Steve Grimmett recalls trying to get the singer gigs in Iron Maiden and Judas Priest in the ’90s

Steve Grimmett recalls trying to get the singer gigs in Iron Maiden and Judas Priest in the ’90s

Grim Reaper and Steve Grimmett’s Grim Reaper frontman Steve Grimmett was recently interviewed by Marcelo Vieira for Brazil’s Marcelo Vieira Music.

Vieira asked Grimmett about his “audition” to replace Bruce Dickinson in Iron Maiden back in the ’90s. Grimmett replied (as provided by Vieira with slight edits):

“Basically I met Rod Smallwood whilst we were doing the “Hell On Wheels” tour with Grim Reaper and got on really well with him and then, obviously, some friends of mine in the press got in touch with me and said “You better get the demo together because Bruce Dickinson is leaving the band”, so I did that and I phoned up Rod and said “Can I send in a demo?”, he said “Yes, send in a demo”. I haven’t heard anything for a while, so I phoned him up again and he said, “You know what, they’re considering you”, I was like “Oh ok, fine”, and then the next thing I hear is “They’ve taken on Blaze“. And at the time I was, well, I don’t know if they made a mistake because they went [inaudible] after that but, I mean, I’ve met Blaze and I’m now really good friends with Blaze and he’s alright. I don’t know what happened, but yeah, I could have done them an excellent job. The same thing happened with Judas Priest when Tim “Ripper” Owens got the job, I actually put in for that too.”

Vieira noted that he didn’t know about the Judas Priest “audition” to which Grimmett added: “Yeah. But I had a really nice letter back from K.K. Downing saying, “Thank you very much”, you know, “Blah blah blah, but we won’t be choosing you this time”, and I was like “Great, fine, brilliant, at least I had an answer but that’s ok.”  

You can read the rest of the interview with Steve Grimmett in the Portuguese language at Marcelo Vieira Music‘s website.