Semi-retired Iron Maiden drummer has recalled the moment he met Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne, and the late singer’s claim that he once saved McBrain’s life.
Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, the drummer, 74, says that he first met the Prince Of Darkness on a boat crossing the English Channel. He doesn’t remember much of what happened next, but the next time he and Osbourne came face-to-face, Osbourne alleged that he saved McBrain’s life by stopping him from falling into the sea that day.
“I thought there was no way Ozzy would remember meeting me for the first time,” McBrain says. “He came into my room while we were on this boat with all these drugs falling out his hands. But he did, crystal clear when we ran into each other again later.
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“He said, ‘Do you remember me saving your life?’ I was like, ‘No?’ He said I was so out of it, I was stumbling towards the railing and he grabbed me before I went over. All I remember was it was a rough crossing, going over the Channel. But apparently he’d saved me!”
Osbourne, who was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 and pursued a massively successful solo career, and Iron Maiden were two of the biggest heavy metal artists of the 1980s. McBrain isn’t the only member of the band to have an unhinged, inebriated encounter with the Prince Of Darkness. In an interview with Jeremy Clarkson in 1999, frontman Bruce Dickinson revealed that he and Osbourne once drunkenly conspired to steal a taxi together.
“He had a couple beers and said to me, ‘Let’s nick a taxi,’” Dickinson remembered. “I asked, ‘How you gonna do that?’ He said, ‘Well, you call it and I’ll distract him – no, you distract him and I’ll hit him over the head! Can you drive?’ When I said yes he went, ‘Good, I can’t.’”
McBrain joined Maiden in 1982, replacing Clive Burr, and retired from the metal legends’ live lineup in December 2024, almost two years after suffering a transient ischaemic attack (TIA, or mini-stroke) which paralysed his left side. The drummer regained his ability to play in time for the band’s Future Past world tour in June 2023, but his abilities remain limited.
Talking to Hammer, McBrain reveals that he could only feel “70 percent” of his hand during the Future Past shows: “It was incredible to get any use back out of it at all … Like, I couldn’t do the drum fill in the intro of [1983 single] The Trooper, so I had to adapt it. Steve [Harris, bassist/bandleader] and the band were so supportive, but my body just wasn’t bouncing back.”
Simon Dawson replaced him on the road, but McBrain is still officially Maiden’s drummer. He says that, should the band enter the studio to make another album after 2021’s Senjutsu, he’d be “delighted” to contribute. However, his condition means the material would have to be “more simple”.
McBrain will release his autobiography, Hello Boys And Girls, on October 22 via Harper NonFiction. The publisher calls it “a thrilling, hilarious and deeply personal autobiography” that “takes readers behind the scenes of one of Britain’s biggest-ever bands”. He’s currently touring the US with his Maiden cover band Titanium Tart.
Maiden are also in the States, continuing their 50th-anniversary Run For Your Lives world tour. The setlist features songs from their first nine albums, 1980’s Iron Maiden up to 1992’s UK chart-topping Fear Of The Dark. They’re reissuing the same albums in a vinyl box set on December 11.