Ronnie James Dio

Ronnie James Dio: If there is any kind of theme lyrically on this album it is just what a miserable place the world is. I think a lot of the musical creativity is because Craig and I have been writing together so long. We wrote Magica and a bit of Killing The Dragon, as well as this entire one. When you continually write with the same person then the signature really comes out. I think that has a lot to do with it.

RJD: He only was the writer on two of the songs. Craig was in the band when we started that album and he and Jimmy Bain and I wrote a lot of the songs. Craig left the band for his own personal reasons then Doug came in. The entire album was done exept for two songs and Doug and I wrote them.

RJD: Doug is a great guitar player and everyone was really happy being in the band at that particular time. We had been on the road for a while so we were well rehearsed. We had a lot of confidence in ourselves and I think it came off that way. We didn’t need to go take bits of several shows and put them together. What you saw is what you got. It is a real point of pride for me.

Jeb: Angry Machines was much different than the style you have been doing since. I would not be the only one who would tell you that I did not like that album very much. I hate to be that honest with you Ronnie, but….

RJD: That is quite all right as I totally agree. That album is my least favorite album. It is really confusing to me. Tracy was a great rhythm player but solo-wise he was not the ilk of guitar players that I am used to. It is not Tracy’s fault; it is what it is. I found it to be very confusing and I agree with you.

Jeb: To go from that state of mind to where you are today is a huge step in the right direction. How did you sort things out in your own mind?

RJD: I realized that Angry Machines was an album that did not make me happy. I felt it was necessary to attack my career from the standpoint of what we were and what people expected from us. Magica was a complete fantasy piece and Killing The Dragon was a lot like Holy Diver and Last In Line. I planned it that way. With those two albums we could portray both sides of what the band is supposed to be.

RJD: I never approach music from a business standpoint of trying to write a song because I believe it will be successful. Maybe in the early days I did that but once I got a fan base then the expectations change. The fan base expects you to make good music for them so you don’t have to have another “Rainbow In The Dark.” It was artistically driven. It worked out well from a business standpoint but I really just felt that we had lost the connection with our audience. I only thought of it from what the fans expect from Dio.

RJD: It is the same guy who did the cover for Killing The Dragon; a guy named Marc Sasso. We chose the title for the album for a couple of reasons; it was the best sounding words for a title and it was a really good visual for the artwork. I spoke to Marc and I told him what I wanted and what my vision of it was and he sent me back a rendering of it. It needed a change here and there but he got the attitude right. You need interpreters for your ideas and Marc is a good interpreter of what I want to see. He is a liaison for me and it has worked well.

RJD: It is important to me. We are not dealing with album covers anymore, which is a shame because you could really see the art then. Even in the shrunken environment we have now, it is important that someone sees the CD and goes, “That must be a DIO album.” I think you have to make that connection right away. I think if you have a pansy-ish type album cover then you must have pansy-ish type music.

RJD: I think you are so involved in the music, from writing it and recording it for five months that you get a feel of what should be and what shouldn’t be. One thing to consider is the key of the songs. You don’t want three songs in the key of A to be one right after another. You need musical contrast. Generally, it is what looks right. An important song should not be stuck on the end of the album. You look for a great opening song that is fast and well paced. Hopefully, they won’t be in the same key but if they are you might just switch song two with song three. It really is just the feel and what looks and sounds best with keys and tempos.

RJD: That song is very strange. It is nothing like anyone thinks it is. People think it is about one more beer for the road. It is a simple title that someone can easily grasp onto. The song is about executions. I talk about people who have said a person is witch so we should execute them. Let’s burn one more from the road! The next verse is about a person wrongly accused of a crime that is about to be executed. People are filing in for the show even though they know it is wrong. The last verse says it all, “There is a cross that you can’t carry ‘cause it’s heavier than hell. You should meet your maker, just pray that he won’t yell ‘one more for the road.’” It is a bit twisted.

RJD: I am glad of that.

RJD: I wrote that about a friend of mine who has a 15-year-old kid who has all these hormones coursing through his body and does not want to be told what to do. He has a bit of a rebellious nature. His parents tell him that he must do this or that. The lyrics are “Turn around and you can face the sun and we can make you be just like everyone.” He doesn’t want to be just like everyone. The operative line is “face the sun.” People think the sun if everything so the moon must suck. I called him ‘master of the moon’ because he is not doing what people think he should be doing. He is a master of crap, I guess.

RJD: It had the best flow as a title. It didn’t really matter what it was about. The song was bigger and darker and it matched the artwork.

Jeb: Track three is the uplifting “End Of The World.”

RJD: I always try to get a little bit of optimism in my music! It seems to me that fools own the world. If I happen to watch television, it seems all that is on is a bunch of reality shows with a bunch of fools making fools of themselves. They are making millions and millions of dollars while there are people starving somewhere else. We watch these people stumbling about eating worms. It just seems to me that fools have got the sunshine. It must be the end of the world.

RJD: In the case of this album, yes. Being around so much paranoia of terrorism and watching all the people dying in Africa and what just happened in Russia are good examples of what inspired these lyrics. Basically, they are about the things that make us paranoid. Where is going to come from next? I could not write any fantasy lyrics with what is going on around me. This is not a fantasy world; this is the real world. I was living in that real world and I wrote more realistic lyrics.

RJD: I don’t think there is any question that world is absolutely truly worse. People being killed senselessly everyday is not something that happened before. Of course there were six million Jews killed in World War II and they were innocent, but it was a different situation. It was organized with Hitler and it was a world thing. It was Good Vs Evil. What are the motivations now? Surely it can’t just be about Palestine. It can’t just be about Saddam Hussein. You have to lock your car door, don’t you? You have to lock your house door, don’t you? I didn’t have murders going on in my hometown. I didn’t have child abuse going on in my hometown. Was it because it didn’t happen or was it just that we didn’t know about it? I am sure some of it went on but it was a different world. Rules were different then. Because of the rules changing so drastically, we are in a bad, bad time of our existence. I think it is worse than any time that I have been in, ever.

RJD: You can’t stop something that involves people who don’t care if they are not alive anymore. Terrorism is like that. There is a promise of something better for them so they don’t care. If someone is coming to attack me and I have a gun and I point it at them then they are like, “Go ahead and shoot.” If the situation were reversed and someone was coming at me with a gun and told me to get out of there, then I am out of there and I am running the entire way. When you are dealing with those kind of attitudes then there is no winning situation at all. People find out what they can do by taking others hostage and by beheading them and they gain power. That really smells like the end of the world to me.

RJD: That is more of a relationship type thing. This is about a person who has never been afraid of anything in their life until they got involved with this other person. It could be anyone. It could be the devil or the guy’s girlfriend or it could be God. This person who has never been afraid is suddenly very afraid of what he or she sees.

RJD: That song could have been on Magica. When I started writing this album I wanted to do Magica II and III. Due to time restraints, I didn’t think I could do a proper job so I decided to do a normal album. I was in Magica mode and this song came out. It started out to be a song about Richard The Lionhearted, who led the first Crusades back in the 9^th Century. He sends solders down to Jerusalem to take the city back from the infidels, who were the Islamic people. As I wrote the song it began to sound like George Bush to me. We have solders dying in the Middle East for what I think is no apparent reason. The song evolved into a correlation between the Crusades and what is going on now. I guess that kind of shows that the world really doesn’t change now does it? In those days they had bows, arrows and knives and now we have nuclear weapons that could destroy the earth. This song is my little political statement but I am not a political person. I don’t think musicians should be that. I am not going to stop a war. The only thing that will stop a war is the number of body bags lined up on the pier and the amount of mothers and fathers crying for them.

Jeb: You seem to be fascinated with Good Vs Evil.

RJD: Absolutely. We fight that every day. We all seem to be fighting our government, don’t we? Our government has become a huge machine that makes laws that you have no choice over. They can spy on you and make you a number. I find that pretty scary and it seems like a very bad thing to me. People think that government doesn’t do a very good job and big government can be a very bad thing, as we have seen many times throughout our history. The things I see around me effect me and a lot of it has to do with Good Vs Evil. The middle ground doesn’t seem to count for much. The middle class is very nice and pleasant to each other but the world we live in seems to be going to extremes.

RJD: Paranoia. We are paranoid over when the next terrorist attack will take place. We don’t have any control over it. Having no control over something like that causes extreme paranoia. I used the example of the eyes in the sense of people spying on us all the time. Secrecy is invaded.

RJD: That is more of a personal statement about people I have seen abuse themselves, especially with drugs. If you believe the lies that people are telling you who don’t really care about you, then that is evil. The song is really just about people who don’t care about others and lead them down a garden path that they should not be led down. In the end, you have a lie that you start living and believing.

Jeb: How did you avoid that trap?

RJD: I am too smart to fall into that trap. I have seen people around me and I have seen what they become and how their lives fall apart. I never wanted to be that. I wasn’t brought up that way. My folks told me that there is a certain way that I should live my life. They showed me some examples and said I could live it that way but they preferred I didn’t. I really care for my folks and they have always given me great support in all the things that I have tried to do. I figured that they were telling me the truth and they were. I believe in the reality that bad things are going to make you worse and that good things are the things that you should gravitate too.

RJD: It is rebellious music. It is very loud and distorted. Distortion is what goes on in the upset mind. Social distortion is all around us. It is a music that shouts out for you as opposed to shouting out at you. I think the people who like it really get into the attitude of what it is about when they go to a live show. I think it replaces some aggression that people have. I think you are so spent by the time that you listen to it that you can’t help but go, “Thank God! I feel a lot better now.”

RJD: I guess so. Sometimes I write things that are more personal. Maybe I felt at the time that I was being taken advantage of. The same things that happen to me, happen to everyone. I might start with something that happened to me but I will write it for someone else. A message that I preach a lot is that nothing can stop you. It doesn’t matter what your physical stature is or what people tell you what you can be or can’t be. You must try. Trying is the best part of it all. Screaming out “I am” means that you are a person and that you are not a number. You can survive.

Jeb: That philosophy has served you well.

RJD: Yes it has.

RJD: I have always lived my life like that. I do what is best for me. Musically, what is best for me are the things that I have done. I am lucky enough now to control my own destiny. Being in some of the other bands was just as good for me. I didn’t have total control but I didn’t care. I had enough input to make it be a good work and that is fine. Having control is a wonderful thing. I have enough control to be able to say yes or no. A lot of ideas are bantered around in a band and someone has to say no or yes. If you don’t then you are just going to keep talking about them. People are going to have different opinions and nothing will get done. I am able to say, “This is what is going to be done.” I stick to my guns and it is the way that I have always been.

RJD: Yeah, I am pretty opinionated. Everyone around me knows what I expect from them and they know what I expect from myself. The lines have been drawn.

Jeb: Is that something that is a personality trait that is innate or was it learned along the way?

RJD: I think both. It was festering up there somewhere and the experiences along they way brought it out. After being screwed over a number of times, like all musicians have, you either learn the lesson or you get screwed over again. My personality is such that I am going to learn the lessons and not get taken advantage of again. It is both what I was born and bred with and what I learned along the way.

RJD: That song is about people I see who are so affected by a broken relationship that it seems to kill them. There is a lot of ways to die. You can be shot or stabbed but death by love is worse. You don’t die. It doesn’t end for a long while and it seems to be so devastating to people. I never have understood that. You just have to move on and get over it. Human emotions are pretty strong. The song is really just about that.

RJD: A lot of people think that the dreams that they have are going to come true. A lot of times that is just not true. You have to have a vision. Just because you dream it does not mean it is going to come true; you have to make it come true. Everything seems to happen to people in their dreams but when they wake up it is just the same as it was. Dreaming is cool but it is you who has to make the dream come true.

Jeb: You only have ten songs on your CD.

RJD: Ten good songs are better than fifteen mediocre songs. We write what we feel we need to populate the album without being too overblown. Let’s face it; out of ten songs they are all not going to be quality either. But you have a lot better chance if you have ten good songs then if you have fifteen. The number of songs does not count. What counts is the content.

RJD: That really doesn’t bother me. I know what my longevity is. As soon as I find that I can’t do this on this level anymore then I won’t do it. I want to go out on a high note. I don’t want to go play in a pit just because I can. I have set up criteria for myself. I always expect to be good and I expect the last note I sing will be a good one. I will be remembered for not ever falling down. I will know that when it does come then it will be time for me to go. I think I am the luckiest person in the world. I have been in three very classic bands. I have made at least three classic albums in those bands. I think those things should be talked about. I think I am someone who has kept alive the classic-ness of great metal music. I think I am someone who is also looking forward and going to make more as well. I know what I am and what I have done. I know how important it was. I must take steps forward. I never look back at what I have done before. I never listen to songs I have done before unless I am doing them for a live performance. They are done and finished. Here is my child; I hope it grows up and I hope you nurture it. I hope you don’t chop its nose off because you don’t like the song. Everything is an arrow going forward for me.

RJD: I take compliments very badly. I am good at what I do and I know I am good at what I do. To have a label like that put upon you is quite a responsibility. My preference is to just go out and be great all the time. There are heavy metal singers that don’t sound anything like me so that is like comparing apples and oranges. You can’t compare Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi. They are completely different players just as I am a completely different singer than Rob Halford. Rob comes from a completely different attitude than I do. As long as I am included among the best, it is fine with me. The thing of ‘he is the best’ -- I appreciate it very much. I know the people who say that to me really mean it and that it is coming from the heart. I just like to think of myself as one of the really good ones.

Jeb: There are us rock nerd writers who tend to debate such issues. I stick with Dio and Halford -- that is the ongoing argument.

RJD: There shouldn’t be an argument. We don’t even write nearly the same kind of songs. To both be included that way, seeing how really different we are, is really special. That shows that we have made a connection with our audiences.

RJD: We start October 1^st. We are going to coast to coast. We are going to go through the 1^st week of November. Anthrax will miss a few dates and I think Dokken will come in and replace them for a few shows.

RJD: It is not a battle of the bands for me. If you start approaching it that way -- you are talking about two completely different kettles of fish. You can’t compare what we do with what Dokken does. We are a lot harder and a lot more doom oriented. We have a lot more credentials with my Rainbow and Sabbath background as well. All that is important is that people like the shows. It is all about the show. I never, ever approach it as a battle of bands, as these guys are my friends.

Jeb: Why are you so good to your fans?

RJD: They have given me this opportunity. Without them what would I be? If there are not a great number of people who like what you do then you are doomed. I think I can sing well and I can write well but I can’t fix my car! I am no better than they are. I approach people as people. They want to get close to someone they really care about. Some want to see that person greater than human and some want to see them as a human being. I am just a regular guy who does one thing and really, really enjoys it. That is our connection, they love what I do and I love their support. It has always been my attitude and that won’t ever change.

RJD: It is more manic there. They have not had music as many years as we have -- especially metal. When you go there it is just like playing for fresh faces all the time. The country has a lot of problems but they are trying to overcome them. The people are very warm and friendly. Rudy is such a great person and a great player and I am very happy to have him in the band. I think we have the best line up we have ever had musically, but more importantly, from a personality perspective.

RJD: I am not really that way. We are prepared by the time we get into the studio. I don’t get into people’s heads. I am not the guitar player but I make suggestions because I think I know what that person plays sounds best; that is what a producer does. If this is what a person wants to do then let’s hear it. If it works then it works and if it doesn’t then lets change it. A musician is a musician. They color the product. Otherwise, what do I need them for? I might as well just play bass guitar, use a drum machine and sing -- that is not what a band is all about. I am not a taskmaster at all. Anyone who has ever recorded with me -- most anyway -- will feel at the end of the day that what we recorded was worth the hard work. It is a job.

RJD: It is your work; it is your profession. When you have done it this long it is not a frivolous thing anymore. Rock music has become respected enough to become a profession. It was not that way when I started. Job may be the wrong word. Job makes it sound like it is not fun. It is not like having to work from 9-5. This can be fun. We party a bit in the studio but after a while it is counterproductive. You don’t party at your job so why should I be partying so heavily at my job? I am not a taskmaster though, that is just not true. We have had our nights of drunken debauchery as well. It doesn’t happen very often but there are times where you have to lay back and take it easy. “Do you want a drink?” “Yeah, lets drink for a while.” Sometimes you get more productivity out of that then you do working all the time.

RJD: You have got to be human. It is a job but it can’t have fences about it. We are talking about musicians who are high-strung people who need to be cared for a lot of times. They also need to have their lead. You are that guy who says yes and no but if you can’t laugh at the same time then no one is going to respect you. They respect you because you are as good as they are. They will respect you if you are fair. Fairness is not to drive people with a whip all the time.

RJD: Performing is the best part for me. Making albums gives me a chance to go perform. The live concert is showing how people how good you are, have always been and will always be. It is all about how you connect together. The kind of adulation that you get from doing a good job is the payment at the end of the day. It is nice to get some money for it but that is never what drove me. I love being in a band. It is like us against the world. That is what keeps me going all the time. Playing in a band is most important. It is the camaraderie of us accomplishing something together.

Jeb: The last thing I want to touch on is how you came up with the concept of Hear ‘N Aid.

RJD: In actuality, it was Jimmy Bain and Vivian Campbell who came up with that concept. We were doing the Sacred Heart album. Rock Relief For Africa was going on and they said they would like to get involved in it from the heavy metal end. I said, “Bless your hearts. Go for it. I am doing this album now but any support you need from me you just ask. But I want you to go do this as it is your thing.” We carried on doing the album; I think we were mixing. They came back to me and told me that they needed some help with the song they were writing. I couldn’t say no to them. I got involved and I really took control over the situation - as I usually do anyway. I wrote the song with them and became the producer of the project. Wendy (Dio) became the executive producer. The credit needs to go to Jimmy and Viv; they contacted a lot of people. I just did the grunt work. I produced it and helped write the song. I dealt with the guitar players and vocalists, which was a joy. When you have all the talent around you then you just can’t loose. They did me a favor by getting me involved.

RJD: Sure. You have to. Some were contacted by our management but the ones we knew we just called up and asked them if they wanted to do this. They, of course, said, “When do you want me to be there?” Especially Rob Halford, who was just the best of the lot. I told Rob we were booking Tuesday and Wednesday for the vocals. He asked me when he wanted me to have him there. I told him that if he had other things to do then I could deal with it because he was very important to the project. He asked me again, “When do you want me to be there?” I said, “How about I make it easy on you. Be here at one o’clock in the afternoon.” He was there at 9:00am. He asked me, “How long do you want me to stay? A week? A month? I am here for whatever you need me to do because this is such a wonderful project.”

Working with those kind of people was a real joy for me. It was a joy to get to know them and to be respected by them. It didn’t do any of us harm to do something from the heart that helped other people who were struggling. That was the best part. It earned about three million dollars but who knows how much of that actually got to those people. Even the We Are The World project ended up with food on the pier rotting away. There were tribal chiefs who came in and took it away without giving any to the people. Our attitude was that if we could save one person from starving to death today then we have done something good.

RJD: I am going to do another one for a charity I support called Children Of The Night. We are going to do the same thing. We are going to re-release Hear ‘N Aid on CD and the film we did will be on DVD. We are going to also do it new. It will be one long song like before with several artists. There will be an album with unreleased material from some of the artists as well. We are going to attack that after the first of the year.

Jeb: Last one, what do you want to tell all the journalists and fans who keep talking about Rainbow reunions.

RJD: There are no reunions for me. There is no reunion with Rainbow and there are certainly no reunions with Black Sabbath. I went there twice and it didn’t happen the second time, either. I don’t want to be involved in that anymore. They are doing what they want to do with Ozzy and that is good for them. I wish them all the best. There is nothing backward at all about what they are doing.

We had an opportunity to do Rainbow about five or six years ago. It just didn’t quite work from a record company/management standpoint. It is a shame that it didn’t happen. It was going to be one show televised and recorded in Tokyo. We could have finally given the people what they wanted. That didn’t happen for all these years and I don’t have time for that anymore. I tried to make my window of opportunity open for it but that window has closed. My career will be DIO and that will be the end of it.

It is nice that people care enough to want that to happen. They care about us after all these years and they remember what good things Ritchie and I did, but those days should be left where they were. They were great days and we made some really great music but life goes on. Too many times people who reunite in that classic manor are doing it because they can’t carry on in this day and age. I can, so I am going to continue doing it.

Visit Ronnie Online by clicking on the DIO