Earlier this week, we posted about Iron Maiden's first shows in China, a huge coup for the band, who surely had to jump through a ton of rings to get the government's approval. Part of the agreement meant the band couldn't use their signature fireworks, play politically charged songs live "Powerslave" or curse.
Well, frontman Bruce Dickinson could give a shit. During Tuesday night's performance in Shanghai, the second Chinese performance the band had, the Iron Maiden frontman addressed the censorship from the stage:
“It’s great to be here tonight. It’s great to be in China tonight, I tell ya. We ripped it up in Beijing, and we thought, ‘Ooh, that was a bit serious,’ you know. So they had a few rules, so we kind of stuck by the rules, and we didn’t do any swearing. You know what I mean? There’s another thing I can’t do. See if you can guess what it is later on. But we don’t really give a [mouths the word ‘shit’] about all that kind of stuff, because, you know what?
Bruce Dickinson doesn't care about yo' damn censorship. Later in the night, he says:
The most important thing is the music, the most important thing is that we are here, and you are here, and we are gonna have a great [mouths the word ‘fucking’] time!”
I think Maiden are certainly making the best of the situation and Dickinson is ultimately right. The band wanted to see its Chinese fans, so if they had to abide by a few rules to bring their ruckus to China, so be it. Here's video of the two speeches:
