Blaze Bayley keeps the fire burning

By Ian Harvey

When former Iron Maiden singer Blaze Bayley stands on a stage in front of his fans the person who did the most to get him back there can't share the moment.

His wife, Debbie, who helped him get back on track after his career hit the rocks, died last September.

After finding fame with first Wolfsbane and then Iron Maiden, Blaze, who now lives in Dudley, found himself on his own again in 1999 when he was ousted from Maiden so that singer Bruce Dickinson could return.

Now touring again with his band, also called Blaze Bayley, the singer credits Debbie with rescuing him after he had all but given up on his rock dreams and settled for a shop job.

"I wasn't a singer in a band who was in a job to keep me going. Suddenly I was just a shop assistant and I didn't have a band," he explains.

"I had a really bad time one day and I attacked one of the customers, who started giving me a load of aggro. The police came and arrested me and they took me to the police station in Steelhouse Lane.

"Debbie and I were engaged at the time. She came to pick me up from the police station and she laughed and she said: 'That's the last day that you ever work a day job. You're Blaze Bayley, that's it, get yourself together'."

But tragedy struck last summer.

"Debbie had a brain haemorrhage on the 7th of July. She went into a coma and she never came out of hospital and she died on the 27th of September. She was in a deep coma but she seemed to be coming back but it just wasn't to be.

"If it hadn't been for her I just wouldn't be here, I'd be a homeless person now or dead myself. She believed in me and she forced me to get myself back together."

Blaze reveals a conversation the couple had made all the difference.

"She was moaning about me not taking some medication and she said 'What am I going to do if something happens to you?' and I said 'What if something happens to you?'. She said 'Well, what would you do?', and I said 'Nothing. It wouldn't be worth living. if I don't have you. I don't want to live'.

"And she said 'No, I'd want you to carry on with your music'. So when she was taken ill that was burned into my brain. She'd worked so hard to get us somewhere that I felt I had no choice but to carry on much as I wanted to give up.

"But it's a huge hole in my life. Now I'm just starting to remember more positive things and the great laughs that we used to have. We were incredibly in love.

"Even now I look at the world in a different way and I think I was in love with someone who was in love with me and we were everything to each other and that is a really rare thing."

Blaze's band appears at the Roadhouse, Birmingham, on June 20 in support of his album The Man Who Would Not Die, the title of which is an autobiographical reference to his career's death and rebirth.

"We started last May with small dates and then the album came out and we've carried on and this year we've gone back to a lot of the same places and we've doubled the attendance at a lot of the places we've gone," he says.

He admits that it's quite a different operation to the five years he spent with Iron Maiden, with Blaze running his band as well as publishing his music himself and dealing with everything from the blazebayley.net website to merchandising.

"We're a tiny, underground metal band in the UK but we're this tiny underground metal band that plays all over Europe and South America too," he says.

"We'll carry our own gear, we'll do whatever it takes. We're not going to have a crew or tour bus or anything. We're just going to play as many dates as we can. It's no different to how it was in Wolfsbane.

"But your values change. I'm much wiser now and I have much more patience than I used to have and now I put the value on the music and my whole life isn't just about the gig, it's about living as a musician, being able to write and record my own material, being able to play to people who are interested.

"Before I always focussed too much on just doing the gig. A lot of the time I was unhappy because we weren't playing a gig and things weren't going well. And now I don't expect anything to go well.

"Now my expectations are completely different. Now, if things go well that is a real bonus but for the rest of the time I just expect to struggle and for there to be lots of problems to work out and get through, and when I haven't got those problems then I feel great about it."

Blaze keeps in contact with Iron Maiden and is looking forward to a brief reunion with Wolfsbane later in the year.

"I'm still in touch with the lads from Iron Maiden. We went to see them at Twickenham last year. A couple of them came to my wife's funeral as well."

And he has no hard feelings about the manner of his departure from the band.

"I'm not bitter about it, just disappointed. It's a long time ago and I have a body of work, I have solo albums now, that really mean something to me."

"Iron Maiden are the most important heavy metal band in the history of the world and I was a part of that," he adds.

"With the Wolfsbane guys, my wife managed to get us back together and get us talking again and two years ago we did a little reunion supporting the Wildhearts and this December we're having another reunion and supporting the Quireboys.

"The Blaze Bayley Band is booked up until the sixth of December and then we start with the Quireboys on the eighth.

"They're dong the Rock and Blues as well and by some fluke there's no Blaze Bayley Band gig that night so Wolfsbane are going to be doing the Rock and Blues."

But for now he's concentrating on taking his own band on the road as much as possible.

"That's everything we want to do, live on the road go out and play, this is what we're about.

"There's no middle man, there's no pretence there's no hype, you've paid your money for your ticket, we're playing on stage.

"If you do well and fans do like you, when you're signed to a major label you don't see the results. With being so small you see the results immediately, if somebody buys a CD or a T-shirt. If somebody comes up to you after a gig and says 'That was great'.

"When you're in a huge band playing huge venues you don't get that and I think that's something that has really been missing."

Once again he credits Debbie for getting him where he is, adding: "If by some crazy fluke, if by blind luck we do become huge, then for me it will be because of her."

• Blaze Bayley plays The Roadhouse, Birminghon Saturday, June 20, 2009. Tickets are £6.

• Wolfsbane play at the Rock and Blues Custom Show at Catton Hall, Derbyshire, on Saturday, July 25

• Wolfsbane will be special guests of The Quireboys when they play JB's, Dudley, on Saturday, December 12, 2009