So how come you’re back in rainy England?
Paul: I’m here promoting my book ‘The Beast’ and I’m gonna be doing my first live show in London in 5 years.

Man, its been fucking ages since I last you!
Man, I haven’t lived in England for 20 years - I now live in Brazil! Well, from my name you’ve probably guessed that I’m of Italian descent and Brazil has millions of people of Italian ancestry, probably even more than the Spanish and Portuguese. I also have family out there but I’ve lived there since 1998. Previously I was living in LA and that’s where I’ve been all this time - I came back to England for 3 weeks and hated it so I f%ked off back to LA. Most of my friends are Latin and despite being borne in London I am first and foremost a Latino.

So was it hard growing up then as a Latin kid in the East End of London?
Not as hard as growing up in fuckin LA in the 80’s! I tell you, those muthaf&*^kers hate anybody that doesn’t have money or even an English type name. If you’re not ‘Jones’ or something they treat you like a piece of shit. I was treated like garbage cos my name is Di’anno. Same with my friend - his name is Mercado. Even the Latino cops treat you bad man. It was and maybe still is a totally racist place. I even got shot in the leg while I was there (Paul shows me the wound in his lower leg)! 

Brazil is better man, I never had so much sex in my life!!!!
Yeah, Brazil is a cool place and as you know there’s no such thing as an ugly girl in Brazil! When we play there we get 15,000 people turning up and its non-stop energy from the start - its just waves of people bobbing up and down! But socially, yeah, San Paolo and Rio can be really fucked up with crime although not all the people in the barrio are criminals. We were invited to some guys house once after a gig and when we got there
there must’ve have been a hundred guys all from this gang there hanging out. Some of the band were freaking out but these guys turned out to be cool - luckily - and we were treated like royalty. Some of these people didn’t even have enough money to live on yet they chose to share what they had with us and that means a lot. In LA, it was fuck this guy, fuck that guy..

Mebbe its because you look just like Mike Muir (Suicidal Tendencies) – and in LA that’s fuckin dangerous!
Oh god, don’t you fuckin start as well. I’m getting pissed off ha ha! Yeah, I actually have a picture of me and Mike and we could be brothers right? Even that bloke from Limp Biscuit (Freddie Durst)....the strange thing I’ve been looking like this since the 80’s after I left Maiden and a fan recently wrote to me saying how these new white rappers were counterfeiting this look I had for years.

Tell me about all the different bands you’ve been in Paul?
After Maiden there was Lone Wolf, then Gogmagog which was kind of a supergroup but was it f&^&k, more like criminal fucking justice cos we couldn’t write our own material! Fucking Jonathan King’s lyrics “its illegal, its immoral but its fun” - I mean, what drugs was he on ?! My 3 year old son could’ve done better! I replaced Dave Coverdale on vocals, Cozy Powell was replaced by Clive Burr, there was Janick Gers and
Pete Willis, yeah, another case of ‘I came, I saw, I f&*&ed off’ ha ha! Battlezone was about the madness of nuclear war. Killers actually was not my choice of name - that was down to some douche bag in NYC ha ha! My solo band is called Di’anno and all the band are Brazilian. With Killers, this is a reformation after six years and that’s cos they’re helping me promote ‘The Beast - Live’ but when this is done we will make another
Killers album. Its somewhat ironic cos we got a new bassist - Darius - who looks like Steve Harris ha ha. Actually me and Cliff Evans (ex Tank) are the only original Killers members. 

I was particularly impressed with your ‘The Beast – Live’ release. 
‘The Beast - Live’ is a collection of tracks taken from 1984 to present containing....god....loadsa line-ups ha ha! You’ve got Steve Hopgood and John Gallagher (Raven) in there, several Battlezone and Killers line-ups. If the tracks have me speaking in English I couldn’t even tell you where they’re from!
 

So how did you join Maiden?
It was at school - Leyton County High School in East London in fact – where I was just starting attendance when Steve Harris was leaving. A mutual friend of ours told me that this band called Iron Maiden were looking for a vocalist. I was in a punk band at the time but I went to see them play and basically laughed my ass off and walked away ha ha! Seriously! After school, the whole situation came about again with them looking again
for a vocalist so I went to a rehearsal and did some Deep Purple numbers. We had a good laugh and on Sunday evening Steve came to my house and told me the job was mine. I was sixteen and rest is history!

Speaking of history, how did it end for you in Maiden?
I loved the first album, it was more punky although we could’ve had better production on it. The second album (‘Killers’) wasn’t quite there for me...and to be frank, at that age I wasn’t also handling things as well as the other guys who were older than me. One minute I was a kid off the street and the next I was expected to handle things like it was sliced bread. Needless to say, I started drinking a lot and I must’ve done half of Peru up my nose. I screwed up.....I wasn’t happy, both with the album and myself and I really didn’t wanna be there. And if you can’t give 1000 percent to a band like Iron Maiden the best thing to do is get the f&^&k out. I just walked in and told them how I felt and walked away. There’s no animosity and I’m happy - I’m certainly a far better musician now than I was then. Maiden was Steve’s baby and Killers is my baby. I remember seeing Steve about 6 years ago in Portugal cos we both have houses there - did you know he’s got this bar there called Eddie’s Bar? Me and Nono (aka Norbert from French band Trust) went there and got pissed - it took us fucking ages to find it cos its on top of this hill ha ha!

What do you think would’ve happened if you’d stayed as their vocalist?
I’m sure we would’ve been a success. Probably not as great as with Bruce (Dickenson) cos he’s the definitive Maiden vocalist. He suits their style right down to the ground. Also, I’m too hardcore for Maiden, my attitude is totally different and I’d always rub them up the wrong way - I’m an antagonistic muthaf^&ker cos I want a reaction from people ha ha! And there’s no way you could get me into spandex again man, not for a million fuckin dollars, its so Spinal Tap ha ha! 

So I guess you don’t favour the big bucks and capitalistic greed that goes with rock stardom…?
Actually, I AM a capitalist ha ha! I just don’t believe in welfare and lets face it, communism isn’t a friend of rock music. I certainly don’t believe in my hard earned tax dollars paying for some layabout. But there are degrees of capitalism so mebbe what you describe as industrial capitalism isn’t what I agree with.

Speaking of things industrial, somebody told me you were a BP engineer...
Oh what?! Christ, if I was a fucking BP engineer would I be here ha ha! What I did was recondition oil drums for BP - some engineer huh?! I’m a qualified butcher though – almost as good ha ha! My parents ran their own restaurant in Leyton…..

So is the song ‘Charlotte The Harlot’ based on a real person?
Yep, its true. Her real name is High Hill Lil and she’s basically an old prostitute. Well, actually she was more of a slut ha ha. I mean, if you turned up to her house with some booze or some speed you were more or less guaranteed a lay. She was a legend in Walthamstow, everyone knew her...she was about 45 but a real rock out bitch..she’d take any guy from 15 upwards ha ha! The song says that she lived on Acacia Avenue but its
actually Markhouse Road, just before you go into Leyton cos thats the area where I lived. 

What about ‘Running Free’?
Running Free is about me as a kid. My mum ruled my life but she said to me ‘ you live in a shit area, but do what you can do and see what happens...as long as you don’t hurt anybody, just get on with it’. But I did get into trouble with the law a few times and that’s the only thing I wish I could change...the grief I gave my poor mama. I never really knew my real dad but my step dad was really cool. Sometimes he’d surprise us and walk
in when we were doing some speed but he’d just brush it off as long as it wasn’t heroin or the hard shit. I don’t have the same attitude with my kids though - if I catch em with anything I’ll kick the crap outta them. 

Man, you’ve been thru a lot given what you’re saying and what’s in the book…
Actually, I have good memories of Maiden, meeting all the people on tours, playing live on Top of the Pops and the fact that we were part of something happening the way we mixed hardcore punk with heavy metal. There’s band’s doing it today but it just isn’t the same as Maiden or the Sex Pistols, they were the happening bands at the time and they changed the world forever.

Any last words? 
Yeah, I’d like to have as my epitaph ‘Here’s lies a lyricist, damn good lyricist’ rather than ‘Here lies a musician’.