I read this and figured some of you might want to read it too, its about his time with Dio and Whitesnake etc. He doesnt like the grand hobbit too much...
You have made a huge contribution to hard rock history. I mean, there's so incredibly few people who've done what you have.....
The real irony of that is I actually don't like hard rock music. I know it's a strange thing to say, but I don't really care about my past contributions. Even now I still get these guys coming up to me going 'Duuuuuuuude!', giving me the Dio devil sign and yelling "Holy Diver!!" and "Rainbow In The Dark, whoo hoo!!" and it's cool that they remember it, but that music never mattered to me - and still doesn't. But what about the writing of it? These are some of the most recognisable songs to a hard rock fan of the 70s and 80s. Again, they first thing that comes to mind, is why wasn't I actually paid for my contribution to it. Does that tarnish the pride in it? I suppose it does in a way, but only in a little way. I mean, it never did at the time but as years go by and you think about it, it seems a bit fucked up. I did a job for someone and wasn't paid for it..... and that's just wrong.
But I must admit I really don't share your opinion that they were major bands. You can't really count Whitesnake as I really had nothing to do with Whitesnake. I just played guitar for one tour. You didn't write anything? No, no one in the band that I toured with had anything to do with the writing of any of it, except of course David Coverdale. He had gone through making that record with John Sykes and a bunch of studio guys and basically, he fired them all and put a new band together for the video and we then went on tour. So we were the face of the record without having contributed.
And as with Dio, I don't think that we were that big a band and certainly not all that influential. I agree that the first two records I did with Dio were the best they've ever done. I feel he's yet to better them and I'd imagine there are a lot of people who'd agree but compared to bands like Zeppelin, Purple and Sabbath, they didn't have much impact. But you must miss the fact that in Dio you were the looker in the band. Well jeez, I was half the age of them so I'd be kinda worried if that weren't the case. I wasn't even shaving at that point....! So what were Dio and Coverdale like to work for? Dio is a horrible, horrible human being. And you can quote me on that. Which is strange 'cause all his fans seem to think he's the loveliest person ever. He will go out of his way for them. He'll stand in the pouring rain and driving winds for 14 hours to sign autographs so that every single person has had absolutely everything they wanted signed and he will look every one of them in the eye and shake their hand and thank them for being there. And then he'll go in and shout at the people who actually work for him and humiliate them in whatever way he can, and he'll do it in public, because he has this small man Napoleonic thing where he has to be the top sausage and he has to dominate them maliciously. If he ever had a problem with someone, he would choose to bawl them out onstage during soundcheck whilst he's on the mic so that he ensures that everyone else heard that he was putting someone down. And it didn't matter if you were in the band or in the crew, he just wasn't a nice person. Professionally though, he's a great, great singer..... Probably the best there's ever been in hard rock.
He was very consistent. Oh yeah, night after night, he was absolutely on the money. An incredibly strong voice and within that niche genre of dungeons and dragons and rainbows and midgets..... You know, the sorta old school heavy metal, he's an incredible talent. But he's an awful businessman and way more importantly, one of the vilest people in the industry. Your sacking was particularly nasty. It was, yeah. It was basically that when we started, he had promised us that we'd be on an equal footing (financially) once Dio got established. He had said that by the third album it would all be sorted -- the third album came and we had had a couple of platinum records and done successful tours and all of which we got nothing of. I mean, we were salaried guys and it really, really hurt when we were playing the big venues like the Los Angeles Forum and Madison Square Garden and selling them out, doing massive business with a platinum record.....and to be paid less than the lighting designer or the sound engineer. That's just wrong, especially considering that you'd written the music as well. But surely you must have got royalties? We got none of the royalties from the record, absolutely nothing. And we had to fight to even get a meagre publishing deal. If you wrote all of the music of a song with Ronnie, you'd get 25% tops - not 50%, as he'd take the other 25% for arrangement or some other miscellaneous title he'd throw in to screw you over..... And it's just horrible! On top of that, to be treated like a bag of shit as well -- so I called him on it and he sacked me between legs of the tour and got Craig Goldie to replace me. Was it a relief? Absolutely! I've never had any regrets about it 'cause it was the right thing to do! And how long before the Whitesnake gig came up? Not long at all. Certainly within the year. And in the meantime I had worked on some stuff with some friends from Ireland, called Trinity, but we were basically clueless. We had a myriad of different musical styles and we were just way too experimental to be marketable. We certainly recorded some stuff together but around the time that we realized Trinity was going to have to change direction in order to be at all viable, I got a call from Geffen records asking if I was interested in the Whitesnake gig. So they sent me a copy of the record and as soon as I heard it, I knew it was going to be phenomenally huge, so of course I said yes. And the incredible irony is that I did three albums and three tours with Dio and then I did one tour with Whitesnake on the back of an album I had absolutely nothing to do with -- and I made probably made 8 times as much money as I had made in my 4 years with Dio.
But basically David Coverdale is a more honourable, generous human being than Ronnie.
You have made a huge contribution to hard rock history. I mean, there's so incredibly few people who've done what you have.....
The real irony of that is I actually don't like hard rock music. I know it's a strange thing to say, but I don't really care about my past contributions. Even now I still get these guys coming up to me going 'Duuuuuuuude!', giving me the Dio devil sign and yelling "Holy Diver!!" and "Rainbow In The Dark, whoo hoo!!" and it's cool that they remember it, but that music never mattered to me - and still doesn't. But what about the writing of it? These are some of the most recognisable songs to a hard rock fan of the 70s and 80s. Again, they first thing that comes to mind, is why wasn't I actually paid for my contribution to it. Does that tarnish the pride in it? I suppose it does in a way, but only in a little way. I mean, it never did at the time but as years go by and you think about it, it seems a bit fucked up. I did a job for someone and wasn't paid for it..... and that's just wrong.
But I must admit I really don't share your opinion that they were major bands. You can't really count Whitesnake as I really had nothing to do with Whitesnake. I just played guitar for one tour. You didn't write anything? No, no one in the band that I toured with had anything to do with the writing of any of it, except of course David Coverdale. He had gone through making that record with John Sykes and a bunch of studio guys and basically, he fired them all and put a new band together for the video and we then went on tour. So we were the face of the record without having contributed.
And as with Dio, I don't think that we were that big a band and certainly not all that influential. I agree that the first two records I did with Dio were the best they've ever done. I feel he's yet to better them and I'd imagine there are a lot of people who'd agree but compared to bands like Zeppelin, Purple and Sabbath, they didn't have much impact. But you must miss the fact that in Dio you were the looker in the band. Well jeez, I was half the age of them so I'd be kinda worried if that weren't the case. I wasn't even shaving at that point....! So what were Dio and Coverdale like to work for? Dio is a horrible, horrible human being. And you can quote me on that. Which is strange 'cause all his fans seem to think he's the loveliest person ever. He will go out of his way for them. He'll stand in the pouring rain and driving winds for 14 hours to sign autographs so that every single person has had absolutely everything they wanted signed and he will look every one of them in the eye and shake their hand and thank them for being there. And then he'll go in and shout at the people who actually work for him and humiliate them in whatever way he can, and he'll do it in public, because he has this small man Napoleonic thing where he has to be the top sausage and he has to dominate them maliciously. If he ever had a problem with someone, he would choose to bawl them out onstage during soundcheck whilst he's on the mic so that he ensures that everyone else heard that he was putting someone down. And it didn't matter if you were in the band or in the crew, he just wasn't a nice person. Professionally though, he's a great, great singer..... Probably the best there's ever been in hard rock.
He was very consistent. Oh yeah, night after night, he was absolutely on the money. An incredibly strong voice and within that niche genre of dungeons and dragons and rainbows and midgets..... You know, the sorta old school heavy metal, he's an incredible talent. But he's an awful businessman and way more importantly, one of the vilest people in the industry. Your sacking was particularly nasty. It was, yeah. It was basically that when we started, he had promised us that we'd be on an equal footing (financially) once Dio got established. He had said that by the third album it would all be sorted -- the third album came and we had had a couple of platinum records and done successful tours and all of which we got nothing of. I mean, we were salaried guys and it really, really hurt when we were playing the big venues like the Los Angeles Forum and Madison Square Garden and selling them out, doing massive business with a platinum record.....and to be paid less than the lighting designer or the sound engineer. That's just wrong, especially considering that you'd written the music as well. But surely you must have got royalties? We got none of the royalties from the record, absolutely nothing. And we had to fight to even get a meagre publishing deal. If you wrote all of the music of a song with Ronnie, you'd get 25% tops - not 50%, as he'd take the other 25% for arrangement or some other miscellaneous title he'd throw in to screw you over..... And it's just horrible! On top of that, to be treated like a bag of shit as well -- so I called him on it and he sacked me between legs of the tour and got Craig Goldie to replace me. Was it a relief? Absolutely! I've never had any regrets about it 'cause it was the right thing to do! And how long before the Whitesnake gig came up? Not long at all. Certainly within the year. And in the meantime I had worked on some stuff with some friends from Ireland, called Trinity, but we were basically clueless. We had a myriad of different musical styles and we were just way too experimental to be marketable. We certainly recorded some stuff together but around the time that we realized Trinity was going to have to change direction in order to be at all viable, I got a call from Geffen records asking if I was interested in the Whitesnake gig. So they sent me a copy of the record and as soon as I heard it, I knew it was going to be phenomenally huge, so of course I said yes. And the incredible irony is that I did three albums and three tours with Dio and then I did one tour with Whitesnake on the back of an album I had absolutely nothing to do with -- and I made probably made 8 times as much money as I had made in my 4 years with Dio.
But basically David Coverdale is a more honourable, generous human being than Ronnie.
