Home > Work > What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography
1 " Nothing in childhood is ever wasted. "
― Bruce Dickinson , What Does This Button Do?: An Autobiography
2 " Bullying happens because weak people need to prop up their ego by beating up or humiliating others. "
3 " I had memorised Deep Purple’s Made in Japan note for note. Every drumbeat, every thud of Ian Paice’s bass-drum beater, I had tried to replicate. Ditto the first Black Sabbath album, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, plus my eccentric collection of Van der Graaf Generator albums and treasured copy of Wild Turkey’s first offering. "
4 " started to read the excellent biography of Blake by Peter Ackroyd. I think it is one of the best of his books, the other being London: The Biography. I got the feeling that Ackroyd was almost channelling the spirit of Blake to rise from the pages and speak directly to the reader. "
5 " the BBC were obliged to play short extracts of the song through gritted teeth. It’s a shame they weren’t paying more attention to Jimmy Savile instead of writhing on the hook of a tongue-in-cheek horror-movie soundtrack. "
6 " It was a heart-stopping moment, and Donington’s collective jaw dropped. Grown men fought back tears. It was a Griffon-engine Spitfire, which has a distinctive growl, as opposed to the whistling howl of the supercharger on a Merlin engine. No one will ever forget that moment. It upstaged everything. "
7 " Los seguidores de Iron Maiden están bastante acostumbrados a involucrar sus cerebros. "
8 " The voice is a precious instrument, an emotional instrument. There is nothing between you and your audience. There is no guitar plank to hide behind, no giant stack of keyboards, no battery of tom-toms. There is nothing and no one to blame except yourself, and an audience will murder you and dance on your grave in a heartbeat if you let them. "
9 " I began to think of school as a prison camp, and my duty was to disrupt, subvert and/or escape. But, of course, there was no escape. I felt I should make some kind of statement. I decided to deliver two tons of horseshit to my housemaster. Just one of those spur-of-the-moment ideas that comes with no logic in tow, but a great deal of emotional momentum. "
10 " Rock stars, of course, have long had the capacity to act like babies, but have not had the sense to sing like them. "
11 " All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience. "
12 " Where have you come from?’ she asked. ‘Sarajevo.’ ‘Why were you there?’ ‘Hey, we had a gig. We’re a rock band.’ ‘Sarajevo is a dangerous place. Never come back. "
13 " A family trip to Jersey – that’s the Channel Islands, not New Jersey, folks – netted brand-new gatefold editions of Van der Graaf Generator classics H to He and Pawn Hearts. (The latter was such a manically depressive record that you could actually empty a room with it after a couple of minutes. On the other hand, I could listen to it for hours on end in solitary confinement, probably because I am not a manic depressive.) "
14 " I had been asked to add a further three-hour rock show, but I protested that there wasn’t enough quality new music to sustain six hours a week. "
15 " In later years I discovered the Japanese expression often used in schools to describe an individual who was overly individualistic: ‘The nail that stands up is always hammered down. "
