Ronnie James Dio is one of the few who can rightly be called a legend. He's performed alongside the likes of Richie Blackmore in Rainbow and Tony Iommi in Black Sabbath.

After leaving Sabbath he put together his own band and has been touring with them ever since.

DIO are currently in the midst of a critically aclaimed world tour. I caught up with Ronnie while they were in Manchester UK. We shared a pint and talked about the past, the present and what the future may hold.

So you’re pretty busy at the moment.

We have been pretty busy for a while, we’ve only done, we did two festivals in this touring process. In the beginning I thought we were here to do more festivals than anything else. We started in Moscow. Did Moscow St. Petersburg, Then did a festival in Helsinki, then went to Gothemburg and another city whos name escapes me in Sweden. Straight down to Spain, did 7 shows in Spain. One of them being in Majorca where I’d never been before. So I got to see all the Kiss Me Quick hats and all the German and English tourists. Then from Spain we did 2 shows in Germany. Then did the festival that I thought was going to be the major one to build it around, which was the Wacken festival. Now here we are here doing 6 shows and it’s kind of been like one of those lightening tours, kind of thing. Then I think we only have 3 days off and go to South America, and then I think we have 2 weeks off and do an American tour. But that’s what its supposed to be.

Do you still enjoy the touring process?

No, I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to I must say, because it becomes so samey after a while. Especially when you go to a place like Spain and you realise it’s the same drudgery, the same promoters who, everything is manyana. Could we get this? Oh, of course, and then it never turns up. Those things become a bit difficult and

it becomes difficult for the crew and of course without them there are no shows for us. I don’t like to see that kind of suffering if I can help it. We have wonderful people around us and I think that’s what makes it all worthwhile. That and the fact that I love to play. Without that, I mean those are the two most presious hours of a night for me because its what I’m supposed to do. That’s where I enjoy myself. All the cares of the world go away. Unless the monitors crap and of course in Spain that happened a lot. But its just I like to play so much that it kind of rubs away all the bad things, and once its over you don’t think about the bad things. Its always the good things. So yeah I’m still doing it and I guess I still will.

And you’ve got a new album coming out also. Yes, and that was unfortunate as well. We had planned the album, infact it was given to the company in time for this to happen, for this tour to be a means for us to play it to people live and to, y’know, flog the thing as well. So here we are, they had one of those release date glitches. We won’t be able to release it until… So what is the sense of our going there. Well, of course the dates had already been planned. The promoters would lose money in advertising, maybe some fans would be disappointed. So, we decided to do it, which of course gives us the opportunity to come back again and play this album. We are already scheduled to do the Bang Your Head festival next year for their 10th anniversary which means that it won’t be a one off, so we will be able to do some other things as well… but yes we do have a new album out here and we do one track from it live, a song called The Eyes. We just havn’t done a lot of it as my feeling is always.

Why do so many things that people don’t know. Because they get a bit confused. What was that. I’d rather you played something from Dream Evil or something from the Rainbow songs, something we know, but the one song really works for us live and its at least a little introduction to the album and I think its done the job. Its made people aware of what we’re doing and its made them a little more hungry perhaps than if we’d not done anything.

You’ve just released the Evil or Divine DVD. Any plans to put out any more live shows?

Well, they remastered the Sacred Heart video. That’s been done.

Is that out over here yet?

I don’t think it is, because those are all out on Rhino records which is part and parcel of Warner Bros. Where we were signed for so many years. All that product was all owned by Warner Bros. Well, it used to be we own it now. We are planning on doing, I think, the Last in Line and another one as well, remastered thing and we are going to include footage that we have. We have some things from Hammersmith that have never been ever done before, plus some other shows so.. and interviews and backstage things that no-ones ever seen before so yes there are plans to do that. That depends on… Well, we do own them so I guess we can give them to SPV which is our new label or our new old label here again. So yes there are some plans to do that.

Joining Black Sabbath at that particular time, you must have wondered what you’d let yourself in for?
It was very strange for me because the whole scenario was kind of like this. I got a call from a friend of mine. I was living in Conneticut at the time. We had moved there with Rainbow. We had been living in LA but Ritchie decided that he now wanted to move back east. Closer to England and closer to what he said was civilisation. So we moved to Conneticut and I was then excused from Rainbow at that particular point, while we were living there.

I got a call from a friend of ours in Los Angeles who said Ritchie had spoken to Tony and Tony had wanted to know if he could have my telephone number because he had heard that I was not in Rainbow anymore and he had wanted to leave Sabbath and start a band. So, I said, yes of course, give him my phone number. So he called me and said exactly those words. I said yeah, I’d be interested in that what do you have in mind? Tony said well, I have a drummer. The only person I’ve ever worked with I’d like to take him along. It was Bill Ward. I said that’s fine. I’ve got a bass player you might be interested in, so on so forth. So we talked about that and we kept in touch for a little while and it looked like it was going to happen, and then he’d gone back to England and I called him a few times and we spoke. Then I called again and he suddenly wasn’t there anymore. I called a few more times and y’know, I wasn’t trying to chase him down or anything but I thought we had something that was going to happen and I was a bit interested in it. So, I finally never got to speak to him again. It was always no he’s not hear or something. Fine, no problem. That was it.

So I moved back to California, on my own. Rainbow stayed in Conneticut, and I went back to California and one night went to a place called the Rainbow, funnily enough, and who was in there but Tony. Someone said, Tony Iommi’s over there. Another drink please. Thank you. Oddly enough it was Sharon, who was called Arden at the time, who’s now Sharon Osbourne. She came over and said. Would you please come over. Tony would really love to say hello to you. I said ‘nah, I don’t think so.’ So Wendy my wife and manager said Go over there, go on. I’m not so sure. I said If you stop hitting me I’ll go over. So I went over and it started from there.

Tony said we’re rehearsing at the moment in a house that we have because its our 10th anniversary. It was strange to me because after all these years I thought it must have been their 50th anniversary but it was only 10 years they’d been together. They of course had 2 or 3 albums that had just not done well at all. I think it was Technical Ecstacy and Never Say Die and the band had really, generally fallen apart at that point. So he said I’d love to have you come up to the house and meet Geezer and Bill. I said I don’t know about that. (Elbow motion) I said ok. By that time I think I’d had a couple of Bevvies. I said yeah ok lets go up there.

So we went up to the place and I met Geezer and I met Bill and Ozzy wasn’t there which I was quite thankful for. I didn’t want it to seem as though I was there to take his place. Which I wasn’t. At that time I had my own band I had put together in LA and I was working with a guy named Al Cooper. Al was the keyboard player who put together Blood Sweat and Tears. He did an album called Supersession with Mike Bloomfield on, great player, and the guitar player was Jeff Baxter and Richie Haywood from Little Feat was the drummer and we had a band together as well. So I had two things going and so they said, after I met the guys Tony said, fancy coming up and seeing where we rehearse. Yeah, sure okay. So he slipped on his guitar, Geezer put on his Bass and Bill got behind the Drums. Tony said, can I show you something, this thing we’ve been working on? So he played me the introduction to Children of the Sea. He said ‘Do you think you could do something with that?’ I said you got five minutes? Yeah, Give me a minute then. I went into the corner and wrote Children on the Sea.

So we did it and he said, that’s it. I’m firing Ozzy tonight. I wanna work with you. I went well, I’ve got other things I'm doing. I’m sorry. 'But but but...' So, y’know that’s the way it goes right? So, after that, he called back. I’d really like to do this. Give it some thought. So I weighed up the things, and I loved the song and I loved what Tony had to offer and I thought it was the best thing for me to do. Not from a success standpoint but because it gave me the opportunity to do the kind of music I wanted to. I could get as dark and doomy as I wanted to finally, and have a reason to do it. To be as heavy as I wanted to and that was important to me so Tony fired Ozzy the next day.

He called me and said Done. So we got together and went through all the trials and tribulations of making Heaven and Hell which took us a year and a half virtually with all the problems that were inherent in it and we made the album which I consider to be really my favourite and the best that I’ve been involved with in my career so far. Y’know from A-B or A-Z.

I mean there have been some other great things I’ve done but I thought that, just because of the comradery and the fact that we overcame the stigmata of a band that was laughed at at that point and ‘you’re crap you're crap’ was all that was heard and I didn’t believe that. I thought they were much better than that. And I like to think that, I know it. My musicality brought out the musicality that was always inherent. Kind of inert in them for a while.

So we were able to make that great album. Believe me I’m not taking the credit for this myself but I have to take credit for my part in it. It was just a labour of love, and then everything fell apart after that. There you go. So I’m sorry I went on and on so much about that.

Talking about it all falling apart and then the reunion in 92. Did you learn a lot from that experience? Yes, I learned I should’ve never done it again was what I learned. It was the same heartbreaking time for me that it was the first time out. I learned… I had always known this lesson but I just never really applied it because I didn’t want to but, leopards never change their spots. Never, never change their spots and I always thought that every band I was in was going to last forever. From the first band I ever had called the Vegas Kings. I thought I’d still be in that band today. From them to Rainbow to Sabbath to Elf. I thought they would all last forever because that’s the way I am. I’m a guy in a band. That’s all I ever wanted to be. The guy in the band. I didn’t want to be Ronnie James Dio I just wanted to be just singer in a band, or the bass player. I’d be more than happy to be that, and we succeed together that gives me satisfaction. But, the 2nd time round was even worse than the 1st time around for me. Started out ok and immediately plunged back to the depths of.. I dunno, whatever the reasons were. No need to go into them, of course I know what the reasons were but. Out of it all came one of the great albums I’ve been involved with and that was Dehumanizer. I always think that’ll be a great album. I think a very underrated album. I think one of the reasons why it didn’t succeed so well is because everyone expected that it was going to be Heaven and Hell. Because that’s all the expectation. ‘Oh they’ve got back together after, I think it was 12 years, we’d not spoken in 12 years, its going to be another Heaven and Hell, and it wasn’t because we tried to go desperately to that other end and not do Heaven and Hell, and we did and people were disappointed and it’s a very different kind of album.

I think Master of the Moon is very reminiscent of Dehumanizer to me. It is. I hope that isn’t its death knell but it doesn’t matter to me because that was a great album. I’ll always be proud of it and this is a great album, I’ll always be proud of it. But it was a hurtful time for me yet again so that’s what I learned. I shouldn’t have done it a second time and I won’t do it again. I never will do it again. Ever. Ever.

The only person I would work with in some form would be Tony. As long as it’s not one of his guest solo albums because I don’t do guest spots. If you think there’s somebody better than me to sing on your project then you get all those people and don’t ask me to do it, because I’m better than all of them for you. You know it. Listen to Heaven and Hell. Listen to Mob Rules. Listen to Dehumanizer. If you’re that stupid not to know that then you are as stupid as some people may think you are. But I would do it with Tony. I love Tony. I love his sense of humour. I think he’s such a magnificent man who invented heavy metal music. Along with Ozzy and Billy and Geezer of course they did it together but Tonys always been a joy in my life. I’ve always loved Tony a lot. But it would have to be the right conditions and it would mean not giving up Dio because I would never do that again. That’s another lesson I learned. I won’t give this up again.

That was one of the things I was going to come to. I think it may also bring in a bit of the relationship you’ve had with the press over the years. When Black Sabbath reformed it appeared in the press as though…

I never was there.

Dio forget that… I’m going to do this now…

That’s right.

How much thought went into that desition to go back to Black Sabbath and how much of that image portrayal was down to the changing relationship you’ve had with the press? Well, I think for a start… Let me just go around it this way. I think that they decided once it was going to be the reformation of that band with Ozzy that my mention in that band would be completely nil. It would be almost as though I never had anything to do with that band. They went to great lengths to bury any image of me. What the press thought about it? I couldn’t care less. I never think or care what the press says. I don’t care because I know what I am and I know what the people I’ve been with are and my problem is I’m a very truthful person. I always tell the truth, I always say what is in my mind. The trouble is that my version of the truth is a lot of times different from perhaps their version of the truth or anyone elses version of the truth. But I will say, you’ve NEVER heard Ritchie Blackmore say an unkind word about me, and you’ve never heard me say an unkind word about Ritchie Blackmore, because our relationship was one of mutual musical respect and I adore that man for his talent and I always will. He’s the best guitar player I’ve ever worked with and one of the best I’ve ever seen in my life. There are only a few.. Hendrix, Ritchie. I’ll put Tony in there in a way because as a Rhythme guitar player and a riff writer he was brilliant but not a lot more. Again, being truthful about it is always going to make the press who may have loved Sabbath, loved Ozzy say oh he’s a whining moaning complaining son of a bitch. I’ve only told the truth and as Jack Nicholson said ‘You can’t handle the truth!’ That’s true. A lot of people, because there allegiances are different places can’t handle the truth. I always admire the journalist who is very open minded and will just report whats said. This is what that what that man said, that’s what that man said. I’m not going to draw a conclusion from it. That’s for you, the reader to draw. Unfortunately fans also have their loyalties. Its very much like Ozzy / Ronnie. Sammy Hagar / David Lee Roth. You either love one man and hate the other or visa versa. That happened a lot. Not so much in my case more in Sammys case. I was accepted because we did some good music and we didn’t do silly music. So Sabbath fans enjoyed that. So again, how much of that has to do with the press’s vision of me I think is really down to you either loved Ozzy and hated Ronnie. As far as they go as people. That is not even part of it to me. We’re all just people at the end of the day. I may

hate the bar man y’know. I’m not going to go over and tell him about it. I may love the barmaid, probably do but its inconsequential it really is. Its purely a matter of telling the truth and some people can’t handle it. Going back to what you were saying about Ritchie Blackmore and Rainbow, I don’t know if you’ve see the Rainbow Rising biography? I think it’s been given to me but I don’t read them. There’s a part in there that says moves have been afoot for a Rainbow reunion which have been blocked by Ritchie Blackmores management. Is that true? Is a Rainbow reunion something that you would do? Not anymore I wouldn’t no. I gave that great consideration 5 years ago because it almost happened. It was only going to be a one off. One show in Japan which would have been released as a live album and a DVD. If it had lead to anything else then, perhaps it would’ve but that was the only thing that was going to be. That did not come about. Blocked by his manager? No, I wouldn’t say it was blocked by his manager I would say that there were difficulties with his managers perhaps coming to terms with what was offered, which I thought was a hell of a lucrative idea. That was the problem there. So if that’s blockage yeah, I’d say so. But now its been 5 years or so and that was the window that was open for me to do it then. That windows closed, shut, double glazed, blackout curtains. No more. I’ve waited long enough. My only sadness is I wanted to do it for the fans. Because they’re the ones who demanded it after 30 years. I mean 30 years ago and they still remember and they still want to know. I felt we owed it to them. Apparently Ritchie didn’t, or someone didn’t and he’s happy with what he’s doing he’s got Blackmores Night and perhaps that’s what he’s always wanted to do. So as long as he’s happy and I’m happy it really doesn’t matter but I just want to go on record as saying I was open for it. I wanted it to happen. I tried and this has nothing to do with whether Ritchie did or didn’t but fans out there believe me I tried for you I really did but now? No. No more.

Sure, I was brought up on Opera and Rythme and Blues as well. Sam and Dave. I used to do all the songs in cover bands and Wilson Pickett, Sam Cooke, just all the great R& B people so that gave me a great bluesy kind of feel. To take that and couple it with opera y’know. The likes of David Coverdale went with his blues thing because those are love songs and I don’t do those. I’ve always felt that Opera was not only a means of showing that you could really sing because it takes a good voice to be able to do that, but it was also couched in a lot of fantacy as well. So y’know those were things I’d read about as a kid. Those were things I’d heard in operatic music. I played the trumpet for such a long time and played classical music for a long time. So I took those avenues of my early life and applied them because I knew that in order to become successful you have to be unique. No-one wants to hear Britney Spears again, once is enough. You have one of them that’s enough. Or a Madonna or a Backstreet Boys or Nsync who ever. Once is enough. How much crap could you swallow before you get sick. So I just really felt that being unique in that way was special and then through all the years I was able to eventually get to the band that, as I mentioned before allowed me to just go in that direction all the way, and that was Sabbath. Rainbow allowed me to be more of that. Elf before that always included 2 maybe 3 songs on an album that were a little but ‘wow what was that. Didn’t sound like a Honkey Tonk song. So you could see my leanings were going that way. So I just took those attitudes that I grew up with and knew once again that to be unique you had to be something special. That was what I did specially. So, they’ve always become part and parcel of what I am.

You’re about to resurrect the Hear N Aid project. In aid of Children of the Night. Do you want to talk a bit about that and why you’re doing that?

Sure, it’s a charity that I’ve supported for about 11 years now. A charity that supports runaway children. Began in LA. There are chapters in other places but its centre is in LA. We were able to earn enough money with a lot of great people, including Ozzy Osbourne. A school and 24 bed, room. We have facilities for them to persue whatever they’d like to persue up to 18. When they’re 18 they must go. Its between 12 and 18 years old. These are kids who have run away from home from dysfunctional families thinking, well if I go to Los Angeles I could become a rock star, or I could become a movie star. Part of what I’m supposed to be is that. So don’t I owe them? I owe them because they went there, because perhaps of me, and people like me so I owe them for that. They’re fans and it’s so sad because they come off that bus thinking they’ve reached the street paved with gold and theres the pimp… thank you! And then they become prostitutes, drug addicts, they get AIDS and they die. Thats what happens to most of them. Most of the kids I see go through this happened. But if we can give them some kind of life before that happens.. and now of course HIV medicine is making life a lot longer for them. It’s a charity because it’s a private charity. Not a public charity. Public charities, ones subsidised by the government always insist that that child go back to where they came from. They must go back to their parents. These are the same people that drove them out in the first place. Private charity they can stay in our facility until they’re 18 years old. By that time hopefully we’ve prepared them for something. So, being a private charity it always needs money so we’re always out there trying to earn money.

Because Hear N Aid was very successful and because it is the realm of what I’ve done all my life and because rock and roll people especially hard rock musicians, metal musicians have got the biggest hearts on earth they’re ready to do it again. So its time for us to do another one. It’ll be just like the Hear N Aid was, one song, with a lot of guitar players playing on it. A lot of singers singing on it and then 10, 11 or 12 unreleased tracks submitted, given to us by other great people like Doro for example is going to give us one, that’s just one name. Bruce Dickinson’s going to sing on it. I’ve got, there are other peoples names I won’t mention because we havn’t solidified it yet. So, that’ll be when we finish this tour we’ll have November and December to start really really dealing with it. Got a song written for it now. Not sure it’s the one I want so I may write another one. Not sure. So it’ll be that same kind of project but it’ll be for Children of the Night and not for.. the other one we did was for Rock Relief for Africa. Boy its time to do that one again too. So, if I could do another one like that on the heels of this I would. Maybe I can because that’s a real horrible situation down there. But that’s what its ging to be like.

You mentioned unreleased material. You have any plans to put anything out?

We have no unreleased material. We’ve never ever done anything that. For me its always been, if it wasn’t good enough to be on the album then it should be destroyed. I destroy it. If it’d been recorded I destroy it. But no, we don’t have any unreleased songs that you’ve never heard before written. I mean not new things. Of course theres a lot of unreleased material that is our old things that we’ve done in our live presentation situation, but no nothing like that. I’ve always been really annoyed with people who say ‘we’ve got 50 songs..’ Well, they must be great huh. You gonna put em all..? Well, some are better than others. No shit! If you’ve got 12 good songs, we put 12 songs on the album, if you do 10 you’ll do 10. If not what are you saving it for? I wouldn’t save it. If I wrote 50 great songs I’d give you 50 great songs. It’d be special. But no we have none of that at all. Coz I would hate it if…I’m sure somebody in the band from Dio has something on cassette and , uh this is great, and you’ll probably hear it somewhere. It won’t have my seal of approval on it.

Any stories behind any of the songs on the new album?

Well, The Man Who Would be King is a pretty obvious one I think but I’ll tell you about it. I wrote that song first thinking it was going to be about the 9th or 10th century crusades and about the knights or soldiers who were sent down to the Middle East to capture the holy grail to get rid of the arab infidels and so I thought that’s interesting. Sat down with my pen in my hand and went. This remids me of someone else. George Bush. We’re doing exactly the same thing aren’t we.. and he seems to want to be king doesn’t he. So, the song really became my political statement. Its not the political statement of the album. I don’t mean it to be the crux of the album but it just happened to be a political statement because I never believed in this ‘war’ that’s down there. But I think that like most military people and soldiers who beget a war they believe in its principals. They believed in the Viet Nam war, and we found out what a sham that was and got our asses booted out and probably the same things going to happen on this one. I think that the soldiers believe initially and then start going hey, too many of us dying, too many bodies lying around here. So that’s really what it was all about.

The other things are a lot more realistic. They’re not fantasy kind of things. A lot more tongue in cheek on this one. Magica was a complete fantasy album. Magica 2 and 3 which should be the next album, which was going to be this one, it’s turned out not to be that one because Jimmy left and time constraints, thinking about it now I guess we had time to do it because we didn’t do it here, but it was going to be Magica 2 and 3 the next one so I’m looking forward to it being the next one because its always been a trilogy. But this album and Killing the Dragon are not fantasy oriented, hardly at all. There just more about the things that affected me as I was writing it.One being the war. Certainly 9/11 has always been there. The suffering in Africa, the suffering in general. The idiocy of people. The fact that some of the greatest no talents on earth are now controlling certainly the music industry and many other things in this world. There’s a song on this album as a matter of fact called the end of the world and that’s what its about. I just look around and go, it must be the end of the world, I mean, look at the people who are doing these things. These people have no talent and brains. They have no care for any of their fellow man. Its got to be the end of the world. So again, it was my tongue in cheek way of saying this world is a screwed up place. All those things affected me. So everything you see on this album probably have some deep seated meaning within what I’ve experienced and absorbed in the last couple of years.

I guess you started that with the Killing the Dragon album and particularly Rock N Roll was about you getting censored off the radio.

That was exactly what that was about. That was my, I’m angry, song and how dare you do that to me and to all these other people. Yeah, that was my statement about that. Much as the man who would be king is my statement about this. Put in a different way. I mean its not the same thing. It had nothing really to do with all the killing that was going on. Including the 3000 people who died in that tragedy. It had more to do with, just the fact that after a tragedy the first thing they could think of to rectify the situation was to ban some rock n roll, including mine and Maidens and Priest and again all the usual suspects. That was what that one was about. This one is a lot more devastating with all the people who have died there and the wrongness of all that went on. The misunderstanding of a culture that the West doesn’t have any clue about. George Bush never had a clue about. It was all a matter of we’re so strong we’re just going to go over and wipe everybody out. Here’s democracy, you’ll be happy bye! Well, we see what happened with that one. So, I just have a tendancy to be real affected by those things. I know they never change. They never change the face of the earth. They never do. Just as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and all the war protesters at the time of the Vietnam war did not change the war. They did not stop the war. It wasn’t going to stop the war. It was all the body bags laying on the docks. It was the Mothers and Fathers crying over their lost children. That’s what stopped the war and this song, Man who would be King is not going to stop anything either. George Bush will probably, and I hope not, be president again and that once again, must be the end of the world.

Looking back on your career so far, what would you say has been the high point?

Well, high point I think musically would be the Heaven and Hell album. Low point? I don’t like to think about low points. I think the one that disappointed me most was angry machines. Y’know, there was a couple of good things on it. All that section with Tracii Gee was a little bit of a low point because it was hard to write with him. Not because because he was not good but because he was the wrong player for us. He was more industrial. He was more noisy. He wasn’t that romantic player that I was used to with Ritchie to Greg to Vivien who really played from their soul, had a great sense of melody and listened to a lot of classical music. Knew what I was writing was all about. That was a bit of a low point for me. So those are the highs and lows musically.

I think once again Sabbath was probably the high point for me playing wise. Because we played for so many people. We were so successful overcame the failures that they had before them. That was probably the high point. Any other lows? The lowest point would probably be our drummer, Gary Driscoll, he was our drummer in Elf, when he was found murdered. Horribly murdered. That was probably the low point for me. I mean any death is horrible but he was probably one of the sweetest people who ever lived on the face of the earth and great drummer. More like my son than anything else. I mean we weren’t very far apart in age but he was such a fragile little soul. I felt I needed to protect him. So that was probably the low point for me. You gotta take lows and put em in a little compartment somewhere and say, that’s cool, life goes on because it does and leopards don’t change their spots! Remember that.