Paul Di’Anno, who fronted Iron Maiden’s first two albums, has died at age 66. The information was confirmed by his label, Conquest Music. An rapid trigger wasn’t introduced.

“Despite being troubled by severe health issues in recent years that restricted him to performing in a wheelchair, Paul continued to entertain his fans around the world, racking up well over 100 shows since 2023,” Conquest Music mentioned in an official assertion.

Di’Anno’s first profession retrospective album, titled The Book of the Beast, was issued in September, spotlighting recordings made since leaving Iron Maiden. An upcoming documentary on his life was reportedly within the works with producer Wes Orshoski, who additionally helmed 2010’s Lemmy about Motorhead’s late frontman.

“Conquest Music are proud to have had Paul Di’Anno in our artist family,” the label added, “and ask his legion of fans to raise a glass in his memory.”

READ MORE: Iron Maiden’s Most Interesting History (*66*)

Born Paul Andrews on May 17, 1958, in Chingford, East London, Di’Anno sang in a number of British rock bands as a teen. He joined Iron Maiden in 1977, changing short-lived former singer Dennis Wilcock, at which level he additionally adopted the Di’Anno stage identify.

With Di’Anno at the helm, Iron Maiden launched their self-titled debut album in 1980. Deftly combining steel, punk and progressive rock, Iron Maiden influenced numerous bands over the following a number of many years, whereas songs like “Iron Maiden,” “Sanctuary,” “Running Free” and “Phantom of the Opera” turned fan favorites and set listing staples. Iron Maiden rapidly adopted up their eponymous debut with 1981’s Killers.

Di’Anno’s second outing showcased beefier manufacturing (courtesy of Martin Birch) and much more labyrinthine music constructions. “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and the title observe rank as a few of the band’s earliest and most promising mini-epics, whereas the pressing, hook-filled “Wrathchild” options certainly one of Di’Anno’s most iconic, skyscraping howls — foreshadowing the path Iron Maiden would take with successor Bruce Dickinson.

Watch Iron Maiden Perform ‘Wrathchild’ With Paul Di’Anno

Why Did Iron Maiden Split With Paul Di’Anno?

Despite breaking new inventive floor with Killers, Di’Anno’s tenure in Iron Maiden would come to an finish shortly after the album’s launch. Friction arose between Di’Anno and different members of the band on the album’s ensuing tour, notably with bassist and bandleader Steve Harris. After a number of canceled gigs and vocal performances deemed subpar by his bandmates, Di’Anno performed his last present with Iron Maiden on Sept. 10, 1981, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was promptly relieved of his duties.

Within six weeks, the band was again on the street with Dickinson, and the discharge of The Number of the Beast in March 1982 turned Iron Maiden into a worldwide steel juggernaut. In hindsight, Di’Anno agreed his bandmates made the precise selection.

“I don’t blame them for getting rid of me,” he instructed Metal Hammer in 2020. “Obviously, the band was Steve’s baby, but I wish I’d been able to contribute more. After a while that got me down. In the end I couldn’t give 100 percent to Maiden anymore and it wasn’t fair to the band, the fans or to myself.”

Di’Anno additionally denied reviews that he was fired for his extreme drug use, regardless of beforehand admitting to snorting cocaine “nonstop, 24 hours a day” throughout that point. “I left Iron Maiden because they were going too heavy metal, and Iron Maiden is a money-making machine, and I don’t give a fuck about it,” he remembered in 2013. “It was not about drugs. It was nothing like that.”

He rapidly added: “But you need to take drugs when you’re with Iron Maiden because they’re so fucking boring. And the only drugs were aspirin, because Steve — fuckin’ headache.”

Watch Iron Maiden Perform ‘Women In Uniform’ With Paul Di’Anno

What Did Paul Di’Anno Do After Iron Maiden?

Following his dismissal from Iron Maiden, Di’Anno launched and took part in a number of short-lived initiatives over the following decade, together with the eponymous Di’Anno, Gogmagog, Battlezone and the pre-New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Praying Mantis, who loved a short renaissance in 1990. He based and fronted the band Killers for a lot of the ’90s and briefly within the early 2000s, and he continued to carry out and launch albums as a solo artist properly into the twenty first century.

Di’Anno’s private life was fraught with each authorized and well being points. In 2011, he pleaded responsible to 9 counts of profit fraud totaling greater than £45,000 and was sentenced to 9 months in jail, of which he served two. He confronted a near-fatal bout of sepsis in 2015, which landed him in a hospital for eight months.

He caught MRSA twice throughout his hospitalizations, which pressured Di’Anno to postpone a scheduled knee surgical procedure. Around that point, he additionally underwent surgical procedure to take away “an abscess that was all infected and the size of a rugby ball.”

In 2022, Di’Anno started receiving lymphatic drainage therapies in Zagreb, Croatia, to arrange for one more spherical of operations on his knee, together with the set up of custom-made bone meant to permit him to stroll once more after being wheelchair-bound for seven years. Amid these therapies, Di’Anno additionally returned to the stage after a six-year absence, delivering a 12-song set of largely Maiden covers in Zagreb in May 2022.

Listen to Paul Di’Anno’s Version of ‘Phantom of the Opera’

Did Paul Di’Anno Ever Reunite With Iron Maiden

Di’Anno’s efficiency coincided with Iron Maiden’s tour kickoff in Zagreb, and he reunited backstage with Harris for the primary time in roughly 30 years. Shortly thereafter, Iron Maiden organized to cowl Di’anno’s medical bills, the icing on the cake of an already-sweet reunion. “It was quite emotional,” Di’Anno instructed the Metal Voice. “It’s made my whole year, actually. It was fantastic.”

Iron Maiden would attain stratospheric heights following Di’Anno’s departure. Still, their first two albums are thought-about cornerstones of the style and remained each beloved by followers all over the world and touted by different steel musicians as main influences.

“The two albums I made with the band were pivotal [to the metal genre],” Di’Anno instructed Metal Hammer in 2020. “Later on in my life when I met Metallica, Pantera and Sepultura and they told me that those albums were what got them into music, it made me incredibly proud.”

A gathering many years within the making was held simply months earlier than Di’Anno died as he was lastly launched to Dickinson.

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