Bruce Dickinson’s Ultimate Decadence: Caviar and Vodka Extravaganza

Bruce Dickinson recounted the most decadent moment of his life, which occurred during Iron Maiden’s tour of the Soviet Union.

The journey commenced in August 1984, five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, marking the end of the U.S.S.R. Iron Maiden was the first Western band to showcase a full production show behind the Iron Curtain. Despite their groundbreaking tour, the band never claimed credit for inspiring political change.

“We didn’t have to work too hard to build [a] bridge,” Dickinson mentioned in a recent interview with the Independent. “We just had to build the other half to go and meet them halfway. Afterwards, when they took their destiny into their own hands…that Soviet-era authoritarian thing just crumbled because it had no substance, it had no basis, nobody actually wanted it.”

One of the cross-cultural challenges they faced was being paid in Polish zloty, a currency of no value in the West. Bassist Steve Harris shared, “[w]e bought all kinds of stuff – china, porcelain, just to get rid of the money.”

Dickinson recounted an incident in a hotel dining room: “This guy comes up with a bin liner full of caviar. We were all drunk, going, ‘Come on then, how much?’ He got a half-kilo tin of caviar out and he said, ‘It’s $100.’ I’m like, ‘$100? That’s incredibly cheap!’”

With the price settled at $50 a tin, Dickinson continued, “We said, ‘Have you got any more?’ He came back with five kilos – like an oil drum full of caviar. Everyone went mad. We probably had about 10 kilos of caviar, which we couldn’t possibly eat.

“This is the most decadent thing I think I’ve ever done in my life, eating a tablespoon of caviar and knocking it back with vodka. It could’ve been the scene in Tommy but without the baked beans.”

Dickinson also had vivid memories of consuming Polish vodka: “When we started knocking back the shots of frozen vodka, you discovered that the world took on a whole different meaning, which was largely pink. That was the color that the world was the next morning when you woke up, because your eyeballs were so red.”

Source: Independent