Bruce Dickinson is known to most as the frontman of Iron Maiden, and anyone with a passing interest in one of the great heavy metal voices could tell you he’s also a qualified pilot and avid fencer. So it’s no surprise that the renaissance man of rock is full of enthusiasm for his latest solo album – The Mandrake Project, also a graphic novel series – as well as being delighted to speak to a Welshman, namely John-Paul Davies, about his aviation company in the Vale…

Nine am Los Angeles time, bright-eyed and pumped from last night’s rehearsal, it’s this month’s upcoming live show in Swansea Arena that Bruce Dickinson professes to be excited for. “It’s going to be amazing. I mean, you want to hear it. We had a couple of run-throughs Monday and Tuesday; we record everything, and my God, it sounds better than the album!”

And that’s no low benchmark. The Mandrake Project, released in March, has hit top 10 spots all over Europe and peaked at three and five, respectively, in the UK and US album charts. A big payoff for an album that’s been 20 years in the making. “You know, what’s amazing is that the record – having been made over a period of 20 years – all sounds like it was made yesterday and it all fits together so well.”

Themes of destruction and eternity pervade the album. “The comic that goes with it, the graphic novel, had elements of those themes and that kind of percolated into some of the songs,” says Bruce. “Then there was a creative separation of the two things when I realised that I didn’t need to tie the album to the comic. But I’m having a lot of fun writing ongoing episodes of the comic, thinking I could throw a couple of lyrics in there as dialogue. So people can have a little Easter egg in there.”

Created by Dickinson, scripted by Tony Lee and illustrated by Staz Johnson for Z2 Comics, The Mandrake Project graphic novel is another string to Bruce’s increasingly large bow. “The comics are going amazingly well – they’ve sold out the first printing of it and we’re well on the way to episode three now. And episode two is out, so we’ll have the comics on sale with us as merch.”

Still, even with his myriad interests, and fronting one of the most successful live acts in the world, 20 years is a long time to make a record. “[1998 solo album] The Chemical Wedding was an important record for a lot of people – critical acclaim, blah blah blah, the audience loved it. So that was great! And no sooner had I done that, about a year later, I got the call to rejoin Maiden.”

In 1993, Dickinson had left Iron Maiden after 12 years, to concentrate on his solo career – but by 1999 he was back in the band. What followed was a resurgence in Maiden’s music making, as well as an expansion in their sound, which some claim rivals their 80s heyday. And then, in 2015, the singer was diagnosed with throat cancer, something he writes so well on in his 2017 autobiography What Does This Button Do?

“In 2016 I came bouncing back,” he says, with some well-deserved self-satisfaction. “A little bit skinnier than normal, flying a [Boeing] 747! I thought, if you’re going to come back, do it in style. And of course that started off in Cardiff – my first flight in a 747 was from Cardiff to Florida, with the band.”

After recovery, and another Maiden album, Dickinson would often fly the band from venue to venue on their world tours. Then, when lockdown hit, work on a follow-up to his last solo album – 2005’s Tyranny Of Souls, with longtime collaborator Roy Z – was being pushed back into its second decade.

“The first thing [Roy and I] did was write a couple of new songs, which are the first two on [The Mandrake Project] – Afterglow Of Ragnarok and Many Doors To Hell. It gave us a sort of lens to look at the old material, and I think that was the key to making the record sound like it was done yesterday. All the other songs had to step up to the plate and measure up to those two, and that gave us a bit of a roadmap in terms of sound.

“Then, when we’d finished the whole thing, we thought let’s juggle the songs and put them in order. I came up with a couple of orders and we listened to it all in one go. That was the revelatory moment. I went, ‘Oh my God, what have we done?’”

If 1994’s Balls To Picasso was Dickinson’s early declaration of what he and Roy Z could achieve together, then The Mandrake Project is his great, late opus: epic and entangled, heavy and histrionic but somehow touching and revealing too.

“I wish I could say we designed it… it designed us, actually. Which I think is often the way with extraordinary records, or anything really great: you don’t really make it happen, you kind of collaborate with it and the art suggests what you should do next. You start making the record and then the record starts making you.

“It was like that when we made [Maiden’s 1982 album] Number Of The Beast. I still remember we were in the studio, and all going, ‘What are we doing here exactly? This feels really special.’ You get those feelings every now and again – and it was the same with this record.”

The morning after we talk, Dickinson plans to surprise his dedicated fans by sitting in the box office to sell tickets to his ‘secret’ show at West Hollywood’s legendary Whisky A Go Go. From there, it’s a solid month of touring South America and Europe before he arrives for his first ever gig in Swansea Arena.

“We’ve got a little repertoire of songs, which is unlike the Maiden thing, which is very set – once the setlist is made it’s set in stone. The [Mandrake Project] band are incredible: they could learn a track overnight and be note-perfect. So at the Whisky show, we’ve got set one for night one, set two for night two… assuming they want us back. So then we can move things around and be a lot more creative with it, because of the nature of who we are.”

But the restrictions of the Maiden behemoth don’t deter Dickinson from returning after this solo run. “I’ve got 50 of these solo shows coming up and then a break of a few weeks and then we [Maiden] are back in rehearsals in Australia. Then dates in Oz, New Zealand and North and South America takes me up to Christmas. But I’m really looking forward to that. I’ve got my Airbnb in Perth booked already! I look at going on tour with Maiden a bit like an overpaid holiday because I love doing it. And it’s a privilege to be able to do it at 65: just to be able to physically do it is a gift.”

It is true that Bruce Dickinson can still soar up there in the high notes a lot better than most his age. And even though 65 is when you have to hang up your goggles, he still gets his aviation kicks from his Cardiff business.

“Caerdav! She’s doing incredibly well,” he enthuses. “I’ve got such a great bunch in there now. It’s a homegrown team, managed and run by people who are Welsh, who live in Wales. A lot of the employees are Welsh, and like to work there because they like to work where they live.”

Come show day, then, there’ll be a staff outing in Swansea with the Caerdav chairman before he sells copies of his graphic novel and then gets onstage to perform songs from his new top five album. All in a day’s work for one of the busiest, and nicest, guys in rock.

Bruce Dickinson, Swansea Arena, Tue 21 May

Tickets: £44.55. Info: here

words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES