Nostalgia Kinky

Cleopatra Entertainment is gearing up to release the crowdfunded passion project Di’Anno: Iron Maiden’s Lost Singer on Blu-ray and DVD. A painful look at Iron Maiden’s legendary first singer, Di’Anno is an essential watch for Maiden devotees and metalheads everywhere. Available as a bundle from Cleopatra and the standard from MVD, Di’Anno is a moving and powerful look at a guy who literally gave his life to Rock and Roll.

When I was a young punk in high school in the late eighties, the River’s Edge days, two distinct crowds sometimes comingled: the punk kids and the metal dropouts. Enemies in our music of choice, we were joined by enough of an innate sense of sticking it to the man to often find common ground. For a kid like me, drunk on Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Slits, a big part of that common ground lay in the mythic first two albums by Iron Maiden.

The self-titled first Iron Maiden album and its follow-up Killers were big records in both the metal and punk communities in the eighties and beyond. Much of that was down to the ferocious voice of Paul Di’Anno that powered the records’ incredible intensity. These albums contain all the precision metalheads love, along with the ‘kick out the jams’ punk spirit that fuels alt kids. There’s nothing quite like the first two Iron Maiden albums, and the remaining scattered EPs and singles Di’Anno led the group through.

Di’Anno isn’t about those first two Maiden albums, although certainly an entire feature could be dedicated to them. Instead, Di’Anno takes a look at the brutal health struggles the singer encountered later in his life, suffering through tour after tour in an effort to pay his medical bills and keep his dream alive. It is a tough watch and a brutal indictment against the music industry for not properly caring for its aging veterans.

Throughout Di’Anno, we see the missed singer through the years from Maiden all the way up to the end, but mostly the film focuses on a journey to (and his time in) Croatia for an affordable medical procedure. If that sounds dull, it isn’t. Di’Anno manages to weave a story of determination and survival with a great rockumentary. It’s not as good as something like the similar Anvil, but Di’Anno is a moving and winning work, well presented on this new Cleopatra Blu-ray.

For Iron Maiden and music fans, Di’Anno is loaded up with vintage concert footage, rare photos, and interviews with many of the singer’s peers and bandmates. The filmmakers do a good job balancing this material with the more personal side of the story. Cleopatra’s Blu-ray is fairly light on extras, with just a couple of deleted scenes forming the bulk, but regardless, this is a good release of a very good documentary. Recommended.
Now, I’m going to go rock out to “Running Free” and pour one out for a legend.

-Jeremy Richey, May 2026-