Blaze Bayley has said the heart attack he suffered in 2023 never made him fear for his life. What it did was change what he pays attention to.
Speaking to Remzi “Jam Man” Yates of “Rocking With Jam Man“, the former Iron Maiden singer described his reaction at the time.
“I didn’t have a near-death experience, so I never felt in fear of losing my life. I always felt like, ‘Oh, this is really embarrassing that I’ve had a heart attack, and maybe I could’ve avoided it,'” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Bayley had the heart attack at his home on March 25, 2023 and was taken to hospital, where he underwent quadruple bypass surgery. He was discharged on April 19, and his spring shows were postponed.
He said his main concern afterwards was the music he still wanted to make, and that the experience pushed him further in a direction he had already been heading.
“I really wanted to make another album,” he continued. “I didn’t wanna leave it there. I felt like there’s much more to say. And I’d finished my album the day before my heart attack. And then people think I wrote it afterwards, but no, I finished it before. ‘I have another album in me that I need to say.’ That was the main thing. And it confirmed, in a way, I’d been trying to be less stressed over details. That still happens, but you know that saying, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff’? Well, it’s a bit like that. Ask yourself this question: in the scheme of life things, is the plane being delayed by an hour important? No, it’s not, man. It’s not important at all. And in fact, you might not have even seen this hour. You could’ve been dead. And I find it’s much more important now, I really try to find out the names and find out about people that I work with. You go to a festival, there’s a guy doing the monitors. You’re only gonna meet him for 10 minutes, and he’s gonna be… Well, I try and find out people’s [story]. Well, how are you? What do you normally do? And I try and find out, ’cause people are so interesting, and there are so many great stories that if you’re up your own a**, you’re never gonna hear.”
The album he mentions was Circle Of Stone, recorded with co-producer Christopher Appleton of Absolva and completed shortly before the heart attack. It was set aside during his recovery and released on February 23, 2024. Bayley returned to the stage with a run of UK shows at the end of 2023, followed by a tour with Wolfsbane, the band he fronted before Iron Maiden.
Asked what success means to him now, he said it has shifted from scale to the experience of a single night.
“Well, success now for me is being independent and doing things on my own terms. And it’s very simple — in some ways I played big crowds, I played stadiums, I had a lot of money in the past, and now it’s about doing something that is really special to make a night that if you see me at my next concert, that a night that will live with you so that you go, ‘Yeah, but that Blaze Bayley concert, man, I saw, that’s 15 years ago,’ or whatever it was, ‘that was incredible, because this happened.’ That’s what I strive for now. Not just to have a huge event like that, but to have something that connects to you and to my fans. So one of the things I’m trying to do, and it was happening before COVID, is not really getting to bigger venues, but play two nights at the same venue. So there’s less travel. If you like the venue, you’re playing much closer to people. It’s more intimate. That’s what I’m trying to do now. For me, that’s success. Every time we get a booking and it’s two nights at the same place — yeah,” he explained.
Bayley is now at work on the follow-up to Circle Of Stone. Earlier this month he said he was gathering ideas rather than rushing a record, with sessions planned to shape the material. In July he headlined the Friday night Maidenville stage at Eddfest, Iron Maiden‘s 50th anniversary weekend at Knebworth.
He fronted Iron Maiden from 1994 to 1999, recording The X Factor and Virtual XI with the band.
