Here are all the news from the year of 2001 - some of these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for updates! Please also note that I didn't have much time to update the pages in 2001, so there are not that many news here...
There will be a book about Rainbow out on Helter Skelter in the UK around April! The book will include biography, discography, gig lists, bootleg listings and so forth. Also several Rainbow members have contributed to the book; Joe Lynn Turner, Roger Glover, David Rosenthal and Don Airey at least.
People involved with this book are Roy Davies, Jerry Black (More Black Than Purple) and Michael Heatley (editor of Record Buyer).
More information about this will be published here as soon as I hear more!
Happy new year 2002 to all the Dio fans around the globe! May the 2002 see again a new Dio album and a world tour!
New album coming up! Dio started to record a new album on December 10th, 2001 at Total Access studios! No song titles or the album title have been announced yet. The album is expected to be out in the spring - estimates vary between March and May.
The line-up for the album is the same as it has been now for a couple of years - Ronnie on vocals, Craig Goldie on guitars, Jimmy Bain on bass, Simon Wright on drums and Scott Warren on keyboards.
Tour with Alice Cooper? There are rumors about a tour with Alice Cooper - who happens to be on the same record label with Dio, Spitfire Records - which might take place as early as in March 2002. This tour has NOT been confirmed by any official source and should be considered only as a rumor at this point.
Things happened in 2001... As you probably have noticed, there haven't been much going on on these pages for the whole 2001. I'm sorry for that, and I hope to change that in the future.
South African tour with Motorhead was already scheduled for late 2001. The bands had scheduled a number of shows over there, but the tour was cancelled. The reason behind was the fear of terrorism that emerged in September 2001.
Here are the winners of the Dio Competition 2001.
I organize a competition where one can win a ticket to either of the Monsters Of The Millennium concerts here in Finland. The competition is open only for Finnish Dio fans, sorry for that.
The competition is open until April 23rd. Questions, rules etc can be found here (English language version) or here (Finnish language version).
Connoisseur Collection is apparently going to release a sequel to the Dio Anthology compilation album from 1997. The album should be out in the UK on February 19th, 2001 and the track listing should be the following:
New tour dates have been added for the Magica World Tour!
Rainbow's gig from October 20th, 1977 in Munich, Germany will be re-broadcasted on German TV on February 18th. For more information, please check the following site: http://www.rockpalast.de/termine.html.
Dio's Magica tour started in March, 2000. The tour will continue in February 2001 with in the USA, from where it will continue to Europe in April, where Dio will do a "Monsters Of The Millennium" tour together with Alice Cooper and a couple of other bands. Check out the magical Magica tour dates here!
If you miss the show, it will be archived after about a week at http://www.mp3.com/stations/AlHandelman-02-04-01"
Ronnie will also do a couple of Concerto shows in Tokyo, Japan with Deep Purple and Shin Nihon Philharmonic Orchestra. These dates can be found on the Concerto tour date page.
Before the Magica tour continues in the USA, Ronnie is busy with the forth-coming Dio album. The album, tentatively scheduled for October 2001 release, will be something like Holy Diver, Dream Evil and maybe The Last In Line, but with heavier production. It will not be a concept piece like Magica was. After this year's touring is done, the band will record the album.
The Elf reunion is still "in the works." It might be delayed again because of Dio's and Deep Purple's extensive touring - Elf's keyboardist Mickey Lee Soule is working as Jon Lord's keyboard technician in Deep Purple these days. We might see the reunion in 2002.
There are lots of rumors about possible Rainbow reunion. The official word, however, still is: "No Rainbow reunion." There is lots of interest in this reunion, but at least for now, there are no actual plans to do that.
All the Dio members are again involved in a charity project much like the Hear N' Aid project was in 1985-1987. This time the charity project is aimed to help the kids living on the streets of the USA. There is a organization called Children Of The Night who is working on this. Ronnie and Wendy Dio have been supporting this organization since it was started over twenty years ago.
The release date and list of participants are not yet revealed. However, in conjunction with this, Hear N' Aid should finally be released on CD outside Japan too.
This page is maintained by Tapio Keihänen,
E-mail: dio@iki.fi.
URL: http://www.dio.net/news/2001.html,
the front page http://www.dio.net/.