Iron Maiden will bring The Book of Souls tour to Australia and New Zealand in May 2016.
The Iron Maiden Book Of Souls tour will kick off in the USA in late February and then head to Mexico, El Salvador (for the first time), Costa Rica, Argentina, Chile and Brazil before returning to North America for 10 more shows.
In April Iron Maiden will head to Japan and then perform in China for the first time ever before heading to New Zealand and then Australia in the first half of May.
After Australia, Iron Maiden will head to South Africa for their first shows there with Bruce Dickinson and then tour Europe through until the end of August, 2016.
Dickinson, a professional pilot, while chauffeur the band around the world in their own plane Ed Force One. “When the opportunity arose from my friends at Air Atlanta Icelandic to lease a 747 for The Book of Souls World Tour, of course we jumped at the chance, who wouldn’t?,” Bruce said in a statement. “The greatest benefit of travelling in a 747 is that because of its colossal size and freight capacity we can carry our stage production and all our stage equipment and desks in the cargo hold without having to make any of the immense structural modifications needed to do this on the previous 757, the extent of which fans will have noted on the Flight 666 DVD. Although in reality we cannot carry much more gear the savings in complexity, time and cost make using the 747 even more practical. All we will need to do is “paint” it and move a few seats around, with the added advantage that there is much more room for band and crew – our Krew can almost get a row of seats each to catch up on sleep on the flights! Furthermore, it is marginally faster o.85 MACH and the range of around 7000NM (13,000 km) is much greater which means we will not have to make the refuelling stops we needed to with the 757.
“However, even though we have worked out the logistics of taking a plane of that immense size out on tour, I still have to learn to fly it before we can go anywhere! So, I’m currently doing my training to qualify as a pilot and Captain on a Boeing 747. I’m doing this at Cardiff Aviation, my aircraft maintenance facility in Wales, where we recently took possession of a rather splendid 747 simulator which I can’t wait to get practising on!
“We’re all really excited at the thought of bringing our brand new tour to fans who have never seen us play live before, and of course re-visiting all our old friends again too. You can rest assured we are all working hard to put together a spectacular show for our fans.”
Iron Maiden’s The Book of Souls World Tour’ dates will be announced in coming weeks. The Book Of Souls is Maiden’s 16th, and first ever, double studio album and is released 4 September through Parlophone Records.
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