Tattooed Millionaire

Bruce's first foray into solo-work happened by chance, really. Having been asked by Zomba Music to write a song for the latest Nightmare On Elm Street film - the fifth one, to be exact - he had joined forces with one Janick Gers, a guitarist disgruntled with the music industry but willing to go along with Bruce's shenanigans. Together they created "Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter" in a couple of days. Zomba liked it so much that they enticed the pair to come up with material for an entire album. In two weeks of insanity, that is just what they did.

With Iron Maiden bandleader Steve Harris acquiring "Daughter" for use on No Prayer For The Dying, this solo album would thus feature ten completely original songs, with the exception of a cover of the Bowie-written Mott The Hoople classic, "All The Young Dudes". Bruce and Janick, alongside Andy Carr on bass and Fabio Del Rio on drums, threw together several collective pools of thought to assemble the material for what would be Tattooed Millionaire.

This album is a bit of an oddball release in the Bruce canon. No one had any real intentions of making a mind-blowing album, yet they had a lot of fun in creating it all the same. Almost nothing on this album borders on profundity - although the opening trio seem to be aiming for it - and it's really more of a sleazy hard rock record than anything else. That said, profundity is never really why someone listens to Tattooed Millionaire in the first place. The energy on display, the clean production, the vibe... those are what makes this an album worth coming back to.

The group would go on to tour the album and release Dive! Dive! Live!, before Bruce returned to focus on Iron Maiden, bringing along Janick to replace Adrian Smith on guitar. It wouldn't be long before Bruce himself would leave the band, but for now, this album was just a one-off affair.