Asked by the Colombian station Radioacktiva about the next two years, Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson spent most of the answer on his solo record and then let one sentence out about the band.
On the solo album: "The new solo album, frankly, is up there with the best stuff that I've ever done. I mean, it's a whole level above The Mandrake Project, and it's absolutely amazing. You have to wait till next year to hear it, although there will be something out very soon, a first track. And the videos, we shot five videos for it now. The whole thing fits together as a story."
Then the part that will be read twice. He said Steve Harris likes the new solo material, and added: "So, we have a few surprises up our sleeve with Iron Maiden, which I can't tell you about. But, obviously, I'll be touring next year with my solo record. And all of that we'll get around to telling people when the time is right. And that time will be quite soon."
On the Run For Your Lives tour, which marks fifty years and draws its set from the first nine albums, he said the band change the staging rather than the songs: "We're always looking at ways of improving the storytelling, improving the drama, whether it's through the costumes or whether it's through the screens." He also described the band's own position on stage plainly enough: "We actually almost semi ignore the show because we're still basically just a band playing in a club in London. It's just that there's 40,000 people in our club." The tour runs on through Latin America, Oceania and Japan, with San Salvador on 5 October and Bogota on 11 October next.