Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson had quietly been suffering onstage in recent years and recently underwent hip replacement surgery to fix some grueling issues. In revealing this news, he also divulged that he snapped his achilles tendon months before one of the 'Legacy of the Beast' tour legs in 2019, but managed to get back onstage and perform without anyone noticing any limitations in his lively performance.

In an interview with Download Festival host Kylie Olsson, the newly-bearded singer spoke of his medical woes, but remained upbeat because having now sought medical treatment to mend his ailing body, he's now doing workouts he hasn't done since his teenage years.

"I had a new hip installed several months ago. So I got five and a half inches of titanium hammered into my leg. 'Cause I run around on stage and jump, and [after] 40 years of fencing left-handed, it was just worn out," began Dickinson (transcription via Blabbermouth).

"I mean, the last tour was really quite painful," he continued, "And I put it down to the fact that during the last tour, just shortly before the last tour, I also broke my Achilles as well — my Achilles tendon snapped… It's horrible. That was two years ago, basically."

The notoriously agile frontman noted that although he took care of that issue, it still hampered him on the road. What shocked Dickinson more than the fact that he was still able to play a demanding two-plus hour show each night with what many have regarded as a Broadway caliber performance, was that nobody noticed the adjustments he made in his movements.

"So I got that stitched back together and went out on tour three and a half months later. So I couldn't actually walk properly or run. So I modified what I did on stage, and nobody figured it out. I was amazed. I did the whole tour — South America, the whole lot — and I ran around," he recollected and noted, "But my hip was giving me so much shit. And I put it down to the fact that people were telling me, 'You're compensating for the other leg,' and everything else, and I thought, 'Oh, yeah. That's it then.''

Dickinson, who will be 63 in August, left his hip alone and started "seriously" training again, engaging in his lifelong fencing passion, but his hip began "seizing up" and then the pandemic lockdown went into effect.

At that time, he was in Paris where "you [had] to get a piece of paper and sign it to go outside and the rest of it, so I was running up six flights of stairs as my exercise, doing that." He also set up a fencing target on the balcony, but hip problems persisted and he elected to visit a specialist doctor, who then told him the condition would not improve from its current state.

Dickinson said he told the doctor, "It's October. When the safety car comes out, Hamilton goes in for fresh tires. So let's do it now in October. 'Cause I might have a tour next year," cheekily remarking, "Little did I know," in regards to Iron Maiden's rescheduled 2022 'Legacy of the Beast' run.

"But being an eternal optimist, it was the best thing I've done. So now, with my new hip, I'm back to fencing again. It's absolutely incredible. I've been doing physio and doing weights that I haven't done since I was 16 or 17 years old. I'm squatting a hundred kilos. It's mental what your body can do," the Maiden frontman concluded, much to the relief of the fans around the world.

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