Ex-Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno dead at 66

Paul Di’Anno, the metal singer who fronted Iron Maiden in the band’s early days, has died at age 66.
Di’Anno’s death was announced Monday by his family and music label. The singer had been suffering from “severe health issues” in recent years that forced him to perform in a wheelchair, according to the label, Conquest Music. He died at his home in Salisbury, England.
“Conquest Music are proud to have had Paul Di’Anno in our artist family and ask his legion of fans to raise a glass in his memory,” read a statement on Di’Anno’s Facebook page.
Di’Anno, whose legal name was Paul Andrews, was best known for performing on Iron Maiden’s early releases, including the band’s self-titled debut album and its stellar second album, “Killers.”
However, Di’Anno was kicked out and replaced by Bruce Dickinson before Iron Maiden’s breakthrough third album, “The Number of the Beast.”
“I don’t blame them for getting rid of me,” Di’Anno told Metal Hammer in a 2022 interview. “Obviously, the band was [bassist Steve Harris’] baby, but I wish I’d been able to contribute more. After a while that got me down. In the end I couldn’t give 100% to Maiden anymore, and it wasn’t fair to the band, the fans or to myself.”
Di’Anno went on to front several other metal bands throughout the 1980s and ’90s, including Battlezone and Killers. After playing numerous shows in 2023 and 2024, Di’Anno had planned to retire from the music industry.
Iron Maiden’s first two albums, with Di’Anno singing and writing occasional lyrics, were groundbreaking efforts in British heavy metal.
“Paul’s contribution to Iron Maiden was immense and helped set us on the path we have been traveling as a band for almost five decades,” the band said in a statement shared on Facebook. “His pioneering presence as a front man and vocalist, both onstage and on our first two albums, will be very fondly remembered not just by us, but by fans around the world.”
Di’Anno had been performing in a wheelchair for most of the 2010s and 2020s, doing numerous shows to pay his medical bills.
The heavy rocker battled numerous physical ailments, including sepsis in 2015 that nearly killed him and a knee surgery in 2022. Additionally, Di’Anno said he had a “an abscess that was all infected and the size of a rugby ball” surgically removed from a lung.
“I’ve been really ill the last couple of months with infection after infection after infection, because I caught pneumonia last year in Mexico,” he told The Metal Voice this year.