Ronnie James Dio Interview Metal Express Radio You've done the comeback with your band Dio. You done a comeback with a Black Sabbath. Last year Ritchie Blackmore did a comeback with Rainbow. Would you ever consider to join Rainbow if you had the offer now? No no, we don't make the same kind of music. I mean Ritchie... I'm an experimenter, I like to try different things. I think this album will show that this is a very different album for us. A very much more modern album than the other things we've done before, but Ritchie continually seems to make the same album to me. He seems to be searching for what he had when he let go the best thing he probably ever had and that was the first band with Jimmy and myself or Bob Daisley, Cozy and Tony Carey. He seems to be continually trying to make that same kind of music and I'm not having to go at Ritchie for it. I mean good for him, whatever he wants to do he needs to do, for my own sake I need to experiment. I need to take steps forward and not just take steps backward or to remain in place. So I don't think it ever could possibly work. I never close the door to it, there's always a chance that something like that could happen. In fact we're doing some shows together in America in November with Rainbow and Dio. So if that means anything at all, it means that Ritchie and I don't hate each other and I never have hated Ritchie and I know he's never hated me. We've always had nothing but good things or nothing at all to say about each other. There's never been a problem, I think people have created that. They felt that with Rainbow it was a matter of two egos that couldn't work together and that's not true at all. If that were the case I wouldn't have lasted 10 seconds in that band because I've always buried my whatever ego people think I have so that I can survive and deal with the people I'm with. Sabbath had some pretty big egos too and I always have had to suppress my own feelings because I wanted my situations to work. Ego is not a problem for me, what is a problem for me is what's right and wrong in music and if things are wrong then I don't function very well in them. I won't be in them anymore but musically I just think that we're too far apart. Again, I try to be an innovator as much as I can within a traditional bounds of heavy metal.... the kind of heavy metal metal I make has allowed me. And Ritchie has not taken those steps forward. So I could never see myself going back to doing that again. I just don't want to rewrite Rainbow Rising or Long Live Rock'n'Roll or whatever. I don't want to do that again but you know as I say I will not close the door if Ritchie was willing to make some changes and the circumstances were right. I perhaps might consider it but at this particular point I'm never going to find a band as good as or a guitar player as good as the one I'm playing with now or one who makes me happier that's for sure. So I'm very happy with the band I have. When you're doing the shows with Rainbow I guess a lot of fans would like to see you on stage with Rainbow for a couple of tracks. Do you think that will happen? That's never going to happen either. No, I don't think so. I mean we're not getting together to do these shows so that we can please people by teasing them with my singing with him or his playing with me. No, we'll just carry on and do what we have to do. It's really not something that I've given any thought to and I'm sure... I assume that Ritchie hasn't, but no that's not what we're going to do, I'm not going to play with him, he's not going to play with me. Metal Express Radio 1996