Bruce Dickinson is back on the road in North America, stepping into his first full-scale solo tour in nearly three decades. Friday night’s kickoff at the House of Blues in Anaheim marked not only the return of his solo project but also a moment of experimentation, nostalgia, and fan service in equal measure.
The show opened the North American leg of The Mandrake Project Live 2025, with Dickinson supported by his most recent band lineup: Dave Moreno on drums, Mistheria on keyboards, Tanya O’Callaghan on bass, and newcomers Philip Näslund and Chris Declercq on guitars. As it’s been since he resumed touring for his solo material last year, Dickinson’s longtime collaborator Roy “Z” Ramirez, who has often been central to his solo recordings, was not performing.
The setlist spanned 16 songs, with two major surprises for fans. First, the live debut of “Shadow Of The Gods” from The Mandrake Project. Second, and perhaps even more exciting for longtime followers, was the first-ever live performance of the Iron Maiden deep cut “Flash Of The Blade,” a song from the band’s 1984 album Powerslave.
Before launching into it, Dickinson told the Anaheim crowd: “Nobody has ever played this song, apart from on the record, of course, but nobody has ever played this song. And it’s a song that I wrote. So I don’t know whether any of you have any clue what song it might be. But like usual, it’s a conundrum. I shall not tell you. You will just have to figure it out. It probably won’t take long… You’ll die as you lived in a flash of the blade.”
The inclusion of both fresh material and rare gems reflects how Dickinson is curating his solo sets. In an interview with Detroit’s WRIF earlier in the week, he explained (via Blabbermouth): “We are doing a mixture of songs from Accident Of Birth, from Chemical Wedding, from More Balls To Picasso, obviously from Mandrake, and that’s, frankly, more than enough for a full show. And in actual fact, I’ve got seven solo albums to pick from, so if I end up doing — as I will do, probably in ’27 — another tour with another album, then I’ll still have plenty of songs to pick from, from those albums. ‘Cause there are songs that people go, ‘Why haven’t you played that song?’ I said, ‘Well, I can’t play every single song. You have to wait. We’ll do it next time.’ But ‘Shadow Of The Gods’, for example, off Mandrake, has never been played live until now. So we’re gonna play that song every night, because it’s a really cool track and it’s the most requested track off Mandrake. We’ve not played it, so we’re gonna do that one every night.”
As for adding Iron Maiden’s “Flash Of The Blade,” Dickinson admitted the idea wasn’t entirely his:
“We’ve actually dropped a Maiden song in there. We haven’t done that, like, ever. And so I said we’re not a Maiden covers band, but I’m gonna do one song, and it’ll be a song that I wrote. We’re not covering [a song] that [Maiden guitarist] Adrian [Smith] wrote with me or [Maiden bassist] Steve [Harris] or something. And my wife said, ‘You should do this song,’ song X. I went, ‘Oh, why?’ She said, ‘Well, nobody’s ever played it. You’ve never played it. Why have you never played that song?’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ She goes, ‘Everybody wants you to play that song.’ I said, ‘Who’s everybody?’ And she’s on social media, so she does all this stuff. I don’t do social media. So I have no clue. And so I mentioned it to the band. I said we should do it. What do you think if we tried to learn this?’ And they dogpiled me, like, ‘Oh my God, that would be amazing.’ So anyway, the next day they’d learned it and they played it to me instrumentally. I was just, like, ‘Holy crap. Now let me see if I can still remember how to sing it.’ So we’re gonna do that.”
This won’t be the only Maiden song slipped into his tour. Dickinson confirmed that he plans to include “Revelations” at select shows, particularly at a festival stop in São Paulo. He explained the choice.
“Now, I’ve gotta learn another Maiden one as well, because we’re doing a festival in São Paulo in the middle of the tour. We dip down to Brazil [to play] this huge festival. And it’s actually 40 years since I set foot in Brazil [for the first time] with Rock In Rio. So I thought, well, for the anniversary, I’m gonna go down there. I really do have to do a kind of a Maiden track in celebration of the fact that, ‘Yeah, look, it’s been 40 years.’ And there was a famous incident where I’d split my head open with the edge of a guitar, blood pouring down my face. That was the image that still played on national TV. Now when they talk about Rock In Rio; they use that moment. And that moment was during a song called ‘Revelations’, which happened to be a song that I wrote. So I thought, ‘Hey, we’ll get the band to learn ‘Revelations.’ And then my wife came in and said, [‘You’ve gotta play ‘Flash Of The Blade’]. I went, ‘Okay, okay, okay.’ Well, now I just love it. I’m just, like, ‘Yes, absolutely.’ So we’re gonna play [‘Flash Of The Blade’ Friday] night and then the secret will be out and social media will be, like, ‘Oh my God, they played that song.’ So if you wanna hear that song, whatever the hell it is, or you might not give a stuff — I don’t know. So we’ll be dropping that in and out here and there, teasing people a little bit. But it’s such a blast on the tour. Such great fun playing with these guys.”
Beyond the songs themselves, Dickinson reflected on the difference between solo theater shows and massive stadium gigs with Iron Maiden: “There’s no comparison. One is one type of thing, one is the other type of thing. So I don’t go into a theater going, ‘Oh my God. I wish I was playing a stadium.’ No, I relish the idea of going into a theater. It’s great. And the same thing — if I go into a stadium, I don’t go, ‘Oh, I wish I was playing a theater.’ No, I’m playing a stadium. That’s what you’re doing, and that’s what’s in front of you.”
For him, performance itself is the core, regardless of scale: “I love performing and I love wherever I am, whether it’s three people, 300, or 300,000. Things change a little bit, techniques change a little bit from one to the other to the other, but it’s still a performance, and you’re still trying to do the best thing by everybody there. So, yeah, I love it.”
