Forgotten man of Iron Maiden: How band’s tragic singer Paul Di’Anno died penniless and alone in social housing flat after being axed over his love of medication and wild partying with royalties of simply £50,000… whereas his ex-bandmates are all multimillionaires

Former Iron Maiden frontman Paul Di’Anno died penniless and alone in a modest social housing flat after suffering a string of health problems, MailOnline can reveal

The wheelchair-bound 66-year-old hellraiser was seen as the forgotten man of the band after he was sacked when he was 23, despite having played a huge part in two smash hit albums selling more than nine million copies.

Unable to mix his weakness for drugs and partying with the rigours of life on the road, Di’Anno, who real name was Paul Andrews, was axed – and then signed away his royalty rights for just £50,000.

As carers found the former hellraiser unresponsive in his ground floor flat last week, Di’Anno’s former bandmates played to a packed arena in St Paul, Minnesota.

The contrast could not have been more stark, but during the US show, Bruce Dickinson, who replaced Di’Anno as frontman more than 40 years ago and is estimated to be worth £100 million, led the 20,000 fans in a moment’s silence, describing him as ‘Devoted to rock ‘n’ roll right up ‘til the last minute of his life.’

He ended with a final farewell. ‘So, Paul, if you’re listening, this is a little message from Minneapolis to wherever you are, upstairs or downstairs, you’re having fun!

‘Minneapolis, for Paul Di’Anno, scream for me!,’ he roared and the crowd did just that.

More than 4,000 miles away in Salisbury, Wilts, the news of Di’Anno’s death was received more quietly, but still spread a ripple of sadness around the small housing block where he had lived for the last seven years.

He was found dead in his ground-floor flat by two carers, according to neighbours, one of whom he’d told, ‘I used to be rich and famous, but it was years ago.’

A neighbour told MailOnline: ‘The first I knew something was wrong was when an ambulance blue-lighted around the corner and stopped outside Paul’s flat.

‘Two nurses or carers greeted the paramedics and let them into the property. I think it must have been them who found Paul and raised the alarm.

‘The ambulance crew were there for about an hour, maybe a little longer.

‘It’s a real shame because, even though I didn’t know him well, he was a nice man. ‘Whenever I saw him come past the window I’d wave, and he’d always smile and wave back.’

In recent years, Di’Anno used a wheelchair following knee injuries from an onstage accident in 2015 which developed into sepsis, requiring an eight-month spell in hospital during which he suffered two bouts of MRSA infections.

He was confined to the wheelchair for the last nine years of his life, even taking it on stage to front his own band, but always nursing the hope that he would one day walk again.

A mother of two who lives upstairs from Di’Anno’s flat, paid tribute and said: ‘He was a really lovely guy, I’m so sad that he’s gone.

‘I remember him telling me that he was a singer and had been in a huge heavy metal band and that he’d been really famous, but he said it had been some years ago.

‘He wasn’t brash or anything like that, very humble. I hadn’t realised until now just what a big star he was.’

Another mum in the block told how she saw Di’Anno last week and said: ‘He was in his wheelchair outside his flat talking to someone.

‘I haven’t long moved in and I didn’t know who he was really until today when I’ve read all the tributes to him.

‘He welcomed me to the block which was a nice gesture. It’s awful to think he passed away in that flat, he’ll be missed.’

Wiltshire Police confirmed there were no suspicious circumstances, though no cause of death was revealed.

Di ‘Anno has been married five times and leaves behind six children.

The news of his death came just a week after the band – which has sold more than 130 million albums worldwide and now consists of Dickinson, Steve Harris, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, Nicko McBrain, and Janick Gers – announced a 50th anniversary tour.

Di’Anno’s circumstances in recent years were very different from that of his former bandmates.

In 2011, the singer was jailed after he was exposed as a benefit cheat by posting his music videos on YouTube. He was sentenced to nine months for swindling £45,000 in benefits.

He had claimed he suffered severe nerve damage to his back that prevented him from working.

But the father-of-two was caught when Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) investigators spotted a YouTube video of him jumping around on stage during a live show in 2006.

The footage, from his own website and YouTube, showed him energetically leaping around.

The heavily tattooed rocker admitted illegally claiming benefit totalling £45,479.

They included wrongly raking in income support of more than £10,000 between 2005 and 2008.

However he went on to say that his time in jail ‘eventually’ made him ‘sort my life out’.

Thereafter, Di’Anno lived in straitened circumstances – he was forced to set up a crowd-funding concert with fans to pay for private medical treatment in Croatia for his leg condition, raising around £20,000, including a donation from Iron Maiden.

By contrast, Di’Anno’s replacement, Bruce Dickinson, sold his £3 million former family home, a six-bed detached house in leafy Chiswick, west London earlier this year and now lives in Paris with his fitness instructor third wife Leana Dolci, 49.

Dickinson, 66, is said to be worth £100 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth, but has said the figure is wildly inflated. Maiden’s bassist and founder Steve Harris, meanwhile, put his £7 million Essex mansion with its own recording studio, pub and football pitch on the market in 2015. He now lives mostly in the Bahamas.

Paul Di’Anno was always characteristically candid about his departure from Iron Maiden in 1981, after his drugs habit and chaotic lifestyle led to the cancellation of several gigs when the band were on the road in Germany and elsewhere.

He claimed to journalist Mick Wall, who wrote a biography of the band, Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills, in 1998, that he’d been about to walk, before he was pushed.

‘It’s no secret. I was pretty much out to lunch on that [German] tour, I suppose,’ Di’Anno admitted.

‘It wasn’t just that I was snorting a bit of coke, though; I was just going for it non-stop, 24 hours a day, every day. I thought that’s what you were supposed to do when you were in a big, successful rock band.

‘But Maiden had become so big by then that the band had commitments piling up that went on for months, years, and I just couldn’t see my way to the end of it.

‘People ask me now, would I have done things different if I could go back and have my time over? Well, the honest answer to that is no. I was a kid. What did I know?’

Steve Harris revealed in the same book: ‘It was just a nightmare, really. But because the band was breaking big, we didn’t want to lose him, you know?’

So a meeting was held with the band and their manager Rod Smallwood.

Harris added: ‘We talked to him and said “Look, Paul, pull your f*****g socks up or else” but it just wasn’t happening and we had to knock it on the head with him.

‘And do you know what? I think he was relieved….He was a bit gutted, but he was also relieved that he didn’t have to put up with all the hassle of being on the road and having all these things to do, these responsibilities to shoulder..

‘But I still can’t understand it. It was almost like he had a death wish, when it came to success….he had it, but he just sort of threw it away.’

The shadow of Iron Maiden lingered over Di’Anno for 40 years, with a sequence of bands of varying success, all largely dependent on his link with ‘Maiden’.

For several years his life descended into a chaos blighted by the abuse of drugs and booze.

‘When you’re f****d up on drugs and alcohol you turn into a complete p***k,’ he admitted while promoting his 2010 autobiography, The Beast, which recounted repeated tales of drunken fights, sex with groupies and confrontations with gang members and police officers, as well as incidents of domestic violence.

Later, Di’Anno claimed that the book was exaggerated by his ghost writer, but there was nothing exaggerated about his prison sentence in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, after he assaulted a girlfriend with a knife while high on cocaine and was found in possession of an Uzi machine gun and a kilogramme of cocaine.

In later years Di’Anno claimed to be a changed man.

Recovered from his drug addiction, calmer after a series of anger management classes, he never stopped singing with his various bands, even while in a wheelchair.

In 2002 Paul Di’Anno told heavy metal magazine Louder: ‘I have my own band, but I still have to go around playing these Iron Maiden songs and it does p**s you off a bit. No matter what I do it gets compared to Maiden and then I get slagged off.

‘I don’t want to end up being in an Iron Maiden karaoke band.’

But in January, 2024 during a short tour of Australia, Di’Anno appeared to be finally running on empty as he took to the stage.

The heavy metal legend left concertgoers shocked when he swore and ranted at them, his loyal fans.

He threatened one in Perth, Western Australia: ‘I’ll punch you in the face’. Another was told to ‘call a cab or go home in an ambulance’.

A reviewer for Australia’s Wall of Sound publication said Di’Anno should have ‘refunded every single person who had the misfortune to experience the world’s slowest heavy metal car crash.

‘Paul Di’Anno is someone I have admired for decades and to see what he’s become is just heartbreaking,’ he wrote.

After his death, the current members of Iron Maiden released a statement reading: ‘We are all deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Paul Di’Anno.

‘Paul’s contribution to Iron Maiden was immense and helped set us on the path we have been travelling as a band for almost five decades.

‘His pioneering presence as a frontman and vocalist, both on stage and on our first two albums, will be very fondly remembered not just by us, but by fans around the world.’

It continued: ‘We were very grateful to have had the chance to catch up a couple of years ago and to spend time with him once more.

‘On behalf of the band, Rod and Andy, and the whole Iron Maiden team, we extend our deepest sympathies to Paul’s family and close friends. Rest In Peace Paul.’

Steve Harris commented: ‘It’s just so sad he’s gone. I was in touch with him only recently as we texted each other about West Ham and their ups and downs.

‘At least he was still gigging until recently, it was something that kept him going, to be out there whenever he could. He will be missed by us all. Rest in peace mate.’