In a new interview with Charlie Kendall of Charlie Kendall’s Metalshop, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson touched upon how the pervasive influence of social media has been increasingly linked to the amplification of narcissistic traits. He said: “Now we have the crazy thing where people are observing themselves and TikTok and all the rest of it, and the influencers who need no qualifications whatsoever to be an influencer and influence people with oftentimes dumb opinions. This crazy world in which we’re so obsessed with influencing other people. And this kind of narcissistic [attitude of], ‘Hey, look at me now. ’  I stand in front of like 50,000 people and go, ‘Hey, look at me.’ But when I step off stage, that’s it.  It’s over. It’s done. I don’t think that that has any value other than what I’m actually doing. The reason you look at me, hopefully, is ’cause I’m singing some stuff or I’m telling you a story or whatever, but when it’s done, it’s done. I don’t need to walk around with the equivalent of a mirror attached to my face to know that I’m a good person.”

Dickinson continued: “I just get worried about people’s mental health with the stuff that goes on in the web. I just think it puts too much pressure on people and people forget how to be a community anymore. That’s why in MAIDEN, we’re trying to say to people, ‘When you come to a show, why don’t you just keep your phone in your pocket and try and look at everybody else around you and join the show and be there for the people that you are with?'”

Asked by host Charlie Kendall
if putting away the phone is “a requirement now to attend” an IRON MAIDEN show, Bruce clarified: “It’s not a requirement. It’s a request. It’s a polite request.  What is the point in paying all this money and turning up and staring at a tiny little box for, like — I don’t know — however long. I mean, first of all, MAIDEN‘s show is two and a bit hours long, so your arm’s gonna get real tired.”

This past May, MAIDEN manager Rod Smallwood took to the band’s web site to share a post titled “Put away your phones and get ready to Run For Your Lives!” in which he urged fans to experience the shows “in the moment” rather than on smaller screens at a later date.

“We really want fans to enjoy the shows first hand, rather than on their small screens,” Smallwood wrote. “The amount of phone use nowadays diminishes enjoyment, particularly for the band who are on stage looking out at rows of phones, but also for other concertgoers.

“We feel that the passion and involvement of our fans at shows really makes them special, but the phone obsession has now got so out of hand that it has become unnecessarily distracting especially to the band. I hope fans understand this and will be sensible in severely limiting the use of their phone cameras out of respect for the band and their fellow fans.”

Less than two weeks later, Smallwood called out fans for their concert phone etiquette, thanking those who “kept their phones down” and respecting “the band and their fellow fans” and shading those who didn’t obey during the opening show of the European leg of MAIDEN‘s “Run for Your Lives” tour.

“It is so much better when they can see you unencumbered and that drives them on without that distraction,” he wrote of the band. “For the selfish few that didn’t and just had to keep videoing… I wish you nothing but a very sore arm!”

Smallwood clarified that the concerts don’t need to be completely phone-free. “As I said before, by all means take the odd quick pic as a memento of a great night,” he added, “but otherwise please keep your phone in your pocket.”

In the same statement, Rod thanked fans for the “amazing welcome” they’ve given MAIDEN‘s new touring drummer Simon Dawson, who “felt your support from the start — and asks me to thank you all.”

MAIDEN‘s request for fans to put away their phones comes just months after Swedish rockers GHOST enacted a phone ban for anyone attending shows on their ongoing “Skeletour”. Fans are required to place their phones in locking Yondr pouches for the duration of the show, which unlock after each show ends.

Back in 2012, Dickinson blasted a fan at a MAIDEN concert in Indianapolis, Indiana for paying more attention to his cell phone than to the band’s performance. “You’ve been texting for the last fucking three songs,” Bruce said. “You’re a wanker.”