RONNIE JAMES DIO
**Exclusive**
By A. Lee Graham
Posted 10/05/04 (Pictured
io band. Ronnie James Dio appears second from top leftt) Ronnie James Dio has a secret.
The man who weaves rainbows into lyrical gold, slays dragons and rules metaldom with menacing finger gestures worships Wal-Mart.
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"When you're on the road, you'd be surprised what a relief it is to find batteries in the middle of the night," says Dio, praising what many consider retail's "Great Satan." Then again, evoking ol' Scratch - at least lyrically - has been a hallmark of the vocal legend for three decades. Dio has explored, battled and survived life's darker side unscathed. Not even personal treachery has affected his outlook.
"Look, I'm not holding anyone back. If someone wants to leave Dio, that's up to them."
When Vivian Campbell broke ranks following Sacred Heart, fans gasped. But Dio soldiered on with Craig Goldy, who became the vocalist's anchor in turbulent waters.
Sure, Rowan Robertson, Tracy G and Doug Aldrich traded guitar duties, but the revolving ax slot always ended with Goldy. And he injects Master of the Moon with welcome firepower.
"Craig's just very focused, as am I," says Dio. "It's great having him back on board." With Aldrich in Whitesnake - and longtime band mates Jimmy Bain and Vinny Appice gone - Dio soldiers on and prepares for another world tour.
After chatting with ElectricBasement's chief cellar dweller (see interview here), the Man on the Silver Mountain delves further into Master of the Moon, the purported metal renaissance and a career that shows no signs of slowing.
Master of the Moon caps a quite a productive period. Between Killing the Dragon, touring and lineup shifts, you've kept quite busy. Does all this mean a resurgence of traditional metal?
Never again will it be like it was. Anyone who feels that is kidding themselves. Every generation has its moments, and the '80s had a giant metal period. You've got to have three strong acts on the bill these days. It could be us, the Scorpions - who knows? But anyone who says those days are back better take a good, hard look.
Yeah, the field's much more crowded today.
And the advent of digital recordings makes music easier to create. The problem is there's so many bands, few filter up through the ranks. In the past, record labels gave artists time to develop.
I'm happy there's another generation of people coming around and saying classic metal is really good stuff. Priest, Maiden and ourselves - all the people out there doing it - want to be as good as their peers were. Like Zeppelin, Purple - those kinds of bands. I don't know if many bands regarded as the metal architects are still around.
Attaining longevity seems impossible these days. If bands don't score a hit single right out of the gate, they're dropped. Labels just don't nurture careers anymore.
Exactly. You're exactly right, Lee. That's so important. Even these days, if you have a hit record from the get-go, if your second record doesn't succeed, you're gone. It's a throwaway world now.
You touched on that theme with "Throw Away Children" from Killing the Dragon.
It has become a throwaway world - not only for musicians, but for life itself. We have no consideration for life: Hey, let's start a war. When will we stop: when see enough body bags? We need the intelligence to say, why do we start wars in the first place?
War is often inevitable; I'm not naïve. But we seem to have retrograded into the old way of, "Let's go kill someone." The world has become more callous than ever before. Terrorism makes us realize there are people who don't care if they die. If someone comes at me with a gun, I'm like, "See ya." If you have no care for your life and believe in your cause and it doesn't matter to you if you pass on, then that's the most dangerous person on the face of the planet.
If this is indeed a throwaway world, your Children of the Night project seems hopeful. I hear you're molding the next Hear 'N Aid project to aid the cause.
It will be a similar project. In 1985, we recorded one long song with different guitar players, singers, etc. I decided to make another album. But we're also re-releasing the Hear 'N Aid song on CD.
That's great news. I've worn the grooves out of my vinyl!
(laughs) Yeah, lots of people want a new copy.
Specifically, how will the proceeds be used?
To help the kids.You don't have to send kids back to the same dysfunctional environment they came from. Because this is private, kids can stay as long as we can keep them.
We built a school and home for kids in LA for them to be educated from the age of 12 to 18. We teach them and ask what they'd like to do. A lot of artistic kids come to LA, many of them running away from dysfunction to become rock stars or actresses.
What better way to give back than for artists to help out? Funds go to maintaining the facility, getting people out of the street. We wrest these kids away from pimps and drug dealers. It's not subsidized by the government, so all the money has to come from private sources.
Sounds like a great project. As for Hear 'N Aid, will there be a DVD?
Yeah, we'll do it again so everyone can have a more permanent log of it.
Let's talk vocals. What's your secret? Water with lemon? Herbal tea? Lozenges?
Lemon and lozenges and throat sprays and those kinds of things are to be used when you have a problem. Those are remedies and not the things that keep you going. The thing that keeps you going is technique. You have to know how to do what you're doing. We're talking about a very physical instrument here. A singer's greatest fear is the cold or the flu.
If you've got technique, you can sing though most of that - certainly not up to standard, but good enough. If you have technique, you sing from the diaphragm. I started playing trumpet at 5 years old and applied that same training to vocals. You've got to have a strong constitution and want to succeed and have high standards and high goals. I've always instilled that in the players in Dio.
Master of the Moon follows numerous lineup shifts. Craig Goldy's back, replacing Doug Aldrich. Rudy Sarzo replaced Jeff Pilson who replaced Jimmy Bain. And finally, you lost Vinny Appice, with Simon Wright back in the fold. Why the huge turnover?
I think these things come in spurts. So it looks like more turnover than there really was. In the case of Simon, he's stayed with me seven or eight years. I couldn't be happier. Rock music starts with drums and bass anyway. Simon, having started in AC/DC when he was 18, he played in a band that wouldn't allow drum fills. It was Angus (Young) and Bon (Scott) in the early days and Brian (Johnson) now just belting it out without lots of fills and flourishes.
Dio is a different kind of band than that. We have a lot more personality. So Simon, I've watched him grow. That's my greatest pleasure. I consider myself more of a teacher than just a musician. I've had a little control in maybe shaping him a little bit myself.
As for Jimmy, I thought he would be with us on this album. Our last tour with Maiden was successful. I thought everything was finally in place. I guess these are answers you should get from Jimmy. But I was definitely surprised.
So it came as a total shock?
Absolutely. I was very surprised. When Jimmy left, we were writing at the time. When we did the album, we contacted Jeff (Pilson), who had played with us before. Jeff's reputation is great, and he's a brilliant person, but the reality was Jeff couldn't play with us on the road because he and his wife were having their first child. So Jeff came in and played, so I don't consider him a replacement. He was only there for that one single purpose.
As for Craig, he 's been in and out a couple of times. That shows it wasn't a personal thing. The last time he left, he left for his own personal reasons - not him against me or someone else in the band. He had his own personal demons he had to deal with.
Doug left for good reason. The kind of music Whitesnake makes is the kind of music Doug liked more. That's what he played in Lion, Burning Rain and, now, Whitesnake.
The kind of music Whitesnake makes is more blues-based. With David Coverdale offering him probably a whole lot of money, that's fine. I understand. Doug's such a good player, such a good person. He's truthful and honest and a friend 'til the end.
I couldn't be happier for Doug. We decided to see if Craig had sorted out his problems, and it turns out he was ready to devote himself to us. As for all the change, when you're actually in the band, it doesn't seem like that much.
But outside looking in, the turnover seemed to happen all at once.
Yes, it did. Within four months or so, it looked like, "Wow, there's lots of change going on here." But the core has stayed here. I mean, Scott Warren, our keyboard player's been here seven or eight years.
The new material seems to continue the metal mission of Killing the Dragon, favoring anthems over epics. Was that your intention?
The intent was to write Magica 2 and 3. That was to be one product. This time, we began with that in our minds. Then things changed when Jimmy left. That took away from what was going to be a far-reaching project.
We decided to do a proper album. Magica was still on our minds. But textures became more midtempo and heavier, a doomier kind of material. It metamorphosed into a Killing the Dragon, song-type approach.
So Jimmy's departure distracted you from focusing on continuing Magica.
Well, I could have continued, but it would have meant releasing an album two or three months later than I did. There were touring considerations to look at, and we had committed to tour Europe and the album would be released by that time.
What distinguishes Master of the Moon from Killing the Dragon?
I think Killing the Dragon was a little more cheerful, a little bit ... We weren't quite so true to life. This one came at a time of extreme terrorism, the war, global warming, hundreds of thousands of people dying in Africa with HIV.
I'm a person of the world. So those things were affecting me. It colored my writing. They were more real to life. Like "The Man Who Would Be King," "The End of the World," "The Eyes."
If you look at those, they are more about what people are feeling at this particular moment. Especially a song like "The Eyes". It's about extreme paranoia, using someone's lack of privacy keeping secrets unto themselves. You have iris scanning, fingerprinting at airports. It's a pretty bad time for people concerned with privacy. I equated privacy with that.
But it's more than paranoia. The song reflects legitimate fear since the world actually is dangerous and getting more so.
That's true. But you must be paranoid about what's going on. We're preached to every day about who's sitting to your left and right, who's that person wearing that hat. Is that person Islamic? It's ingrained into us. I understand what you're talking about, though, Lee. But people have the right to be paranoid.
When you start writing, do you follow the same formula with each release, or do you use each opportunity to experiment with new ideas?
I try to be more adventurous. But when you realize what you are and you have a built-in and genuine respect for your audience, you have an obligation to the people who have supported you over the years.
You don't want to confuse your fans. I mean, you don't want to do a jazz album, a pop album. Sometimes you can pull it off, but more often, they can venture off and dilute what they do best.
I always preferred Sabbath's Dio years. Nothing against Ozzy; those first few albums lay the metal blueprint. But Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules, in my opinion, are also metal classics. Do you ever feel overlooked or cheated in the great scheme of things?
No. I never felt that way. I look at it this way: before I was in the band, they had two miserable, unsuccessful albums. That was the end of them. They didn't want to play with Ozzy anymore. I can't find the word here, Lee. He just didn't want to work hard anymore. I'm not trying to put words into Ozzy's mouth. I do know what Tony (Iommi) felt at that time. It was Tony's band. Tony created the riffs, Tony created the whole magic of it all.
I don't feel left behind at all because the success of Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules overrides anyone who would say he never got respected here.
Is there even the smallest chance of reforming the Dio-era Sabbath lineup? Have you and Tony talked about that?
No. I think, once again, there has been too much water under too many bridges. You can never recapture that kind of magic anyway. I was pleased with Dehumanizer. Everyone expected Heaven and Hell, but we did a left turn with Dehumanizer. That was the way it was supposed to be.
Same with Vivian and Vinny. It worked for a couple albums; then, it got to a real deteriorating pointwhere everyone was gone.
Speaking of Vivian, I realize there's no love lost between you two. But do you keep in touch?
No, I don't. I haven't heard from him at all, and I heard some horrible things he said about me in the press. My lot in life is not to throw stones at anyone. If that's the case with him, making the comments he made, I want no part of him, either. I see Vinny on occasion, but it'll never be the same.
Jimmy left on a positive note. What happens is you're in a band, it's you against the world. Once you have different band mates, it's like being back on the same team and going back to school and it's Friday night: "I'm here again." And everyone says it's like being back home. But the camaraderie's not there. Again, once that goes away, it's hard to get it back.
While we're discussing underrated albums, I thought Strange Highways and Angry Machines were really strong, but different. Tracy G definitely brought something to the band. To what do attribute the lackluster response those albums received? Did fans just want classic Dio?
I think Strange Highways will always be an album I liked. Angry Machines was very confusing. I thought we did a real left turn there. Tracy was not the greatest solo player. It wasn't his fault. He gave what he had, and I couldn't have asked for more than that.
Several years ago, you mentioned an animated movie along the lines of "Heavy Metal." Any progress on that project?
That was going to be with Magica. That isn't finished yet. As for when it's finished, it's a matter of time. There are only so many minutes in a day.
Can fans expect an eventual release of the "Black and Blue" tour movie, with Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult?
I know nothing about that, but if you've heard rumors about it, it must be true. As soon as you're "not" anymore, people will make money on your "not" being there. Most artists monetarily don't receive what they deserve because someone else owns it and you have no control over it. I have no problem if they choose to release that.
So what are your tour plans?
We'll finish touring at the first week of November, and after the first of the year,we will attack the Children of The Night project.
Any truth to the rumored tour with Priest?
I haven't heard that rumor, but if it came up, it would be a helluva thing to do. We're great friends.
