- 2000 - On the phone with David Lee Wilson
- Both Ronnie James Dio and the band that bears his surname have become, and justly so, heavy metal institutions. For his part Ronnie has managed success in three separate and tonically distinct groups, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio, all the while remaining on a solid rock footing. With the release of "Magica" Dio combines a bit of the old with a bit of the new with astounding results. Reuniting with members from previous incarnations of the band Dio has alchemized a shot at the gold from a career that was sinking like a lead weight. Though the Tracy G. era produced some tonically intense soundscapes the fans didn't take to the less melodic more brutal Dio and, as is said, "stayed away in droves."
- Now, with the inclusion of original bassist, Jimmy Bain, former AC/DC and Dio drummer, Simon Wright and one time Dio guitarist, Craig Goldy, Dio is an entity that people can care about again. Back are the melodies that made Dio the heavy metal chart-stormers that they were in the mid-eighties. "Magica" is not entirely a trip down memory lane, there are new aspects that have always bubbled under Dio's skin but never fully erupted.
- This is the first and only "concept" album that the master lyricist has ever penned. The storyline runs roughly in the same Sci-Fi mindstream that Dio has previously touched upon only here it is fully fleshed out leaving a beautiful monster of a soundtrack. "Magica" is grand, it is intense but mostly it is what was always expected of Dio, wizards, Knights, Heaven, Hell and all the rest. Having assembled the band, recorded the album and begun the tour all there is to do is to see if the fans will come out, a prospect that Dio is as optimistic as he is realistic.
- As he notes, "You have got to be sensible about it, I don't think that we are going to be capturing this generation of people but I do think that anyone who likes good rock and roll. . . will appreciate it." Dio will be bringing their vision of rock and roll theater to a stage near you in the coming months and if you politely nodded along to the last few records but were truly pining away for the days of "Holy Diver" and "Heaven And Hell" this is your ticket.
DAVID LEE: Having followed your career with much interest through the years it has always puzzled my as to why you never did do a full album with a single theme, why now?
- RONNIE JAMES Dio: Well, I wanted to have a reason to do it, to be truthful. We have been experimenting since the "Dehumanizer" album with Sabbath and onto "Strange Highways" and desperately into "Angry Machines" and the experimental part came in great part because our guitar player was a lot more of an industrial player and not really from the mold of Vivian or from Craig or from Ritchie or those kind of players that I had played with before and, I think, the music got a bit confusing. There were like five years of time where people would speak to us after the show and they would say, "Oh, well, we like the album" but you could tell that they really didn't like it but they were such great fans and they would say that they did but then they would always ask, "Well, are you going to do another "Holy Diver" style album?" When you hear that enough times you realize that really is what they want to hear and perhaps the experimentation had gone a bit too far. I think that was exactly the case and to do this one, there needed to be a reason to do this particular album and it was time. To hearken back to "olden days" or to "Holy Diver" days or even to Rainbow days, which a lot of this reminds me of, I didn't want people to be able to say, "Well he couldn't survive in the modern world and he has to do that old album again" well, with the concept, there was no other way to do it, nothing else to do but fantasy kind of writing. It is a fantasy concept therefore the songs needed to be fantasy in nature and it gave me a chance to really sing again plus the fact that we have Craig with us again. Craig just gave to me all of the things that I needed to write this kind of material again, not that Tracy wasn't a great guitar player because in my mind he was, he was just the wrong guitar player for this band and he will go on to do some great things for himself. Initially, we had Craig and Tracy in the band and Craig said yes while Tracy said "No, I just can't play with another guitar player." It wasn't Craig that he couldn't play with, it was just that he felt he couldn't play with another guitar player and I don't blame him at all, it is a very personal thing. It would be like singing with another singer. When he was gone Craig was still there and with Craig, he gave to me all of the things that were necessary to make this kind of album so this is the reason for the concept and the reason that this album is what it is.
- K2K: Just to go down the path about Craig for a moment, I spoke with him a few years ago and at that time he was very devoted to his personal philosophies and it didn't seem, to me, that he would ever really want to become very visible on the rock scene again, did it take some convincing by you for him to come out and play?
- RJD: Oh, about five or six seconds probably. Naw, it didn't take any time at all. You must understand, Craig and I had a great rapport, we always had a great rapport. I was one of his heroes. He grew up listening to Rainbow which was his favorite band so he was obviously very taken with Ritchie and, you have spoken with Craig before so you would know that he is a very cerebral person and he has a lot of deep thoughts.
- He is a very deep person and a very serious guy and he always liked the things that I had written because they had much more serious tones to them than, "Hey baby lets go to the drive-in and get in the back seat. . ." You know, that kind of stuff. Craig is a real serious guy so he had always admired the things that I had done in that kind of writing and, of course, I was doing that with Ritchie so the combination was wonderful for Craig. When he came in the band the first time it was a perfect combination, now with thirteen year away from it he has had a chance to go his own way but it hasn't changed his opinion or his attitude about what he knew he wanted to write and what gave him pleasure to write so when I did speak to Craig, and of course it wasn't five or six seconds, it was probably ten, I said to him, "Would you like to have a play?" and he said, "Yeah, I would love to." He has always liked the way that we worked before and he has always liked the music that I wanted to write and the music that we had written before so it was a no brainer for Craig. Even though his philosophies have seemed to have changed, somewhat, I know that Craig got very heavily into born-again Christiandom again and is still is a born-again Christian, he is not the kind of person that ever impresses his feelings upon you. He never tells you that "This is what you should be" or "God is waiting around the corner for you." We never speak about that at all. I think that, perhaps, he knows my feelings about that. I am not an Atheist or an anti-God person but my beliefs are that you do not have to go to a place to worship, you don't have to go to a house to do that and that God resides in you and me and so does the Devil and heaven and hell is where we live on this earth. If the God that everyone prays to is such a wonderful God he wouldn't have people suffering so horribly as they are. Even though I give him that and tell him my opinions he doesn't try to impress his opinions upon me. He will just say, "That is cool, that is what you should think because that is who you are." That all goes by the wayside, his philosophical feelings have nothing to do with mine. We are musicians; we love to write together this way. He loves fantasy writing, he loves the way that the music turns itself around and turns itself inside out just as I do. It was a match made in heaven and heaven is a place on this earth. I think that is a quote from The Go Go's or something like that! (laughs)
- K2K: Ronnie James Dio utilizing a quote from The Go Go's, now I certainly didn't expect that! (laughs)
- RJD: (Ronnie sings a portion of the Belinda Carlisle hit.) So, from that great sage, Confucius or whatever her name is, it is true, it was a real labor of love and it was so easy to do. The philosophies never came into this at all. This is something that Craig wanted to do for a long time and he did tell me, one night after we had been working for two or three weeks, "I just want to tell you that I apologize to you for leaving the band when I did before, it was a wrong thing for me to do, I was very confused." I don't blame him because he was very hurt by the treatment that he got, not from me but, from the other people in the band who had really resented his coming in and replacing Vivian, I think, and it was hard for him then. He said, "I never should have done it." and I said, "No, you're wrong, you should have done it. You should have done it exactly as you did because it has gotten us to this point where you have matured and I have matured and we can easily accept what we are now." Craig was a no brainer for me, he was a person that I wanted to play with and he is the person that made all of this happen.
- K2K: From purely a tone perspective, I don't think that I could hear any other guitarist on this material and have it still be as moving as it is.
- RJD: No, I can't either and you are the first person who has said that, other people may have hinted, but no one has really cut to the quick as you just have and that is so very true, I can not hear another guitar player doing this at all. I couldn't hear Ritchie doing this. I certainly couldn't hear Tony Iommi doing this. I could never hear Vivian doing this. I certainly couldn't hear Tracy doing this. The only other person that could have perhaps had a chance at doing it but never could have done it the way that Craig did it is Rowan Robertson. Rowan is a great musician the way that Craig is and who, again, loved Ritchie's playing, who loved the early Dio stuff and he could have adapted but Craig was so easily adaptable because it was what he wanted to do and it was what he was meant to do. You are absolutely right.
- K2K: Without trying to get too far away from the here and now but, have you heard anything that Rowan has done with John Crosby and Vast?
- RJD: I have not heard a thing that he has done with them. Rowan calls me every once in a while and says, "Hey, I am in town. . ." and things like that but he has never said, "I would like to play this for you" but he has always told me how really good this guy is that he is working with. He (Crosby) couldn't have found a better guitar player because Rowan is one of the best. Actually, I must listen to it.
- K2K: He didn't actually play on that first record but I caught him on the tour a couple of times and it was really magic. It will be interesting to see how he contributes to the next Vast album.
- RJD: Right, because he (Crosby) plays most of the things himself, he is a keyboard player, singer writer, right?
- K2K: Yeah.
- RJD: He doesn't play guitar?
- K2K: Actually, he does and that was his first claim to fame. He was written up in one of the guitar magazines when he was only twelve or something, a bit of a prodigy I guess.
- RJD: Where is he from? Is he from the Bay?
- K2K: Sacramento or thereabouts as I remember it.
- RJD: Well, that is cool, I certainly must check that out. I would want to check it out for Rowan's sake but I have so many good things about this kid (Crosby) and I would love to hear it.
- K2K: Great, great stuff. As for Dio, you have used the theme of "coming full circle' many times and that is appropriate here with the return of some veteran players and music in the "classic Dio" style, as far as the fans are concerned has the wheel turned completely around? This time out are you expecting to see a completely new generation of fans or will there be a combination of fans old and new?
- RJD: I think that no band that has been around as long as we have should ever consider that. I don't think that you should ever consider that because that sounds like the old Glenn Miller adage, to me, "Well, pretty soon the kids are going to come around and they are not going to want to listen to this crap and they are going to want to hear that good old music." Music, Rock and Roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have their own music, I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own generation. You must cling to what your peers are all about and to think that this is going to attract some great multitude of this younger generation, I think, is a foolish thing for me to think about. I think about it this way, if you give a good product there will be a lot of people, no matter how young or old, who are going to like what you do if this is the kind of music that they like. If it is hard rock and heavy metal that you like then you are going to like good hard rock and heavy metal music so, it will effect some people. I think that there are a lot of young people out there now who do appreciate music more than they did before. Just as the generation before them got sick of heavy metal music, because it was always on MTV and pumped down their throat, that is when it went to punk music and that is why this generation is embracing it a bit more because they are getting bored with some of the music that is getting shoved down their throats.
- The last tour that we did in Europe which was ourselves, Motörhead and Manowar, three bands that have not just started yesterday, (laughs) and we saw lots of young kids at the shows. We saw a lot of people who were the age that should have been there, you know, the ones who remember these bands from their generations but we saw a lot of young people at the shows. We see a lot of young people at the shows that we play in America but not to the point to where we should kid ourselves and think, "Wow, we are capturing those kids!" Nobody wants to see their dad or their grandfather on the stage, they don't want to see it, I wouldn't want to. So, you have got to be sensible about it, I don't think that we are going to be capturing this generation of people but I do think that anyone who likes the good rock and roll music that we have always made, I think that they will appreciate it, yeah.
- K2K: As you say, it is an interesting dynamic. Something else that meant a great deal to my generation was the movie and soundtrack to the film, "Heavy Metal". As there is a sequel due out this summer, I have to ask about your involvement with the original movie.
- RJD: It was a great time in my life. I think that we kind of gauge our lives on the good times and that was a time when we were riding very high in Sabbath. We had done "Heaven And Hell" and brought the band back up to respectability, which was very important to me, and I am sure it was very important to the rest of them as well but I think that it was more important to me than it was to them. I think that I cared more for their band than even they did. When we recorded the song, "Mob Rules," for that we recorded it at what used to be John Lennon's house in Ascot which was then bought by Ringo Starr so when we recorded there it was called "Startling Studios" but it was Ringo's house. It was the place where the video, "Imagine" was done, it was an amazing, amazing place and of course The Beatles are among my heroes of all time so, there we were! We recorded the song there, we were signed at Warner Brothers at the time, and they showed us the parts of the "Heavy Metal" film itself and told us, "You can choose what you would like to do" and we saw the part for "Mob Rules," actually I think that I am the only one that went so I guess that I chose the one that was "Mob Rules." When I first saw the presentation from Warner Brothers of the animation itself, it was like a porn film! I mean, there was severe screwing going on in this one, it was like, there were members all over the place in this one and eventually they had to take it back a bit because, otherwise, it would have got a rating that would have been like, triple X or something and no one would have gone to see it. We chose that particular song for it and it was very easy to do, much like this album that I have just done. If you have a plan, a concept, it makes it so much easier to follow along that plan and that was very easy to do. We wrote the song in one day, recorded it in two days and then went off on the road because we were in England at the time, and there it was. We just felt that it was really perfect for what it was all about. The song just really worked, it was one of those fortunate things. I had not heard until the last two weeks about "Heavy Metal 2000," is it by the same people, is it the same director, do you know?
- K2K: No it isn't. I have already interviewed the director, Kevin Eastman, who is the guy who created the whole "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" empire and now owns the "Heavy Metal" franchise. He is also married to Julie Strain who is the lead character in the movie and did all the poses for the female characters.
- RJD: Right, I saw her do the poses too because they showed us first the poses and how they did the animation with that. Wow! What a lucky man! Well, he was lucky then, I haven't seen what she looks like now. (laughs)
- K2K: Oh, Julie Strain is not the original movie's model she is the model and voice for the new one and, yes, he is a lucky man! (laughs)
- RJD: Oh, she is the new one! I would like to meet the old one, her name was "Tarna" in the movie but whoa, give me a break!
- K2K: That was quite a movie, certainly the fist animated sex that I had ever seen! (laughs)
- RJD: Well, it was an amazingly successful film. One of the first of its kind and I know they spent an awful lot of money on it. They are probably going to be doing a lot of digital animation for this one which will cost them a hell of a lot less and the effects will be twice as stunning, probably ten times as stunning.
- K2K: Yeah, he gave me a figure but when you are talking about a movie that most people are going to refer to as a cartoon, it was a huge amount.
- RJD: I don't remember how much the first one cost, I'll bet it was like 20 million or something although they didn't pay the bands a whole lot of money. (laughs) That part of the budget was real cheap! It was like ten bucks and a six pack or something! (laughs)
- K2K: They didn't even give you free tickets to go and see it? (laughs)
- RJD: I don't even think that we went to see it, wait, (directs question to Wendy Dio), Did we go and see it? Yeah, I think that we had a private screening and all we waited for was the ending with the credits with our names on it. "Written by. . ." And we were like "Oh there is my name on the film! It is on the screen!" I enjoyed the film, I thought that the Blue Öyster Cult section was really good. It was very well done. That is my memory of that.
- K2K: As I recall, when Dio was really starting to take off there were plans for you to direct an animated feature, what ever happened to that?
- RJD: That is something that I definitely wanted to do and I think that at that time a lot of things really fell apart including the band which was always most important. There were Sabbath things and Dio things that didn't happen and other commitments that had to be met, perhaps a record company gone or another one being approached. I think that everything just didn't fall into place at that time but this particular project leads me to that same area. I would love to see this story made into an animated film, of course, fleshed out a little bit more. As far as directing it, I don't know if I am capable these days now that I see all of the things that are being done but, again, graphic animation is so much less expensive and the tools are so amazing. I would love to do it and now there is a story where before there wasn't even a story. There has been some very good interest in the story itself and I think that we are even going to do a game for it as well, like a Sega kind of thing.
- K2K: In the past your writing style has given people the shadows and outlines of shapes and figures in a story whereas this recording and story line is fairly well defined, did you give away too much this time?
- RJD: No, I think that you have to do that. That was going to be the danger, or not really the danger but he difficult part of it, you can't hide behind innuendo. You can't use this analogy and that analogy and hope that people are going to make their own judgment, which is what I have always tried to do with songs. In this particular instance I had to do it all, I had to write everything. I enjoyed it much more than writing about the same thing because it just gives you more time to say what you have really need to say, to really flesh it out, to say what you really mean as opposed to having people write that story for you. This was much more important for me and fun for me and I found that I am very good at it.
- K2K: When you go out are you going to play the whole record from beginning to end?
- RJD: We would like to do it from beginning to end, we certainly could play it beginning to end, it is not a probably of performance but it is a problem of time. We can't do just this, we must do the other things that got us here. You must do songs from "Holy Diver" and songs from "Sacred Heart" and songs from etc, etc and then go back and do the classics at the end. This time we are not going to do the songs that we have done for the last fifteen years, we are going to do some Dio songs that have not been done for fifteen years although written fifteen years ago perhaps. (laughs) We have been asked for them over and over and over again and this time we are going to do them. Of course we are going to have to do "Rainbow in the Dark," "Holy Diver" and we will probably have to do "The Last in Line" but only those. I won't be doing any Sabbath songs this time, if we do anything it will be just one and Rainbow songs, probably just one so that will give us more time to fill out the "Magica" concept. We will probably do it, not in a Readers Digest sort of way were it is all condensed, but maybe we will take a song or two out that isn't necessary to tell a story but the story must be told. It will end up being forty to forty-five minutes, which is really very far off of the mark of the whole piece, so yeah, we will do most of it.
- K2K: Have you considered perhaps doing some special shows where you do the whole record?
- RJD: What I would really like to do is present it in a small theater with great effects, video, everything to make the story really come alive, pyrotechnics. The cost of doing that in this time is different than it was when we were bringing dragons on the road and we were playing for 20,000 people, it is difficult to do that these days and you must have money to spend money. Really, the way to do it would be to present it either in a video form with a live performance or a live performance with video to back it up in a small place, done for a couple of days, with an audience, that would be something that I would really like to do. I think that the project has been important enough to do that and we will probably do that at some point. Those are the plans but, you know the best-laid plans of mice and evil people sometimes go asunder.
- K2K: Beyond Dio, there was talk of an Elf reunion, where does that stand today?
- RJD: It is something that there has always been a lot of interest in and the questions have always been, "When are you going to get back with Rainbow again?" and "Hey, why don't you do some Elf songs?" So, this time I decided to call my cousin up, my cousin Rock Feinstein, and said, "Rock, what do you think?" and he said, "Boy would I love to do that!" He has had his own business for a while in our hometown and he owns a restaurant but still plays here and there and he probably just wants to get away from home once in a while! (laughs) He is going to do it with us, we have already written a couple of songs together, he and I and we will use our keyboard player who was with us before, Mickey Lee Soule, of course and Simon Wright, the Dio drummer is going to play on it. Strangely enough, the bass player from Manowar, Joey DeMaio is going to be the bass player on it which is pretty strange in itself but, you know, Joey grew up thirty miles from where we grew up and we were the first band that he ever saw. Joey called me and said, 'You know there is only one bass player that is going to do this" and I said, "Who?" He said, "Me!" "O.K. Joey, I am not going to argue with you." (laughs) So, probably about a year from now we will finally get a chance to have a little bit of time off to do that, hopefully. We are definitely going to do it but I doubt that we will tour with it at all. I think that we will just do an album and let it go where it goes.
- K2K: That is good to hear, great music with that band as well. O.K. as an exit question I need to ask you this, in all of the years that I have followed your career I have heard many accusations of devil worship and, basically, people constantly accusing you of being in league with Satan.
- RJD: Yes?
- K2K: Never had I seen actual proof until I heard Pat Boone's version of "Holy Diver." Why on earth did you let him do that? (laughs)
- RJD: (Laughing) Truthfully, you don't have a choice. I mean any time that you have recorded a song anybody can record it but I must tell you that he is a great guy, he really is. One of the reasons that we, not really allowed it because you have no say in it, but because that album was populated by a lot of good songs from a lot of good people. If it were not for that, if it were only "Holy Diver" and a song from Poison or a song from Ratt or some other loser somewhere down the line I never would have allowed it to happen. But, I mean, you had "Smoke on the Water" and "Crazy Train" and you had an Alice Cooper song and a lot of great stuff on it and truthfully I did resist it all the way down the line until Wendy said, "Look, he is going to do it, you may as well accept it and you may as well deal with it!" So, I said, "OK as long as I don't have to have anything to do with it!" Of course the next day she called me and said, "Pat called and he would love for you to go down and watch the recording session because he thinks that he may need some help." I said, "I told you I am not going to go down!" And of course she brow beat me, and beat me over the head, and took me down where I met Pat, and he was one of the sweetest guys that I have ever met in my life. Not only a sweet guy but he is one of the smartest people that I have ever met. He is so knowledgeable about music, not just other kinds of music, heavy metal music. I mean he knew everything about it, he knew everything. He knew all the music and loved it. When people had a go at him and said, "What is all of this devil music stuff?" His replies were things that I wish that I could have said. He is a wonderful man. I consider him a great friend and he is also a legend. This guy was a legend when Presley was a legend and he was as big of a legend as Elvis Presley was and he deserved to be. The album was funny. It was meant to be a joke but nobody got the joke! All they thought was, "This guy is serious. What is he doing?" I would do anything for Pat, and I would do it again for Pat anytime. I am a fortunate man that I met Pat Boone.
- K2K: So, if he calls you up and says, "O.K. I was thinking of you and me on a duet of 'Tutti Frutti.' Come on down?"
- RJD: If he did that, I might not go quite that far! (laughs)
- For more information about Dio - http://www.ronniejamesdio.com
- Written by David Lee Wilson
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