Blaze Bayley is making his wishes plain: if he can swing it, he wants to be in the room when Iron Maiden are inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame — even though his former bandmates won’t be. In a new interview, the ex-Maiden frontman said he’d relish the chance to stand in for the group at the November ceremony.
Speaking with Paul Christine of the “Hard Rock History Show“, Bayley, who fronted Iron Maiden for five years and sang on 1995’s The X Factor and 1998’s Virtual XI, didn’t hide his enthusiasm. “I would love to go. I would love to represent the band in a very positive way. I’d love to be a part of that,” he said.
He framed the honor as something bigger than a trophy, even for a musician who insists awards were never the point. “It’s a huge lifetime thing. Whatever you think about awards — we don’t get into it for awards, but I mean, you’re talking about Led Zeppelin being in there and all of that. So it’s huge, really,” Bayley said.
“And it’s a kind of thing that I don’t think too much about it, and so many people mention it: ‘Man, congratulations.’ And it’s really nice that… I mean, that is considered important by a lot of people, and so they consider me, and my work has been recognized, and that’s a really lovely feeling.'”
The catch, as ever, is his calendar. “So I’d love to go to the presentation. I don’t know yet if I’m available at the moment. On my calendar, I’m not booked… There’s a couple of weeks in November I’m not booked. I’ve got no gigs. It falls on the presentation night. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, so I would love to go,” he explained — a slightly firmer read than his earlier comments, when he said only that he was “trying to work it out.”
His eagerness stands in sharp contrast to the current lineup. Earlier this month, Bruce Dickinson and Steve Harris told Metal Hammer they wouldn’t attend the ceremony even if it didn’t clash with their tour. “I don’t do those sort of things. I didn’t even go to the recent red-carpet thing for the [Maiden] documentary. It’s not me,” Harris said at the time.
The band will be mid-Australian tour on the night regardless, with dates in Melbourne on November 13 and Sydney on November 15.
Bayley will be inducted alongside the current lineup of Dickinson, Harris and guitarists Adrian Smith, Dave Murray and Janick Gers, plus late former singer Paul Di’Anno, ex-guitarist Dennis Stratton and past drummers Nicko McBrain and Clive Burr. The 2026 ceremony takes place November 14 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, with a broadcast to follow on ABC and Disney+ in December.
With the touring members bowing out, Nicko McBrain recently admitting to “mixed emotions” about the whole thing, and Bayley now the most openly keen to show up, it increasingly looks as though the former singer could end up being one of the band’s most visible faces on the night. The two records Bayley sang on sold well below the band’s earlier output and were Iron Maiden‘s lowest-charting U.K. titles since 1981’s Killers, yet his era retains a fiercely loyal following.
