DIO - Next In Line... Page 3
By Martin Popoff

And after that, look for a pretty cool box set from Rhino, distinguished from past Dio comps in that it looks at the whole career. Post-Elf anyways. "Yes, there's a boxed set that is being released in late April, which is, I think, 37 songs, spanning my career from Elf until right now. It's a Rhino product, which is obviously directly involved with Warner Brothers; it's one of their companies. It's done by the same people who did the last one, The Beast Of Dio, this of course just being very much more perhaps introspective because it has so many songs from the beginning to the end: Elf, Rainbow, Sabbath and Dio." In terms of rarities, unfortunately, there isn't much, although Ronnie figures some unreleased live tracks should make the cut.

And looking out to the future, Ronnie hints of bombastic, epic work to come... "When we finish this DVD, we'll take some time away from it and we'll need some time away from each other, I'm sure. We've been on the road for about eight months now and it's been pretty grueling. We need to spend the holidays... obviously we'll see each other over the holidays, but away from this situation, being thrown together so closely... Following that, I'm going to go back home for awhile. By home, I mean New York, to see my folks, just for a week or ten days or so. Then when I get back to L.A., I'm sure I'm going to just be chomping at the bit to do something anyway. So I'll begin writing for the album then, which should be Magica II and III. So at least there's a plan for that. And Doug Aldrich is just like I am; he can't stand to sit around and do nothing so that will be interesting. But most important is to just take a bit of time away from this and just generally gather our lives around us again. We have another album to do and that's going to be long process and it's going to be a very involved album for me because it's going to be Magica again. When that stops, you know, I may have some time this year to do other things, because we plan on only going to South America for a very brief period of time, probably in February, and then only doing festivals this year. I've had enough of touring constantly. I think it's important that we take steps backward and not be quite so available all the time. So I want to do that. And then for the next proper tour, I'd like to put together a wonderful package, or be part of a package like we did with Scorpions and Purple, without being the opening act, quote unquote..."