Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain says that his pastor urged him to remain with the heavy metal masters after he converted to Christianity in 1999, despite the band having once whipped up a Satanic panic with their album The Number Of The Beast.
Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, McBrain, 74, says that he’s never felt “any worry” over Maiden’s music possibly conflicting with his religious views.
“When I became a Christian man, I put it in prayer and talked to my pastor about continuing in the band,” he reveals. “He said, ‘If it’s something God doesn’t want you to do, he’ll let you know.’ So I asked if He was still OK with it and got the sense He was.”
Despite marking Maiden’s commercial breakthrough, topping the UK charts shortly after its release in 1982, The Number Of The Beast was a controversial record, especially in the United States. Conservative religious groups objected to the lyrics of the title track, which was inspired by 1978 horror film Damien: Omen II, and the cover which featured band mascot Eddie using the Devil as a marionette.
Guitarist Adran Smith recalled the controversy during Maiden’s 2005 documentary The History Of Iron Maiden, Part One, saying that ahead of a planned television performance, “the presenter looked at the album cover, and we watched in the wings as she recoiled in horror. They chucked us out! People were reacting.”
“It gave us loads of publicity,” added frontman Bruce Dickinson. “The kids who did wanna buy our records were like, ‘Oh cool! The religious right are burning their records! I better buy half a dozen!’”
McBrain joined Maiden in December 1982, replacing Clive Burr shortly after the end of the Number Of The Beast tour. He found his faith after his wife, a born-again Christian, invited him to a church service, where he felt “God and Jesus” push him forward.
“I kept moving forward as though I was being pushed over,” he told TVMaldita in 2020. “I couldn’t feel anything. And this is the God’s honest truth: I thought, ‘I haven’t had a drink. I’m not in a hangover here.’ I felt His presence. And right there and then, I gave my heart to God, and I asked Jesus in my life.”
McBrain retired from Maiden’s live lineup in December 2024, almost two years after he suffered a transient ischaemic attack (TIA, or mini-stroke) which paralysed his left side. The drummer regained his ability to play in time for the band’s Future Past world tour in June 2023, but his abilities remain limited.
Talking to Hammer, McBrain reveals that he could only feel “70 percent” of his hand during the Future Past shows: “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, bassist/bandleader] and the band were so supportive, but my body just wasn’t bouncing back.”
Simon Dawson replaced him on the road, but McBrain is still officially Maiden’s drummer. He says that, should the band enter the studio to make another album after 2021’s Senjutsu, he’d be “delighted” to contribute. However, his condition means the material would have to be “more simple”.
McBrain will release his autobiography, Hello Boys And Girls, on October 22 via Harper NonFiction. The publisher calls it “a thrilling, hilarious and deeply personal autobiography” that “takes readers behind the scenes of one of Britain’s biggest-ever bands”. He’s currently touring the US with his Maiden cover band Titanium Tart.
Meanwhile, Maiden have just concluded a tour of North America; they will continue their ongoing 50th-anniversary Run For Your Lives world tour at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City on Friday (October 2), then through more dates in Central and South America, Oceania and Asia. The setlist features songs from their first nine albums, 1980’s Iron Maiden up to 1992’s UK chart-topping Fear Of The Dark. They’re reissuing the same albums in a vinyl box set on December 11.
