Blaze Bayley was born on
May 29, 1963 in
Birmingham, UK. His real name is Bayley Cook.
He was the singer with british hardrock band
Wolfsbane, with who he released two studio albums,
Live Fast, Die Fast and
Down Fall All The Good Guys, and a live album,
Massive Noise Injection. The third studio album,
Wolfsbane was recorded and being mixed when Blaze left in
1994. It was never released.
He left Wolfsbane to become the singer in the legendary Iron Maiden. His first album with them, The X Factor, was released in 1995 after some delay because Blaze was involved in a motorcycle accident. Virtual XI was his second and last album with the band, and was released in 1998. He got fired in February 1999 when Bruce Dickinson returned.
In 2000 he released the album Silicon Messiah with his own band that is simply called Blaze. To record this album, he had been offered help from Iron Maiden's Steve Harris, but he rejected it and did all the hard work on his own. This resulted in an album which sounds a lot different from what he did with Iron Maiden, and according to most fans, it was a lot better too.