It’s not easy to replace Bruce Dickinson.

When Dickinson left Iron Maiden in 1993, the band set out to replace their frontman. They ultimately chose Blaze Bayley, who revealed that the band had auditioned 12 singers out of 1,000 submissions before deciding on him.

Bayley said he recalled thinking, “I’ll have a go for it,” when he heard about the auditions. He said, “I think they had 1,500 demos that they had listened to, and then there were, like, the 12 disciples that were chosen for the audition. And I was lucky I was one of those 12.”

Bayley went on to describe the audition process: “You went to the studio to sing live. There was 10 songs that were in the set at the time — 10 of the classics that you had to learn — and I went and I’d done my best.”

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