Jimmy Kay from Canada’s The Metal Voice recently spoke to Wendy Dio about the upcoming Holgram tour, upcoming Dio documentary, Dio book as well as unreleased material.
Watch the interview here:
When asked about the upcoming Dio Hologram tour
“It’s a brand new tour, no one’s ever seen this one before, its new and improved technology and has come a long way in the last two years. This time Ronnie looks much better than he did before. I’m a perfectionist, last time his eyebrows and his hair were not quite right for me, so we’ve corrected them. And of course the technology has come a long way and we have all kinds of effects going on which we didn’t have on the last one. Amazing effects! We’re playing Ronnie’s isolated tracks from various shows that he did live and then of course the band is playing live on the stage with them. Craig Goldy, Simon Wright, Scott Warren, we have two guest singers which is Tim Ripper Owens from Judas Priest Fame and also Oni Logan from Lynch Mob. They sing some songs by themselves, some songs together and some songs with Ronnie. Plus we have a lot of special effects going on, we have Fire Dragons, it’s an amazing show it’s going to blow your mind.”
When asked about the Hologram critics
“Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion I think you’d have to see it before you criticize it. Ronnie I’m sure would give his stamp of approval on this because in 1986 anyone who saw the Sacred Heart tour saw that we tried to make a hologram by rear projection and we hung a crystal ball and it had film of Ronnie’s head in there talking about walking over the Rainbow Bridge. I mean we tried everything and Ronnie was always an innovator. This is this is done to keep the music and his memory alive and for people that didn’t get chance to see Ronnie can see this show and also the ones that would love to see him back up and stage again. This show is done with love from the band to everybody that’s involved and we were very excited about it’s a great great show.”
When asked about an update on the Dio Documentary
“We just started shooting, we did interviews last week with a few people, with me, with some technical people and with Geezer Butler and we will continue to shoot in between the tour. Hopefully that should be out by next year, We started with Geezer Butler who was obviously Ronnie’s best friend from Black Sabbath and we will probably do some interviews with the band while we are on tour and all the people that were close to Ronnie. People that played with Ronnie or influenced by Ronnie and also his childhood years and then going right away through his time with Elf, with Rainbow and with Black Sabbath. I have so much footage people have never seen. I got unseen super 8 stuff. I found a whole huge box with stuff from his childhood, from the Rainbow days, behind the scenes stuff, all in a big box which I’m getting it now transferred so that we can actually view it. A lot of these are super 8’s were at Ronnie’s parents house and when they passed away Ronnie and I went there and took it. I also found a whole bunch of tapes of Ronnie, demos of his songs, in his own studio and we had all these tapes which I had no idea what they were there. Demo stuff that probably no one has never heard before or it’s the beginnings of songs or it’s songs you know that haven’t been finished or I have been finished, this is a treasure trove. So we will go through songs and hopefully put some of those out on bonus material on the summer releases that BMG’s putting out of Ronnie which starts actually later this year. For the documentary we’re hoping for theater release.”
When asked if she would be interested in doing a Biopic movie on Ronnie James Dio
“I don’t want to do one, nobody could play Ronnie. I would like a straightforward documentary of Ronnie’s life and with lots of footage of Ronnie. I’ve got so many interviews that Ronnie did and so much stuff that I’d really like to just keep it very very very natural.”
When asked about re-releasing Hear n ‘Aid
“We will do that for the charity but it’s a lot of work and it will probably take a year to do so. I have to put that aside until we’ve finished these other projects, so many projects going on at once. But yes I’ve talked with my board of directors for charity which we have 14 board members and our five advisory people so we have discussed that and we will all all start working on that why when the Hologram tour is over.”
When asked about a letter where George Harrison asking for Ronnie’s autograph
“I was actually going through a bunch of old stuff in boxes and there was this letter from George Harrison asking for his autograph for a maid of his.”
When asked about unreleased Live recordings
“There is so much live music that I have from so many different shows, yeah we probably go through it all and find the best of what we’ve got there because Ronnie obviously wouldn’t put out something out that he felt was inferior.”
When asked about his autobiography
” I’m working with Mick Wall, who’s a famous journalist from England, he knows Ronnie very well and has interviewed his million times. I’m actually meeting with him in July. “
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 