25 Jun 2005 - Rod - Back to school

The weekend June 4 -5 we played to around 110,000 people at the Rock Am Ring and Rock im Park German festivals - to a tremendous reaction again . We flew back into Stanstead after the gig getting in about 1am and Nicko and l took a car down to Brighton where Nicko was staying with me. A good lie in, spot of lunch and early evening we went down to the Brighton Institute of Modern Music (www.bimm.co.uk). This is a great school and part of the University Of Sussex teaching music skills like singing, instruments, songwriting , production along with an introduction to the music business. Its run by some good friends of mine Kevin Nixon, Sarah Clayman and Bruce Dickinson (the other Bruce who was in that fine band Little Angels) and Nicko has been down before for a drum clinic. We did a Q and A for the students for about ninety minutes - typically when Nick and l get going we only actually answered 2 questions - what he said reminded me of a story and vice versa - the usual double act.. We think the students enjoyed it though. Nicko also played Number of the Beast with some of the students. Afterwards we were treated to a very good curry at the Taste of India on the seafront with - of course - a few beers.

We were up in the very early hours to go to Gatwick to pick up BruceAir flight 666 to Reykjavik, Iceland with 200 or so fans who came in specially from all over the world including Australia, USA, Japan and South America. Bruce got us there fine and we headed off for the Blue Lagoon - a sort of outdoor spa with water heated underground by the earth. Iceland truly is a spectacular place and the people so friendly. Bruce came along to the Lagoon but Nicko headed back to get some rest before the gig as he didn't get a lot of kip the night before!! After a really good gig with a fantastically responsive crowd of about 12,000 (about 4% of the population of 300,000 in Iceland!!) Bruce headed back to the airport with Nicko to fly back with the fans. I jacked out and had a few beers with the chaps and flew back in the next day. A different few days!!