Paul Di’Anno, who fronted Iron Maiden’s first two albums, has died at age 66. The news was confirmed by his label, Conquest Music. An immediate cause wasn’t announced.
“Despite being troubled by severe health issues in recent years that restricted him to performing in a wheelchair, Paul continued to entertain his fans around the world, racking up well over 100 shows since 2023,” Conquest Music said in an official statement.
Di’Anno’s first career retrospective album, titled The Book of the Beast, was issued in September, spotlighting recordings made since leaving Iron Maiden. An upcoming documentary on his life was reportedly in the works with producer Wes Orshoski, who also helmed 2010’s Lemmy about Motorhead’s late frontman.
“Conquest Music are proud to have had Paul Di’Anno in our artist family,” the label added, “and ask his legion of fans to raise a glass in his memory.”
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Born Paul Andrews on May 17, 1958, in Chingford, East London, Di’Anno sang in several British rock bands as a teen. He joined Iron Maiden in 1977, replacing short-lived former singer Dennis Wilcock, at which point he also adopted the Di’Anno stage name.
With Di’Anno at the helm, Iron Maiden released their self-titled debut album in 1980. Deftly combining metal, punk and progressive rock, Iron Maiden influenced countless bands over the next several decades, while songs like “Iron Maiden,” “Sanctuary,” “Running Free” and “Phantom of the Opera” became fan favorites and set list staples. Iron Maiden quickly followed up their eponymous debut with 1981’s Killers.
Di’Anno’s second outing showcased beefier production (courtesy of Martin Birch) and even more labyrinthine song structures. “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and the title track rank as some of the band’s earliest and most promising mini-epics, while the urgent, hook-filled “Wrathchild” features one of Di’Anno’s most iconic, skyscraping howls — foreshadowing the direction Iron Maiden would take with successor Bruce Dickinson.
Watch Iron Maiden Perform ‘Wrathchild’ With Paul Di’Anno
Why Did Iron Maiden Split With Paul Di’Anno?
Despite breaking new artistic ground with Killers, Di’Anno’s tenure in Iron Maiden would come to an end shortly after the album’s release. Friction arose between Di’Anno and other members of the band on the album’s ensuing tour, particularly with bassist and bandleader Steve Harris. After several canceled gigs and vocal performances deemed subpar by his bandmates, Di’Anno played his final show with Iron Maiden on Sept. 10, 1981, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and was promptly relieved of his duties.
Within six weeks, the band was back on the road with Dickinson, and the release of The Number of the Beast in March 1982 turned Iron Maiden into a global metal juggernaut. In hindsight, Di’Anno agreed his bandmates made the right choice.
“I don’t blame them for getting rid of me,” he told Metal Hammer in 2020. “Obviously, the band was Steve’s baby, but I wish I’d been able to contribute more. After a while that got me down. In the end I couldn’t give 100 percent to Maiden anymore and it wasn’t fair to the band, the fans or to myself.”
Di’Anno also denied reports that he was fired for his excessive drug use, despite previously admitting to snorting cocaine “nonstop, 24 hours a day” during that time. “I left Iron Maiden because they were going too heavy metal, and Iron Maiden is a money-making machine, and I don’t give a fuck about it,” he remembered in 2013. “It was not about drugs. It was nothing like that.”
He quickly added: “But you need to take drugs when you’re with Iron Maiden because they’re so fucking boring. And the only drugs were aspirin, because Steve — fuckin’ headache.”
Watch Iron Maiden Perform ‘Women In Uniform’ With Paul Di’Anno
What Did Paul Di’Anno Do After Iron Maiden?
Following his dismissal from Iron Maiden, Di’Anno launched and participated in several short-lived projects over the next decade, including the eponymous Di’Anno, Gogmagog, Battlezone and the pre-New Wave of British Heavy Metal band Praying Mantis, who enjoyed a brief renaissance in 1990. He founded and fronted the band Killers for much of the ’90s and briefly in the early 2000s, and he continued to perform and release albums as a solo artist well into the 21st century.
Di’Anno’s personal life was fraught with both legal and health issues. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to nine counts of benefit fraud totaling more than £45,000 and was sentenced to nine months in prison, of which he served two. He faced a near-fatal bout of sepsis in 2015, which landed him in a hospital for eight months.
He caught MRSA twice during his hospitalizations, which forced Di’Anno to postpone a scheduled knee surgery. Around that time, he also underwent surgery to remove “an abscess that was all infected and the size of a rugby ball.”
In 2022, Di’Anno began receiving lymphatic drainage treatments in Zagreb, Croatia, to prepare for another round of operations on his knee, including the installation of custom-made bone intended to allow him to walk again after being wheelchair-bound for seven years. Amid these treatments, Di’Anno also returned to the stage after a six-year absence, delivering a 12-song set of largely Maiden covers in Zagreb in May 2022.
Listen to Paul Di’Anno’s Version of ‘Phantom of the Opera’
Did Paul Di’Anno Ever Reunite With Iron Maiden
Di’Anno’s performance coincided with Iron Maiden’s tour kickoff in Zagreb, and he reunited backstage with Harris for the first time in roughly 30 years. Shortly thereafter, Iron Maiden arranged to cover Di’anno’s medical expenses, the icing on the cake of an already-sweet reunion. “It was quite emotional,” Di’Anno told the Metal Voice. “It’s made my whole year, actually. It was fantastic.”
Iron Maiden would reach stratospheric heights following Di’Anno’s departure. Still, their first two albums are considered cornerstones of the genre and remained both beloved by fans around the world and touted by other metal musicians as major influences.
“The two albums I made with the band were pivotal [to the metal genre],” Di’Anno told Metal Hammer in 2020. “Later on in my life when I met Metallica, Pantera and Sepultura and they told me that those albums were what got them into music, it made me incredibly proud.”
A meeting decades in the making was held just months before Di’Anno died as he was finally introduced to Dickinson.
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Gallery Credit: Allison Rapp
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