Music

Iron Maiden forced to censor their concerts to play in China

by Dan MacRae

SCREAM FOR ME, CHINA!

(Note: All screams may be monitored for content.)

Iron Maiden’s Book of Souls World Tour made a pair of stops in China this week and the concert put on by the metal legends had to undergo a few tweaks as a result. Blabbermouth reports that the Beijing and Shanghai dates featured alterations and omissions of certain lyrics. Frontman/pilot/monkey dancer Bruce Dickinson addressed one of the restrictions during some banter in Shanghai.

“It’s great to be here tonight. It’s great to be in China tonight, I tell ya. We ripped it up in Beijing, and we thought, ‘Ooh, that was a bit serious,’ you know. So they had a few rules, so we kind of stuck by the rules, and we didn’t do any swearing. You know what I mean? There’s another thing I can’t do. See if you can guess what it is later on. But we don’t really give a [mouths the word ‘shit’] about all that kind of stuff, because, you know what? The most important thing is the music, the most important thing is that we are here, and you are here, and we are gonna have a great [mouths the word ‘fucking’] time.”

So naughty, Bruce! Of course, the band’s not the only act to face censorship issues in order to play in China. Rolling Stones, Bjork, and Metallica have all faced issues in that realm too.

What else was modified when Iron Maiden played Beijing and Shanghai? In addition to axing curse words, pyrotechnics were banned and no memorabilia was allowed to be thrown to the crowd. Y’know the bit in the concert where Dickinson waves the Union Jack during “The Trooper?” The UK flag wave was also blocked. (Dickinson still wore the red coat and brandished an invisible flag, though.) “Powerslave” also saw a rework with “Wicker Man” replacing “Powerslave” in the lyrics.

[h/t Blabbermouth]