Nicko McBrain stopped touring with Iron Maiden at the end of 2024. He has not stopped being their drummer, and says he would take a studio call if one came.
The 74-year-old told Metal Hammer he would be glad to play on another Maiden record, with one qualification about what he could handle.
“If Iron Maiden went into the studio, I’d be delighted to get back on with them,” he said. “But it’d have to be something more simple really.”
Regarding what that would mean in practice, he named two songs from 1986’s Somewhere In Time: “Stranger In A Strange Land” and “Wasted Years“. “That kind of song. I’d love to do something like that.”
Both are mid-paced and built on repetition rather than the shifting time signatures that run through much of the band’s later work. Maiden have not announced a new album, and have not released one since Senjutsu in 2021.
McBrain had a transient ischaemic attack at his home in Boca Raton, Florida in January 2023, which left him with partial paralysis down his left side. He did not make it public until the following August.
In the new interview he mentions a detail of the timing that has not come up before. He had been due to have cataract surgery the same day.
“The miracle was that I had the stroke in the morning, rather than while I was under the twilight anaesthetic,” he recalled.
He went on to play the full 81-date “Future Past” tour with limited movement in his left hand.
“It was incredible to get any use back out of it at all … Like, I couldn’t do the drum fill in the intro of [1983 single] ‘The Trooper‘, so I had to adapt it. Steve [Harris] and the band were so supportive, but my body just wasn’t bouncing back,” he said.
Bruce Dickinson described what that had taken in a 2024 interview with Loudwire.
“He was paralysed in his left side entirely,” he said back then. “In May [2023], we’re supposed to be rehearsing for this big tour, and he’s not even sure if he can play drums. He couldn’t hold a fork. Three months after that, he’s on tour … Can you imagine how hard that is for a drummer of Nick’s calibre, in front of 10,000 people?”
McBrain announced his retirement from touring on December 7, 2024, hours before the final “Future Past” show at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, his last with the band after 42 years. Simon Dawson, a former session drummer and Harris‘ bandmate in British Lion, was confirmed as his touring replacement the following day.
He remains a member of Iron Maiden. He joined in December 1982, replacing Clive Burr, made his recording debut on Piece Of Mind and is the third longest-serving member of the band after Harris and Dave Murray.
His autobiography, “Hello Boys And Girls!“, is published on October 22 through Harper Nonfiction in hardback, ebook and audio, and will be followed by a spoken word tour. He is currently on the road in the United States with Titanium Tart, his Maiden covers project.
Iron Maiden are also in the US, working through the “Run For Your Lives” tour marking fifty years since the band formed. The set is drawn entirely from their first nine albums, from 1980’s Iron Maiden to 1992’s Fear Of The Dark, and those same nine records are being reissued as a vinyl box set on December 11.
