NICKO MCBRAIN Opens Up About Retirement From Touring With IRON MAIDEN: “I Wish I Had My Full Fitness And I Could Still Play With The Guys”

After more than 40 years behind the drum kit for Iron Maiden, Nicko McBrain has officially stepped away from touring. The 72-year-old drummer announced his retirement on December 7, 2024, stating that night’s concert at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil, would be his final show with the band. Now, less than two months later, he is opening up about his decision, his health, and what comes next, in an interview with Chaoszine.

“Mixed emotions, obviously. Making the decision to step back from touring has been — it was easy at the time, going towards the end of the tour. I kind of made my mind up when we got to North America and talked to the boys about it, mainly Steve Harris, and then the management. And everybody went, ‘Okay. If that’s what you wanna do, we understand,’ having my handicap, since my stroke and stuff like that. So having said that, I get up some days and I’m, like, ‘I’m gonna miss the next tour and I’m not gonna be able to go out on the road.’”

“It was an easy decision, but I wish I could still play with the guys,” he continued. “I wish I had my full fitness.”

McBrain, who suffered a stroke in 2023, admitted that The Future Past tour was physically challenging: “This one, we kept the kind of same schedule, like gig, travel day, gig, travel day, gig, two days off or a day off, travel day, that sort of thing. And it was just — it just got to me.

“It was good the year before last, in ‘23. And it was still good [in 2024], but I felt that I couldn’t give it a hundred percent, certainly on Trooper and other songs. And we made do, we got through it okay, but I felt that I was not able to drive the band like I wanted to, although I had a personal trainer out on the road towards the end of the North American tour… We didn’t have any rest days. If we did two shows in a row, we’d have a travel day and then a full day off. It was working out nice for me. I was enjoying getting that physical side of training. I wasn’t doing so much weight; it was a lot of kind of yoga stretches, a lot of things like that, trying to get my mental agility back with coordinating. There were a lot of things that we did together to improve the synapses in the brain to get working again. And it was coming on nice, but it was just a struggle for me. And I thought, ‘You know, at my age, I’m gonna step back and let somebody else take the reins,’” he added.

Despite the physical and mental hurdles, McBrain clarified that it wasn’t a struggle to complete the tour itself.

“No, not at all. Well, just from the point — when you get used to being able to do something for, like, 50 years of your career, and then God gave me a stroke, but I’m still here. I’m still standing two years later. However, I was very fortunate in the fact that I had great therapists who helped me through this in the beginning. I basically felt that… The feeling I had was I was frustrated because I know I could do stuff, but I couldn’t actually do it physically or mentally, ‘cause there’s a lot of mental stuff going on.”

His retirement had been on his mind since 2023, but he wanted to complete one final tour before making the call.

“It was something that I had thought of in ‘23. I was thinking after the end of that tour, I was going, ‘Well, should I announce it to the band then?’ But I thought, ‘No, I’ll get through The Future Past tour and then we’ll see. And let’s get that one out of the way first.’ And as we got to the North American tour, I thought, ‘It’s time to hang it up, Nick.’

“It wasn’t an easy decision by any means, but it was the best one — it was the best decision at the end of the day,” McBrain explained. “Admittedly, I get good days and bad days, and the bad days are when I feel, ‘Oh, I’m not gonna be out on those stages anymore looking at these wonderful fans of ours for all these years,’ but at the end of the day, that’s why I’m not doing it. That’s not why I’m doing it, actually — I’m not doing it because it was just too much for me.”

McBrain also revealed that he may be telling more of his story in book form: “Yeah, we’re on the cusp of that,” he said about a potential autobiography. “Yeah, it’s been talked about. Yeah. Watch this space.”