 Okay, now we are officially live with the Queen, Wendy Dio, nice to see you once again. Hi, nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me. All right, so on the show today, we're gonna talk, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about in 29 minutes, but first, Wendy, here it is. I did not open it until this interview today. Okay. I did not open it, so I made a little cut because I usually have a lot of problems taking off the wrapping at the top, you know, like shrink wrap, there it is, okay. So I'm gonna unbox and you could tell me about it as I unbox, is that good, you like that? Okay, this is like Christmas, but this is like a Yahtzee box, it's like a Yahtzee, is it not? I just very, very thick, very thick, not hollow at all, just giving everybody sort of a bird's eye view of this here up above. Look how beautiful, beautiful packaging, beautiful. So I'm gonna rip it open now. Lots of goodies. So this is, oh, I should say, this is the deluxe edition of Dreamers Never Die, that will be released tomorrow. Yep. September 30th, maybe you wanna just give a quick little, you know, what's going on tomorrow, how is it gonna be released as I open this up? Oh, it's gonna be released tomorrow and all over the place, and I think you get it on Amazon, if you get it in a lot of record stores, I think Target has it all, I think you can get it everywhere, hopefully. And it was on Showtime, correct? Yes. Streaming on Showtime, and what else? It was streaming on Showtime, and it was in the theaters, and actually a year ago today it was in the theaters. Am I right? Yes, and what I like about this box set is the fact that Americans could watch it in Showtime, but the rest of the world couldn't watch it unless they called it the cinema in just a couple of days it was out, so now it's worldwide, so we can, everybody can watch it. That's right, the whole world is gonna get to witness, and not only that, but you get a lot of goodies, I don't even know what the goodies are yet, I'm gonna open it up and we're gonna find it out. Okay, so as you can see, have any of your other interviewers opened it up like I have? One. Oh geez. Okay, so I'm not gonna show you. Okay. All right, I don't know what this is first of all, this seems like a poster of some sort. Yes, is it a movie poster? Whoa! Yeah. I'm gonna hang this up in my room. I'm gonna hang this up in my room. Yeah, it's a movie poster of the documentary. Yep, look at that, beautiful. My wife will not like this, but I will hang this right above our bed. No, she'll love it, she'll love it. Okay, so we've got a poster. And what's this here? It's a wristband, and it says Dreamer's Never Die on it. I'm really bad at opening things. Hang on. Okay, here we go. There's a wristband here. So this is sort of like, right? Yep. Oh boy. It's like I'm in the hospital. So it says Dreamer Never Die, right? And what do we got here? This is like a pen, correct? Yeah, a pen, yeah, real nice steel pen. For your battle vest? For the battle vest that people wear, right? Do you know what else? We've got a patch also for the battle vest, correct? Patch, yep. Nice patch. Are these Kleenexes? That's right, in case you cry. It's true, it is a tear-jerker of a movie, isn't it? So they're Kleenexes, who would have thought? Look at that. Yeah. Okay. And here, what do we have? Baseball cards? Baseball cards, yes, there's some photos on them. There's four different photos. I'm not gonna load up because I want to keep it as a souvenir. Guitar pick, right? Yep, two of them, I think are in there. Okay. And of course a sticker to put on your fridge. Yep. Or a new guitar. And this here, what's this? That looks like, is that the DVD? No, it's too small for it to be a DVD. It says... Oh no, those are the... Coasters. Those are coasters. Oh, look at that. Yeah, you put your old drink if you're having a beer or a wine or a cup of tea. Those are for your coasters. Look at that, amazing. And now we're getting into, okay, now we got a little booklet of some sort, right here. Yep, telling you all about the story of the documentary. Beautiful, look at that. Wow, it's wonderful. Very well done, by the way, so far. Very well done. And this is, okay, now this is probably the Blu-ray or DVD, one or the other. Yep, that's it. This is the DVD, right? Yep. And a Blu-ray. And for all the people watching out there, if you could play your Blu-ray, you could play your DVD on your Blu-ray, but you can't do it the other way around. Hmm. There it is. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, you could play your DVD on your Blu-ray player, but you can't do it the other way around. You can't play your Blu-ray on your DVD player. I don't have a Blu-ray. Yeah, yeah, so there you go. And that's the empty box, so got a lot of goodies. Okay, so let's talk about, there's some additional scenes, correct? There's additional scenes in the movie. So tell me about that. Well, because, well, when we made the documentary, there was so much footage, but we had to cut out a lot of footage, unfortunately. But on the bonus, we get bonuses, you get The Son of Mike, Ronny's drummer talking about a story. You've got when Davis, Ronny's engineer, talking about a story, and then you have Jack Black talking about a story. Yeah, Jack Black. Did Jack Black, when he did the Pick of Destiny, correct? Mm-hmm, yep. With Ronny, I mean, a lot of people love that movie. And Ronny's scene was the best part there. That's what Jack always said, and he wasn't in it. Just meet Lof and Ronny, basically. And little Jack Black. All right, so what really impressed me about the movie, we could talk about that a little bit. I love how when the priest, the Holy Diver, which I love. You know, a lot of people, we know the Holy Diver here, and I will show also the last year you came out with the Deluxe Holy Diver remix. This picture here, a lot of people don't know, I haven't seen the film, I've seen it a few times, this was actually sort of inspired by a real photo shoot. Maybe you want to talk about that a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they went down, Jean Kirklin, who was a photographer, went down with the guy that, Jean, there's another Jean that actually drew the actual original photo, the original drawing of Holy Diver. They went down to Malibu Coast and they put a wetsuit on and went into the water and Jean was a photographer and they had changed around him. He wanted to reenact the actual scene, but what happened, he almost drowned and then Jean had to end up pulling him out. So it was not a fun time for them at the time when they were doing it. It was a great idea. And the story behind that is, you know, people ask, you know, always very specific, there's a devil, Daniel, a priest. But Ronny's way of thinking was, you know, how do you know that that's a bad guy because he looks like a monster and that's a good guy because he has to freestyle it on. Never judge a book by a cover. In other words, whatever really looks like doesn't matter. Is it too short, too small, too this, you wear the wrong clothes, doesn't matter. What's inside your heart is what matters because that's what people should know, not what the outside looks like. That's very good. Well said. When you rewatched it, or I guess you've seen this so many times now, what have you learned that, you know what, I didn't realize that or, wow, or maybe it inspired a memory of yours that you didn't forget about? Many, many, many, many memories in there. It's very pretty sweet for me. The first time I saw it, I carded my eyes out because we worked on it for so hard for three years. We worked on it and it was longer because of COVID. But, you know, there's so many memories in there that bring back to me that I was like, you know, I've forgotten about this. I've forgotten about that. I've forgotten about the accident that Ronnie had. You know, that was a terrible, terrible time. I'd forgotten about the really bad time we had when Ronnie lost his record deal. That was very hard for all of us because, you know, an artist without a record deal feels like nobody wants him. I've forgotten about those days. I've actually forgotten about how when that happened, he had to play club because of the big arenas that he played. So, you know, there's a lot of things that I've forgotten about that I brought back memories to me again. Did you, when you went to the club days and that was like, let's say in the 90s, like the late 90s, early 2000s, did you think, man, are we ever going to get it back? Are we ever going to get back to where we were? I may have thought that. I never portrayed that to Ronnie and Ronnie never thought that. He didn't care. You know, he could play to eight people or 80,000 people. As far as he was concerned, he was going to give his all for that, that eight people or those eight, 80,000 people. It did hurt him a lot to lose the record deal. You know, I mean, he lost it, Van Halen lost it. A lot of people lost it. And that was very, very hurtful to me. It was a bad time in his life. Lost it for a minute. But, you know, I went all over the world to find a new record deal and I found independence, which was great. You know, you license it to him. We don't give it to him forever in a day when you get it back. So it was like, it was actually a learning trip for me. But, you know, we persevered and we carried on and money got back up where it belonged. You know, at the beginning of the documentary, Lita Ford says, we had friends who named their children after Ronnie, right? Strange enough, my friend, Orlando, he named his son Ronnie. I mean, what are the most bizarre stories you've, I wouldn't say bizarre, but interesting stories of people naming their children that you remember. Oh, they named their children Ronnie, they named them Dio, they named them, in fact, Amit, Zappa wanted to name his kid Dio, but his wife didn't want him to. But, you know, a lot of cats are named Dio, a lot of cats are named Ronnie. I think somebody had a drag with a dragon, this is a dragon that they named Ronnie. It's a whole bunch of different things in there. I think it's fun, I think it's great. And, you know, what he's saying about children, I think this is the first time ever in history that kids are listening to their parents' music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes or no, I don't know. They are, they are, they are, but yes or no, I mean, they're not listening to as much metal as we'd like them to, that's what I think. This is true, this is true, but it goes in and out. You know, it's always fashionable for a while, then it's not and something else comes in. But, you know, I think that Ronnie's fans are always there. I mean, they're the most amazing people ever. He's been gone 13 years, I still have two and a half million people on our Facebook and our webpage and everything. You know, it's like, you know, Ronnie's my life is to keep Ronnie's music and his vision alive and I try to do that. But, you know what? I don't have to try that hard because his fans are always there. Yeah, yeah. What did you learn as a manager? Like, okay, so you would transition from a wife to his manager and like, what were the sort of hurdles you had to overcome in the beginning? Because, right? I mean, because you know, it's easy to watch somebody do it and it's another thing to, you know, be the quarterback, right? Especially in the eighties because at that time there was only men managers. There were no women managers. Sharon and I were the only women managers. And we got it from the man who said, oh, you don't know what you're doing. Listen to me. This is it. Take the supplies and whatever. And I listened very carefully to what they had to say. I said, yes, yes, I agree, blah, blah. And then went and did exactly what I wanted to do. Sharon turned around and turned an F off and did what she wanted to do. That we both did it the way we wanted to do it and we both became successful. And I think that there are so many women managers now and women make great managers. They are multitask people. Men a lot of times don't see the multitask. They take little silly things that maybe look silly to a man but to a woman, we listen to what the musician has to say. I've seen bands break up over silly little things that could have been talked about and could have been talked about and thought about. And I think that when we have a lot more listening power to what the musician wants. Did you find it sometimes, like we've talked about this in the past in interviews. You were getting more of the heat because you're the so-called manager. And the wife, yeah. Yeah, and the wife. I mean, oh, yeah. Well, you know, it's her fault. She doesn't know what she's doing. You know, yeah. I mean, she's just the wife. Doesn't have a clue what she's doing. People, I do have background in music. When I was 17 years old, I wasn't at Decor Records as an intern in my summer holidays. I worked for a booking agency. I worked for attorneys doing contracts, you know. But those are things that nobody knew about. And that helped me in that but it was still very challenging. Very, very challenging. But you know what? I'm a control freak. One is a control freak. And together, the two control freaks managed to get to it. I mean, sometimes you gotta play good cop, bad cop. Right? When you're renting an organization. And I guess a lot of times the manager always ends up being the bad cop, right? Because. Oh, yeah. Like Ronnie, and I'm just guessing here. I would think Ronnie is just trying to keep the peace with the band, especially in the early days. Whereas you had to sort of come across as no, it's gonna be this way. And maybe unfairly so sometimes, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. And Ronnie would really have a go at me. I mean, we are being control freaks. He wanted it his way. I wanted it my way. And we would have big, not more fights about it. But the thing is, you know, it was always the good friend career. And I think why it works this one and I is because I never ever interfered with music. Because music was his thing. I didn't interfere. And he didn't interfere with my business. Sometimes he didn't want to do what I wanted to do, but he ended up doing it. You know, just sparked the memory. I was reading Giza Butler's book. And you know, and don't get me wrong here. He loves Ronnie. And he says it throughout the book, but there's one point. He goes, during the Black Sabbath era, the first go around, you know, there were more laid back, right? Whereas Ronnie was, let's go, let's go, let's go. And I guess they found that somewhat annoying. Annoying, annoying. You know, I want to be polite here. I don't want to, I don't like, I love Giza Butler. I love Tony Elmi, but you could see that Ronnie was driven. Whereas Giza, and you know, they were just kind of a little more laid back like Ronnie would say in his book, at least what Giza said, cut down on the solos, Tony, cut down on the solos, right? But he wouldn't listen because they were used to their ways. I mean, what are your thoughts? I don't know if you read the book or not, but. I haven't read the book. Yeah, I asked Gloria for it and she said it to me, Giza's wife. But because I talked to her all the time, I think Giza all the time. But no, that was true. Because Ronnie was a perfectionist. He was a perfectionist at his art. Everything had to be perfect and done right. And yes, they were very laid back. There was a lot of drugs going on at that time too. So, but you know, Ronnie wanted it done and he wanted it done right. And as he said, they were used to just being, oh, well, this is the way it is, you know? Different, different from people. Yeah, yeah. All right, tell me about how it hurt him so much. I mean, there were so many points, there were so many highs and so many lows. He's at a black Sabbath just quickly. I mean, was that more painful than being out of sort of losing the label deal later on? Or was that even more painful than, was that his painful point, the most painful point for Ronnie? I think they're both equally painful, you know? He loved being in black Sabbath. He wanted to be in black Sabbath, but there were things that he did not agree with in black Sabbath. And so therefore he, you know, he always did what he wanted to do. So if something wasn't right, he wasn't gonna do it. So he had to leave. What about re-releasing? And I'm just jumping around topics because I know you don't have a lot of time. Ronnie and the Red Caps, are we ever gonna see some sort of major release on Ronnie and the Red Caps? I don't think so. I don't think so. There's a lot of red tape involved in that with Halone's in, who thinks they own it and who doesn't own it and whatever. I don't think so. All right, last in line. I know we got this one right here. It's beautiful. A remix and remastered. Last in line is next. So brishi. Are you planning on to keep on going throughout all the albums and sort of doing remixes? So what's the plan there? Rhino wants to do it. They did it with doberishi, which I thought did an excellent remix on it. Excellent, excellent remixers. You can listen to Ronnie's mix and you can listen to Joe's mix. And they're both different. They're both great. Yeah, they have plans next year. Rhino to do last in line on that. There's a beautiful release that came out two days ago. I don't know if you can see this on BMG with the last four albums that are in vinyl. It's a beautiful box that is really real. Do the unboxing for me, please. Do the unboxing. Unboxing. Okay, wait, there's one on the floor. It's okay. That's part of the unboxing experience. Dropping things. That's it. Okay, so we have this beautiful cover. We have Angry Machine here. Beautiful. Angry Machine has, let's see, what color is that one? I have to look this one. Oh, and it's got some great artwork in there as well. Wow, look at that. Yeah, and then they ask, what color is this one? Angry Machine is a Halloween orange. Wow, that's beautiful. So that's really cool. And then there is Killin' the Dragon. Beautiful. And that one is got some more great artwork here. You can see. Wow. And that album cover is, let's have a look. So that one vinyl is, oh, this one is a swirly, a swirly green yellow color. Grimy, grimy. Grimy, yeah, grimy. Limey. Are you calling me a limey? And you've got Master of the Moon. Beautiful. And this one, I think this one's my favorite actually. And you've got more artwork. Beautiful. And this one is, I think this is a beautiful blue one. Yeah, look at this one. This is beautiful, beautiful blue, that one. Wow. And then last one is Magica, if I can find it. Oh, here's Magica. Magica, but that color of this one, this one is, there's a booklet with Magica. And then this one is a red one. This is a really, look, then you've got more artwork. Geez, that's nice. And you've got this red one here, which is beautiful. And then you've got this bonus, if I can find it. Oh, here it is, of Electra. Oh, Electra, yes. Yeah, so that one is a little. Can you just turn around? Let's see the song selection on Electra. It's the song Electra, right? Yeah, it's the song Electra. And then, I wonder what my glasses on. Just put it up there on the screen. I'll read it for you. I got mine on. Okay, no way. It says Electra, and then on the B side is Electra again. There you go. B side, one side B is Electra. And it's blue. And it's blue, yes. Yeah, it's really beautiful. And I think that's a really lovely box set. And really, BMG did an excellent job on that. Is that strictly just LPs or is it CDs and LPs? No, it's vinyl. Vinyl, just vinyl. They're all vinyl. Yes, vinyl, yep. All right, now that, let's talk about bowling for cancer with Ronnie, right? Tell me about that. It's our celebrity bowling. Eddie Trunks always the host. He's so graciously busy this time. That's on November 16th at Pins in Studio City. And in the past, we've had, you know, Jack Black in April and Tom Morello, and his name has been there. And we don't know until the last minute because obviously people are working, they don't come. But I do know that Jack Black is not through a nation-state. And I think that Eddie Trunks been talking to Dave Ball, so I don't know. And I think there's, I think these are butler will be there this year. I'm not sure of it. But we're working on a bunch of things. It's going to be a really fun night. We sold out a set of tickets. There's a couple of lanes left. If anyone wants to purchase the lanes, they're 20, I think they're 22 flippers. Which, and then we have the auction on Eddie Trunks team, which is always like the celebrities. And they have an auction of raising money for the cancer. Whoever bids the highest gets to play on the team with the celebrities. But it's a really funny thing with money going to a great cause. Every penny goes to researching and education of cancer. We're working with Dr. Wong at UCLA on the saliva test, which is really good because it will tell your early detection if you have stomach cancers or pancreatic cancer, which are horrible cancers that creep up. You don't know if it's the last minute. Yeah, so we've been working on a lot of things. We're working on seed money with different people. It's good like Vanderbilt didn't have any money set aside for research on these two horrible diseases. And we gave them 100,000. Someone else gave them 500,000. Then they got a $11 million grant from the government to work on it. So we're working on things. You know what? It's such a great cause. You do this, man. You just do it like twice a year, right? You do it to Ronnie in the park. Yeah, when the park, we do the bowling and then we used to do ride for Ronnie. That's right. But it started to get too expensive to close the street and there's so much to my table. We have to work on it so long. So now we're doing rock for Ronnie. We did one last year. This year we've moved because we sold out last year and we couldn't get any more people in. So we've moved to Warner Center and that will be on May 19th next year. Warner Center in LA. And we're hoping to announce some great bands that will be on it next year. You know, something just came to mind. I always try to think of something that I haven't asked you before. And I think this is the question. Do you remember and how true is this? Ronnie had a movie in his mind to make. He wanted to make an animation movie, correct? Yeah. He wanted David Leroy's voice to be the main character. Do you remember this? Yeah, I do. Is this true? This is true. This is very true. Yeah, I think he's working on our magicers and then to be a trilogy, which unfortunately didn't work out. I don't know if that, I don't think that's the one he wanted David Leroy. No, no, I think that was, I think the David Leroy one was in the 80s. Yeah. He wanted to cartoon his story of Murray. And I think it was a Middle Earth, again. I'm going right from memory here, but I think... Yep, it was a Middle Earth, yep. It was, he wanted, how far did he get to that? Like, I mean, in that project, it was just maybe just on paper. Was it something that he was just bouncing around? I don't think he even got to paper. Ronnie was very much doing one thing at a time. You know, he'd be asked to do something, but if he was like on a tour, he could only do that. If he was home, he was writing songs and he was doing that. So he didn't multitask very well. But he wanted David Leroy to sing or at least, I don't know if it was supposed to be, it was a musical or just a speaking movie? No, it was a musical, a musical. It was going to be a Middle Earth, musical and David Leroy, he wanted as the main character. It was going to be the story of Murray and Murray is the name he gave of that monster that's drowning the priest. Okay, and I also remember, here's the last question as we have a few minutes left. Ronnie said in the papers, back when, I wish I could only sleep for two or three hours a night. Oh yeah, yeah, I think he didn't. He actually probably slept five or six hours a night. He thought that eating and sleeping were a waste of time. He had so many things to go and so many things he wanted to do. He was always busy writing things, doing stuff that he never thought there were enough hours in the day. Maybe he had a permission that he was in the past. I don't know, but I know he was always awake. I remember, and here's the last part as we have two minutes left. He said that he wanted the band deal right at the beginning. We're talking about right at the beginning, to be like Led Zeppelin, to be remembered like Led Zeppelin. I think he accomplished that. Did he not? I think so too. I think, you know, I mean, guys, I think, well, lost in life is going to be 40 years next year. Which means that Holy Diver is probably 42 years ago and people are still buying it and playing it. And I'm so happy. There's so many young tripple bands out there doing tribute music, which I love. It's people monitoring music, is legend alive. And I just, I'm so happy that the young kids appreciate the music that he did. On that note, pick up Yahtzee. No, I'm just kidding. What about Deal Monopoly? Are we getting to that stage yet? Are it made in AS Monopoly? Like a Deal Monopoly, something like that, maybe? I think we did some casino game that's only available in Europe with Wyber. It was gotten to Monopoly, yeah. Okay, all right. Well, I won't push my luck. All right, well, it's been a pleasure. I'm really happy that you're always keeping Ronnie's memory alive. You're always, you know, trying to get money, raise money for cancer. I think it's a wonderful initiative. And best of luck to you, Wendy. You know, Neil Turbin will be at the bowling event. Oh, great, great. And he will be there to, you know, to cover that for the metal voice, all right? So thank you very much. Any closing remarks? Thank you so much for inviting me. Couldn't do it without people like you that support us. And thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right, Wendy, have yourself a wonderful night. You too.