10 Replacement Hard Rock Singers That NAILED It (Or Just Didn't Fit)

It's difficult to think of Iron Maiden without Bruce Dickinson on the microphone. His vocal range is legendary and his patter with the crowd second to none.

But in addition to their forgettable Blaze Bayley period in the 1990s, there was also a pre-Dickinson era. Maiden would experiment with handful of vocalists as they played the London bar circuit in the mid 70s, settling on Paul DiAnno who would sing on their 1980 self-titled debut album and its follow up Killers, a year later.

As they started gaining notoriety and were hitting the road for longer periods, DiAnno had trouble adjusting to the lifestyle and by his own admission was using a lot of cocaine and drinking heavily, greatly effecting his ability to meet the standards set by the rest of the band.

They went behind his back and lined up Bruce Dickinson during a clandestine meeting at the Reading Festival, where he was performing with the band Samson.

And the rest as they say is history, as Bruce joined in time to sing on Maiden’s third album The Number Of The Beast, which would catapult them to worldwide stardom and enormous success.

Subsequent albums that followed with Bruce Dickinson in the 1980s included Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere In Time and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, unquestionably among the finest examples of heavy rock/metal music ever recorded.