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Paul Bruce Dickinson was born in the small mining town of Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His mother worked part-time in a shoe shop and his father was a mechanic in the army. Dickinson`s birth hurried the young couple into marriage. Initially, he was brought up by his grandparents; his grandfather was a coal-face worker at the local colliery and his grandmother was a housewife. When Dickinson was about to start school his parents moved from Worksop to Sheffield, the nearest big city, where more jobs were available [citation needed]. Dickinson`s first school was Manton Primary. Of this period, he recalled "I grew up in an environment where it struck me that the world was never gonna do me any favours. And I had very few close friends, because we were always moving. I think that`s partly why I grew up feeling like such an outsider. I didn`t have an unhappy childhood, but it was unconventional, to say the least". Dickinson`s first musical experience was dancing in his grandparents front room to Chubby Checker`s "The Twist". The first record Dickinson recalls owning was The Beatles single "She Loves You" which he managed to persuade his granddad to buy him. "I was only four or five but I really loved that scene, The Beatles and Gerry & The Pacemakers. ... I noticed they had B-sides, and that sometimes I liked them even more than the A-sides. That was when I first began noticing the difference between `good` music and `bad`." He believes that this marked the beginning of him thinking like a musician. When Dickinson was six he moved in with his parents in Sheffield who had set up a house and had regular jobs. He found it difficult to adapt himself to the environment. In his spare time he tried to play an acoustic guitar belonging to his parents, but it blistered his fingers. When moving to Sheffield, he had to change school. He was sent to Manor Top, which he disliked. After six months, his parents decided to move him out to a small private school called Sharrow Vale Junior. His parents earned a living from selling estate. A lot of Dickinson`s childhood was spent living on a building site. His parents had reached the stage where they were making profit. Dickinson`s parents bought a boarding house where his father sold second-hand cars off a forecourt. This gave them the opportunity to give Dickinson - then 13 years old - a boarding school education and they chose Oundle, a public school in Northamptonshire. Dickinson enjoyed being away from home. "I didn`t particularly enjoy being with my parents, so I saw it as an escape. I think it was because I hadn`t built any real attachment to them when I was very, very young." Dickinson was picked on and routinely bullied by the older boys of Sidney House, the Oundle boarding house that he belonged to. Dickinson`s interests at Oundle were often military. He co-founded the school wargames society, and he rose to a position of some power in the Combined Cadet Force. At fifteen he joined the school amateur dramatics society. "I was 13 when I first heard Deep Purple`s `In Rock` album, and it just blew me away! I heard this thing coming out of someone`s room one day, and I went in and said `Whoa! What`s that?` And they just looked at me disdainfully and went `It`s "Child in Time" by Deep Purple. Don`t you know anything?` But I was too amazed to care. The first album I ever bought was Deep Purple In Rock, all scratched to fuck, but I thought it was great." Dickinson obtained bongo drums from the
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