Di’Anno, 66, died at his home in Salisbury. He fronted the heavy metal band from 1978 to 1981 after meeting its founder Steve Harris at the Red Lion in Leytonstone, reports Marco Marcelline
Chingford-born Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno has died in his Wiltshire home at the age of 66.
His death was announced by record label Conquest Music, on behalf of his family, who said Di’Anno had “passed away at his home in Salisbury”. A cause of death was not given.
The statement continued: “Conquest Music are proud to have had Paul Di’Anno in our artist family and ask his legion of fans to raise a glass in his memory.”
The musician, born Paul Andrews, sang on the heavy-metal band’s first two albums, Iron Maiden (1980) and Killers (1981).
Joining in 1978, he stayed for three years before unceremoniously leaving in 1981, later saying that he had been partying “non-stop, 24 hours a day” and admitted his hedonistic lifestyle was “not fair to the band, the fans or to myself, external“.
Di’Anno grew up in Chingford to an English mother and Brazilian father, and as a teenager and young adult he worked as a butcher and chef to support a fledgling music career.
Iron Maiden’s founder Steve Harris recruited Di’Anno after a chance meeting at the Red Lion pub in Leytonstone. In Mick Wall’s book Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills, the Authorised Biography, Harris said of Di’Anno: “There’s sort of a quality in Paul’s voice, a raspiness in his voice, or whatever you want to call it, that just gave it this great edge.”
Iron Maiden bagged a major record deal soon after Di’Anno joined, and the release of their debut album was met with instant critical acclaim and commercial success, debuting at number four on the UK Albums Chart.
Eventually attaining a platinum certification for sales of over 300,000 copies, Iron Maiden was hailed as a defining British heavy metal album of the 1980s.
In 2017, it was ranked 13th on Rolling Stone‘s list of “100 Greatest Metal Albums of All Time”.
The success that came with the record also saw Di’Anno develop a worsening drug addiction. His drug problem came to a head in 1981 as the band were to embark on a gruelling tour.
In Wall’s biography, Di’Anno was quoted as saying of his turbulent time in Iron Maiden: “It wasn’t just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day… the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn’t see my way to the end of it. I knew I’d never last the whole tour. It was too much.”
After Iron Maiden, Di’Anno fronted his own band called Di’Anno from 1983 to 1985. He was later in bands called Gogmagog, Battlezone, Praying Mantis and Killers.
Iron Maiden founder Harris, from Leytonstone, said: “It’s just so sad he’s gone, I was in touch with him only recently as we texted each other about West Ham and their ups and downs. At least he was still gigging until recently, it was something that kept him going, to be out there whenever he could. He will be missed by us all. Rest in peace mate.”
Di’Anno married five times and has six children.
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