Vocalist Paul Di’Anno, the singer for some of Iron Maiden’s earliest albums, has passed away at 66. Metal label Conquest Music confirmed his passing at his home in Salisbury, England on his Facebook account on Monday, October 21. No cause of death was provided. The statement notes that Di’Anno, real name Paul Andrews, was “troubled by severe health issues in recent years that restricted him to performing in a wheelchair,” but he still continued to perform for his fans around the world in over 100 shows since 2023. Di’Anno contributed to Iron Maiden’s EP “The Roundhouse Tapes,” its debut 1980 album “Iron Maiden,” and its follow-up release “Killers.”
Paul Di’Anno struggled with health issues over the last decade
In 2016, Paul Di’Anno came down with sepsis while on tour in Argentina and struggled with various health issues due to the condition. At the time, he needed to be transported back to England by emergency Medevac helicopter to save his life.
As reported by Loudwire in 2019, Di’Anno said that sepsis made his life “very, very tough,” causing him to “keep getting infections.” This not only forced him to be in and out of the hospital for years, but it also prevented doctors from operating on his leg, noting that he needed a double knee replacement. He also suffered a MRSA infection that could have killed him.
Both the treatments and emergency transportation were extremely expensive, to the point that Di’Anno admitted that he “ran out of money,” per a 2023 piece in Blabbermouth. Fortunately, his former bandmates in Iron Maiden, along with a crowdfunding campaign that raised over £11,000, helped him pay for part of his treatments. He was able to undergo major knee surgery in Croatia in 2022.
After the surgery, in an June 2024 interview with The Metal Voice, Di’Anno explained that he was still struggling with the recovery process and remained in a wheelchair. He said that the slow progress of his recovery was partly his fault because he needed to break treatment to go on tour and pay for medical bills that were “astronomical.”
While he didn’t like being stuck in isolation, doing shows meant that he was “not getting the physio done or the lymphatic drainage” he needed to make a full recovery. As a result, he was facing “infection after infection after infection,” catching pneumonia in 2023 in Mexico.
Di’Anno released a career retrospective album called “The Book of the Beast” in September 2024 that features highlights of his work since leaving Iron Maiden.
