HELLOWEEN’s MICHAEL KISKE: ‘I Don’t Think There Was Ever Any Serious Consideration’ About Me Joining IRON MAIDEN

HELLOWEEN singer Michael Kiske has once again shot down the rumor that he was approached to join IRON MAIDEN as the replacement for Bruce Dickinson.When Dickinson left IRON MAIDEN in 1992, many heavy metal fans felt that Kiske seemed the best fit to fill his shoes. But the job instead went to WOLFSBANE vocalist Blaze Bayley, an odd choice considering that Blaze’s singing voice is quite clearly a baritone in contrast to Bruce’s tenor/alto range.Kiske discussed his hypothetical pairing with MAIDEN during a recent interview with Made In Metal. Asked about the rumor that he was one of the contenders for the MAIDEN singer job, Kiske said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “At that time, [HELLOWEEN] had the same management as IRON MAIDEN. We were with Sanctuary Music and Rod Smallwood, around this time, was also managing HELLOWEEN. And so there was this connection. I was at the marriage of Rod Smallwood, and all the IRON MAIDEN guys were there, and stuff. And we met them. I met Bruce a few times in the office and had conversation. I watched tennis with him together in the ’90s when Boris Becker was playing. I remember that. We were in the office and we were both watching tennis. So this connection was there. But there was never any discussion, or there was never any talk about it. The only thing that I discovered later on, many years later on, and I cannot tell you if that’s true, it was something that a journalist, or an interviewer was telling me, that I don’t even remember who it was — I think it could be a French interviewer — he said something that he had an interview with [IRON MAIDEN bassist and founder] Steve Harris about who could replace Bruce Dickinson when he was no longer in the band, and that I was supposed to be one of three on Steve Harris’s list. I don’t know if that is true, but maybe that’s where it came from. And a funny thing is I even watched it on TV, and in the ’90s, we still had those music TV channels and there was one show that was taking care of hard rock and metal, and there was a beautiful girl that was hosting the show, and she said, ‘Well, it was just a rumor, but now it’s pretty official that Michael Kiske is the new singer of IRON MAIDEN.’ I was, like, ‘That was interesting.'”Kiske continued: “There was never any talk, and I don’t think there was ever any serious consideration because the British are very nationalistic too, and just the idea of a German singer replacing Bruce Dickinson in IRON MAIDEN, I don’t think this would really work. In theory, this might have been something in the head of Steve Harris, but you’ve gotta ask him that. I don’t know if that’s true. I can just tell you that an interviewer told me that Steve Harris said something like that. But you can’t believe many things these days anymore. But maybe that’s where it came from… Also, we played with IRON MAIDEN, and this was a very successful tour that we did. I think it was in ’89 — ’88 or ’89. I think it was [MAIDEN’s] ‘Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son’ tour, and it was an amazing tour. The audience was really accepting HELLOWEEN too. I remember that. It was fitting — the style of music was kind of fitting. So someone who likes MAIDEN doesn’t necessarily hate HELLOWEEN and vice versa. Maybe that’s also why some people thought this could work out or something like that.”Kiske went on to say that the prospect of replacing a much-loved singer in an internationally established metal band is not something he would have embraced.”I wouldn’t care for IRON MAIDEN without Bruce Dickinson, the same way I didn’t care for JUDAS PRIEST without Rob Halford,” he explained. “I can’t help it. [A singer change like that] only worked for me with VAN HALEN, really. I like David Lee Roth’s time just as much as the Sammy Hagar time — maybe a little better, because the time is a a bit more timeless while the Sammy Hagar phase, they sound a little more ’80s. It’s almost like they wanted to meet the sounds of the ’80s a little more and whatever, but they’re both equally great and musically exciting. And it worked. And I enjoy both phases. But most of the time, when I like a band, and especially when I grew up with a band, and the singer changes, I don’t care because it’s like you kind of connect the sound of the band, the speaking voice of the band with the singer. It’s always a difficult thing to do. It worked with HELLOWEEN — it worked with HELLOWEEN too [when I left the band], because they didn’t choose a Kiske-like [singer to replace me]. They chose someone with his own style and with his own attitude. And the band needed someone like Andi [Deris]. He’s a lion, a Zodiac. So he’s someone who takes things under control and is leading. And that was exactly what the band was needing in those days. The band was very dysfunctional in my final two, three years in the band. So with HELLOWEEN it worked too. If it wouldn’t have worked, we wouldn’t talk today. But with most of the bands, it doesn’t work. It’s a very difficult task, especially when you try to get a singer that sounds like the previous one. It makes much more sense to take a singer that has his own attitude, his own style — more convincing than a copy of something.”Kiske previously discussed rumors of him joining MAIDEN during a June 2021 interview with “The Neil Jones Rock Show” on TotalRock. Asked if he ever got a call to audition for the MAIDEN singer job, Kiske said: “I even heard it on TV. On German TV, it was a heavy metal show on a channel, and there was a good-looking lady who said, ‘Well, everybody knows that Michael Kiske is the new singer of IRON MAIDEN.’ But I didn’t know about it.”[The rumor] probably came about because Dickinson was no longer in the band,” Michael continued. “I was no longer in HELLOWEEN [at the time], so I was sort of available. Maybe that’s where the idea came [from].”Had he been asked to join IRON MAIDEN, Kiske told “The Neil Jones Rock Show”, “I don’t think I would have done it — even though I am a MAIDEN fan; always been. MAIDEN was, together with [JUDAS] PRIEST, these two were my main bands when I got into this type of music. I think I was 14 or something. METALLICA later on… [I was listening to their debut album] ‘Kill ‘Em All’. I was one of the first fans. We even had a tape of the demo of that album that was circulating through Europe. It was something different; they sounded different, and the energy was very different. And later on, it was QUEENSRŸCHE. Anything with Ronnie [James] Dio, anything where he laid vocals on, I loved. His solo stuff, just as much. That was my main thing.”But to join a band like IRON MAIDEN, I would not recommend it,” Kiske added. “Because, c’mon on — it doesn’t work; it just doesn’t work. So I don’t think I would have done it anyway. It was a good choice that [Bruce] came back later.”When Bruce joined IRON MAIDEN, it was the early years. They made two records [with Paul Di’Anno] which were successful, but he was the next step. Dickinson was the reason why I cared about IRON MAIDEN. It was his voice. I heard ‘Run To The Hills’ on the radio, and I was, like, ‘What’s that?'”That same month, Kiske told Loudwire that he struggled to understand MAIDEN’s musical direction once Bayley had joined the group.”I don’t want to hurt Blaze, I don’t know him, but he was not Bruce Dickinson,” Michael said. “I actually listened to [IRON MAIDEN’s ‘The X Factor’ album] with [guitarist] Adrian Smith [who exited IRON MAIDEN in 1989] in my apartment when we were both fooling around with my first solo record [‘Instant Clarity’]. We couldn’t understand what we were hearing. The whole spirit of the album was very weird.”Bayley recorded two studio albums with IRON MAIDEN — 1995’s “The X Factor” 1998’s and “Virtual XI” — before Dickinson returned to the group. The MAIDEN albums Blaze appeared on sold considerably less than the band’s prior releases and were their lowest-charting titles in the group’s home country since 1981’s “Killers”.Kiske and the rest of the reunited expanded classic lineup of HELLOWEEN released a new album in June 2021 via Nuclear Blast Records. The “Pumpkins United” lineup also features returning guitarist/vocalist Kai Hansen alongside singer Andi Deris, guitarists Michael Weikath and Sascha Gerstner, bassist Markus Grosskopf and drummer Daniel Löble.[embedded content]