on and on and on. It's just incredible. I'm not finished yet. I bet. Good to hear. Good to hear because man, one of my top drummers of all time, especially, I listen to Last in Line. Stuff you were doing on that album just blows my mind every time I listen to it. All right. I got to play great music, so it's easy to play. So here we go. Let's start her up today on the show. Promoting Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules Deluxe Edition coming out March the 5th. All right. So when you when you heard these live performances, have you ever heard them before? I guess we should just sort of break it down, right, Alan? Break it down into these two albums are coming out. There's a lot of unreleased tracks, a lot of live tracks or remix tracks. I guess, Vinny, the first question is, what did you notice differently on these albums that you haven't noticed about them in the past? I noticed that I don't even have them. He never got a copy. Oh, actually, which ones are the live ones? I don't even know. Well, you have you have Heaven and Hell and it comes with an extra disc, I guess, with live material in I think it's Hammersmith, right, Alan? Do you remember? Oh, the Hammersmith. Yeah, that was already released. I mean, Connecticut as well. Yes. And then Mob Rules, which you are, I guess, more part of Hammersmith, which was already released plus Portland, a whole live gig in Portland. Oh, do you remember? There you go. You'll learn something new. Well, that's, that's what kind of wraps up the show. You guys, let me interview you guys. All right. What did I think? I got a right to send an email to the record company to tell me, tell them to send me a couple albums. That'd be something that I could talk about. I love it. I love it. It's okay. We enjoy that. Let's go back. Maybe let's go back. Maybe we take a step back. We got, okay, let's go with Heaven and Hell. There's a show in Hawaii. Bill Ward can't make it. You show up last minute kind of thing. Walk us through that. How you how you first performed? Well, that the year was 1980. And I was actually right before that Sabbath thing, I got a call from Sharon Osborn saying, she told me that she's putting a band together with Ozzie, a new band. And they wanted me to fly to England and hang out with Ozzie and see how we get along and possibly be in a band. And I was pretty young back then and I haven't really been out of the country except for Canada. And I thought I'd ask my brother about Ozzie. So I asked Carmine, is Ozzie a little bit crazy or you think I should do this? I got to go all the way to England. I don't even know where England is, right? So back then. So Carmine said, yeah, he's pretty crazy, not pretty nuts and whatever we talked. So I decided not to do it. So I actually turned that gig down. And then about two months later, I got a call from Sabbath saying they're in town. They're looking for a drummer. Bill left the tour. They heard about me. And you know, would you like to come down to me, Tony? I owe me at the hotel. This is in LA, of course. So I said, yeah. So next day, I went to meet Tony and he had an album under his arm that I did with a band called Axis, a three piece band.  And it was a really good sound on a really good drum sound. So Tony liked the album. And he said it was really good. And so they, we got along great Tony and I, you know, we just hit it off. So he invited me to come down to the next day to rehearse with them. So that's the next day was when I actually met Ronnie, Tony Geyser and Jeff Nichols, who was the keyboardist. Right. And this first song we ever played was Neonites. Because I heard it on the radio a couple of weeks before. I just happened to hear it while I'm driving in the car. And I thought, wow, that new singer for Sabbath sounds great. Dio, huh? Because I didn't really follow Dio. You know, I knew Rainbow a little bit. But you know, I knew he was a great singer. But wow, this really fits well together. That's a great, great song. So they said, what do you want to play? Oh, I don't know about Neonites. You know, I know it's fast. There's not a lot of stops or starts in it. It's all the same. So that's the first song we played together. And then I don't know what we did after that. We probably try to know the song. And I wasn't a big, big, huge Sabbath fan where I knew all those songs by heart. Obviously, I heard them, but some of the old stuff. And so there wasn't much to choose from. But then we started working on some stuff and it really went well. So they asked me to join the band until Bill comes back. That was the premise. That was the plan. Okay, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week. But the problem was we only had like at that point four full four days of rehearsal and that was already one afternoon. So they were so happy that they went to the pub to have a drink.  So I stayed back with Jeff Nichols and we he showed me the songs. I listened to the stuff. I started making charts as much as I could do, you know, like cheat sheets. And and then we rehearsed some more and that was it. And then the next day we rehearsed, but not a whole lot. They went to the pub again. So I stayed back and worked on it. This is your problem. It's not our problem. Yeah, all of a sudden it's like me. And then the third day, they started getting a little nervous. So we started to get into it and rehearse and the fourth day are really nervous. So they went back to the pub. I'm like, oh, I got to learn all this stuff, man. So every minute was spent learning no songs and making charts and going over the charts, make sure they were right. And then the first gig was Hawaii Aloha Stadium and it was 30,000 people. So so I wrote the book out with the charts, boom, boom, boom. Halfway through the set, it starts raining. Classic. And the book got all wet, the wind blowing and stuff. And then the ink ran and the pages crumbled. Halfway through, I mean, I can't even look at this thing. It's stuck together. It's like, Ronnie announced the next song. I go, wait a minute, wait, pages are stuck. Let me open this pop here. Couldn't do it. So I we just had to wing it. The Hawaii gig, the Hawaii gig, how many shows in were they on the tour already in the heaven and hell tour? Probably maybe halfway in. So they were tight, you know, they were tight, but I was up there winging it, you know, man. And then of course, Hawaii, we got there and there was a day off and I think a day or two off that gave me a little bit more time to listen to stuff. But everybody's on the beach, hanging out, sipping drinks. And I'm like at a table somewhere gone with a Walkman, a Sony Walkman, trying to go over these songs as much as I could. But the gig went well, you know, from what Tony said, he was very nervous. Apparently, there was some trepidation on Tony's part when he saw the size of your kid in the stadium. He wasn't sure he was going to survive or be loud enough from what I've read. Well, what happened with that was they asked me to come down and play with them in LA. And at that time, I was with my band Axis and I had a four, five piece kit, right? Or six piece, if you count the snare. Two toms up front, two on the side. And they were concert toms. They didn't have heads on the bottom, which made the kit look smaller. So there's four tomtoms, snare drum, three cymbals. That was it. You know, I was fine with that. And Tony, the first thing he asked when I brought the kit down, he goes, you play double bass? Did he had a bass drum? I went, oh man, no, I don't play double bass. Forget about double bass when I'm trying to learn the songs with that bass. Tony started it. And I said, don't worry, I'll call Ludwig drums and get some more drums. So I ordered a floor, another rack tom, a floor over here, then these aerial drums that were above my shoulders. I remember that. I got two of those eggs. So it made the kit bigger. And then every six months, the kit got bigger and bigger. Kept ordering more until I had all the stuff. So the last tour in 2009, I had 21 pieces, 21 drums, most of it up in the air, hitting them backwards, forward, close Tony's fault that the kit got that big. So I remember reading back then, you know, the transition between Ozzie to Dio, and it took the audience just like any new singer in any new band, they're sort of like pushed back by the fans. Do you remember seeing a lot of that? Or it was maybe just even when David Lee Roth was out of the band, you know, Sammy Ager, you know, people are holding up signs, you know, bringing David Lee Roth back. Was there a lot of that? Same thing. Same thing.  So it wasn't the giant album yet, you know, but establishing Ronnie in the band.  You know, where's Ozzie? Yeah. And then three songs in they forget about Ozzie. What is going on? We did Iron Man and Paranoid and all that stuff. But Ronnie hated that man, he hated going on stage and seeing these signs, you know, it's like these days you play, well, you watch somebody on stage, a band's playing and somebody's on their phone texting. They're up like second row and they're texting. Yeah. Like, why did you bother to get to the second row? Yeah.  Exactly. Yeah.  Was that the case? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, I'm a lot younger than Bill. And once I got hold of the set and knew it, you know, I added some punch to it as well, you know, with my own fire. I'm sure Bill did too, but he's a different player than I am, you know. Bill played the way he played. I had to play like Bill, but I still put my personality in it. So, you know, and we got along really well and things were moving. It was easy to work together, you know. And so, Tony, I think mentioned that I was like the new engine in the band. Obviously Ronnie was, but then now they got a younger drummer and, you know, playing together well. We're all on the same page.  Did you connect with Ronnie on a personal level right away?  I mean, obviously he was like 15 years older than me, 14 years older than me. But we got along like brothers, you know, we're both from New York. He's from upstate. I'm from Brooklyn. And we like the same kind of foods. And so we hit it off right away.  And the Birmingham accent was really heavy. And sometimes they talk and I didn't know what they said. Ronnie said, Ron, what did he say? What did Tony say? He said, you're fired. So then we got to know them and we all, you know, and I started, I was getting tuned into what they were saying and the expressions, the whole thing. It was great. Did you ever mean? Did you go from a six piece drum set, including the cymbals to, like you said, 21 pieces by the end. And Tony's complaining that you're overplaying on these songs, you know, you wanted to come back to a more simple beat from what I've read as well. Oh, really? Somebody wrote it. Somebody wrote it. No, I don't, I don't know. Did you ever meet Bill Ward on that tour or like afterwards? I met Bill Ward. Yeah, it was either during a break of that tour or something at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Hollywood, the, you know, famous place.   Hey Bill, I'm Vinny in here. And he was just a bit out of control. It was pretty funny, you know, I wasn't ready for that.  And I was like, oh God, I don't want to get into anything with Bill, you know. And that's the only time I met him. Then I met him years later when he was stopped drinking and I see him every now and then. He's the sweetest guy in the world. And I love Bill and he was a big influence on the way I played too. Great drummer. Yeah, it's great stuff he played, creative. And it was just that one time when he was still drinking.  So we go into the second, of course, the Mob Rules, another classic album and that's just been reissued as well. What was the feeling going into the writing of that album? Well, the good thing with the Mob Rules, we were on the Heaven and Hell album tour and we did a song for the movie Heaven and Hell. No, Heavy Metal. Heavy Metal, yeah. Warner Brothers asked the band to do a song for the movie and they accepted it. So we were in England touring. We had a couple days off. So we went to John Lennon's house. He had just passed at some point before that. Ringo owned it and we went in this big mansion and that was very cool. And we recorded, actually we put together the ideas and wrote the whole thing there.  So everybody was, the band, it's really excited that something came out that good with a new drummer because I'm the only drummer that Tony Geyser played with after Bill. That's why Tony was a bit nervous, you know? So that was a good foot in the door. Like, oh, we just recorded this song. Everybody loves it. The Wrecked Company loved it. And then it made it easier for when we finally got around to writing the rest of the Mob Rules album in LA. We just go in every day and jam. You know, nobody ever came in with songs written. Really? Songs written, yeah. Same with Dio too, all the Dio records. Nobody came in with a song and went, hey, I got the song, A Holy Diver. A Holy Diver was the riff with two parts to it that Ronnie came up with. And it was just me and him jamming on it. Then we came up with different parts together and accents and different things like that. So basically the Mob Rules was sitting in the room jamming together, recording. I would always record the stuff. Then we'd play it back and go, wow, that sounds good. Let's work on that. Let's listen to what we did last night, find something to work on. So that's the way the album was put together. How was Martin? What about Martin Birch as a producer? I mean, what do you remember from that experience? Martin Birch, I just remember, he was just such a really nice guy, sweetheart, you know, and very, very low key. He just, you know, did his thing in the background and got great sounds, suggestions, and he was just a great guy to work with. And we were all on the same team. So it was a good team calling Martin to do the album. And he got great sounds and it kept that vibe, you know? It sounds like having an hell album a little bit, a little bit different approach here and there, you know? So Martin was great. I'm going back and listening to what strikes me is the lyrics are so strong and so universal, you know? Not particularly about rainbows or dragons, just talking about the human condition. I kind of, I don't know, it just really surprised me listening to it recently on the remaster, the reissues, I should say. And it's just the lyrics, unbelievable. It's some of Ronnie's best writing as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, Ronnie, you know, I think probably Ronnie, well, you know what happens is the band was happy at that point. Because when I'm in the band, and this has happened three times in their history, I go back, it's easy to work with. We work like a machine. There's no complications. There's no anything. It's full speed ahead and it's fun and musically, it's fun. So I think Ronnie was just very happy at that point. And his lyrics fit the music and we all look forward to going to rehearsal and stuff. And, you know, when the band's happy, the music comes out great.  So that we made a great album because everybody was happy, including Ronnie. It's amazing how you and Ronnie just brought out something else into the IOMI and Giezer Butler, like just another dimension to the music, not to say that Tony IOMI isn't great. I'm just saying you guys brought another dynamic to the music. Just the same way Randy Rhodes brought another dynamic to Ozzy at the same sort of time. Did you think, oh man, we're going to create some even better Black Sabbath albums moving forward after Mob Rules? Or what was the vibe like? Like I said, during Mob Rules, it was fantastic.  I always compared Ozzy as a great frontman. Ozzy's a great, Ronnie's a great singer and frontman, but Ronnie's a real singer. So that brought a whole different direction to the band. And then when I joined, if you listen to some of the tracks, I'm a little bit more lively than what Bill played. I'm a drummer that doesn't play in the background. You know, so I push the band, push, push, push. When I play with a band, band usually, you know, follows me because I'm pushing it. You know, I try to obviously The fills, the fills Alan, Vinny's fills are like phenomenal. Just the same with the Holy Diver. If you listen to this stuff, I'm playing fills over vocal lines. Not many drummers think that way, you know. Back of the beat fills, fills. Back of the beat. Well, that's from playing with Tony. Tony so far, so steady and behind and in Geyser too, you know, that's why they sound so heavy.  When you play a fill, there's no need to rush the fill. That thing should be right in the pocket and slam it into the next verse or wherever you go. So I think the whole thing worked well. But, you know, you listen to those albums and this fills where there's usually not fills. And I think that brought a little bit more fire into the song, you know. That's a great point. I just hear it that way. I just hear it. That's how we hear it.  Yeah, you know what? I noticed and you probably, I don't know if you noticed this, Jeff Nichols, on the Mob Rules Live songs, I think it was in Portland, you could hear more of Jeff Nichols playing along with Tony. I don't know if that was the case during Heaven and Hell or not. But during Mob Rules, he was filling in more of that empty, let's say rhythm guitar spot. Do you remember? Do you have any recollections of that? Well, the whole idea of having a keyboard in the band, Rainbow was different. Ronnie was used to working with keyboards with Rainbow, but that was more of a prominent keyboard band. Sabbath was a guitar band. They didn't start with a keyboard player. But it got to the point where Tony liked to hear the chords under him when he was soloing. That was the main thing about bringing a keyboard player in. And I noticed that Vinny, I know you didn't hear it yet, but I had my headphones on and I was listening to the live version on Mob Rules. And I could hear on the left the keyboard of Jeff Nichols and I can hear on the right Tony Aomey's rhythm. And when he was soloing, it's exactly what you said. He was filling in that rhythm part on his keyboards. And that's not something you hear on live evil or it's maybe it's there, but it's more in the background. Yeah, probably more in the background. Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to listen to that and see what the mix was, but that was the idea behind the keyboard player. Now, the problem with that is we did this with DO, too. We got Claude Schnell in the band to play keyboards. So because Ronnie liked to hear the chords saying kind of a tradition under the solo. But the problem is, keyboards tend to, what are you going to do? Play the chords on the solo and then stand there. So you start doubling up things, playing the same stuff as the guitar or the bass. And that's what happens. Because otherwise you'd just be standing there playing solo, you know. So keyboards all of a sudden are sometimes it takes the edge off the guitar a little bit, you know. It doesn't, you know, keyboards sound different than the guitar. And I noticed it sounded more like rainbow Sabbath than black Sabbath on the port. Well, that's it. Yeah. But only on the headphones, the only on the headphones. I didn't quite hear it on the head. Yeah, like last in line, I'm playing with Vivian now and we had a keyboard player, Eric Norlander, and it was cool. Then it wound up, it didn't work out after a while. And it was like, Viv liked to hear the chords under his guitar, too. But we just continued four piece. And now we don't miss it, except, you know, rainbow in the dark, a couple of little things here and there. But we're like a hard edge band now, you know, without keyboards filling in. But you got to work harder without the extra instrument. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That means more fills. That's good for you. Perfect. That's good for you. No, but what's happening with last in line? We're finishing up an album, a new album. We're getting that done. You know, right now we're doing it. We went in the studio and recorded, would we do six songs for a pretty much finish. Okay. We did them in person and then this pandemic stuff hit. So now we're just finishing up the last two. And then we're planning to get together to, we got about six or eight more ideas and put those down, too. So, and then we're probably going to play some gigs maybe in the summer. Hopefully. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool. Is there a release date? No, we haven't signed a deal yet. Oh, okay, okay, okay. We're still talking to different companies and stuff. All right. So. But it sounded great. It's great. I love playing with it. Another great band.   I remember back in the day, loving mob rules. I remember loving live evil. Then, you know, it's suddenly at all, how does this thing fall apart? It's the colonies. The colonies did not. The Vinny version. There's so many versions out there. What's the Vinny version? Yeah, I don't know. You know, everything was going great. And then I don't know exactly what happened as far as why it split up. All I know is that one day Ronnie came to me and at the end of the tour, we were recording it. All of a sudden it became like we had limousines, limos, and would be the American limo and the British limo. Stuff like that started happening. And I was like, ah, but you know, I'm in the middle. I would just, didn't matter. I would go in the British limo with Tone and they were all my friends and family. So it didn't matter to me so much. But obviously they had probably some business disagreements. I'm not sure. And then when the, when that tour ended, Ronnie said, look, I'm going to put a band together. I'd like you to join me if you'd like, if you'd like to do it, you know, and Sabbath wanted me to stay. So I had a choice, you know, so I just thought it would be exciting to do something with Ronnie. I mean, he's the man, right? And he lives close. We lived miles apart. It was easy to do something here. Tony Giza, we're in England, English base. So, you know, I had to have a talk with everybody and then I decided to go with Ronnie. So, so I really don't, it's got to be a business thing because it was never a musical thing. Sabbath was Sabbath. We were all on the same page. I think I spoke to Wendy about it. And it was, it was a case of you were waiting on them. And as you were waiting for them, they thought you were mixing it, but it was actually the engineer who was mixing it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The studio time was booked at two o'clock, something like that. And Ronnie and I would write together because we lived together pretty close. And we'd get there too, you know, and we had to wait for Tony and Giza to get there.  So after a while I go, well, let's just start getting some sounds together, you know, so that got blown up to, you know, we were mixing the guitar and the bass low in the mix and stuff. Really what it was is Ronnie didn't want any green M&M's in the dressing room. Tony and Giza. Oh yeah, I get that. So that's a shame it broke up. But yeah, I mean, the rest, the rest is history, right? But Holy Diver was born. Yeah. Last in line. Last in line.  I mean, it's, you know, people consider it the classic heavy metal album of all time, or at least heaven and hell add mob rules, right? But I guess you would be more mob rules since you were part of that. I mean, did you think these albums would be such a significant metal cultural statement, I guess, years later? Well, did I ask that question properly? Yeah, yeah, but it's easy. It's easy to see it now that Holy, these things are still going, you know, this is legendary albums, mob rules, Holy Diver.  Like we didn't set it, we never set out to make the greatest album we could, we greatest album in rock. Well, I mean, couldn't do that. We just went in and just put our soul into these things.  And my roadie came up to me and said, you know, that's going to be platinum. I'm like, yeah, we'll be lucky we sell 300,000 at that time, the people sound record. And who knew what we were making, we didn't know.  No, but we almost didn't do it. I mean, that was a jam. That was rainbow in the dark. Even the beginning. I recorded it. I was always in charge of recording the tapes. And I hit it and we just hit this chord. And then that feel was there. You know, and I came in the next day said, listen, this is cool. And I know the couple of girls heard the riff I played it for and they liked it. I go, that's a good sign. Ronnie didn't want to do it. He thought it was too poppy. Wow. It was too poppy. But then we kept working on it. And came the big, that was the biggest hit, you know. Yeah, I remember the radio, Alan, I remember it was just non-stop. And we're talking about during the day, right? Not at night, you know, when I was listening. It was a hit. At least in Canada it was. It was huge. When I first heard it, I'm like, okay, well, this is perfect. You know, it mixes rainbow with black Sabbath and you get the deal, right? Because you got the keyboards in there where it just, that's what struck me the first time I heard it. It's like taking Ronnie's two groups, putting them together and you get something new. So that keyboard part, which is really prominent was us, I think we're playing back the tape in the dressing room, not in the dressing room, in the rehearsal room, in Sound City.  And he just went over to the keyboard and went, and we went, that's great, man. And the ash didn't even drop. It's as simple as that. As simple as that. And then he walked that Jimmy. We said that, there you go, man. That fits right over the top. Just thinking back, when you were doing mob rules, because, you know, Ozzy was releasing albums kind of at the same time.  Was, these are Tony ever looking over their shoulders, kind of wondering what was going on in Ozzy's camp at that point? Not that I know of. They never talked about it in front of me. So no, I would say no. And I don't think we were really following what too much, what Ozzy was doing, you know, concentrating on just focusing on this. Mob rules and touring and stuff like that. So I don't know, maybe they did, but I never heard about it.  Do I buy speak of the devil or live evil? I was, you know, I had so much money, right? 15 bucks. That's all I got. It's all like today. So I was there sitting there, speak of the devil or live evil.  I'll send you money back. So you got it for free live. And I have it right there, but I'm scared to grab it because I might knock over all the, you know, the monitor and all that stuff. I, I just, well, live evil was a great name for that album and the band because it's backwards is the same thing as forward. And I love the album covered with all the, I mean, let me see if I could grab it here without ruining too many things. Well, I got here, Jim, I'll get it. Okay, here we go. Well, here's the classic heaven and hell, right? Yeah, that's a classic. And that's amazing artwork. Isn't that beautiful? That was taken from another piece of art, right? It was sort of not mimicked, but Oh, there it is. There it is. Yeah. But I want to grab it here.  Well, we have dehumanizer right here, right? And then, and here we go. If you listen to fools, the mob rules. Yeah. And great covers. Yeah. I love that cover. I think it was a great seven. I was too young to go to the concert. My parents wouldn't let me, those Satan worshiping people. Yeah. What did you think about all that? All the satanic stuff? I remember in, there it is. Here it is. This is the original live evil when it came out. Yeah. That's a great cover. It is. It's beautiful. It's just, I love that. And then when you open it up, how many pictures of video do you see? Well, that's another thing now. Where's Vinny? The shot right down here, right? Well, that's when the bam was breaking up. And if you see this I think there's one less picture of Ronnie in there. Well, this is the original album, right? Then there's only one of me. And if you look at the credits, it says everybody's name, then it says special thanks to me spelled where on the mob rules, I was number one. I was first. So the bam was breaking up. So that's what happened. That's right. Ronnie Dio. Let's not let's not put in the James. There's a say Ronnie Dio. Yeah. It's right there. Look, like there. This is the original album. There he is. He didn't. Beautiful. But I got to say, though, I love this album. I'm happy. I picked it over speak of the devil at the time. And the set list is pretty similar to what you have here. The mid part, you know where the heaven and hell, sorry, the sign of the southern cross, that sort of I think it's sign of the southern cross.  Was that something he kept on sort of like, organically changing it night after night? And I don't remember that part, but we probably did it just as you heard. Yeah. Alan, what's the lyrics on that? It's it's you start going into some sort of like rap, right? Right at the sign of the southern cross. And then it sort of goes into the ending of heaven and hell. Yeah. Oh, I got to listen to it. Yeah. Yeah. Follow the bouncing deal. That's all I remember. You know, all that Santana stuff, right? Everybody with Sabbath, mob rules tour, we were supposed to play on Easter Sunday in Arizona and Phoenix. And they boycotted us. They had people out there with Bibles and all this stuff. And we had to change the show to the next day on Monday. They wouldn't let us play. What is your parents think about it? I'm my mommy. What are you doing? A Vinny is a Diablo. No, no, no. They're a big fan. They're happy. What are you doing Vinny? How much money you make? But all the Santana stuff, you know, nothing really happened and went down. But when we made Holy Diver, Ronnie and I were talking, I said, Hey, why don't we put something backwards on the record? Because everybody thinks that there's stuff that's all subliminal things on these albums, you know, on the Sabbath. And he goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you listen to shame on the night, the last track on Holy Diver on the fade out, there's a thing that you'll hear it go. And Ronnie, it's Ronnie backwards saying crucify the diver. So we put it in and you could hear it. And we thought, you know, this will feed all of that frenzy of sin 10. Nobody freaking mentioned the word. You actually do it. It was like when Sticks did it. Sticks didn't actually kill Roy was here. What about the album cover? Holy Diver album cover. Like, I think Dio is quoted saying, Well, who's really the bad person? Is it the priest in chains? Or is it that monster sort of throwing the priest in the water? Yeah, yeah, you could look at it two ways. Probably Ronnie saw it as the priest was the bad one. You know, and Murray, who we call Murray, big guy was the good guy, you know, but that's just a stunning piece of artwork as well colors in it. And, you know, when I saw the cover on Wow, what a beautiful cover, you know, it was and then people, some people got offended that the subject matter of the priest and in chains, getting thrown into water and all that stuff. So, but you know, that makes people talk, I guess. Speaking about playing stuff backwards, is it true that invisible? It was reverse the tapes and then you had to learn? Yeah. You know what it was? We smoked so much pot on that record. So we came upon the riff, I forget which riff it was, but it was invisible. Yeah, we played it that night, we jamming and stuff. And then the next day we came in and our friend, Angelo, who wound up recording the first five Dio records, he was a sound man for Sabbath. He was a good friend. We grew up together. We said we smoked a couple of joints, Angelo put that tape in, let's hear that riff, you know. So he put the tape in, it's a four track upside down. So it plays, but it goes backwards.  But then we said, wait a minute, that sounds good. What is that? And we started learning the riff. So we put it with the original riff and I think it was down, something is backwards of the other riff. And that's the way we put that together, because we would do anything. And invisible, the beginning, Ronnie wanted that invisible kind of sound. Well, how do you do that? There weren't no computers back then.  And our actually pot dealer who was in the studio goes, I got a I got a spare tire on my truck. We'll take the air out. Yeah, go go get it. Go get the tire, we put it in the studio. Now there's a mic on the spare tire. I know that. I don't think anybody has ever recorded a spare tire before. So we'd roll the tape. Okay, you ready? You ready, Tom? Yeah. If we recorded tire, I thought it was synthesizer. Now they put an effect on it, maybe they turned it backwards. I don't know, but that's what that is. Wow. The word can't wasn't used in Holy Diver. Hey, any crazy idea we were up for it, you know, what about the song Egypt on the next album? Was was their set backward message on that too? No. No, because somebody's writing here saying nobody picks up on it. Can Vinny say what the backward message is on Egypt? Okay, I guess there isn't. There's another thing on Holy Diver because we're in the studio and I'm on the drum set. Ronnie's there, Div and Jimmy, and the control room's behind me with a window, obviously the big window. And we just took, we recorded something and we're going to talk about it.  I'm like, what? What does that mean? And it was my brother. But that hit me. Look behind you. So we put that on the album too. So there's all kinds of little goodies, not backwards, forward. It's like on the plane now, all of a sudden they started saying, and the two exits are up front and remember the other exit could be behind you. It's like, oh my God. What was it like?  Looking back, which album do you appreciate more? Which one do you like more basically? Holy Diver. Holy Diver was a lot more fun to make. And we did it at Sound City in Los Angeles and we rehearsed. Sound City has a studio on one side of the parking lot. And then on the other side right here is the rehearsal. So basically we wrote four songs and then drug all the gear, the equipment right into the studio.  We didn't even break anything down. Just walked it over and plopped it in the studio. And that's how loose it was. And that was a lot of fun. Last in line, we went up to Colorado at the Caribou Ranch where a lot of Chicago's work was done. And that was like 8,500 feet elevation. Took a while to get used to the air. And we lived there and stuff. We each had cabins and it was a lot of fun. But the music wasn't quite as loose. Like Ronnie started to take a little bit more control of the music. Whereas Holy Diver was like everybody, you know. It felt like a band. Is that what it was? Yeah. It felt more like a band. Is that what you're saying? Like Holy Diver was? Holy Diver was just everybody's input, everything. You know, Ronnie started to get a little bit more picky on last in line. And then also we had keyboards with us. Yes, yes. Now Holy Diver was written completely with no keyboards. The riffs, everything. We wrote the songs. There was no keyboards until when we were ready to overdub some keyboards. And there's not that much on there. There's a couple of things here and there. Last in line, Claude was our keyboard player. Claude's now, so he was there. So now changing the sound a little bit, you know, that's here and there. So it was a fun album, but Holy Diver was, like I said, like just a hangout. It's great. We had such a good time, you know. I think just, I know your time is precious. I don't want to take too much of your time. A dehumanizer. A lot of people are asking about dehumanizer.  Tony Martin coming into the mix. I guess he started off with the album. I'm not quite sure what happened. Who's that Tony Martin? No, no, no, that's not true. As far as I know, that's not true. That was a Sabbath album with Ronnie. So Tony Martin was never at all invited. No. Okay. No, it was cozy Powell. Cozy Powell. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Cozy. Yeah, they were doing an album because at that point Tony was playing with cozy in a version of, I think it was Black Sabbath. Yeah. When they decided to get back with Ronnie, Tony has cozy with them and that was the band. But during the recording, it was going very, very slow, spending a lot of money. And cozy was riding a horse and had an accident. Fell off the horse and broke his pelvis. So he couldn't play. So then it comes down to, let's call Vinny. Yeah, let's get ready. Vinny three times. So they call me, I fly in. And it was in Wales. We lived on a, like a farm that turned into a studio kind of thing in the countryside. And so actually Ronnie and I had a house. And we would, we would rehearse in the house every day in the living room. Tony had a small guitar amp. It was funny because here's the mighty Black Sabbath. And we got these little lamps and Tony's got a little lamp guitar. I got the small set of drums and Ronnie singing through a guitar amp that's on a chair.  I said, we should go out like this at the next stage set, like in the living room. You know, it's really, really crazy. But you know what? We could hear really good because it wasn't so lasting loud. It was loud, but it was small ramps. So we could really hone in on what we were doing. And so then we wrote, they had about two or three songs before I got there. And then we wrote another six songs or something like that together. And then went and demoed them, then went in to record them. And everything was going good. We were having a good time. We're getting along again. And then that, I mean, then the soundtrack to Wayne's World with Time Machine and yeah, it's the same sort of like thing with mob rules. You know, that was a soundtrack to mob rules. That same thing. Except the music industry change. It was when the language came out. That's right. So we will be coming more of the dinosaur bands, you know, we're playing smaller places, smaller theaters and stuff. I remember one time we took, we had to get to the gig. We're at the Holiday Inn Hotel. And we had to take the Holiday Inn Shuttle to get to the gig. We're sitting in there and we're all laughing on, here we are. Big time again. The Holiday Inn Shuttle. What was it? Was it disappointing though? Like, you know, here we are. We're reuniting. And it wasn't that, maybe they were expecting more, right? Yeah, yeah. But we were laughing. I love that album, by the way. I love that album. Me too. I love that album. It kicks butt. It's heavy and it's, drums are so loud on that. It's amazing.  I mean, we were selling out the places. They were 2,000, 3,000 people, you know, sometimes bigger. So it was the tour de Dauquay for that size. But, you know, we knew the music changed a little bit. So we were just happy to play together, you know? Yeah. Oh, great. And then it broke up again, until Heaven and Hell. Until Heaven and Hell, then it started all over. No, right before Heaven and Hell was Ozzie's, this is 92. They did the, what am I thinking of? Well, Ozzie goes back into Sabbath. Ozzie goes back and it had Bill Ward. That's right. And then, so one morning, get up in the morning, I was going to go to Home Depot to fix my sprinklers, right? I fix everything in the house. So at 730, phone rings, I go, Vinny, I go, yes, hang on, hang on for Sharon Osborn. So she comes on, she goes, Vinny, we're doing this album with Sabbath, we're doing an album, live album, live DVD, and the live gig at the NEC hometown as a big hoopla for their anniversary She goes, can you come to England? It's not working out with Bill. So she asked me to come to England. So I said, all right, when do you want me to come? Because today, I said, no, I'm going to Home Depot to fix my sprinklers. So that, that I went, oh, okay, of course, you know, see, that's when your people go, well, how is it in a music business? You got to have that passion to go, okay, you want to come to England now. Okay, no problem. It's like actors waiting by the phone. When that role is there, it's now. You either going to get down or not. You don't go, well, let's see, I can come on Monday, you know, it gives me the weekend to pack. It doesn't work like that. Didn't your brother like warn you about Ozzie and stuff? Well, this was with Sabbath. So yeah, I've met Ozzie along the way. He's been around Ozzie sweetheart. Yeah, he's really, really funny and just cool to hang out with. So, so I went over, you know, and luckily and un-luckily, I didn't get to play because Bill, they worked it out with Bill and he was able to play there. But then here I was an hour later with all the CDs. They messaged me all the CDs to learn the songs.  And I think it was a DVD about Ozzie and I saw you on it. And you were talking about that tour saying, when the four of those guys played, your comment was, ah, now I get it. Like the power of those four guys, the original man playing really struck you. And you were in the band forever. Well, what what that was is we did on the humanizer tour, the last two shows were with opening going on before Ozzie and his retirement gigs in Los Angeles. So there were two outdoor shows and Tony and Giza wanted to do it. Ronnie refused to do it. So I worked it out. I didn't want to leave them hanging Tony and Giza and I didn't want to hurt Ronnie. So I worked it out. So I played a gig and then Ronnie and I would continue. So we got Rob Halford to sing. Yes, yes. He only had one day, one afternoon to rehearse with us in Phoenix. And then the shows come up. So we did two shows. So at the end, the four original guys were jammed. Hell, Ozzie, Tony, Giza and Bill. So I went on the side of the stage and they started playing.  Just the power coming off the stage from just Tony and Giza alone was just incredible. See, I don't hear it like that. Where I sit, I hear, you know, usually had a higher drum rise. And all I hear, everything's through a monitor system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. But nothing like the power I felt watching them from the side of the stage.  Did Halford do a good job, though? What did you think, Halford? Oh, he was great. He had to learn all these songs. And then we were kind of bit on edge, a little bit nervous, because we didn't play those songs before. We didn't play The Wizard and things like that. When we play Sabbath songs with Ronnie, it was the same four or five songs. Iron Man, Paranoid, Boar Pigs. With Rob, there were about four or five new songs, plus all those. And plus we played Heaven and Hell. So we weren't really that tight with all this stuff. And Rob, he never even played with us before. So he just did a great job. What about all the talk now?  And I mean, what are your thoughts on all that? Again, if you want to answer it, answer it. If you don't, it's all good. Well, there was talk back then, because obviously, Ronnie had split from Sabbath and Rob sang him with us. And there was actually talk of maybe continuing something with Rob back then. So it was always on the back burner. And now it's resurfaced into the news. And Tony kind of quelled it saying, that's not going to happen. Whatever. Yeah, whatever it is. I guess they'll call you if they need you, right? In his book, he just wrote. I mean, he's not shy at all about how much Ronnie James, he was probably his favorite singer of all time. Oh, Ronnie loved Rob. Anytime we played Phoenix, Rob came down and they loved each other. Rob is such a nice guy and such a great guy and such a great singer. So, you know, Ronnie didn't like a lot of singers. And he liked Chris Cornell, he liked Glenn Hughes, and he liked Rob. What do you miss most about Ronnie? Yeah, just hanging out and all the fun we had, you know. He's on the same page as me. We go to Home Depot together. He got to fix something in his house. So, you know, yeah, let's go. Let's go get some screws. We need the wood. We need to make the list go and do these projects together at the house. He loved doing that stuff, you know. He loves sports. I don't even get in. I don't even watch sports, you know. So sometimes I'd be over his house. He'd be watching the football game or hockey or whatever. And I go, why did they do that? And he knew everything. You know, all the rules. He explained it to me. His cousin, his cousin, David, he said he used to do crossword puzzles every day. And he wouldn't do anything until he finished his crossword puzzle. He used to watch. Was it Family Feud? I think it was Family Feud. You just guessed those questions and answers. And I think it was Family Feud. Oh, yeah, yeah. Funny thing is, you know, Ronnie would, he would read a lot. And he'd have a not, you know, paperback, pretty thick paperback.  And sometimes you go, Vinny, Vin, got any books? A man of books. I go, yeah. And then he'd comment to me the next day. Go, Jesus, the pages are folded over every other page. That's like where I stopped. Yeah, yeah. One page is good for the day. One page for him. I must have fallen asleep. And the next page, maybe one full page and then is a fold over again. And he was cracking up. Because the thing was, I probably didn't finish. I'm notorious for not finishing books. Read them all the way to the end. And then I just don't happen to finish them. But he's an avid reader and all that stuff. And that's pretty funny. Yeah.  So thank you so much. Yeah. I mean, again, we could talk for hours, but I know you're. Well, I got, I got to see, I'm in my, there's my drums behind me. I got to play today. Because tomorrow I do a Facebook live thing at 4pm on my Facebook. Sure. I like that. Yes. I got to warm up. Yep. So the way I haven't played since Friday, otherwise I'll be left hand. So I got a pleasure. Pleasure having you on the show, Vinny. I mean, a huge fan. And geez, this is like a dream. I finally get to speak to you. This is great. Yeah. Thanks for promoting everything. And you know, is this, this is on live. Right now, as we speak, I mean, there are people commenting. Tomorrow, 4pm on my Facebook. Minneapolis the official something, whatever it is. 4pm. I do a whole drum thing. It's really cool. 4pm Pacific? 4pm Pacific? Pacific time. Yeah. 4pm and every Tuesday, actually, it's fun. And actually during this pandemic, that's what kept me sane. So I do it for my drum company, which is the poster soft in the back and kept me in shape and it kept me sane. And getting a lot of people and answering questions. It's a fun show. Oh yeah. I got a question here from the people watching. Who's a better drummer? You or Carmine? Me, me. That's not even a question. This is a fact. All right. So let's see, March the 5th, Heaven in Hell, Deluxe Editions. The record company's got to send you a copy. I'll write that down right now. Mob Rules, Deluxe Edition. And it also includes a version. Mob Rules also includes a version of the song Mob Rules, which was different than the album version, the one that appeared on the film. That's recorded at John Lennon's house, that one. That one there. There's the Portland show. There's the Portland show on Mob Rules, Deluxe, which is never before heard. Very similar. Yeah. Even by me. Even by you. So I'm pushing it for you here. I'm pushing it for you. Heaven in Hell has a lot has, again, it has got a lot of live stuff, but it wasn't released in North America. However, it was released probably in Europe. So you got a lot of goodies. A lot of live stuff. You know what? I've been listening to this stuff for like the last two weeks. And you know what? You just fall in love with these albums. These albums are so great. This just, stand the test of time. You did a great job. Thanks for that. And of course, Ronnie did a great job. And Tony, holy mackerel, and geezer, and just everybody who participated in those albums, just great albums, man. Just, I just love listening to them. I think I've been listening to them since the day I bought them. Classic. All right, Vinny. Okay, thank you, guys. All right. Talk to you soon. Be safe. Bye, everybody, for watching all that stuff. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow, here. 4 p.m. Okay.