Here are all the news from the first half of 2003 - some of these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for updates!
In a recent Rockline interview Ronnie was asked whether Craig will continue with Dio after the summer tour. Ronnie said that he definitely wants to do the sequels to the Magica with Craig. Ronnie has planned Magica parts 2 and 3 to continue the story started on the first Magica album. In an earlier interview Ronnie has hinted that these parts might be combined on a double CD.
Apparently all the European tour dates have now been set. The tour starts on June 26th in Switzerland, then moves to Germany, Turkey, Greece, Denmark, Sweden (three gigs there!, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands and finally Spain. Check out the dates on the Killing The Dragon tour date page!
In the same Rockline interview where Ronnie told news about Craig, he also mentioned that he has been thinking about a DVD release with lots of rare footage from his past. Of course, this project is only in the idea stage at the moment, no decisions been made, but it would certainly be a very interesting DVD should it ever come out!
Dio released the 29-track remastered compilation 2CD on May 27th in the USA. The release party was held two days later at The Cactus Club in Santa Clarita, CA. This 2CD is (at least for now) US only release; no European or Japanese releases have been planned.
A couple of more European gigs for Dio: Athens gig was confirmed to be on June 30th, roughly 10 years after the previous Athens gig! Dio will also play in Malmo, Sweden on July 3rd.
Rowan Robertson, Dio's guitarist from the Lock Up The Wolves days, is on the road in the USA with his band AM Radio:
The Rods, David "Rock" Feinstein's band from the 1980s, rereleased all their CDs around the end of May. Rock Feinstein is Ronnie's cousin and played with him in Elf in the early 1970s.
More shows Dio's forthcoming European tour are trickling in - new shows include Copenhagen, Denmark and Zürich in Switzerland!
Vinny Appice, ex-Dio/Black Sabbath drummer, appears on the forthcoming Kelly Keeling solo album, coming out in August on Mascot Records in Europe. US release date hasn't been announced yet. Vinny's brother Carmine Appice will appear on the album as well, so will Kerry Livgren too.
Dio's ex-guitarist Craig Goldie returns back to Dio for the summer festival tour in Europe as well as the US tour with Iron Maiden and Motorhead! Warren DeMartini, who was already announced to be the replacement for Doug Aldrich, will not join Dio for these tours.
It is unknown whether Craig or someone else will play guitar with Dio after the US tour has ended.
Dio will play at the Rock The Nations festival in Turkey as well as Bospop festival in Holland!
Amazon.com is now taking preorders for the Evil Or Divine DVD. The DVD will be released on July 1st and costs $15 at least for now.
Dio: Evil Or Divine release date has now been set to July 1st, 2003. This is apparently the final release date, as the work on the DVD has been finished and track listing published:
In addition to these tracks, the CD will feature promo video for Push, as well as behind the scenes footage, fan gallery and Ronnie James Dio interview.
The show was filmed at the Roseland in New York on December 13th last year.
Dio's European tour in the summer takes the band up here in the North as well - at least to Turku, Finland and Oslo in Norway!
The cover picture of the forthcoming DVD is out! Click here to see the front cover (located on the Eagle Vision pages). The DVD might've been pushed back for July release, possibly in order to have it out at the time Dio's US tour starts?
Apparently all, or at least most of the tour dates have been confirmed for the Summer's tour. The tour will have Motörhead as the opener, then Dio will take the stage and finally Iron Maiden will headline.
Tickets for some of the shows are already for sale, if not even sold out - New York's Madison Square Garden sold out apparently in a matter of hours! Be quick or be dead as Bruce Dickinson would say!
Here's a message from Doug Aldrich concerning his departure from Dio (taken from Doug's own pages):
Hey you guys, just wanted to say thanks for all your support and good energy. As you know, I won't be seeing you this summer with Ronnie. But the best is I will be seeing you with Whitesnake. We are putting together a U.S. headline tour that will start around the middle of July and go through August. Japan looks like Sept. which is great. And after, I will be recording hopfully with David. Regarding Dio, it was really difficult, I had to make a choice. You all know that I love Ronnie and the guys. I hope to think the door is open for sometime down the road but for now it won't happen. Dio was schedualed to be off this summer, and then his tour dates started comming in. He is my friend and I didn't want to keep him hangin so I recomended a few guys. For the Dio fans that are concerned about Warren, don't be. He is great and Ronnie knows guitar players. Besides Jimmy is one heavy player and alot of the Dio sound comes from him and Simon.
Rowan Robertson, Dio's guitarist back in 1990, will hit the road with his current band AM Radio. Here's a list of dates for their upcoming US gigs:
Ratt guitarist Warren DeMartini is said to have replaced Doug Aldrich in Dio as the touring guitarist for this summers' Dio/Iron Maiden US tour! It remains unknown whether he'll be working with Dio on the forthcoming album or if he's in just for the tour. It is also unknown who will play with Dio in Europe this summer.
Doug Aldrich has been touring with Whitesnake this spring already and apparently has chosen to continue with them. As a matter of fact, also Warren DeMartini has toured with Whitesnake in 1994!
Dio's (now ex?) guitarist Doug Aldrich is going to be interviewed TODAY (May 3rd, Saturday) on KNAC.com (http://www.knac.com/) at 5.30pm (Pacific Daylight Time).
Dio's drummer Simon Wright will be interviewed on KNAC.com (http://www.knac.com/) on May 11th (Sunday) with DJ Will between 10am-1pm (Pacific Daylight Time).
Some more tour dates for this summers' US tour have been added on the Killing The Dragon tour date page! New cities on the tour include Clarkston, MI, Englewood, CO, Mountain View, CA (2 shows!), Marysville, CA, Columbus, OH and Tinley Park, IL.
Ex-Dio guitarist Rowan Robertson and his band AM Radio releases a limited edition CD single on May 6th in independent LINCS record stores in the Los Angeles area. The single will have songs "Taken For A Ride" and "The Stalker" (which won't be available anywhere else).
Ronnie's cousin & Elf band member Rock Feinstein will release a new album titled "Third Wish". Track listing and samples of the songs are available on Rock's homepage at address http://rockfeinstein.com/.
Rock's old band The Rods will also reissue their albums on CD in a few months.
Dio is featured in a book titled Sound Of The Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal. The book is written by Ian Christe, who has previously appeared on the pages of for example Kerrang!, Metal Forces and Kick*Ass Monthly. Web pages for the book can be found here: http://www.soundofthebeast.com/splash.html.
Totally off-topic for Dio related stuff - but I couldn't help myself from bragging about my first baby, born on April 24th, 2003! ;) 4150 grams and 54 cm are the strategic measurements! Check out my personal home pages at address http://www.iki.fi/dio/ for picture of the family a couple of hours after the birth!
Dio's & Dokken's ex bassist, Jeff Pilson, will release an album with Dokken's George Lynch.
Dio, Iron Maiden and Motorhead will do a tour together in the North America starting in July and continuing at least through the August. Iron Maiden will headline the tour, but it still remains unknown which order Motorhead and Dio will play. Also Anthrax and Ministry have been suggested as the opening acts, but neither of those have been confirmed yet.
Click here for tour dates! Only a handful of dates have surfaced this far, and those haven't been confirmed yet.
This forthcoming Dio compilation will include the following tracks, all digitally remastered:
CD 1:Here is the press release from Rhino Records:
LOS ANGELES-It's time to raise those horns in the air and pay tribute to the man-and the band-who made it sound so very, very cool to be very, very evil. STAND UP AND SHOUT: THE DIO ANTHOLOGY is here! Featuring two discs' worth of classic tracks spanning his entire career, STAND UP AND SHOUT is the only anthology to include songs from Ronnie James Dio's eras with Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Elf and, of course, Dio. It just doesn't get any better than this!
Or does it? STAND UP AND SHOUT arrives augmented with dozens of photographs by rock's best photographers, a liner essay by noted rock scribe Lonn Friend, as well as Dio's own detailed track-by-track notes and remembrances. With two and a half of definitive heavy metal, this is one collection that simply, well, rules! STAND UP AND SHOUT will be available at retail outlets and www.rhino.com for a suggested list price of $24.98.
Growing up in Cortland, NY, Ronald Padavona, the man who became one of hard rock's all-time most distinctive voices, began his career with a series of high-school garage and doo-wop groups. By the time Ronnie James Dio formed Elf in 1970, he'd already had 13 years of experience playing rock 'n' roll. Elf was signed to Epic in 1972, and their debut album was produced by Deep Purple's Roger Glover and Ian Paice. As Deep Purple's opening act, Ronnie came to know Ritchie Blackmore, and later formed Rainbow with the guitar master.
For four years Rainbow built a reputation as one of the world's most popular hard rock bands. Dio became known for his soaring vocals and lyrics brimming with fantastic mythical visions. However, musical differences between Blackmore and Dio led to Dio's leaving after only a handful of albums to join the legendary Black Sabbath, then reeling from bitter in-fighting that resulted in the departure of founding singer Ozzy Osbourne. Dio's energy rekindled the Sabbath spirit, resulting in the epochal Heaven And Hell album in 1980. The mighty Mob Rules follows in 1981, but his initial alliance with Black Sabbath was doomed to be short-lived; after the concert recording Live Evil, Dio split to form the first incarnation of a band that will forever bear his name.
DIO! Songs of demonic peril and seduction! DIO! Visions of theatrical concerts with lasers and dragons! (The Sacred Heart tour was voted "Outstanding Stage Set" by Performance Magazine and "Most Creative Stage Set" by Pollstar.) DIO! Tenacious D could only dream of such glory.
Now, 20 years after the release of the first Dio LP, Holy Diver, it's time to take stock of the man's illustrious career. Ronnie James Dio has helped create some of the best-loved tracks still heard today on rock radio: "Man On The Silver Mountain," "Long Live Rock 'N' Roll," "Neon Knights," "Heaven And Hell," "Stand Up And Shout," "Holy Diver," "Rainbow In The Dark," "The Last In Line," and "Dream Evil." All of the hits are here, but the best part about STAND UP AND SHOUT: THE DIO ANTHOLOGY is that it also includes album tracks and live cuts to present the fullest possible picture of Dio and his work.
It's truly the next-best thing to being front-row center at the arena!
Magnus Danielsson, a Swedish Deep Purple fan, will organize a fan convention in Vaxjö, Sweden on May 10th! The convention will start with a record fair - my guess is that there will be loads of rare Purple & Related records, CDs etc available! There will also be an exhibition of rare Deep Purple items for fans to view.
After the record fair there will be meet & greet with the fans, as well as a party lasting until 2am. More information about the convention can be found on this page: http://hem.bredband.net/b121041/.
Ken Tamplin And Friends released recently a new CD, titled "Wake The Nations". Not much information available yet, but Dio's guitarist Doug Aldrich appears on the CD.
Recently a bootleg CD-R has surfaced among the Black Sabbath collectors. This CD, titled as "Dehumanizer Demos" contains early versions of some Dehumanizer tracks. No vocals; apparently only rehearsals with Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Cozy Powell - the material was recorded before Cozy Powell was replaced by Vinny Appice in the band! Some sources suggest these songs were recorded in 1991 in Monmoth, Wales, UK.
The material is allegedly from late Cozy Powell's archives, but it is unknown how it found its way to the trading circles.
Dio's forthcoming DVD "Dio - Evil Or Divine" release date has been pushed back to June 17th, 2003. The reason behind this is the fact that the band is still mixing it. Guitarist Doug Aldrich, who was touring with Whitesnake this spring, didn't have the chance to participate to the mixing before late March, so they couldn't get the thing ready for publication in the original schedule.
Also the deadline for submitting fan photos for the DVD release has been reached.
Just a couple of more dates for the summer European tour have surfaced. Check out the forthcoming Killing The Dragon tour dates here!
Speculating those tour dates .. as the known tour dates are already spread over a month's period of time, it is quite likely that more dates will be added for both June and early July.
Dio will supposedly play in Athens this coming summer. The exact date is unknown, but the gig should happen in June.
Catch The Rainbow: The Anthology - the new 2-CD compilation from Rainbow is out at least in the US; no information about the European release date is available at the moment. The compilation was released by Polydor/UME and features 28 digitally remastered songs from 1975 to 1986. Apparently the first CD contains only Ronnie James Dio's Rainbow tracks while the second CD concentrates on the period after Ronnie.
Stand Up And Shout - The Dio Anthology promo copies have been sent to press. The CD should be out in May as planned.
According to CMM Music Promotion in Germany, the release date for "Dio - Evil Or Divine" DVD is now set to May 19th. It is unknown if this affects to the US release date.
The current issue (April 17th, 2003) of the Rolling Stone magazine has a short article about Ronnie.
Rhino/Warner Bros is going to release a 29-track double CD set on May 27th, 2003! This release will contain material from Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and of course Dio. No unreleased studio material will be included, but there will be some live recordings. Track listing has not been published yet.
Rumors about this release surfaced in January, when this release was claimed to be a box set and contain 37 tracks.
This coming Tuesday (March 18th, 2003) Polydor/UME is going to release a 2-CD collection from Rainbow, consisting of 28 remastered tracks from Rainbow's albums released between 1975 and 1986. This release will also contain a 16 page booklet about Rainbow's history and photographs. Apparently the release date is for the US release - it is still unknown whether this will be released elsewhere.
There are rumors that Dio might play Waldrock Festival in Bergum, Holland on June 21st. That show has not been confirmed by the festival organizers or the band, so take that with a grain of salt.
Simon Wright, Dio's drummer, has released a DVD and a video documenting life on the road as a drummer. The DVD and video tape are available at http://www.landsharkprod.com/. These apparently are a limited edition and will be available only until the end of April, 2003.
I got e-mail from Garry Sharpe-Young about his forthcoming Black Sabbath book. The book is now at the publishers but no exact release date has been set yet. The book will be around 400 pages with lots of photos never seen before. Here is an excerpt from Garry's e-mail:
This book has been an absolute pleasure to write. Many of those I spoke to seemed thankful that someone, at long last, was documenting this vital period of Sabbath history in an accurate manner. All told I'm estimating about 400 pages including 50 plus exclusive, never seen before photographs from private sources. Some of these photos are unbelievable, capturing moments from previously mysterious times in the band. Pictures onstage, backstage and in the studio.
As with my Ozzy book, the Sabbath history is traced in great detail told, in the main, by the band members themselves. A huge catalogue of mysteries was solved during the detective work for this book believe me!
Each album, tour, line-up and near line-ups are documented thoroughly. As far as possible I have tried to get the exact details of the recording and song-writing processes for each album. Who wrote what and who recorded what. The stories behind the songs, how and why the albums got both their titles and their artwork, which singers were suggested for the frontman role, which singers didn't make it through auditions. There is a plethora of song titles you won't recognise and some surprises on the band members front too.
Interviewed exclusively for the book and at great length (quite a few of these discussions took a number of weeks) are Geoff Nicholls, Tony Martin, Neil Murray, Ian Gillan, Bobby Rondinelli, David Donato, Ronnie James Dio, Glenn Hughes, Eric Singer, David Spitz, Bob Daisley, Jo Burt, Rob Halford, Terry Chimes, Jeff Fenholt, Vinnie Appice and others. All of these people really opened up to me and the detail just poured out... I also had the great pleasure of conducting numerous interviews with the late and very great Cozy Powell and spoke to Ray Gillen just before his last ever gig with Sabbath at Nottingham Concert Hall. Ray's interview is printed in full. Both Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler were also interviewed at various times over the years. On top of this I spoke to many Sabbath support acts including Alvin Lee.
I have done my very best to satisfy the curiousity of Sabbath fans with this book, answering a lot of the questions I have seen asked over the years.
I shall leave you with this thought. Writing this book has proven to me beyond all doubt that Tony Iommi is the man! My admiration for his talent and sheer tenacity increased immeasurably during the process.
There are rumors about a new Black Sabbath tribute album, titled as Heaven & Hell - A Tribute To Black Sabbath. No word yet about the track list, but judging from the name, it should have some Dio Sabbath material covered too! ... Or actually, there are some claims that Primal Fear will cover Die Young on the CD, but that hasn't been confirmed. The record company should be Nuclear Blast anyway. Vip-24 has a competition to win a copy of the CD on their web site at address http://www.vip-24.com/ (click the Competitions link on the front page).
Rumors are floating about a couple of possible Killing The Dragon tour dates in the summer for late June or early July. No details have surfaced yet, except that one show might be in Holland and another in Sweden.
Dio will hit the road again in the Summer! One announced show this far - Dio will headline Bang Your Head festival in Germany around the end of June! Twisted Sister will be the headliners on the other day of the festival. This tour actually might be called something else, but for the time being, I'll list the dates as Killing The Dragon tour.
Vivian Campbell - guitarist on the three first Dio albums - has reformed Riverdogs with Rob Lamothe and all the other original Riverdogs members. They're working on a new Riverdogs album. I don't know if this has any effect on Vivian's position in Def Leppard or not.
Rowan Robertson and his current band AM Radio are recording a new album in Los Angeles with producer Howard Benson. The forthcoming CD should have heavier sound than what AM Radio has done earlier and the CD should be out in March.
Tentative release date for the live DVD is set either to April 22nd or May 6th, depending on the source. Rumors has it that the DVD will be called Evil Or Divine: Live In Concert.
Apparently negotiations about the Black + Blue DVD release are still going on, so eventually we might see the DVD release. Lets hope the negotiations will be fruitful!
Rhino Records is going to release a 37-track box set from Ronnie's career starting from the Elf days! The release date is supposedly going to be in April, 2003 - lets keep our thumbs up for this! All the songs on that release will be digitally remastered. There won't be any unreleased songs, but it is possible that it'll include some live tracks.
Lana Lane (http://www.lanalane.com/) is going to release a cover album shortly. It'll have cover of Rainbow's Stargazer. A while ago Lana Lane released a CD with Vinny Appice on drums, too.
Your photos are wanted! Spitfire Records are calling for fan photos for the forthcoming Dio DVD release! See more information at Spitfire's web site!
Last - there are some rumors that Hellion's guitarist Ray Schenck is lending a hand to Ronnie James Dio, apparently for writing the forthcoming Magica 2+3 album. These rumors haven't been confirmed by anyone and may be entirely bogus.
On Rob Dwyer's excellent Black Sabbath time line pages there is a sad piece of news: Classic Pictures have withdrawn their plans to release the Black + Blue video on DVD. Classic Pictures web site still has the old piece of news from July 29th, 2002, saying that the DVD is scheduled for 2002 release.
The release date was pushed further and further during the second half of the year 2002. According to the Classic Pictures, the release was apparently cancelled as Tony Iommi didn't want to have the DVD released.
My personal view on this issue is that Black Sabbath tries to forget the 15 years of their existence - namely those years when Ozzy Osbourne was not their singer. Well, at least we got the Black Sabbath Story Volume 2 out on DVD.
Rockdetector (http://www.rockdetector.com/) is going to publish a new Black Sabbath book in March 2003, written by Garry Sharpe-Young. The book will apparently be titled "Never Say Die: 1980-2002" - thus it will concentrate on something else than the original Black Sabbath! No further details have been published yet, except that the book should be about 350 pages long.
Mike Stark's book from 1998 "For The Record - Black Sabbath: An Oral History" is going to be (or possibly has already been?) rereleased by the publisher Harper-Collins. However, the author has had no input into the new release and will receive no compensation for it either.
The original edition of the Mike Stark's book is out of print, but the author is selling new copies of it exclusively on his own web pages, http://members.aol.com/mikeknac/Sabbath/index.html.
Last fall Helter Skelter Publishing (http://www.helterskelterbooks.com/) released a book about Rainbow - titled "Rainbow Rising" and written by Roy Davies. I forgot to post the review here - I wrote it on a couple of Dio mailing lists but forgot to save it anywhere.
Anyway, the all the 256 pages of the book are excellent reading, lots of very interesting information about Rainbow in all of its incarnations! I've been a Ronnie James Dio fan for some 20 years reading all the possible interviews and articles and still there were lots of stories I had never heard of!
The book is divided more or less into two parts. The first part, some 160 pages, contain loads and loads of stories from Rainbow from the very beginning until the end of Doogie White's Rainbow in the 1990s. The second part contains discographies, tour date archives, listing of all the known bootleg recordings and links to other Rainbow resources (These pages are also mentioned there, by mistake under wrong title;-)
I recommend this book to all the Ronnie James Dio fans. It is an excellent source of information for everything Rainbow ever did!
Another Dioful year behind - here's a short wrap-up of the biggest news the year 2002:
I'd like to use this opportunity to give A BIG THANK-YOU to all the Dio fans on the net as well as to the band and crew, Niji Management and Spitfire Records for all the support you've shown!
Very special thanks go to Genady Perchenko for hosting these pages at AnGen (http://www.angen.net/) Genady, you're a wonderful friend!
This page is maintained by Tapio Keihänen,
E-mail: dio@iki.fi.
URL: http://www.dio.net/news/,
the front page http://www.dio.net/.