Since his earliest days as a member of Rainbow with Ritchie Blackmore, vocalist Ronnie James Dio has been familiar to fans of the hard rock genre. First, with Rainbow, then with Black Sabbath and, most notably, Dio, he has been the originator of some of the most recognizable classic albums of the genre, combining the exciting sound of heavy rock with imaginative, fantasy-inspired lyrics. Currently celebrating the release of the band Dio’s very first full-length live release titled Dio’s Inferno—The Last In Live, Ronnie took time to chat with Prime Choice about a number of topics ranging from the state of contemporary music to religion, his love of science fiction and biographical literature, and his fanatic support of his beloved New York sports teams. He even alluded to the idea of a concept album that will be his next project, harking back to the style of songs from albums such as Holy Diver and The Last In Line. And, he wanted to express his fondness for his former Rainbow bandmate, drummer Cozy Powell, who had unfortunately lost his life in a traffic accident only days prior to this conversation.

Why is now a particularly good time to release a live album?

I don’t know if right now is the right time. It certainly wasn’t predicated upon it being a good time to release a live album. It was because I’ve been trying to do this for quite a long time now. After we had the first two albums of ours, Holy Diver and Last In Line, both which were very successful, I thought, then, that that was the perfect time to do it. There were a lot of hits from both those albums and we would’ve been able to capture the original band. But our record company at the time, Warner Bros., wanted studio albums. I’m sure it was a matter of money. So, we never really got a chance to do it. Finally, with a new record company and a tour that was going to last for a year-and-a-half, we approached them with it and they said, “Yeah! Let’s do it, it’ll be great.” So, it was just more timing than anything else.

Are there plans for a companion home video?

There were going to be. We had [filmed] a show in Bremen, Germany at the same time we had recorded one of those shows. As of this particular moment, it’s not in the works. But, it’s a possibility. I think I’d rather do it in a different situation where I had a little bit more control. It was kind of spur-of-the-moment.

One thing that I find interesting about this live album is that it doesn’t acknowledge Sacred Heart, Dream Evil, or Lock Up The Wolves. Any particular reason why?

I think one of the things is that there are so many songs from the first two albums that we’re kind of forced to do, things that have been more of our signature material. Plus, a few other reasons, I guess. Sacred Heart and Lock Up The Wolves were not the happiest of projects. We also did nothing from Dream Evil, either, so there are three albums we didn’t touch from. With Lock Up The Wolves, the entire band had changed. Now, Vinnie [Appice]’s back with us, of course, and has been for a long time. I just felt maybe I was gonna be putting things on him that maybe—he wasn’t involved in, if you know what I mean. I thought maybe it was better if we just didn’t do it at that time. The other two albums, again, Sacred Heart was the album that—shortly after we started touring to support that album, Vivian [Campbell] was gone. And, the making of the album was not the happiest of times. And so, perhaps for that reason, we just neglected it. The same with Dream Evil—another unhappy time—perhaps. Another guitar player change with Craig Goldy coming in. I think, perhaps, just bad tastes in our mouth, a little bit; we decided not to do those. One good positive thing about it is we get a chance to do them now because we’re running out of material. We’ve done almost everything else before, so, yeah, we’ll probably touch on those; I’m sure we will. I’d like to do a couple tracks from the Sacred Heart album this time on the road. And, something from Dream Evil, and something from Lock Up The Wolves. So we’ll catch up with those.

One of the things about this live album that I found most appealing is how real it sounds. I mean, with the headphones on, it’s really not too much of a jump of the imagination to feeling like you’re actually at the show.

Well, it was an incredible audience, a really exceptional audience that particular evening that we did most of the tracks from this album. That was outside of Chicago in Shaumberg. We did choose a couple tracks from other places in the world because we did want to make it a world tour live album. But most of them were from Chicago. The audience at that night was just wonderful and I think it shows in the performance as well. I mean, if you don’t have a great audience there, you’re not really gonna put out. Everything really went well that night. It was a real magical night, and my only concern, really, Roger, was that I thought it sounded too good. [Snickers] I thought that maybe the album sounded almost as good as a studio album, and then there was an audience with it. But I guess in the long run, that’s okay. Thanks for your compliment. That makes me feel a little bit better about it. I think it was the matter of the connection with the audience. And that happened almost every show we played anyway, so the audience was an as-important part of this album as we were.

In all honesty, after a certain point in your career, I haven’t really been too familiar with some of the stuff that you were doing. When I got this album and listened to it, it was great. It just brought back a lot of memories, like, Yeah! I remember this stuff, and I remember why I love this stuff. I don’t want to compare it to a studio album, but with a lot of live albums, there’s a tendency of, Well, y’know, this doesn’t sound so great. But it just seems with this piece, everything came through: the audience, the performances.

Well, it was important for us to be sure that the audience were included in this. Again, without their spark that night—all those nights, really—we wouldn’t have been nearly as good as we were. My feeling just was about it sounding like maybe it wasn’t a live album. I just thought the performances were so good. I mean, let’s face it, when you do a live album, you go in and you mix the thing. And there are some mistakes here and there, and you have to fix them. But the thing I’m most proud of is that there were very few fixes on this. So there were some, of course, but not very many, which showed the consistency of the band from not only that show, but of all the other ones that we did. Maybe that consistency made me think, Gee, if there were a few more mistakes, maybe it would sound like it was more live. I just can’t bring myself to do that, and, again, the band is just so good that it comes across as, perhaps, too polished. I certainly hope not. Per your compliment, I think, obviously, it sounds like a live album, so that’s what we were looking for.

Well, it sounds like you and the rest of the band are definitely having a great time.

We had a great time. We always have a good time. I mean, once you find the right people in place, once you put them there and you know that they feel the same as you do about the music that you’re making and the music that you want to make—plus the fact that we’re all friends—why play in a band with someone you hate, just because he’s a good player? I never would do that. But everyone has always been chosen because we got along well. This band gets along particularly well, and we’ve been together—actually, Vinnie and I have been together for eighteen years, Tracy has been with us for five. So, it’s a long enough time for us to have really gotten to know each other, personally and musically, and I really do think it shows.

There seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding Tracy G. and his ability as a guitarist, which strikes me as very odd.

And me.