Here are all the news from the year 2009 - some of these may be outdated already, so please check out the newest news for updates!
Here is an update from Wendy Dio on Ronnie's battle with stomach cancer:
Well, it has been a very exhausting month - after all
the neverending tests in Los Angeles, we flew to the
Mayo Clinic in
Minnesota, and as soon as we arrived, we got a call
from the MD Anderson Hospital that they had an
appointment for us with the doctor we originally
wanted, so we then flew to Houston to the clinic, and
of course MORE tests, but Ronnie finished receiving
his first chemo treatment on Wednesday, and all is
going very well.
I would like to thank Tony Martell from the
T.J. Martell Foundation, Dr. Stuart Aaronson from
Mount Sinai, Lindsay Brown and Mike Carden from Eagle
Records, and our very own Dr. Sandeep Kapoor, for all
your help in getting us into MD Anderson, and also our
friends Geezer and Gloria Butler, who flew to Houston
to be with Ronnie while he had his chemo.
Ronnie and I are totally overwhelmed by the amount of
well wishes that we have received from friends and
fans - we are reading them all. Some make us laugh,
some make us cry, but all of them are so filled with
love that it gives us so much support and makes Ronnie
even more determined to fight this battle and
win. Thank you all for the positive energy and
prayers.
--Wendy Dio
The is certainly a great relief for all the Dio fans world wide! Looks like Ronnie, all his friends and all the doctors and nurses are in the battle against the dragon and they will win it too! Lets all show him that we care - send me your horns-up get well greetings! I'll post them online as often as I can, hopefully at least every couple of days.
I'm being honest here: After hearing the news last month, I never ever thought that something like this would be happening this soon: Heaven And Hell is returning back on stage next summer, at least here in Europe! The dates have just started to come out. Check them here!
There are now four shows, one festival in Austria and three Sonisphere festivals around Europe. The Sonisphere festivals at http://www.sonispherefestivals.com/ have started to announce the lineups now and, except for Poland and UK, all the other Sonispheres have included Heaven And Hell. There are still six unannounced festivals on this tour (Switzerland, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey and Spain), lets see if Heaven And Hell appears at them too!
Wendy posted these news on
Ronnie's own
site:
As Wendy says, Ronnie will kill this dragon. Lets help him to do that with the horns-up get well greetings! Keep 'em coming! I'll post them online as often as I can.
As you probably already read elsewhere, Ronnie has become ill and was forced to cancel the European tour. The tour was supposed to start already on Saturday in Glasgow, so this was pretty much the last minute cancellation. Unfortunately there are no rescheduled dates either.
"Ronnie has been hospitalized and we are waiting for further news," explains Ronnie's wife/manager, Wendy Dio. says Wendy on Ronnie's official pages. I recommend you to check out the official site for news.
On Facebook I spotted an excellent quote from Jens Johansson, Dio's keyboardist from the Lock Up The Wolves days. "What's on my mind? Ronnie Dio. But I'm not gonna pray to nobody, I'll raise my horns in hope instead." I won't be praying to anyone either, but I sure raise my horns instead! \,,/ \,,/
Will you raise your horns too and wish Ronnie a speedy recovery with them? If yes, ask someone to take a photo of you with your horns and e-mail it to me. Include your name and country with the message. I set up a very simple photo page for these pics and post them online here at dio.net!
As said, because of Ronnie's illness, the Dio European tour was forced to be cancelled. Unfortunately there are no replacement dates, either. If you had already purchased tickets to the shows, please take them back to the ticket agency you bought them from.
As far as I know, this is the very first time ever that Ronnie has had to cancel shows because of getting ill at the wrong moment. It is a hugely remarkable achievement, I don't think there is any other artist in the world who'd have this long, world-wide career and similar track record.
In a recent (conducted apparently during October) interview in the British Classic Rock magazine Ronnie announced that Dio will do a completely new song on the upcoming European tour in November-December. "It was important to me that Dio didn't just come over on the back of the old material, but that we had something fresh to offer," Ronnie commented to Classic Rock.
The song is called Electra and there are some plans to release it also as a limited edition single. The single format still remains unknown - no idea whether it will be just a promo release for radio stations, electronic single, CD single or the Real Thing, a 7" single for us, vinyl junkies. Now after the tour has been cancelled, I don't know whether that affects the single release plans too.
Ronnie also commented that Black Sabbath songs would not be played on this tour as he's been doing them with Heaven And Hell world-wide on the last couple of tours already. Interestingly he mentioned only Black Sabbath in the interview regarding this - maybe there will be a song or two from Heaven And Hell in the set list? Author of this wouldn't mind at all hearing Bible Black performed by Dio too. Late November will tell. Lots of Dio and a couple of Rainbow songs will be included to the set too.
Instead of traditional surgery, Tony Iommi opted for stem cell treatment for his long-lasting hand problems. Eddie Van Halen had recommended Tony the stem cell option over the surgery and it has been a success.
Heaven And Hell is planning to do another (perhaps UK?) tour in February 2010, although no dates has been announced yet. There has also been some speculation about a new Heaven And Hell album too, but no official word on that either.
This happened already on March 11th, 2009 but the news managed to pass me at that time (should be quite obvious if you've been "reading the news" on my pages during the past couple of years). On March 11th, 2009 Dio's US best-of CD "The Very Beast Of Dio" was certified gold status in the USA after sales of 500 000 copies. The album was originally released in October 2000 and has subsequently been reissued three times: Original released had "metallic red" Dio logo, 2001-2002 reissue had regular flat red Dio logo, 2005 reissue came with a paper slip over the regular sleeve and 2008-2009 reissue came with a cardboard slipcase over the regular sleeve.
Rowan Robertson, guitarist from the Lock Up The Wolves album and tour, is going to the studio in December-January with his current band DC4 to record their new album. The album is tentatively scheduled for late spring 2010 release. They also played in early November at Hollywood's Whisky-A-Go-Go. Aside Rowan (who has been in the band since 2006), the band has Jeff Duncan (vocals, guitars), Shawn Duncan (drums) and Matt Duncan (bass) - all Duncans are brothers - and the album will be produced by Bill Metoyer.
I've received some requests from Dio fans to split the Black Sabbath and Heaven And Hell bio and discographies into separate sections. I originally placed them into same section as - in my opinion - the band essentially is nothing but Black Sabbath. However, since there are now so many Heaven And Hell releases, as pointed out by my good friend Nuno, I've now done the change. The change is not yet reflected in the Updates section, that will be coming with the next update.
Another long pause with updates. This time there are a lot of discography updates, as well as tour dates for the already gone Heaven And Hell "The Devil You Know" tour as well as for the forthcoming Dio European tour.
Universal Music is planning a reissue of Rainbow's Rising CD. Okay, what is the significance, there have been (especially in Japan) almost uncountable number of reissues of the Rainbow catalog, especially of Rising. Now this may (note, MAY) be different. Universal Music lists this as "coming soon" in their Deluxe Edition series. All the previous releases in this series have been 2 CD sets. It remains to be seen if Rising will be released as a 2CD, and if it indeed will be released like that, what will be on the 2nd disc.
According to Heaven And Hell's management, the band is not breaking up even though The Devil You Know tour is now over and Ronnie returned back to Dio for November-December European tour. Here is what H&H's management had to say about the matter:
"[We] just want to quash any rumors that HEAVEN & HELL have broken up. [HEAVEN & HELL guitarist] Tony Iommi has to have surgery on his hand and [needs] some down time for recovery. Therefore DIO will be performing some dates in the U.K. and Europe in November/December during this time off. HEAVEN & HELL are already making plans for dates next year."
As said, Dio will do an European tour in November-December 2009. At the moment, as far as I know, there are no tour plans for the rest of the world. The European tour will see Doug Aldrich back in the line-up as Craig Goldie has other commitments - he has been booked for Budgie's Australian tour according to the news.
Album-wise Ronnie has said multiple times already that he wants to continue working on the Magica project. The first part of Magica was released in 2000, and Magica 2+3 should follow at some point. It is unknown how these Heaven And Hell plans for 2010 will affect the Magica plans.
Vinyls are coming back! Dio's Killing The Dragon was released on vinyl by Night Of The Vinyl Dead label, numbered edition of 500 copies. Same label released Magica on vinyl a while ago too. Heaven And Hell released their newest album on vinyl too. There is also a new vinyl single of Bible Black, and all the Black Sabbath with Ronnie albums were reissued on 180g vinyls.
This update brings some quite interesting discoveries to the discography section. Full change log can be found on the Updates page, but here are some highlights:
Rumor mill: A few years back a Norwegian Dio fan made a very nice discovery: The Elves had released a 7" single in Sweden back in 1970. Now there are rumors of even an earlier Swedish single release from Ronnie James Dio. The Prophets, Ronnie's band from the 1960s, did a lenghty tour in Sweden (albeit without Ronnie himself) in 1964. They had released a single, Gonna Make It Alone/Swingin' Street, in August 1963 in the USA (three different promo versions and two stock versions exist). However, the rumor now says that they also released this single in 1964 in Sweden because of the tour there! If you have either of these two gems, please contact me.
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/.