During a recent appearance on The Metal Voice, drummer Vinny Appice talked about the iconic DIO debut, 1983’s Holy Diver.
When asked if he expected song “Rainbow In The Dark” to be such a huge hit, Vinny responded: “No. We almost didn’t do it. I mean, that was a jam, ‘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 record. And then that feeling was there, and I came in the next day, said, ‘Listen, this is cool,’ and, ‘I know a couple of girls heard the riff, I played it for them, and they liked it.’ It’s like, ‘That’s a good sign.’ Ronnie didn’t want to do it, he thought it was too poppy, but then we kept working on it, and that was the biggest hit.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Vinny reflected on his time in BLACK SABBATH in early 1980’s and why he and Ronnie James Dio left the group in 1982.
After the interview asked why the band fell apart after 1982’s Live Evil live album, Vinny responded: “I don’t know. Everything was going great, and 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 — and we’re recording it — all of a sudden it became like, we had limousines, limos, and it would be the American limo [for Ronnie and Vinny] and the British limo [for Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler].
“Stuff like that started happening, and I was like — I’m in the middle, I didn’t matter, I would go in the British limo, and they’re 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. When that tour ended, Ronnie said, ‘Look, I’m gonna put a band together. I’d like you to join me — if you’d like to do it.’
“And SABBATH wanted me to stay, so I had a choice. I just thought it would be exciting to do something with Ronnie. I mean, he’s the man, and we live miles apart, it was easy to do something here, while Tony and Geezer were in England…
“So I had to have a talk with everybody and I decided to go with Ronnie, so it’s got to be a business thing, it was never a musical thing. SABBATH was SABBATH, we’re all on the same page.”
