Ed Force One touched down safely at Dubai International Airport a little after 6pm on Wednesday evening.
Omar Abdulaziz Khan, an Emirati Iron Maiden fan, and I were among a handful of journalists waiting at the Jet Aviation Facility at Dubai Airport Free Zone to interview the pilot and Iron Maiden lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson, 50.
We cheered when the band finally walked by, Nicko McBrain, the drummer, even recognised Omar and I, and came over to shake our hands, which was awesome.
After that Bruce made his way over, took a few pictures and Omar fired the first question of the Q&A, “Will you release a DVD of the [Matter of Life and Death] tour, and when is the new album?''
“Well we have a film coming out soon, Flight 666 about the first leg of this tour,'' said Dickinson. “We have taken a lot of footage of the Matter of Life an Death tour so I'm sure there will be a release at some point.''
As for the next album, Bruce said: “We will be writing it at the end of this year.''
“It is excellent being back in Dubai. We really enjoyed it last time and this time we will stay longer and do some sightseeing.''
He added that the plan to do a desert safari on Thursday.
Bruce commented on the first time they played in Dubai two years ago: “The thing that impressed me the most is that we had no idea what the audience was going to be like when we first played here two years ago. We didn't know whether it was going to be expatriates or not. But what impressed us the most was the mix of Arab fans and a large number of them were women, local women.''
Dickinson added that the band is not ruling out visiting other Arab cities in future tours.
My turn finally came and I asked, “Iron Maiden has done songs about so many different subjects, and you just said that you will be writing your next album this year. Is there a chance that you might do a song about what is happening in Gaza right now?''
Bruce took a few seconds of uncomfortable silence to think about his answer and then said: “The songs we write tend to be about things we know about, experienced or are interested in, which is why the tend to be Western. If you look at the media in the West and documentaries and such, we only have information on the Middle East up until the Crusades. And then suddenly it's the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Well, what happened in that huge gap in between? So it's highly unlikely, but due to the lack of information rather than the desire to steer away from the subject. I mean we did ‘Run to the Hills' in our US tour, and that was about them slaughtering the native Americans.''
At the end of the Q&A, Omar finally got Bruce's signature on his custom Yamaha Pacifica 904.
The guitar was autographed by the whole band two years ago when they came to Dubai, but somehow it never got to Bruce. He also got his Dubai 666 number plate autographed.
I had bought the band gifts consisting of Gotras, Agals and Gahfiyas, the Arabic head dress.
And just as Bruce was about to leave, I gave it to him. He seemed intrigued by the Agal (black ring part of the head dress); I explained it was originally used as a camel hobble. With a bit of persuasion he agreed to let me show him how to wear it. He didn't look too bad in the head dress, even though I rushed it.
