Vivian Campbell admits he and Ronnie James Dio said ‘stupid shit’ about each other
Vivian Campbell admits he and Ronnie James Dio said ‘stupid shit’ about each other
It’s no secret that current Def Leppard and Last In Line guitarist Vivian Campbell left on poor terms from his stint in Dio and working with the powerhouse singer Ronnie James Dio. In addition, Campbell and another former Dio guitarist Craig Goldy have traded barbs in the press over the former’s various comments about Ronnie James Dio and Goldy‘s Dio Disciples band.
Campbell was recently interviewed by Eon Music and was asked how it feels to embrace his musical past again to which he replied: “I’m really embracing the music again, because things have come full circle for me, and obviously the passage of time, and Ronnie’s passing away, I think had something to do with it too. Like I said earlier, it left such a bad taste in my mouth the way things went down, but to come back at it now, I look at it in an entirely different light; this is as much Jimmy Bain’s legacy, Vinny Appice’s legacy, and Vivian Campbell’s legacy as it was Ronnie Dio’s. We created those records with Ronnie; we wrote the songs, and we worked for nothing; believe me, we worked for less than the road crew, because we were working for a common goal.
We were a creative unit, even though Wendy Dio never saw it that way. So to be denied that, and then to be fired from it, and then the crap that was said about me in the press, that the Dios went on for years to say – that I turned my back on the band, that I left the band – it was absolutely untrue, and back then you didn’t have Facebook where you could go on and defend yourself, or present your side of the story. The only way to do that would have been to hire a publicist at great expense, which I couldn’t have afforded to do.”
When it was commented that it was a famously bitter split between him and Dio, Campbell advised: “I felt so bitter about it for so many years, and I was guilty of saying some stupid shit about Ronnie in the press, and he was guilty of saying some stupid shit about me. It’s never a good thing when people air their dirty laundry in public, but that’s the way it went down. So, I look at it in an entirely different way now; it’s our legacy, it’s Vinny’s, mine, Jimmy’s and Ronnie’s. So then to hear people say; “oh, it’s a cash grab”, or another one is people who say it’s a ‘tribute band’; how can it be a tribute band when we are what’s left of it?!”
Campbell was also asked whether there would be a sequel to Last In Line‘s debut album Heavy Crown to which he stated: “There will be a second album. I’ve certainly started writing for it; I’ve got ideas for it. I think in January we’ll probably go in the studio together and we’ll start jamming song ideas. I don’t know when we’re going to record it, but definitely, sometime in 2017, we will finish another Last In Line record, because we’re really encouraged by the response this record [debut ‘Heavy Crown’]’s got. I mean, I think we hit the target that we aimed for, which was we wanted to make a record that was reminiscent of that era, and we went about writing and recording it in the spirit that we had approached the original ‘Holy Diver’ album in, without being contrived. There is an undeniable sound when Vinny Appice plays drums, it raises my game as a guitar player, and when Vinny and I play together, and especially when Jimmy and Vinny and I played together, it was seventy-five percent of the original Dio band, and it was a sound that we naturally had.”
You can read the rest of the interview with Campbell at Eon Music.