Bruce Dickinson stated probably the most decadent second of his life got here throughout Iron Maiden’s tour of the Soviet Union.

The highway journey began out in August 1984, 5 years earlier than the Berlin Wall got here down, which marked the tip of the united statesS.R. While Maiden had been the primary Western band to take a full manufacturing present by means of the Iron Curtain, they refused to take credit score for encouraging political change.

“We didn’t have to work too hard to build [a] bridge,” Dickinson advised the Independent in a brand new interview. “We just had to build the other half to go and meet them halfway. Afterwards, when they took their destiny into their own hands … that Soviet-era authoritarian thing just crumbled because it had no substance, it had no basis, nobody actually wanted it.”

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One of the cross-culture points they needed to contend with was being paid in Polish zloty, a foreign money with zero worth within the West. As a end result, bassist Steve Harris stated, “[w]e bought all kinds of stuff – china, porcelain, just to get rid of the money.”

Dickinson recalled an incident in a lodge eating room: “This guy comes up with a bin liner full of caviar. We were all drunk, going, ‘Come on then, how much?’ He got a half-kilo tin of caviar out and he said, ‘It’s $100.’ I’m like, ‘$100? That’s incredibly cheap!’”

Polish Vodka Made Iron Maiden See Pink

With the value settled at $50 a tin, the singer continued: “We said, ‘Have you got any more?’ He came back with five kilos – like an oil drum full of caviar. Everyone went mad. We probably had about 10 kilos of caviar, which we couldn’t possibly eat.

“This is the most decadent thing I think I’ve ever done in my life, eating a tablespoon of caviar and knocking it back with vodka. It could’ve been the scene in Tommy but without the baked beans.”

Dickinson additionally had stark recollections of consuming the Polish spirit: “When we started knocking back the shots of frozen vodka, you discovered that the world took on a whole different meaning, which was largely pink. That was the color that the world was the next morning when you woke up, because your eyeballs were so red.”