Vocal legend RONNIE JAMES DIO spoke to BW&BK recently about a number of topics including DIO's current tour where the entire classic Holy Diver opus from 1983 is being performed in it's entirety.

When asked how to describe the show, Dio says that "People need to know that we’re not playing two sets. That makes no sense at all. Intermission? Why? Piss in your pants or miss the music. I don’t really care. It makes no sense to me. An intermission stops the progress. It’s like stopping at a services somewhere and everyone having a beer. If you’re there to perform, you perform from beginning to end. Our set is about two hours and twenty minutes, and even I can’t believe we do that much. No one else on earth can do that, I don’t think, not with the intensity of the songs we have to do and the difficulty of my having to sing them and the difficulty of the musicians having to remember the damn things. ‘Holy Diver’ is in the middle of the whole set, but before that you get songs that haven’t been heard before. We haven’t done the song ‘Tarot Woman’ since I was in Rainbow. That’s a long, long way back. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there are also songs that you must do, that got you there. Songs like ‘Heaven And Hell’, ‘Man On The Silver Mountain’ and ‘The Last In Line’. So there’s four or five songs, some you’ve heard before and some you maybe haven’t, then there’s the ‘Holy Diver’ set, then down to songs you may or may not have heard before, and lots of encores. Once again, because I’ve had such a long career, you can’t do everything. It’s the most adventurous and best set that I’ve ever been involved with. It may be ‘An Evening With…’ but it’s just gonna be a longer evening with us than you’ve had before. Bring a piss-cup or pee on the floor. No one’s gonna care at that point.”

Dio's upcoming tour schedule is as follows:

December
3 in Copenhagen, Denmark at K.B. Hallen
4 in Oslo, Norway at Sentrum
5 in Gothenburg, Sweden at Liseberghallen
6 in Stockholm, Sweden at Arenaen
8 in Helsinki, Finland at Icehall
9 in Jyvaskyla, Finland at Icehall
10 in Oulu, Finland at Teatria

URIAH HEEP and ASIA will be on the bill as support.