When Ozzy Osbourne saved Nicko McBrain from drowning, the Iron Maiden star was so wasted on drink and drugs that he forgot all about it. “We were coming back from Calais on the ferry,” Nicko, 74, tells me. “The weather was rough, the Channel was choppy, and I was so out of it I started falling over the side. Luckily Ozzy grabbed me by my jacket just in time and pulled me back. This was in 1975, when my earlier band the Streetwalkers played some European dates with Black Sabbath.”
But drummer McBrian, who was forced to stop touring with multi-platinum-selling rockers Maiden in 2024 after suffering a stroke, had completely forgotten his escape from a watery grave until the late rock legend Ozzy reminded him about it three decades later. “We did a Water Aid thing together in 2006 and that’s when we relived all the stories from the 70s and that’s when Ozzy asked if I remembered the day he saved my life. I was like, ‘Whoa, did ya? Oh, thank you very much, Oz.’
“How he remembered, I’ll never know, the state of us. But he remembered everything about that tour, including the day he turned up at my hotel room with his pockets full of uppers and downers. I loved Ozzy, we were great mates. I knew all the band. You know, Tony Iommi was a wonderful guy. Bill Ward and Geezer Butler. But Ozzy and I were cool. We were pretty tight.”
Nicko McBrain and Ozzy Osbourne (Image: Richard Young/Shutterstock)
McBrain was in the middle of a blazing row with Roger Daltrey when he felt two strong hands grab him. “I must be the only drummer to be flung out of a party by the scruff of his neck by Keith Moon,” Nicko tells me with a laugh. It was May, 1976, and The Who had just played Charlton Athletic’s ground, The Valley, to 88,000 people. Nicko’s Streetwalkers were one of the support acts.
“I said hello to Roger at the after-show do in the chairman’s office and he blanked me – he’s a grumpy old bugger, even today, although he’s mellowed, and I was very drunk and Charlied up. [on cocaine] So I called him an effing two-faced bastard. Keith heard me, grabbed me and slung me through the door. He said, ‘Dear boy, you do not speak to our Rog like that. Now f*** off.’
“Keith and Roger didn’t get on, but band loyalty trumped that. He told the security men not to let me back in, so I had to make my own way back from Charlton to Paddington. Luckily a hot dogs seller gave me a lift in the back of his truck. Oh, it stank something rotten.”
He later became firm friends with fellow drummer Keith Moon – known as ‘Moon the Loon’ because of his devotion to OTT pranks, like throwing furniture out of hotel windows and blowing up his drumkit on stage. “Moony was 18 when The Who had their first Top Ten hit and just 19 when My Generation was at No 2. And that kind of stardom, at that age, it’s got to change you; but all the time I knew him, I never saw the Loon side of Keith. He was a wonderful guy. We used to have long chats, really deep conversations. We went on to have a nice relationship after he slung me out of that party… I think that crazy side of Keith was a persona he took on the road. He was a crazy drummer for sure. I mean, his style of playing, I’ve never ever in my life seen anyone play like him.”
Nicko in Iron Maiden (Image: Getty Images)
Nicko recalls a wild night out with Keith and Saturday night TV star, dancer Lionel Blair, both now deceased. “Who’d have thought in a million years that Lionel, bless his heart, would be into the old ‘disco dust’ – cocaine?” he laughs. “We met him at Le Chasse, in Wardour Street, and had a proper party; he was a lovely lad but if you had some toot that was all he wanted to know about.”
The straight-talking rocker even made it up with Roger Daltrey, to a degree, when they played the Limelight in London’s Shaftesbury Avenue for Rock Aid Armenia in 1991.
“I pulled him aside, and said, ‘Have you got a problem with me?’ Because every time I’d see him after the Charlton gig, it felt like he was blanking me. He turned around and said, ‘If I had a problem with you, Nick, you’d be down the bottom of the stairs.'”
Phil Lynott “a lovely, sweet man” was another close pal. They first met when Thin Lizzy supported the Streetwalkers. “Oh my gosh, we were like two peas in a pod. I knew Phil would be a star – an upfront bass-player, an Irish man with big afro style hair, singing these great songs. He was the first bass-player with a mirror pickguard, and he’d shine the reflected lights on the kids, and I thought, man, this guy’s a star right here.
“We became very close friends; at one stage we were planning to share a flat. When I got hepatitis, Phil came to visit me in the hospital, and brought a bag of coke and a joint. I was really sick and he’s saying ‘Could I put one down for you, Nick?’ I’m like, mate, look, I’m yellow, I’m jaundiced, my liver’s not working properly, and you want me to have a toot? Here? No!”
In 1976, when Lynott was hospitalised in Manchester with hepatitis, Nicko returned the favour. “He was angrier about it than I’d been with him. He was like, ‘You know I can’t be doing drugs, what the f*** did you bring that in for?’ But we had great times together.”
He last saw Phil in a late-night Mayfair bar. “It was summer, 1985, and he was wearing fingerless black gloves. He denied using heroin, but I pulled a glove off and could see the [injection] scars. We sat in the stairwell and had a heart-to-heart, but we lost him the following January. We were good chums, and it was a sad day when he passed.”
Hello Boys And Girls! by Nicko McBrain (£22, HarperNonFiction) is out now (Image: Supplied)
Nicko, who admits he briefly dabbled with heroin himself, didn’t get on with every rock star he met. “Axl Rose is not a nice guy. When Guns N’ Roses supported Maiden on tour in 1988, it wasn’t good. He was one of those guys where the success had truly gone to his head. When we headlined Rock In Rio, and they were supporting in 2001, I tried to hold out an olive branch, but he just ignored me. I was a bit more upset personally than professionally about that.”
McBrain joined Maiden in December 1982 and stayed for 42 years, playing on fourteen hit albums and anthems like The Trooper, Aces High and chart-topping Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter. His stroke left his right hand “handicapped, I’ve been trying to get it working,” he says. “You’ve got to have the speed in the fingers to control a drumstick in fast single stroke patterns or paradiddles. And I just can’t get it to go.
“I had to compromise my playing on my last two tours. The guys were great. They supported me. But all the touring was getting to me. It was a lot of traveling, and long hours on stage; our sets were close to two hours long on my last tour.”
Maiden replaced him with British Lion drummer Simon Dawson for their latest tour, but Nicko still hopes to play on their next studio album. “I love the guys and I miss the closeness, the brotherhood…I miss not being with them. I don’t miss getting up in the morning, living out of a suitcase, getting on an aeroplane and whatnot, but I do miss that, especially coming out at the end of the night and the fans giving me a rapturous reception. That was my moment to shine.”
Father-of-two Nicko, real name Michael McBrain, married his second wife, American ex-model Rebecca, in 1989. He now drums in his Maiden covers band, the Titanium Tarts, and co-owns the Rock n Roll Ribs restaurant near his home in Boca Vista, Florida.
“The restaurant’s been cooking, it’s our 17th anniversary in December. My partner Mitch and wife Ivy run it for us, but I’m getting involved a bit more. I’ll go in a couple of times a month and cause trouble. The problem is I eat too much of the profits. I’ve always loved baby back ribs, and I’m getting a bit of a porky tummy.
“For an old girl, I’m not doing too bad. I’ve got aches and pains but I went out and shot nine holes of golf yesterday. Onwards and upwards.”
Hello Boys And Girls! by Nicko McBrain (£22, HarperNonFiction) is out now
