'A guy walks in a churchyard and meets the devil': Bruce Dickinson explains 'Rain on the Graves'

The idea for “Rain on the Graves” — the latest single from Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson's upcoming solo album The Mandrake Project, out March 1 — came to him while visiting poet William Wordsworth's resting place. He had been invited to a wedding in England's Lake District in 2012 and, knowing that Wordsworth wrote many of his verses at Grasmere, decided to visit his stone cottage and the church where his body was laid to rest.

“It was a gloomy day and it was raining,” he says Rolling rock on a recent visit to New York. “And I was looking at the grave. It was very neat, but there was a cage over the grave. I thought, “Well, is this to keep him in or is this to keep us out?” I felt this nice melancholic vibe, which I always find quite conducive to creativity. And I said: “It is raining on the graves.” This sounds good.”

When he started working on The Mandrake Project, he remembered the feeling and asked his partner, producer and guitarist Roy Z, to make a heavy blues similar to early Fleetwood Mac when guitarist Peter Green was their leader. His idea for the song was similar to Robert Johnson's “Cross Road Blues”: “A guy walks into a churchyard and meets the Devil,” says Dickinson, “and the Devil says, 'What are you doing here, man? Don't lie, because I'll find out.”

That idea plays out literally in the laid-back video for the song, in which Dickinson plays a preacher and actor Tim Cartwright, whose credits include roles in vampire and werewolf films, as Old Scratch. Good and evil intersect in rainy graveyard scenes, shot in black and white, until the screen fills with bold, giallo colors and Dickinson belts out the chorus, “Well, there's rain on the graves,” and his backing band nicknamed The House Band of Hell, provide the soundtrack. Of course, all hell breaks loose, and at one point, Dickinson even stumbles upon the grave of another poet, William Blake, and the full scope of the preacher's nightmare comes into focus.

“It's a complete homage to Hammer Horror,” says Dickinson, referring to the English film company best known for horror films starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. “It's unusual but also very beautifully shot.”

Director Ryan Mackfall shot the clip in Cornwall just before Christmas. “We basically put all of this in the pub after the first video,” says Dickinson, referring to the “After the gaze of Ragnarok.” “And I said, 'Okay, let's tell the story: A guy sells his soul to the Devil for a night with the House Band of Hell. And in the end, he drifts off to an asteroid. Turns out the whole thing is in space, and the Death Star goes, antenna.' So we went, “Yeah. Sold.” (When someone present at that meeting told Dickinson that “funny” and “scary” don't work well together, Dickinson shut him up with one word: “Thriller.”)

As Dickinson talks about the clip, he points out some Easter eggs. The imagery in some scenes evokes two paintings by William Blake — Jerusalem and Ancient of Days. (Blake features heavily in the comic, The Mandrake Project, which Dickinson helped write. the first issue is out now.) And the drum kit was once “actually played by Gene Krupa.”

But is this Blake's tomb? “This is a facsimile of his grave,” says Dickinson with a smile.

What is definitely true in the video, however, is the premise: There is definitely rain on graves. “Oh, it rained,” Dickinson says with a laugh. “It was bloody freezing. It was a two day shoot, but we all had nasty colds and bronchitis after all. But it was worth it.”