Paul Andrews, known by the stage name Paul Di’Anno, vocalist of Iron Maiden from 1978 to 1981, has died at the age of 67.
Paul was born on May 17, 1958 in Chingford, East London, and first rose to fame as the singer of the English heavy metal band Iron Maiden between 1978 and 1981. He sang on their groundbreaking debut album “Iron Maiden” and its influential follow-up “Killers”.
Di’Anno’s father came from Brazil, which gave Paul dual citizenship: British and Brazilian. In his teens he sang in various rock bands and made a living as a butcher and a cook in hotels and restaurants.
Paul was introduced to Steve Harris by Iron Maiden’s drummer at the time, Doug Sampson. But Paul never imagined he’d end up with them. When he first caught the band live at a club in East London, he said that he and a mate nearly wet themselves laughing as they watched Iron Maiden’s singer at the time, Dennis Wilcock, up on stage with a sword in his hands and blood smeared around his mouth.
In the end, though, Di’Anno landed with Maiden after all. His brash attitude and street-punk swagger gave Iron Maiden a whole new dimension and had a decisive effect on the band’s early rise, as they quickly pushed to the front of the then-new wave of British heavy metal. The crowds going wild at their shows and the arrival of the debut EP “The Soundhouse Tapes”, released in November 1979, meant that by April 14, 1980, Iron Maiden’s first album was one of the most anticipated releases in metal.
The debut “Iron Maiden” quickly became a genre classic in 1980, as the band fused raw punk energy with metal phrasing and added complex twists on top, since Steve Harris had always been into the achievements of seventies progressive rock too. The debut thus became a kind of foundation that other bands, who later started playing thrash and speed metal, as well as progressive metal, drew excitement from. In that sense, its successor “Killers”, released in 1981, which was far bolder, even more uncompromising, thunderous and raging, and more challenging above all in terms of composition and performance, became an even more important album when it comes to influence on the development of metal. Di’Anno later received nods of recognition as an inspiration from, among others, members of Metallica, Pantera and Sepultura. The live EP “Maiden Japan” also came out in 1981. Paul Di’Anno played his last gig with Iron Maiden on September 10, 1981 in Copenhagen, Denmark, just four days after Iron Maiden also played a festival in Belgrade. Paul was let go from Maiden mainly because of his drug dependency and undisciplined lifestyle on tour, which caused the band constant worry and trouble, as he didn’t function on stage the way he should have, and he also got into repeated arguments with Steve Harris.
More than for his later musical output, Paul became known among fans for his incredible stubbornness, focus, iron will and persistence, plus a pile of controversial outbursts and health problems. After leaving Iron Maiden, Paul was active in several bands. First he founded the band Di’Anno, which ran between 1983 and 1985. In 1985 came a short stint with the supergroup Gogmagog, which also featured bassist Neil Murray, former Maiden drummer Clive Burr and guitarists Pete Willis (in Def Leppard from 1977 to 1982) and Janick Gers, who back then had no idea whatsoever that in just under five years he’d end up in Iron Maiden himself. Next came Di’Anno’s Battlezone, Killers, Rockfellas and, more recently, Warhorse. Together with his former Iron Maiden comrade Dennis Stratton, he played again in 1990, when Paul joined Praying Mantis for a Japanese tour and recorded the live album “Live At Last” with them that same year.
In 2002 he put himself back in the public eye by releasing the autobiography “The Beast”. In 2011 he was arrested for receiving bribes and money laundering. He was sentenced to nine months in prison, but was released after just two months for good behavior.
Over the last decade Di’Anno kept playing the odd show, though constant health problems left him mostly confined to a wheelchair in recent years. In 2023 Iron Maiden launched a charity campaign, with the money raised going to Paul and his urgent knee surgery.
Paul Di’Anno played his last show on August 30, 2024 in Kraków, Poland. Although he once said he didn’t want to be remembered for playing in ‘karaoke Iron Maiden bands’, his setlists were always filled entirely with material from the first two Iron Maiden albums. That very fact is, and will forever be, what ties Paul firmly to Britain’s biggest metal export, and even more so to the very origins and foundations he laid with his contribution for the further expansion of British heavy metal.
Paul Di’Anno was planning one last farewell tour this late autumn, after which he wanted to retire from the stage. As part of that run of shows, he was supposed to play Ljubljana’s Orto bar on December 3, 2024, but the rattling old hag with the scythe decided otherwise and came knocking at his door much sooner than he would have liked, and than the heavy metal world would have liked too.
Paul Di’Anno played a handful of shows in Slovenia. The first was on November 10, 2001 with his Killers, when he stopped by Ljubljana’s Gala Hala. Then he played in 2003 in Dolenjska, as part of the Rock Otočec festival, and in 2007 he also played four shows in a row: at Bled, in Postojna, Žalec and Izola.
