June 26, 2010

An Interview With Ronnie James Dio

By Running With Scissors Columnist Tom Farrell

Ronnie James Dio was one of my first interviews ever. Back in 1984, Dio sold out the San Diego Sports Arena, pulling in over 10,000 heavy metal fans - while church protesters picketed the former Black Sabbath and Rainbow frontman outside.

His album, Last in Line, was the cause celebre of every metalhead worldwide, and here I was about to interview the guy that thousands of my fellow teens were just screaming their heads off over.

That was 26 years ago. Ronnie James Dio passed away in Houston from stomach cancer at the age of 67 on May 16, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of fans mourned the loss. Dio was truly one of the great ones. When I first set up to interview Dio after his 1984 concert at the San Diego Sports Arena, things didn’t go exactly as planned. Someone was forging backstage passes, and I was accidentally kicked out. Hanging out in the parking lot (remember, this was before everyone had cell phones) I waited for my friend Dave White, a roadie for Dio who set up the interview for me, to come out. When he did, I let him know what happened, and was promptly escorted back into the venue, and lead to the backstage area where Dio was holding court with a ton of record company and industry types. Ronnie walked up to me and immediately shook my hand and apologized for the way I was treated. “You’re a professional, you’re here to do a job, and provide a service which helps me, and I wanted to apologize for the way you were mistreated.”

Wow. I stood there with my mouth open. Here’s a guy that just rocked the house in front of over 10,000 people, and now he was apologizing to me for something that wasn’t even his doing. That’s how I will always remember Ronnie. As a professional, who formed his first band before I was born, yet was treating me, some kid with a brand new magazine that hadn’t even come out yet, with dignity and respect. I’ll never forget that moment. It was the first big interview of a career that’s lasted 25 years, and it almost didn’t happen.

Here’s an exclusive transcription of the interview I did with Ronnie James Dio 26 years ago. This hasn’t been seen in a quarter of a century! Enjoy.

Ronnie, you came up through the old line with Black Sabbath and Rainbow, and now you’ve managed to establish yourself in the new metal scene. While others have faded, you’re still going strong. What do you owe your success to?

DIO: I owe it all to the people I play for and a lot of it to my attitude as well. We play for people who live today. In 1975 in Rainbow, we played for the people who lived in 1975, now we live in the 80s and we play for the people who live in the 80s. You have to keep up with the attitudes that are happening. I think the most important factor to my longevity is that I care about an audience, and I think they realize that. I try to involve them in everything that we do, not only on the stage, but speaking to people afterwards, by signing as many autographs as possible, not hiding from the kids, but showing them that we know that they’re the ones who’ve been the loyal factor and allowed us to remain successful after all these years.

How long have you been in the music business?

DIO: Since I was five years old.

Five? You want to explain that?

DIO: Well, I started out as a trumpet player. My mom and dad thought I should have some kind of musical education. I didn’t want to play the trumpet, but that was the easiest thing to play at the time. I played throughout high school, I also had a band at the same time, without a trumpet in it. I played classical music with the trumpet, which is good for what I do now. I try to take a little classical feel and put it toward a real heavy sound, which makes us a little different than most people. I started singing when I was seven, and had my first band when I was ten. I’ve kept doing it since then.”

A lot of people mention you and Ian Gillian more than anyone else as their main vocal influences. Who were your vocal influences?

DIO: Well, early on, I really like Rod Stewart a lot, back when he was with Jeff Beck. I thought it was a great band. I like Rod and when he did his thing alone, and when he was with the Faces. I still think Rod is a great singer, I just don’t like the material he does now. I think “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” is a complete turnabout for a guy who used to be real good, gruff rock and roll singer, but he was an influence of mine, and some of the people who influenced him were influences of mine like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding and some of the black singers. I always liked Paul Rodgers a lot, from Free, and of course Bad Company. But I think my favorite of all, were collectively, the Beatles. McCartney was my favorite individual in the band, followed by Lennon. McCartney because he sounded different in almost everything he did. He has a chameleon voice, he can do whatever he wants to , he can sing gruff, he can sing sweetly, he can sing in any way he wants to, and I’ve always admired someone who can take music and do all the things that are possible with it, as opposed to being very one-dimensional.

You come from a pretty varied musical background. What made you choose heavy metal to go into?

DIO: Well, my attitude was a very aggressive one, and this is the kind of music that we play. Metal music is very aggressive, and it relates to day-to-day things, not things that happened fifteen years ago. I think it’s probably more of the fact that I like loud, hard fast big sounds and big music. This is the perfect genre for me to go into, especially with my very strong voice and knowing how to use it with all the training I had with the horn, and singing all of my life. This was the perfect medium for me. When I first heard Deep Purple I just freaked - I said this is what I want for me, this is what I want to do. Ian was not an influence of mine, Ian and I are different kind of singers. I always felt that I could do different things than Ian could, and that he could do different things than I could do. I never patterned myself after him, and he was never one of my influences, but the concept of the band was one of my influences. They would always play as fast as possible, but with a lot of technique. They’re great players (Deep Purple) and that’s always been the kind of band I’ve insisted upon being in. Rainbow, of course, with Ritchie Blackmore, was a nice dream come true for me, playing with one of my idols, and getting to know him that well and finding out that he didn’t have to be my idol anymore, finding out that he respected me as well as I respected him, so we became friends. In Sabbath, I think the band got so much better when I joined it, I don’t mean it was my giving them the music, I think that they had come up to a different level. They had a vocalist who could actually sing, Ozzy is not the greatest vocalist in the world to me, he’ll admit that himself, he’s admitted it to me. I think they had to reach higher standards, and I think it made them better musicians. It made Black Sabbath a force to be reckoned with in that time. It became, not the old dinosaurs of heavy metal, it became something new, it was new life, sort of like this band. There’s new life to heavy metal because some of the things this band has done.”

What made you decide to become a 1984 heavy metal band instead of trying to bring back the sound of the Sixties and Seventies?

DIO: That should stay in the Sixties and Seventies, again, as I said two times before we’re living in today, there are different values in the world today. People have different social problems, and rock n’ roll music reflects different social problems. It’s always been the spokesperson for social problems, the Clash perhaps, or the Sex Pistols when they were doing what they were doing. They were saying things that the kids were unable to say because the Sex Pistols had the stage to say it with. Living in today is very important because of the different values. Why should I talk about the tired, old, washed-up old hippies of the 1960s who were out singing folk songs and saying “Give peace a chance?” It’s a wonderful concept, but it’s not the world we live in today. We live in the world of fast cars, fast music, and fast men and women and fast everything. We seem to be on a collision with some kind of destiny. I just feel it’s important to place yourself in today’s market. By recognizing that there are different values today, I don’t get myself stuck in the Sixties and Seventies.

The Sixties and Seventies had their messages, you seem to write a lot about what’s going on in the world. What are you trying to say that’s going to happen in the world, or are you?

DIO: I’ve attempted to do that occasionally. In Sabbath, I did a song called “Children of the Sea,” which was a social comment. I usually don’t give social comments. I’m of the same opinion that John Lennon was. They said to John Lennon, “Why don’t you get the Beatles back together? You could make $250 million and feed the world for one day.” And John Lennon said, “Yeah, but what would we do tomorrow?” You can’t do it for the rest of your life, you can’t feed the world, you can’t take that burden upon yourself because you are an individual. You do the best you can. Harping back to what he said, I’ve found that trying to make a few of my social statements did no good at all. “Children of the Sea” was a song about how we run before we can crawl, and how we’re overpopulating the world and poisoning ourselves with all the things around us because we think too far in advance. We don’t take the proper steps in life, we see a fast car and we think, “Oh let’s jump in this car and go as fast as we can. Oh, I forgot, I don’t know how to drive…” and that’s what my comment was. What are we doing to this world? If we just stop, care about each other, look at what’s happening ourselves, maybe we can keep the world a little bit better for the next ten years. But that didn’t work. Nobody really listened, they liked the song, but I don’t think the message really got through to anyone, so I try not to make too many social comments these days, I just write in a framework of fantasy and imagination, because I think it allows people who live in a humdrum world day after day for reading headlines of death, pestilence, war, overpopulation, I think they’d rather get out of that and have a chance to breathe in their own mind for a change. So I write about fantasy things, things from the imagination, things that happened thousands of years ago, Egyptian times, medieval times, whatever it may be. Because there were wonderful values in those days, chivalry was wonderful because the white knight jumped out from behind the tree and killed the dragon, and saved the chick. It wasn’t the white knight who jumped out from behind the tree and raped the chick, the values were good then. I try to write in a way that allows everyone who listens to the song to make their own judgment. One person will say, “I know what he means” and another person will say “I know what he means, too.” and their opinions are totally different and unique from each other, and probably different from mine. But it gives them a chance to think, and it gives them a chance to get out of the real world, just for a little while. Today, a lot of people are scrutinizing rock and roll. They’re saying that we have to listen to it, and say “No, this isn’t what life is about.” Most of the songs that are written today, especially by heavy metal bands, are about fast cars, and about driving down highways with a bottle in your mouth and saying “let’s party.” Well, that’s escapist in a way. As far as the Satanic elements, I haven’t seen anyone suffering because of the music. I don’t think there are any more covens today than there were 15 years ago. I just don’t think that’s real. I think what we’ve done, bands like ourselves and other bands who talk about the dark side of life, have just given more jobs to the moral majority, and heaven knows, they need more jobs.

Finally, any advice to the youth of America, and up-and-coming musicians?

DIO: As far as the youth of America goes, I’ve never set myself up as a prophet or teacher to them, I think they have to make their own judgments. If they follow any of the things I say, they’ll find that they’re usually good things, and all it means is look after your fellow man. That’s what it’s all about. We live on the humanity of each other, God is in you and the Devil is in you, good and evil is in everyone, so why do we have to go to some other place where God is supposed to be or Satan is supposed to be? We are all of those things. If we look at each other and realize that, then we can help each other out a lot better. As far as the musician part goes, you gotta do what everyone else does - you gotta work, you gotta play, you gotta start at the bottom, you gotta start in the trenches. Learn your craft, if you’re a musician, you’re an artist. If you want to be a great artist, you gotta work at it, perfect your craft, and work at it all the time. Just hard work, and love what you do. If you don’t love it, get out of it.

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