Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson Wants to Have an Onstage Lightsaber Battle With Eddie

Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson is not just a world-renowned heavy metal frontman, airline captain, author, entrepreneur and businessman, but a well-respected force in the sport of competitive fencing. Excited that lightsabers are legitimately a sanctioned element of fencing now, he has high hopes of one day dueling with the band's beloved undead mascot, Eddie, onstage with the weapon popularized by the Star Wars film franchise.

The singer's fencing abilities have been incredibly useful when it comes to concert performance — his agile, quick-footed movements are the hallmarks of any Maiden show and, rather often, he wields a sword at some point during concerts, usually to spar with Eddie during "The Trooper," while swinging it around on his own during "The Clansman." At least, that's how it went down on 'The Legacy of the Beast' tour over the last couple years.

In an interview about Maiden's new album, Senjutsu, Dickinson capped off a conversation with Forbes by offering a preview at what fans could potentially see onstage when the metal legends return to the road in support of their 17th album.

When asked if he will be fighting a samurai version of Eddie, who is depicted on the Senjusu album cover wielding a sword, Dickinson replied, "Here's a weird thing. The International Fencing Federation, okay, the actual, like, Western fencing federation in particular, and this is kind of led by the French, now has internationally sanctioned competitions in lightsaber."

"I kid you not, in lightsaber," he reiterated, assuring everyone that this is not a joke.

The frontman continued, "I've seen one or two of their training sessions and they actually have competition lightsabers and they are the coolest things. I bought a couple of junior fencing lightsabers and they are just the coolest things on God's green earth. It’s a full on combat lightsaber. You can bash the shit out of it! It doesn't break!"

He's even had a go at playing around with the lighted weaponry himself.

"I carried these once into a hotel lobby and we ended up having lightsaber fights in the lobby and nobody stopped us because everybody's like, "That is the coolest thing we've ever seen." So the idea of having like a lightsaber duel with a samurai Eddie on stage, oh yeah, bring it on," Dickinson exclaimed.

Unfortunately, the topic of lightsabers was never broached during our own interview with the Iron Maiden singer, but we covered quite a lot of other ground, such as ideal time travel destinations.

Senjutsu drops this Friday (Sept. 3) and you can read Loudwire's resident Iron Maiden superfan's track-by-track guide and review here.