Bruce Dickinson is on the road with The Mandrake Project band for a tour highlighting his solo music. The Mandrake Project tour hit its third show on Saturday April 27th in Brasilia. During the show, a couple of concert-goers got the ire of Bruce and interrupted the show with smoking and possibly pepper spray. In a now-deleted video, Bruce said:
“I can’t fucking breathe. Tanya [O’Callaghan, Bruce’s bassist] can’t breathe. You with the fucking vape over there, yeah, it’s not you, but, you know, please, fucking do that outside, all right? You know, if you can’t stay for five minutes without having a fucking addiction, but… Somebody down here has been using pepper spray. Some fucker has been using pepper spray, which is why people can’t fucking breathe down there, right? So, you know, if you figure out who the fuck it is, I just don’t care what happens to them after the show, all right? In the meantime, we will try and do the best we can.”
There was another video with Bruce continuing about the smoke and not being able to breathe on stage.
“I do apologize for coughing. Some of you fuckers are smoking, all right? I can’t sing if you’re gonna smoke, all right? [Tanya’s] coughing her guts out, I’m coughing, my fucking wife is going, ‘Blargh,’ in the back there, all right? It’s kind of disgusting, all right? But if you wanna be disgusting, do it outside, all right? Not in here. My throat’s got work to do. You pay good money to hear me fucking sing, not go, ‘Blargh, blargh,’ all right?”
It goes further than just the band complaining on stage at the time, the concert promoter MCA Concerts even put out a statement a day after the show.
“[Saturday] night over 2000 fans filled the Opera Hall in Brasília to see Bruce Dickinson on the third show of his, critically acclaimed, first Brazilian solo tour for over 20 years. An incident occurred towards the end of the show where noxious fumes were released, causing severe issues for the band members on stage and the crew and audience in the auditorium. Subsequently many members of the crowd have taken to social media to corroborate the incident that caused them breathing difficulties.
Tour promoters MCA are still working with authorities to understand the full impact of the incident and understand how the noxious fumes affected not just the audience and crew but also the band onstage.
Fortunately, everyone has been checked out by medical staff and given the all clear. The show in Belo Horizonte at the Arena Hall tonight (April 28th) will be unaffected.”
Check Out Our Interview With Bruce About The Mandrake Project
This isn’t the first time that Bruce has gotten heated with audience members doing stupid or harmful things during his shows. At an Iron Maiden show in 2022 in Greece, Bruce lashed out at a fan during their performance of “Number of the Beast” after they lit a flare and started swinging it around. He blasted the fan just as the song was beginning and was thrown off his timing for the rest of the song.
At a concert in Anaheim, California in 2022, he called out fans for smoking cannabis during the show and disrupting both him and Steve Harris.
“There’s so many fucking people smoking so much fucking dope down here, I’m amazed you can even see. Poor old Steve. I don’t know if you know, but he absolutely fucking hates marijuana and the smell of it, all right? So when he’s trying to play bass, it fucks him up. It fucks me up. I’m a singer, all right?”
Let’s hope that there aren’t any more disruptions during the shows and fans and the band can enjoy them.
The Mandrake Project was released on March 1st, 2024 and it was a hell of a solo comeback for Bruce. It has an accompanying comic series with two issues out so far and another arriving in June. You can check Bruce out on the solo tour and see dates here.
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