Di’Anno – Review of Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer – an early metal singer is hard to follow | Video

This honor but (for his record) not the honor of Paul Di’Anno (born Paul Andrews in 1958), the lead singer of the heavy metal act. Iron Maiden between 1978 and 1981. Fans of the band, and historians, will know that, while there are many admirers of Di’Anno’s work in concert and on the first two albums of Iron Maiden, the band went supersonic only after parting ways with him. Their best album, The Number of the Beast, had Bruce Dickinson on lead vocals, so this makes Di’Anno the Stuart Sutcliffe or Pete Best of Maiden lore, although the band has gone through many singers and collaborators over the years compared to the Beatles they don’t record well.

In any case, the records of Di’Anno, who looked into his reign, rocking his heart with a sound that is more anti-punk than rocking old metal, are interesting, even for all the girls of Maiden. However, you can see why he didn’t go all the way because, as viewers get to know him through the first scenes of the film, it’s clear that Di’Anno is often difficult, hard to like.

Director Wes Orshoski bravely follows him through the darkest moments in his life – before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic – when Di’Anno’s health took a turn for the worse, including a dislocated knee that left him unable to walk. We hear a lot of grumbling from him about the NHS not seeming to be able to arrange surgery for him until his health has improved in other ways. Then Croatian fan Stjepan Juras and his friends raised enough money to bring Di’Anno to Zagreb where treatment is much cheaper than private services in the UK. Their efforts to help their hero come across as pure as his bad temper and sarcastic tendencies see him chew them out for booking the wrong taxis and he’s often downright bitter.

Most importantly, when the operations are carried out and Di’Anno’s work is slightly revived in Croatia, he does not follow the rehabilitation and exercise program and returns to his mental health, smoking cigarettes while crying and moaning all the time. It’s one of those films where the scene is so obscure that the camera longs to leave and follow someone else for a while: for example, Juras, or the Croatian nurse who had an affair with Di’Anno at one point and then disappeared from the story. If only the doc had chosen to describe the Norwegian musicians who included Di’Anno’s backup group in Croatia, a group of middle-aged men who looked like boys who usually did something in IT or taught physics. In the end, any of the above would have been better than the ungrateful, self-pitying middle man.