Bruce Dickinson Calls Phone Obsession a “Failing of Humanity” During Concerts

During a recent appearance on the Appetite for Distortion podcast, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson expressed his frustration over the growing obsession with recording live experiences on smartphones. Dickinson described the prevalence of phone cameras as “an infestation” and compared it to “a terrible disease,” arguing that it disconnects people from fully living in the moment.

“Look, in so many ways I wish the camera on those things had never been invented. But it has been invented. It’s now a kind of infestation, is the way I would describe it. It’s like some terrible disease, that people feel the need to look at the world through this stupid little device,” Dickinson said. He urged concertgoers to “put it down, put it in your pocket and look around you. Look at the people, look at the joy, look at the band, feel the emotion, feel the music. What a phone does, it cuts all of that off.”

He added, “I feel sad. I also feel pissed off, because as a performer, it’s, like, I want to perform for an audience of people that have some emotional feedback — not a bunch of like Android twerps.”

Phone-Free Policies Transform Concert Experiences

Iron Maiden’s recent Run for Your Lives world tour has encouraged fans to put their phones away during shows to foster a more immersive experience. Dickinson praised attendees who respected the band’s request, sharing his impressions from a recent Ghost concert in San Diego, where phones were secured in Yondr pouches, preventing use during the show.

“People who are real music fans, I think, understand, and I think they’re getting better about it. They understand what’s going on,” Dickinson said. “I went to see the Ghost show and it was a no-phone show… Oh my God — the difference. It was astonishing. The atmosphere — it was, ‘Wow.’ I mean, really, really noticeable. Even the way people behaved with each other, interacted with each other — not looking at the band, just being civil to each other, talking to each other was different.”

Other notable acts, including Tool, have implemented similar phone restrictions, requesting fans refrain from phone use until the end of their sets, signaling a broader shift in live music culture toward reclaiming attention from digital distractions.

Balancing Audience Engagement with Practical Challenges

Speaking to SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk, Dickinson noted that most of Iron Maiden’s dedicated fans have embraced the phone policy, particularly those near the front of the stage.

“Yeah. It depends on different places, different attitudes and things like that. In general, I’d say that the real diehard fans, who are basically all the people who are down the front, respected it and they got it,” he explained. “It was blindingly obvious when there was one person or something in the middle of a whole bunch of people and he was having his phone out and filming, and you could see people going, ‘Hey, hey, hey. What are you doing? Come on. Put it away. We’re trying to have fun here. It’s not all about you.’”

Dickinson also acknowledged the difficulties in enforcing such policies in large outdoor venues. “You’ve got fifty thousand people — that’s tough to make it work. Fifty thousand people outdoors, it’s, like, come on. You don’t wanna get to the point where you’re feeling like there’s some sort of guards at some concentration camp looking to see if the guy’s got his phone out. There’s that fine line.”

Manager Rod Smallwood has echoed these sentiments, urging fans via the band’s website to experience shows firsthand rather than through their screens. He encouraged taking “the odd quick pic as a memento of a great night,” but asked fans to otherwise keep their phones in their pockets, calling out the “selfish few” who continuously film during performances with a sharp quip: “I wish you nothing but a very sore arm!”