned the procedures to his neck and tongue might impair his ability to sing. Even when surgery is successful, any incisions made in the mouth or neck can have drastic effects on a performer’s vocals.

“That was an outcome which I was prepared for, although not one which I desired,” he says. “But if it was a choice between, ‘Yeah, we’ve gotten rid of the cancer, but you can’t sing’ or ‘Sorry, mate, there’s nothing we can do,’ I’d have to take the former as an acceptable alternative. I take the ‘I choose life’ position.”

During his treatment, doctors did what they could to minimize the chances of the chemo and radiation affecting Dickinson’s larynx, and to his relief, when he gained some strength back after surgery, he found he could still sing. “I’ve had a good yell and my voice seems to be OK; all the notes are still there,” he says. “I need to put it to work, but I also need to wait for it to properly heal up. It’s still healing up internally.”

When Dickinson’s bandmates received the good news that the singer was cancer-free and could still perform, they made plans for a world tour that will start in February 2016.

Dickinson’s battle with cancer is a climactic tale of triumph in the face of adversity, and a dramatic cap to the story of Iron Maiden’s most cinematic release. The follow-up to 2010’s The Final Frontier, The Book of Souls is the band’s most ambitious, progressive, and creatively rewarding album since, at least, 2000’s Brave New World. The 92-minute double-CD is epic and eclectic, and features a wide range of songwriting, from the blustery, five-minute-long rocker “Speed of Light” to the theatrical, 18-minute period piece “Empire of the Cloud.” The latter recalls the tragedy of British airship the R101, which crashed on her first voyage on Oct. 5, 1930, killing 48 of 54 passengers onboard.

“The origins of that song started with me winning a piano in a raffle,” Dickinson says. “I fiddled around on the piano and came up with a couple of atmospheric intros, which I thought I would use for another song called ‘Death or Glory,’ but that didn’t work out, and I thought, ‘What else can I use these intro parts for?’ I have a personal interest in in airships, and when I was a kid I made a model of the R101. It was a familiar story to me. I actually have a few artifacts from that airship that I got in an auction, including the pocket watch of one of the survivors. So I felt a connection with the subject and I was working on the song and finishing it up all the way through the album. Whilst everyone was doing all the other songs, I was working almost entirely on that one.”

Iron Maiden wrote other adventurous, multi-faceted tracks for The Book of Souls, including the title track, the lyrics of which were penned by bassist Steve Harris, who has written the band’s most popular songs throughout its career. The album art of the band’s zombie mascot, Eddie, wearing tribal face paint and sporting multiple ear piercings ties in with the subject matter of the song. “It’s about the Mayans, and how a whole culture can disappear and, as it were, poison itself and just vanish, and how we might end up going the same way,” Dickinson says.

While The Book of Souls includes some of Iron Maiden’s most forward-thinking songwriting, it also contains references to past glories. “Speed of Light” could have been an outtake from 1983’s Piece of Mind; “Shadow of the Valley” opens with a guitar lick reminiscent of the intro of the single “Wasted Years” (from 1986’s Somewhere in Time); and “The Red and the Black” has a similar vibe as “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (from 1984’s Powerslave). “If it feels like this album has ended up as something that [incorporates the best elements of Iron Maiden’s past], that’s not a bad thing, but it wasn’t done consciously,” Dickinson says. “There are a few songs on here that are really quite different from anything we’ve ever done before.“

As dense and multi-tiered as The Book of Souls is, Iron Maiden were in a prolific zone creatively when they wrote the album. The members collaborated on the songwriting far more than they have in the past, a decision that actually sped up the process. The band started writing together in mid-September last year, and by the beginning of December the album was done and mixed.

“Steve only wrote one song on his own on the whole record, which is unique for us,” Dickinson says. “But it doesn’t feel that way. This feels like a total Maiden record. We could probably have written a triple-album if we had another three months in the studio. There were so many ideas floating around that we could have happily carried on.”

When Iron Maiden presented The Book of Souls to their management and label, there was a considerable amount of head scratching. In an effort to maximize the commercial potential of the album, many close to the band suggested the record be released in two parts, as Metallica did with Load and Reload.

“Doing it as two records just wouldn’t work,” says Dickinson. “Whenever anyone does two records, the first one is always seen as the proper record and the second one is viewed as the weak record. And the only reason people put out records separately like that is because the record companies are such weenies. They can’t deal with the concept of putting out a double-album because it’s a pain in the butt for them. They all worry that the shops will complain. So they suggested that we do it like Guns N’ Roses did when they released Use Your Illusion I and II, and we went, “No, it’s one record, and we think it’s indescribably cool. And we think kids will think it’s indescribably cool, so anyone who has any problems with that is just going to have to deal with it.’”

For the past 12 years, Iron Maiden, who formed in 1975, have hinted that they may be getting ready to retire. Album titles like Dance of Death, A Matter of Life and Death, and The Final Frontier kept fans wondering if Maiden’s days were numbered. The band members were elusive when asked about the future. Now, however, Dickinson is vocal about his hopes that The Book of Souls is not Iron Maiden’s swansong.

“Obviously, nobody had any idea going into the album that as soon as we finished I was going to get diagnosed with bloody throat cancer,” he says. “It didn’t affect anything on the record because I had already done all my parts, but even so, there was the added drama at the end of it that it might actually be the last Maiden record for reasons that were unintentional.”

For now, Dickinson has a clean bill of health and has been given his doctor’s blessings to tour, but he is fully aware that even though he seems to be cancer-free for now, the condition could come back in the future.

“You can get terribly maudlin and become fatalistic about the whole thing,” he says, “but you can’t stop looking forward. I’ve got a nice letter from the doc saying that says he expects there’s a 95 percent or greater chance that I will live comfortably beyond 10 years. And I’m thinking, ‘Well, that’s an improvement over what it was before.’ So while I’m not necessarily making a 10-year plan – because first of all, I have no idea what I want to be doing in five years, let along 10 – but having said that, it would be absolutely fantastic if I was sitting here talking about another Iron Maiden album five years from now, albeit at the advanced age of 62.”