Last week, Bruce Dickinson abruptly postponed the last two dates of his U.K. spoken-word tour because a member of his immediate household had tested positive for Covid-19. So the Iron Maiden frontman returned home to quarantine for 10 days, per government guidelines. For the first few days, he mostly felt bored — until he started feeling like he was getting a cold.

About three days ago, Dickinson, who is double-vaccinated, took a lateral-flow Covid test, and it came back positive. “I thought, ‘Oh well, shit,’ ” he tells Rolling Stone, sounding upbeat over Zoom. “I was kind of sneezing a bit. For a couple of days, I felt a bit groggy, kind of like the flu, and that was it. And I’m 63 years old. I’ve pretty much got no doubt that had I not had the vaccine, I could be in serious trouble.”

Dickinson has since rescheduled the dates he missed for October and he’s using his downtime to accommodate interviews about Iron Maiden’s upcoming double album, Senjutsu.