Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio

Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio Dio

OR

How A Kid From Upstate New York Had Such

A Profound Effect On The History Of Metal

Words and Images by Mike G

They chant it from the rafters at every show. Dio! Dio! Dio! Dio fans are vocal, belligerent even, but they love their man. The only other singer in Black Sabbath history worth a damn, Ronnie James Dio tould tell you some stories. Oh yeah, could he ever. And they'll all be in his book. But for right now, they're here. Right here. And the man is in an expansive mood. Over mint-flavored Absolut vodka, in the kitchen of his Encino, California castIe, we talk...and talk and talk and talk. The reason we're here is the release of the first-ever live Dio album, Inferno: Last In Live (Mayhem) with Tracy G, guitar, Vinnie Appice, drums and Larry Denison, bass.

But first I had to get there. We're driving through one of L.A. county's many valleys during another El Niño-inpspired deluge of torrential Cali rains. Rivers of mudsplat roll down hills to either side of us as we trudge upwards against the mighty brown to navigate our way up up to the castle itself. Dio! The upstate New York kid whose first band, Elf, was so cool, that uppon opening for Deep Purple, Purp's Ritchie Blackmore co-opted the whole Elf (minus guitar, of course) just to get Ronnie as the singer for his first solo band Rainbow. Dio! Who brought to Black Sabbath the songwriting frontman force it never had. Dio! who left a burgeoning star career to go back one more time fo Sabbath only to find misconception and deviousness. Dio! The crowds still chant it every show. Dio! Dio! Dio!

Metal Maniacs: Your vocals on the new live album are wonderful. Singers tend to get gruffer and lower as years go by. Your voice sounds even stronger!

Ronnie James Dio: I've been very fortunate. Both physical and mental because so much of it is technique. If you have a good technique, you can do just about anything. I mean, if you don't know how to use a hammer and nails, you're sure as hell not going to build a house. But if you've got technique with the tools you have, you're gonna build! And if you you keep your tools good and clean, you can use them forever.

MM: How do you keep the voice in shape? Drinking? Drugs? Cigaretts?

RJD: [laughing] My drug days are gone, but I do drink, hey, I'm a musician! I used to smoke four packs a day. I stopped 13 years ago. Drinking's actually much worse than smoking [for a singer] because it closes the sinus passages down.

MM: How did you decide which songs to use on the live album? You did Deep Purple's "Mistreated", which was great, yet left out so much in favor of a song like Sabbath's "The Mob Rules." I thought that curious.

RJD: Okay, first we must understand that my attitude about a live album is what you hear must be what you get. Not albums that go back and take six months to do, "well, let's fix aIl the parts, even the drums", that's a lie, to me. I love "Mistreated". It goes right back to Ritchie's past, a necessary link, and when we were in Rainbow we were a fledgling band who needed that connection with something Ritchie already achieved. That's why we did it on tour where he'd stick in solos and the riff from "Smoke On The Water". In choosing material, it's just really, really difficult, because there's been so much, as you say that I've done. Hell, you're gonna always anger somebody. "Hey man, how come you didn't do 'Rock And Roll Children', man? I love that song, man!"

MM: Or "Children Of The Sea".

RJD: I tried to do songs that were going to please as many people as possible, but I also tried to choose songs I knew were going to make a more interesting show for the people there that night. THAT'S who we where there for.

MM: You're not telling me that that was one show!

RJD: Yes I am.

MM: I was under the impression you picked songs-like on most live albums from different parts of the same tour.

RJD: OK, it is, actually, from two nights, but we didn't use much of the second night. We did it in Chicago and some in Germany.

At this point, Dio pours me another Absolut straight-up, agrees to play some pool in his huge pool room after the interview, and takes out Tubs, his extremely large black furry Newfoundland.

RJD: He's a bear but he's the nicest dog on Earth. We had recorded a couple of other shows too, but there was no need. We could've used the entire Chicago show or the entire German show. That's how good they both were. It's just that the Chicago audience was so great, so ready for it, it made for a great show.

MM: How does it make you feel when your crowds start chanting your name?

RJD: Real good. They do it after every song. I got the right name for it. [laughs] And they sing along. They know everything! On the live album, you can hear them singing. Other than that, the album doesn't sound like a live album to me. When I listen to it, and the band is playing, it's as good as a studio album. I'm always impressed with the crowd. I think it's amazing that a collection of people can come together and feel as one in a situation like that. I'm always awed by that, Where do they get the energy?I guess from us.I still feel I have to go out there and convince them every time. Really. To this day. Folks who've seen us live expect that. Folks who maybe came with a Dio fan and maybe love, say Megadeth, and hate Dio, can leave goin', "fuck man, they played great!" That's important to me.

MM: That's a great attitude. Your longevity speaks volumes.

RJD: Thank you. I've always thought self-importance was one of the worst things you could ever deal with. These kids, man, if you stay in touch, if you take the time to spend time with them, which I do after every single show I ever played, to this day, they'll stick with you your whole career. That's where the longevity comes in. When I do a gig, I always meet them afterwards. Always have. It's a connection. I learn from it. There've been times when I've had to stay in bed on the bus because I've been sick but I've still had , 'em pass the stuff back to me in the back of the bus to sign. But I never canceled a show in my whole career. Not one. And I never will. That's the thing I'm most proud of. I did two months with Motorhead in Germany and was so sick with the flu. I did my time on that fucking freezing bus, got stressed out every night not knowing If I'd be able to sing, but I didn't miss a show, and I still signed autographs from the back of the bus. I love my fans, man. Plus, if they advertise that I'm gonna sign autographs after the show and I don't, then who's the asshole? You tell me.

MM: Let's do some history. First came Elf in the early '7Os.

RJD: Right, but before that, the middle and late '60s was such a cool era. It was a time when record companies were populated by people who were fans and not just people who added up the numbers and said, "all right, we're getting rid of these bands". Record executives and people in A&R nurtured bands and let them take time to become the great artists that they were. Just a totally different time. Everything was very free. Politics ran rampant, a part of the music.

MM: We had a common enemy: our own government, fighting an illegal and immortal war in Vietnam.

RJD: And young people, especially students, got pissed off about that. Here we were sending kids over there to kill women and children knowing we're never gonna win and we didn't. They just kept coming back. This bred a whole new rebel state back home.

MM: And thus a sense of community amongst us longhairs. Concerts back then were communal rites of passage where you wouldn't be afraid to take a toke on a stranger's joint...where the dude sitting next to you was your brother. Damn, that sounds so corny today. Sad. So, into this web of radical politics, came Elf, from upstate New York.

RJD: We were a band who had gone to school together. We'd aIl been in other bands. But, as you know, eventually, the cream of the crop skims itself up and we all came together as Elf. Our first album was produced by [Deep Purple's] Roger Glover and Ian Paice, but really by Roger with Ian just there looking confused.

MM: So you were a Deep Purple baby band!

RJD: Yeah, I guess you call us that. We had gone to New York to audition for Clive Davis at Epic. In the meantime, Roger or Ian had come down with hepatitis on tour so it ended. They stayed in New York to shop or whatever and our manager at the time contacted them, asked, them to produce, and Roger was like, "produce? Cool!" Deep Purple was my favorite band. Here comes Roger and Ian to our showcase and I'm like, "Ohmigod! I've gotta audition under these circumstances?" But we did, and we got the deal, and Roger loved the band. He couldn't wait, so we went to Atlanta and did the first album in 10 days. I played bass then. Roger introduced us to the rest of the Deep Purple guys and we signed on to open for them.

MM: Pivotal moment here.

RJD: Not yet. We did about seven tours with them before Ritchie [Blackmore] decided to leave and use us as his new band. My cousin was always my lead guitarist, but when he left to form his own band, The Rods, we got another guitarist. Plus, I quit playing bass to just sing and we got a bass player Craig Gruber. Anyway it was a differentsounding Elf. We did two more albums produced just by Glover in a studio called Kingsley owned by Ian Gillan, so you can see the whole family vibe.

MM: So the first version of Rainbow was really Elf with Blackmore on lead guitar.

RJD: Yeah, but never say so to Ritchie. And that was probably a reason why it only lasted for just that album. I think Ritchie was very annoyed with that. He very much wanted his own band. He fully believed he needed better players, and he probably did, although I think they did a magnificent job on the first album, and it'll alwnys be my favorite Rainbow album.

MM: I would think he didn't really want lo swallow Elf whole, he just wanted your voice.

RJD: You' re right, but who does that leave out in the cold?

MM: Your band!

RJD: Yeah, the people who I grew up with, remember? We saw aIl of our first experiences together.

MM: But this was Ritchie Blackmore!

RJD: I don't care if it was Satan or God. It didn't matter to me. What's more important than the peopIe you love? Ritchie Blackmore? I had confidence in myself. I knew I was going to succeed, that Elf would've succeeded had we stayed with that. My concern was for them, so, hell yeah, when I spoke to Ritchie later, I said l'd do it if you take aIl the guys in my band minus the guitarist. He liked them all anyway. And he wanted to keep me happy. So he took them in. He told me he was dissatisfied with Purple, that he thought they were making "shoeshine music".

MM: You didn't seem to care about your guitarist. He must've bummed.

RJD: No, I didn't care about him. I didn't grow up with him. He was only in the band a short period of time, replacing my cousin. I mean, he was an ok guy but...

MM: ...not a deal breaker for this Rainbow project.

RJD: Absolutely not.

MM: You must've been riding high when he asked you.

RJD: Sure. I was very proud and flattered.

MM: And so young.

RJD: Same age as Ritchie but he had made his bones alrendy. I idolized him. The first six tours Elf did with Deep Purp1e, he never spoke to me, not a word. But, I figured, that's cool. He's a very private person, and I wanted to respect that. Hey so am I, actually. So I just let him alone. And like all good dogs do, they come to you. You leave them alone, they come to you, don't they? I mean, usually they respond to the same person who hasn't been hassling them like every other asshole. So I just left Ritchie alone, and one day he came to me in the dressing room on one of the shows we were doing in Hartford, Connecticut, and he turned around, I was alone after our set, getting ready ta go out and see Purple pIay, cause we'd done that every night. I was brushing my hair, turned around, and there's Ritchie with his guitar all dressed in black with his white shoes. He says, "heIlo, you're a great singer." And turns around and goes onstage. I remember thinking, "how cool is that?" After that we got friendly. We'd jam at small clubs with local bands. he'd keep his guitar in the trunk of his car, cause he'd get more girls that way. And we kept getting closer and closer. Until the day he felt comfortable enough - and probably threatened because Elf was doing really well - to rationalize, "I better get this guy now. He's going to have his own career and I'm going to be screwed." I know all these things because I know the whole story now. So he asked me, and with provisions, I said "Yes." And that was it.

MM: Ultimately you left Ritchie to join Black Sabbath.

RJD: [pause] No, no that's not exactly true. When I left Rainbow, or was asked to leave Rainbow it was because he wanted lo change the music. Roger Glover came in as bassist. We'd been rehearsing with Roger so Bob Dais1ey was gone, which didn't make me very happy because Bob was a good friend on the road. [Drummer] Cozy [Powell] was still there. Roger was Ritchie's errand boy and Ritchie obviously sent him in to ask me, " could you stop writing things about fantasy stuff? Couldn't you write more about chicks and relationships?" I said, "Sorry, I don't do that." A few days after that, I got a call from the manager talkin' 'bout how Ritchie wanted to break up the band. "Is he going to keep Cozy?" I asked. "Yeah." "Is he going to keep Roger?," I asked. "Yeah." Well, guess what?

MM: Everyone but you.

RJD: So, yes, it was my turn because I guess he somehow wssn't into that kind of music anymore. I mean, I wasn't about to sing songs about picking up chicks, for god's sake! I didn't want to do that, so I went off and tried to decide what I was going to do by myself. I found a couple of musicians to pIay with, guys I had known, in Connecticut. That was another one of Ritchie's things, to move from sunny California to Connecticut, it was a little bit more civilized. Oh really? We were there two years, three years. I got married in Connecticut, Ritchie was one of the ushers. So I was still in Connecticut, I didn't have anybody I knew in New York, I didn't have any connections in the city didn't really want to come to New York anyway, because the attitude, amongst New Yorkers, was that aIl the musicians from outside the city were farmers. AII I wanted to do really was someday come back to New York and headline the Garden. As Dio. Luckily I was able to do that with Sabbath. Then with Dio.

MM: What was your state of mind at that time? Did it frenk you out? Were you pissed? Worried?

RJD: Probably aIl of those things. Certainly worried because when I left that band, I mean, I'd made a mark being in Rainbow but, unfortunately in America, we were never anybody. Now 20 years after the fact everyone goes, "wow Rainbow, what a band!" But at the time? Hell, where were the fans when we played Canada's Maple Leaf Gardens with 1,500 in a 20,000- seater? America was tough, really hard. Europe, though loved us.

MM: What were your finances at the time?

RJD: Dead broke. Rainbow never made any real money.

MM: Damn! So you must've been scared shitless.

RJD: Funny but no. A bit frightened that maybe this was the end of it, because I wasn't stupid enough to think that you start a career and it lasts for 40 years until you have to stop. Y'know, we're talkin' about the music business. I realize the life span of a band is three years, then what do you do? Nobody knows you anymore. Look how lucky I've been. From Elf to Rainbow to Sabbath to Dio. I've played incredible places for millions of people. So I worked, but at that time I was thinkin' what's gonna happen now? What am I going to do?" Well, the safest thing was to go back to California because, again, that's where I knew people, and I could pick up and go, "wow there's a sky! It's blue." So I moved. Started work with Al Kooper, Jeff Baxter and some other guys. I played in two bands at the same time. Then one day I got a call from a friend who worked at a club I knew. She said she just had spoken to Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi, everybody called him Tommy at the time. Anyway, he wanted my phone number, she said, because he heard my Rainbow stuff and "wants to talk to you." I said "of course." I thought that sounded interesting. Tony calls the next day. Iommi: "Hey Ronnie, I heard you left Rainbow. I love the things you do. I'd like to, when I'm not with Sabbath, get together and do something with you sometime." Dio: "Sounds great to me." Iommi: "What do you think about musicians?" Dio: "I don't know." Iommi: "Well, I don't like to work with anybody but Bill [Ward], so we'd like to keep him." Dio: "No problem. In fact, I do have a few ideas for people." So we talked and talked and talked over the course of about a month or so. Tony was in L.A. at the time, moved back to England, I had his telephone number and would call him there, and eventually the calls stopped coming in and I never talked to him again. They just stopped. "Tony in?" "No, sorry." "Tony in?" "No, sorry." Tony's a little bit like that, he can't deal with reality sometimes, he just puts it off.

So he goes back to this L.A. club where I hang out, The Rainbow. I was talking to a girl, a good friend, Sharon Arden [who later became Sharon Osbourne, wife/manager of Ozzy - Ed.] We were hangin' out. Sharon knew Tony and those guys because her father Don had Black Sabbath signed to do a record for Jet Records. Sharon leaves the table, comes back, says Tony would like me to come up to the house they were playing at. They were living in this beautiful place in Bel Air where they had taken the garage and made it into a rehersal studio to write the album. And that's the reason I didn't hear from Tony. They got offered all this money to do a 10th anniversary reunion tour. But instead of telling me about it, he just let it ride. So I go up to the house. Bill, Tony and Geezer are there with no Ozzy. We're sittin' around talkin', havin' a great time. Really got along well, as peopIe, screw the musician part. So we start talking music. Tony tells me what he's looking for; how he feels he's not getting it from Ozzy. Iommi: "Can I show you something?" Dio: "Yeah, sure." Iommi: "You wanna go see the rehearsal place?" Dio: "No problem." Iommi: [At the rehearsal place] "I'm gonna play this for you." Dio: "Wow, that's really cool. I could write something to that." Iommi: [After playing the rest of the piece] "Do you think you could do something with that?" Dio: "Could you give me a minute?" Iommi: "Sure." Dio: [After he jots some stuff down] "Okay, wanna try it?" Tony did the intro, you could see him beaming, grinning ear to ear. It was so happening. I took on that song and did something with it that had musical content. Now I'm not slagging Ozzy here, Ozzy does one thing. And he does it good. Anyway, we finished it, and that song was "Children Of The Sea." Really dynamic. The first song we wrote together. We finished and went back in the house. Iommi: "That's it. Will you play in this band?" Dio: "It sounds interesting to me. You want me to come back tomorrow and do some rehearsals and see what we can come up with?" Iommi: "Yes." So Tony goes and fires Ozzy and Ozzy is really pissed off and I'm blamed for the whole thing. Hey l'm sorry, this is the way life works, y'know? I knew through aIl this time Ozzy was not very happy with me. He should've learned that it was his fault, not mine. But anyway, that's water under the dam, the beginning of the Heaven And Hell saga. And that's how that started.

MM: And two albums later you leave Sabbath to form Dio. I must say, in going back and listening again lo Heaven And Hell and Mob Rules, taken in the totality of your career they're more now like Dio albums than Black Sabbath albums.

RJD: There's a reason for that. When we starled Heaven And Hell, Tony had been limited to being able to do one thing, he was not getting feedback from the singer. [Ozzy] never said stuff like, "hey, let's change this chord." He rarely wrote anything. All those things were Geezer's, not to take any of Ozzy's lustre away but let's tell the truth, that's the way it is. To me, if you're a total person, you do everything. You can play and you can make suggestions, you're a musician.I've always prided myself on being a musician first and then a singer afterward. So I was able to do all those things and bring to Tony something he had never experienced before, and that was a musician who could sing, and lend him down the path that was going to be better for him. So, he was inspired by what I was giving him, and this brought out all his latent talent. He's the gretest riff writer on the face of the earth. But he also had great thoughts, so because of our friendship, because musically we got along so well, that's why that band was able to evolve, and that's probably why you today hear it as a Dio thing, because my suggestions were always there. And believe me, I'm not taking credit for the songs, it's not that way at all, but just my infusion and Tony's, he made me what I am as well. It was a team effort. See Geezer had left during the writing of Heaven And Hell. But with him back, he and Tony are what heavy metal, especially doom metal, was all about. These were the first people to really pull everything together! Geezer's a stunning player with incredible style, tota1ly one-of-a-kind. And Bill Ward? Man, just the same. Both so unschooled, guys who picked up these instruments, played them, and it worked. Especially Tony, who's such a natural. He didn't know what the chords were called, he didn't know why they were called that and didn't know a diminished from a flatted fifth, but he knew what sounded good and that's what made that band so wonderful. We were all so naive about everything, life, money. I mean, here's a band, Sabbath, who should've made millions and millions of dollars, but had been screwed, had nothing left at all. So we were able to start on the same page. They had nothing, I had nothing. MM: Get back to when Tony asked you into Sabbath but had contracted to do the 10th Anniversary Tour with Ozzy, Bill and Geezer. RJD: Yes, Tony didn't want to do this tour. He wanted to tour around doing what he did with me. But they offered the money. Iommi: "What do you think?" Dio: "Cool, man, do it, take it, I'll wait" yet thinking a mile-a-minute, "no, don't get the money, screw, 'em, let's do what we do, and then you can fail and it will be my fault. I don't want to have that hanging over my head. What a fiasco." Iommi: "Thanks, man." Dio: "That's it, I'm outta here. Thanks guys, I loved playing with you, it was all a lot of fun." Exit Dio The tour was going to last only for a month. Tony had been telling me, "I just don't know Ozzy anymore." Dangle, dangle, dangle, money, money, money. Tony goes. So now, despite him touring, I have to go meet their manager because Tony wants to make sure I'm still in place when the tour's over because he wants the next album to be with me, not Ozzy. The month stretches to three, to six, to nine, then to a year! We finally start Heaven And Hell, work most of the material up before going to Miami. We work up more songs waiting for Geezer, "Die Young" among them, and get 10 songs. Then we go to England but the guys start to get into tax trouble, Bill's mother dies, Tony has to leave, but we start "Neon Knights" in a hotel room and finish it in France.

MM: Whew! Let's get to the exit of Sabbath and the entering of Dio.

RJD: That would be '83. We're mixing for Live Evil at L.A.'s Record Plant. We'd go in 2:00 every day. Except this one Monday. It's 4:00 and no Tony. Same thing Tuesday. Only the engineer's there. I found out eventually we'd go in at two, he'd leave, and call them up to come in. Why? Why? What's the point? So this idiot engineer tells Tony I'm messing with the mixes. Well hell, I'm not gonna just sit there [in the studio] with my thumb up my ass! Let's hear it! I was doing what I do! I wasn't producing! Anyway, this drunk engineer tells Tony, "Ronnie and [drummer] Vinnie [Appice] were turning up the drums and the voice, lowering your guitar."Hold on! We weren't mixing. We were just listening! Maybe because there were a lot of drugs going around at that time, a lot of bad shit, and you know what that does to people's heads, that led to the demise of it all. And it wasn't Vinnie or I doing the drugs! Hey, I'm not telling stories out of court here. This is what went down from my perspective. I finally got a call from Geezer. Geezer: "Look, maybe we should just let Tony mix, because it doesn't seem to be working out." Dio: "Fine, but...this is it right? This is going to be one of those 'I'll never talk to you again' jobs? I mean, after aIl, you're my best friend in the band. There's going to be no more talking?" Geezer: "No, that's not the case at all, man." We didn't talk for 10 years. That's how that game goes. The engineer was telling Tony that Vinnie and I were going in and doing it ourselves.

MM: What did the engineer have to gain from this?

RJD: I have no idea.

MM: Didn't you and Tony ever get together personally about this?

RJD: No.

MM: Why?

RJD: Because Tony didn't answer the phone! That's why! I tried! It only makes sense if you think of some of the underlying reasons behind it. Live Evil was incredibly successful. Maybe he just wanted total control. What was it that people were alwnys whispering in Tony's ear? And let's face it, Tony's Black Sabbath. Not Ozzy, not Geezer, not Bill, not me, not anybody. It's Tony.You take Tony out of it and what have you got? You've got Ozzy, Geezer and Bill. But you get Tony in it and you've got Black Sabbath. Tony is Sabbath, he always will be, and I never ever disputed that. Tony's not one of those people to come onto you like, "you need to do this, this is the way it's going to be," Tony's not like that. He's a great person. Great sense of humor. I love Tony.

MM: But he seems flawed.

RJD: Well, after we got back together for the next album, he said to me, "Look, we listened to the wrong person. I'm sorry. I realize you had nothing to do with what went on. I'm sorry."Well, that could've been coming from the back of his ass, too but I like to give him the benefit of the doubt, because first off, I was going to work with him again, and I genuinely liked him. I understand him, and I don't feel slighted or hurt by some of the things that happened in the past. Plus the fact that, hey, he kicked my ass into Dio, didn't he? Wow! I could never really be pissed off with that! So all along, things work out for the best, that's the story. You'd have to dig into Tony to find out more.

MM: When you started having big success with Dio, did you ever look askance at all those bogus versions of Black Sabbath after you left that should've just been called The Tony lommi Bands?

RJD: Of course. Absolutely. I always looked at it that way because I was so proud to be in that band. You have no idea. All the wonderful things they'd done with Ozzy then with me, I didn't think they deserved to be on the bottom of the pile. They were so much better than anyone ever knew I was lucky to be able to bring some of that out, and annoyed by the fact that they were being shat upon. I wanted to be part of a comeback. It just killed me when I saw what he was doing to it. Tony was afrnid to be the focal point. He felt comfortable under the umbrella of Black Sabbath. There was a time there in '86 when he was supposed to do a band called Seventh Star with Glenn Hughes. He even called that Black Sabbath and Seventh Star became the album name. So that's what happened aIl the way down the line. He stayed under the umbrella of Sabbath and he just diluted it to the point of where it became a joke. The Ozzy section of Sabbath, and the Dio section, were both things to be proud of. The rest of it wasn't. Period.

MM: Now here's where it gets interesting. You're an international rockstar at this point yet you chuck it all to go back to Sabbath after all this!

RJD: I always felt we quit too quickly, only two studio albums. And I loved playing with Tony and Geezer. When the opportunity arose, I knew what Tony was capable of. I knew what I was capable of with Tony I just wanted to do it. We didn't plan on doing it for just one album, it was to be for real, but, as usual, Sabbath blew up in our faces. It became one of those situations again that was unviable. One tour and it all culminated in the "Dio-refusing-to-play-on-shows-with-Ozzy"' controversy. Sure, I refused! We'd done Europe, America, and a second American leg. Almost two straight months! As Black Sabbath. Then I'm told for Long Beach Arena we can't go on as Black Sabbath, the headliner, which we'd done all this time, we were now going to be the opening act for Ozzy. Oh no. After all shit he said, not only about me, but about Tony? I said, "You can swallow this?" You know why? The bucks again. I take that crap all the time. "You left man, you didn't play." Rob Halford filled in for me. "How come you weren't there?"' Aw, none of of your fucking business, man. I just told people why. You summed it up best for me, Mike. I left Dio, I left my own identity to go back to Sabbath again because I believed in what we were doing, and what happens to me? At the end of the day, as usual, it's my fault again. It's always my fault. That's okay, it doesn't matter I got the chance to do the album I wanted to do [Dehumunizer], it just happened to be a one-off again and that's the way it went. I'll always be proud of that album. It's better than almost anything anybody else has ever done with them. It was just a great album. It was the album that no one expected Sabbath to make. They expected Heaven And Hell again, that's what they all kept waiting for. Suddenly out came this much more modern project, lyrically. Because I refused to do those two shows, we did the tour, right after those two shows we went to San Francisco and played the two shows we were supposed to do. We finished the night, and the last night we went, "Thank you! goodnight!" and they're gone. I'm on the bus goin', "am I that much of an asshole?" And that was the end of it. Since that time we've been able to speak here and there, and, y'know, I have no grudges. Our problem was no communicntion. Tony and his dog would be in the back and me and Vinnie would be in the front, and Geezer would navigate between the two to keep everybody happy.

MM: As far as the future, I definitely sense a new groundswell of metal support in the states. With bands like Pantera, Sabbath back again, you, a few others, man, maybe metal could really come back. Wait'll you hear Max Cavalera's mixing of hiphop, Jamaican toasting, death metal and worldbeat in Soulfly!

RJD: Aah, it's a young man's game, You've got to captivate the youth market. Let someone else do it. I'm never going to be the savior of anythtng. Max might be just lucky enough to have that mishmosh where he doesn't have a clue about what he's doing. Maybe it'll work, maybe not. People are people. I don't give a shit if you play toasters or brooms or play with yourself. You know what they want to hear? At the fucking end of the day they want to hear 'Louie, Louie'! You know why I say that? Because people can relate to things like [does the riff to "Louie, Louie"]. Check those chord changes out, man. Tell me one song with those chord changes that hasn't been a fucking hit! You can't, 'cause they're all over the fucking place. And you see, you're dealing with the musical mentality of people. I'm not calling them stupid or brilliant but if you're dealing with this great volume of people, what piece of the pie do you expect to be or understand great musicians? A little sliver? So take it out. Now who're you playing for? You're playing for people who want to fucking hear 'Louie, Louie.' You could take toasters and refrigerators and guns and fucking cannons and it'll still only be the media who loves it."

RONNIE JAMES DIO select discography

with ELF

Elf - 1972, Epic

Trying To Burn The Sun - 1974, Purple

Carolina County Ball - 1975, Purple

with RAINBOW

Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow - 1975, Polydor

Rainbow Rising - 1976, Polydor

On Stage - 1977, Polydor

Long Live Rock 'N' Roll - 1978, Polydor

with BLACK SABBATH

Heaven And Hell - 1980, Warner Brothers

Mob Rules - 1981, Warner Brothers

Live Evil - 1982, Warner Brothers

Dehumanizer - 1992, Reprise/Warner Brothers

with DIO

Holy Diver - 1983, Warner Brothers

The Last In Line - 1984, Warner Brothers

Sacred Heart - 1985, Warner Brothers

Intermission - 1986, Warner Brothers

Dream Evil - 1987, Warner Brothers

Lock Up The Wolves - 1990, Reprise

Strange Highways - 1993, Reprise

Angry Machines - 1996, Mayhem

Inferno: Last In Live - 1998, Mayhem

This interview is taken from Metal Maniacs, August 1998 issue.