Exclusive: Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris talks about his British Lion solo project

Steve Harris: club tour in the offing

Will you tour British Lion with the band?
Yeah, I mean, what are my alternatives, playing acoustic bass on my own? We’ll definitely tour it. But there are no shows arranged yet, because we don’t know yet what we’ve got. I know we’ll be playing clubs, which is great because I’ve not played clubs for years, but do we play in front of 200 people, 400 people, 600? I’d be totally happy with 200 people a night, that’d be brilliant, but I just don’t know.

What expectations do you have for the album?
Truthfully, I don’t know what kind of reaction it’s going to get. And that’s quite exciting for me. Even with Maiden I don’t have expectations and this is a very different thing: this is stepping outside that safe Maiden bubble and finding out what’s going on in the real world.

Will British Lion free up other people in Maiden to do more solo stuff?
I think Bruce will do another one: we were talking about my album the other day and I think it got him thinking that it’s been 10 years since he last did one. So it’s probably time he did another one. Maybe this will prove to everyone that you can be in Maiden and do other stuff as well. And there’ll definitely be another British Lion record. I want to do more things with Maiden obviously, but if some of the guys decide that they don’t want to do as much in the future, then I’ve got this as well: this is my safety valve, because what else am I gonna do? I want to cram in as much as possible before I kick the bucket.

* British Lion will be released by EMI on September 24.