VIVIAN CAMPBELL: 'I'm Very Proud Of The Records I Made With DIO'

DEF LEPPARD/ex-DIO guitarist Vivian Campbell was interviewed earlier in the month on the "Hines' Side Show" on the Springfield, Missouri radio station US 97. You can now listen to the chat in two parts below. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On getting up on stage with STEEL PANTHER and jamming on DEF LEPPARD and DIO tracks:

Vivian: "That was very inspiring to get up and play those solos from the DIO songs again. And I'm actually inspired by that. I actually called up the other guys from the original DIO lineup [Vinny Appice (drums),Jimmy Bain (bass) and Claude Schnell (keyboards)] and we've been getting together a couple of times and we've played. We've found a singer [Andrew Freeman, who has previously fronted HURRICANE and LYNCH MOB] — and he's a great, great singer — so we're actually gonna go out and play some shows the next time DEF LEPPARD takes a few months off."

On how his playing in the DIO songs differs to his approach with the DEF LEPPARD material:

Vivian: "It is very, very different to what I do in DEF LEPPARD. To be honest, I don't get to play anywhere near as much guitar in DEF LEPPARD as I did in DIO, obviously. I mean, I was the only guitar player in the DIO band and with LEPPARD, we've got Phil Collen. Yeah, it's definitely a more aggressive approach to playing. And a lot of that was brought on… I did four months with THIN LIZZY [as the band's touring guitarist] last year when LEPPARD were off, and that was very, very inspirational to me as a player because I grew up listening to THIN LIZZY and the guitar players in LIZZY — Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson and, in particular, Gary Moore — were massive, massive influences on my playing. That really kind of re-energized me. I went and did a U.K. and European tour with them, which was a real dream come true. And it really got me really kind of reconnected to playing again, and so that kind of opened that door, and ever since then, it's just like being 16 again — I just wanna play a lot of guitar."

On playing the DIO songs again after so long:

Vivian: "I'm very proud of the records I made with DIO. For some reason, a lot of people don't seem to understand that. But I wrote those songs and I feel a very passionate connection to them. So it's gonna be great fun to go out and play them again in front of an audience."

On getting Andrew Freeman to sing Ronnie James Dio's parts:

Vivian: "Andy is a fantastic vocalist. I mean, he doesn't sound necessarily like Ronnie Dio. I mean, he doesn't have that tonality in his voice, but I wasn't so sure that that was the way to go. I'm not gonna try and replace Ronnie Dio. I mean, Ronnie was the best of the genre, so it would be pretty much impossible to replace him. Funny enough, since announcing this on my Facebook page several months ago, I've had people send me video links to different singers, and there's three guys — one from Argentina, I think one from Sweden and I think the other guy is American — and I don't know a lot about them, but they do actually sound scarily like Ronnie. But I wasn't so sure that I wanted to go down that route. I think it's more important that it's the original bandmembers and that it's the original songs; we're only gonna be playing songs that we wrote and recorded back then. So Andy brings his own thing to it. Like I said, he's a very, very strong singer, and we're not trying to clone Ronnie. That might be a little bit too cheesy. It's about the songs and the band, the original band."

On the difficulties he had working with Ronnie James Dio on a personal level:

Vivian: "Every lead singer has a strong ego, and they need that. I just had problems with Ronnie on a personal level, because I lived with him in his house for a long time when I was originally in the band. It was strange, because there was such a generational gap. I mean, Ronnie was so much older than me, and it was kind of like being in a band with your dad, or with your stepfather. It was a little bit weird. So business-wise, Ronnie and I didn't see eye-to-eye in particular. His ex-wife, or his estranged wife, Wendy, was his manager, and she, in my experience, was not a very good manager for his career and made some horrendous decisions. And Ronnie just kind of didn't wanna go toe-to-toe with her, so we had kind of capitulated to that. But I have nothing but respect for Ronnie as a musician. But other than that, yeah, it was a tough time for both of us in terms of our personalities clashing, but we made great music together, there's no denying that."

Interview part 1 (audio):

Interview part 2 (audio):

Original DIO lineup performing live in 1984: