RONNIE JAMES DIO **EXCLUSIVE**

By Chris Alo

Posted 10/07/03

The word "legendary" is used far too liberally, especially in the music business, but I can think of no better way to describe Ronnie James Dio. We all know the story. The golden voiced front man shows Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow the promised land and not soon after pulls Tony Iommi and Black Sabbath out of the grave, before starting his own band. Of course Dio, the band, has released a wealth of classic material, and they have been touring relentlessly behind their best album in years, Killing The Dragon. They have also just released the first Dio DVD, Evil or Divine. I had the chance to speak to the "living legend" while Dio is in the middle slot of perhaps the best traditional metal touring package to hit the U.S. in years, sandwiched in between Iron Maiden and Motorhead.

Ronnie, thanks so much for taking time out of your busy day.

No problem at all.

You've been on the road in the United States with Motorhead and Iron Maiden. How has the response been so far?

It's been excellent. I can think of only one gig that wasn't. I thought the audience was good, but we've had a lot of problems with rain. Thunderstorms have been following us around or we've been following them around.

It's been a wet summer in the States.

Yeah, it has. When you do some of the outdoor venues, you've got the places with the grass up at the top there, it's really hard for people when they know it's just gonna come pouring down with rain. So I think the one we played outside of Cleveland, was probably the least effective because of the weather. All the rest have been absolutely phenomenal, just fantastic.

Now before the Maiden tour, you were doing some of the festivals in Europe. I caught you at the Bang Your Head Festival in Balingen, Germany.

That show was wonderful. You know 30,000 people to play for is always wonderful to do. It kind of reconfirms how you think people have felt about you all these years and that's really what it did. It puts a really nice period behind how hard we have worked. It was a great festival. We did so many in 3 weeks' time. We went to Turkey, to Greece, to Spain.

You did that Metal Mania festival in Spain too. That looked like a killer line up.

That was a great one, too. That was the first one we did with Maiden this year in preparation of coming to the States. And that was also a great festival. That was about the same amount of people and absolutely fabulous.

This year's set list saw Dio pull out some great songs that haven't been done that often. "Dream Evil", "Evil Eyes", "Stargazer", "I Speed At Night". Any reason in particular you are really "digging deep" this year?

Well I think if you listen to your fans, which we try and do, you realize that there have been requests for songs that we haven't done for a long period of time. It means something to them if they keep requesting it, so we try and change the set as much as we can. When we play for a longer time, it is easier to pull some of those things out. But there are always certain songs that you have to do. You can't not do "Holy Diver"; you can't not do "Rainbow in the Dark". The longer the set is, the easier it is for us, we could play for four hours and still have a lot to choose from.

You've always pulled something out of your hat for the fans, but this year in particular was really spectacular.

Well thank you. We've tried to do that, and it's important not to just rest on your laurels. There have been so many great songs that we've been able to do through the years. We've also recorded songs and not taken advantage of them. But you know it's a joy for us too. It really is nice to look forward to something that you haven't done for 10 years and it gives us great joy that people hear songs they haven't heard for a long time.

Having said that, on a personal note, do you think we'll ever see Dio perform "The Sign of the Southern Cross" or maybe "Voodoo" or anything other than the title cut off the Mob Rules album?

Sure. There is always a chance of that. We still do "Mob Rules", but the other songs are a bit more specialized. When the set is longer, then we would have time for "The Sign of the Southern Cross" or maybe something from Dehumanizer or "Voodoo". But yeah, we will get to some of those. We keep getting requests for "The Sign of the Southern Cross" and I love the song myself anyway, so it will be something that we'll attack.

The reason you've been on the road so much is that you have been touring behind the Killing the Dragon album for quite some time.

I think all the parts came together on that album. Doug Aldritch, who is no longer with us played great on that album. And it was the first time that Jimmy Bain and I got to write together in a long time. The inclusion of Doug and Jimmy did create a little more "magic" on this album. We knew we wanted to make an album that was more song driven and not a Magica album. We wanted to make an album in the vein of Holy Diver and the Last In Line and Sacred Heart and Dream Evil and Doug was a big part of that.

I wanted to ask you about the guitar player situation. Doug was in the band, and then he was replaced by Ratt guitarist Warren Dimartini, and then before you know it, he was replaced by former Dio guitarist Craig Goldy. What happened there?

Well we had already committed to the Maiden tour and for the festivals. Having committed to something, I'm never one to say, "Oh we just won't do it". Well we thought we had a few months to put this together and play some of these songs we haven't played before and I was thinking," I hope we get the right player". The hardest part is working with a guitar player who hasn't played the songs before, while we've been playing some of them for 25 years now. That becomes difficult. We like to rehearse, but we don't like to nitpick and teach somebody every little nuance of the song, and that's really what happened with Warren. Warren came in and he had to learn all these things. He was just the wrong player for the band. He doesn't work in the same way that we do. None of us felt that he was giving to what these songs are all about. Certainly not from a solo perspective. He didn't really have a handle on what was going on. That's not to take away anything from his talent. In a different band, his talent will shine, in this band, it will not.

It made life very difficult for us. We tried to deal with it for three weeks actually. It just didn't work and none of us were very happy about what was going on. I couldn't speak for how Warren felt about it, but it wasn't down to him, it was down to us. We're the ones who created these things and we are the ones who had to carry on. Luckily for us, Craig had his things sorted out and it made life much easier for us. We sorry for Warren that it didn't work out, but we are very happy to have Craig back with us.

Now that Craig is back in the band, you do really seem to be shining live.

Yeah, once you're so comfortable with the people in a band, you can take those other chances and that's really what happened. With Warren, I think we always kind of would've been on the razor's edge thinking, "Well, is this working?" "I don't like what's being done." This way it's just so easy. You can let your guard down. You just go out and play and do some things we've never done before.

When Doug was still with you, you recorded Evil or Divine DVD. Were you pleased with the results being it was your first Dio DVD?

I was more than pleased, certainly with the sound. Then again, I dealt with the sound so I better be pleased. I know what it's supposed to sound like and I've always taken a lot of pride to make sure it does sound like that but, the performances were really good. The one thing to do with it was to make sure the sound we got in the truck came out and sounded really, really excellent. We have an excellent engineer, a guy by the name of Wynn Davis.

And I think the camera guys and the producers captured what we were that night. I just would've liked to see a lot more post-effects. I always thought with the tools out there these days; it would've looked like something out of Star Wars. Maybe I was just going too far over the top with that one. Everyone seems to be pleased with it. But, once again, the truth is, I expected Star Wars and I got Bruce Almighty. That's a bad analogy there, but at the end of the day, I'm pleased with it. I'm pleased just because it sounds so great. I thought it was a great representation of Dio live.

So, what's next? Are you going to go back to Magica 2 and 3? Is that still the plan?

That's always been the plan. Whether that is what happens, I don't know. I'm having some second thoughts about it now. In order to do Magica 2 and 3, we have to write it, and that's certainly not a problem, to create it in the studio. But for me, the problems are going to be, how are we possibly going to take it on the road? Fortunately enough, we were able to do Magica 1 on the road, but we also populated the set with things people need to hear, with "Heaven and Hell", "Holy Diver", etc.

That was the tour you guys pulled out " Invisible".

That's absolutely right and the problem with that is we wanted to do Magica, and succeeded. But, now how will we do 1, 2 and 3 and still please people by playing the songs that they always remembered and want to hear again? So my problem with this is, maybe we should do an album that is not Magica 2 and 3 yet. Maybe do one that will yet again allow us to tour properly and then do 2 and 3. I haven't made up my mind yet. It all depends on the touring situation. Magica 2 and 3 will be there at some point.

Touring-wise then, after the Maiden tour, are you taking a break?

Yes, we're taking a break. And again, the plan was always to do Magica 2 and 3, keeping in mind, it is going to take 6 months to do.

When you do release Magica 2 and 3 will they be released back to back?

Yes, we are going to release it as a double CD. It would round out the trilogy. Magica 2 and 3 would be represented in one place. And that's still the plan. I want to finish the project. And again, what we do depends on which choice we make. If it's going to be Magica or just a proper album. And if it's a proper album, I think we will be touring a lot sooner than I expected. But, we do need some time off. We worked really, really hard last year. And we weren't even going to tour this year but we took some festival dates and then this Maiden/Dio/Motorhead package came up and it was so attractive. We couldn't say no to it and it was a good chance just to play again which is what we love to do.

The last package tour that you were on was with Deep Purple and The Scorpions.

It's a different kind of package, of course. This is more of a metal package. It's certainly the most attractive of the metal packages out there these days. Scorpions and Deep Purple and ourselves were a little more retro than anything else. People may have viewed it this way, but I never see it in these terms. Maybe a little bit classier as well. Not that Maiden and Motorhead and ourselves don't have class on this tour. But I think that's because Purple have been around for such a long time. But they were both great and I didn't want to turn it down because I felt the world needed this package. Perhaps they didn't need Purple, Scorpions and Dio, but they did need this one. And we needed this one.

Now, of course this tour is hitting the markets across the US, but what about your fans in Brazil and South America. Do you have any plans to go down there anytime soon?

Absolutely. All the people in South America have been so close to my heart because they are like some Germans, and some Italians for example, they never forget. Their roots are in hard rock and that's where it begins and ends. They've always been there for us. Going down there has always been the most severe of pleasures because you know the reaction is going to be ecstatic, stupendous, loyal. It's going to be all of those things, wonderful. We of course always look forward to going back to South America. There are a few places we have not played. We have played Chile, but only once. We have played extensively in Brazil of course and we always play two or three places in Argentina. And Buenos Aires, which is such a great place to play, such a great city as is Sao Palo, as is Rio and some of the other great places there. We'd like to expand it and play a few places we haven't played before but if it's only Argentina, Brazil and Chile again, that'll be fine with me so, of course we have plans to come down again. I guess economically, it makes a great difference to the people there. They have fallen on hard times so that is a consideration but we never turn our backs on any form of South American entertainment and we always want to go back and of course, we will.

So that will be when the next album comes out?

Yeah, there were some talks of going down to South America with Deep Purple. Purple are going down in September, I believe. And there was some talk of going down with them but I won't know if that will work out for us from a logistical standpoint until finishing this tour. To keep our guys for an additional two weeks, all of our crew, with lives and things to do themselves, it sometimes becomes a bit impossible but if things work out the way it was approached to us, it's a possibility. If not, we'll be down there on our own. We'll be down there for sure.

Are you still working on your autobiography?

Yes, I am.

Any timeframe on when that might see the light of day?

Well, that's a difficult thing too. The reason for that is, it's so time-consuming for me and it's something I really need to address in a very singular matter. If I'm going to write something as in memoirs or an autobiography, I'm going to have to take all the time I have to do it. I will not be performing, I will not be writing for another album. I really need to devote myself to that. It's a third done now and hopefully with this time off, I should be able to put more of this together. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish two thirds of it before we prepare for the next album. Certainly before we start touring. But it is definitely in the works and I am going to do it.

Well, that's good. I'm sure it will be a fascinating read given your long, fantastic career.

That's what I want to portray. I want it to be all the good things that have happened, all the productive things; it's not going to be a tell-all or anything like that. It's not going to take shots at anybody. It's just all my experiences from starting as a musician at 5 years old to all the things that have happened to me.

Any chance you think you'll do that Rainbow reunion? The internet rumor keeps popping up every year or two.

It seems to be a lot of people's wish. That's always very wonderful but it's been such a long time now, I think I would say no at this point.

Really?

I've said yes for so many years, that it could happen. I'm going to be very truthful. I don't think it will happen. I think the opportunities have been there and Ritchie has blown those opportunities. I don't want to do it anymore.

His heart doesn't seem like it's in rock music anymore.

Well, I have no idea where his heart is. I can't speak for him. The only thing I've said about Ritchie is, how much fun it was to play with him, and how much I've learned from him. And how productive we were as a band, and what a damn shame it was that when we have had the opportunity to give these kids who have been dreaming and wishing for this for so many years, that there was never a yes coming from his end of it. Now he has other agendas and I've said yes too many times and I'm going to say no now.

It really is shame it never happened.

Again, I just want people to know it's not because of my lack of trying or my lack of caring for wanting that to happen. I did want that to happen but it's been too many years now and I'm not in the position anymore for people calling me up and saying, "Let's do Rainbow again." Well, I'm sorry. You had your chances. I make up my own mind these days and I apologize to all the kids but I'd like them to know I have tried but it just hasn't come about but they'll have to position Ritchie for getting some other form of Rainbow back. I'm sorry it didn't happen. But at least the music has always been there.

Well at least we'll always have Dio to play some of the Rainbow classics.

Absolutely. If it weren't for us, you'd never hear these songs again. We've tried to do the same with Sabbath. Without us, without me, there wouldn't be those things but it's so important to the kids that they hear those things. Not only have they been close to my heart, but hey, most of them grew up with it and I want to try to please them. That's why we do this.

More on DIO at: www.ronniejamesdio.com