The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan - Wendy Dio | The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

In this powerful and emotional conversation, Wendy Dio joins Billy Corgan to share the brilliance of her late husband, Ronnie James Dio, from their first meeting at the Rainbow to the creation of Blackmore’s Rainbow, following Ozzy in Black Sabbath, and his breakthrough with his own band, Dio. Wendy reveals how Ronnie stayed true to his vision, refusing to chase hits, and how his humility, brilliance, and devotion to fans made him a legend. She and Billy discuss the origins of the devil horns, the making of “Holy Diver” and “Rainbow in the Dark,” and the enduring legacy Wendy continues through the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund. Subscribe to the Magnificent Others YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BillyCorganTMO?sub_confirmation=1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's a hard life. It's a hard life and there's ups and downs. We, I mean, we, it's screaming. You don't strike me as a shy personality. No, absolutely. No, we would knock heads like this. In fact, people would walk out the room and I was like, oh, God, you know. You met him sort of really at the precipice of snow. Right. And yeah, they kept following me around and I thought, short for me. The word you hear with the musicians off is an eccentric, but they tend to be different types of... It was very eccentric, Richard. Okay, right, right. But there were a lot of fun times. Like, we would, we would have a all kinds of things going on, especially seances. My view of him from an outside point of view, he was a true professional.

He was a very much professional. Totally, totally. They didn't work at home. Okay. Wendy Dio, thank you so much for being here. I'm so excited to talk to you about your late husband, Ronnie, such an incredible musical icon. So let's start with two stories. You get one story, I get one story. Okay.

I'm sure you've told it many times, but take me back to the night that you met, Ronnie. You're working at The Rainbow as a waitress. I was, I was over here. I'd come over, and I didn't have a green card yet, and I needed to work. So I was working at the Rainbow, also doing some movies at the time. And so I knew Richie Blackmore, and I knew his wife at the time, Babsey, from England. Oh, so you knew Richie from back? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I knew them very well, actually. And they invited me to, they were in town, and they were invited me to go to a party with them afterwards, up at the Hollywood Hills. And so I said, okay. And they had recorded the first Richard Blackmore Rainbow Rainbow album, but they had not toured yet. Yeah.

So we went up there, and Ronnie was following me around. I was like, uh, he was a bit short. And he wasn't, nothing disrespectful, but he wasn't a young guy at that point. I mean, he wasn't in his 20s. I mean, he's about 30 at that time. Yeah, yeah. So he'd lived some life.

Yeah, he'd been an elf. But Rainbow was really his coming out, as I say, of being actually in a big band. Sure. But I'm saying you met him at a unique time where it's... Oh, yeah, right. He wasn't a big star then, no, he was not big star. You met him sort of really at the precipice of Starved. Right, and yeah, and he kept following me around.

He's short for me. And anyway, we talked and everything, and then everybody was going to Denny's family. for breakfast because party, this was like, I guess some was just coming up. And we were talking and stuff. And he said, do you want to go for a right to Manabu? I said, okay, sounds good. So we went and we talked and talked and talked. And he was very interesting, a really interesting person, very, very smart.

And we started chatting and stuff. And then we started dating for about two weeks. Okay. And then he went on the road. Yeah. And then he called me and he said, why don't you quit your job and come and join me? I said, you know, I can't quit my job. But I come for a couple of weeks.

Yeah. And I went for the rest of my life. Yeah. That's so beautiful. Okay, so my story. Yep. I went to see Sabbath in 2007. Heaven and Hell, obviously, was the name of the tour at the time.

And I went back to see Tony, my hero and my friend, and talked to Tony for 10, 15 minutes, says you do. And then, okay, everybody's leaving. I'm going to go home. I'm on my way out. And I'd never met your husband. And he's passing me. And he looks and he goes, hey, where are you going? I said, well, I'm just going home.

He said, can you hang out? Do you have to go home right now? I said, no. He goes, let's go talk. And he just took me in a room, just me and him, for 45 minutes. He had a glass of wine. And we just talked. And he was just amazing, as you know.

I mean, but he was so warm, generous, supportive, which is interesting. Most big musicians aren't really supportive. He was very supportive. He told me, asked me whatever you want. We talked about Rainbow a lot because I love Rainbow. And I still, to this day, really hold that meeting because it's so rare. He was a very rare person. He always made anyone who was talking to feel like that they were the most important

person at that time to him. And they were. He honestly genuinely loved people. And I'm not saying this in any self-agrowness. He was generally interested in what I was doing. what I was thinking, how I was thinking of music, where I was going. Well, because he was always interested in the next generation. Yeah, very much.

Very much. And even when I did the last Ozzy show recently, I was talking to Lizzie Hale. Oh, Lizzie, yeah. Hail Storm about her experiences with your husband. And she said he was so amazing to us. He would take time and get in our camper van and want to know what we were doing and what we were. So here we are these multiple generations. Right, exactly.

Or your husband gave us like a form of blessing, if that's a nice way to put it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Lizzie, he gave Lizzie, she asked him one time for a piece of advice, and he said, always take time with your fans, because, you know, you may not be remembered, but they will remember it for the rest of their life. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, when you first heard Rainbow, I assume you heard it basically before it came out, or what was your first impression as somebody who was a purple fan and who, you're a big.

I was a big purple fan, big purple fan. Great band. Yeah, and I, yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was great. Did you kind of get what they were after right away? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It was more of a blues way of going and rock, blues rock. And Ronnie wrote actually wrote a song for me, about me, called Rainbow Eyes.

Oh, beautiful. Because he said my eyes changed from blue to green to Hazel. I love that. So now you're on tour with Rainbow. Yes, yes, yes. Richie obviously had something to prove, right? Yeah. Because he'd left purple.

Yeah. I mean, all that stuff's well documented. We don't need to talk about it. But, I mean, it wasn't exactly the best of terms. You know, he kind of felt like those guys were stealing his band away. Yeah. Yeah. No, Richie was a very intricate person.

He's obviously a brilliant musician. But very difficult person. When you say, because I'm, I like to say we don't do gossip here. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's fair to ask someone who knows him as a person, because I've never met Richie. You know, you hear these stories about Richie being difficult, but is it the difficulty of someone who's strong-headed? Is it somebody because he's a visionary and he's got his way? Or is it just somebody who's just difficult because they're just difficult?

No, it's just his way. And I think because of him being such a musical genius, that that's what made it like that. I mean, he was so nice to my parents. My parents loved him. He was an absolute gentleman to them. me, I knew him before, so he and I would lock Higgs sometimes and Ronny go, don't talk to him like that, you know? I don't care, you know.

I'm me. So, but what was your impression? Because, you know, I love Rainbow as a band. And I think they're, honestly, in many ways, an underappreciated band. Very underappreciated. I think that, you know, when people talk about Rainbow now, of course, they had the hits after Ronnie left, but Ronnie didn't want to be commercial. That was one thing he did not want to do.

He didn't write love songs. So can you explain that because I think maybe most people, if they're not in the music business, they wouldn't understand what they mean. It was, was it was Ronnie was more about finding the music that the fans wanted and or his vision of rock. Can you break that down a little bit? Just Ronnie doesn't write love songs. He never wrote love songs. And he didn't want any, he was more into the music than making a commercial hit. Okay.

And he felt that they were just trying to make a commercial hit, which of course the record company always does. Sure. And that's why he wanted to stay true to the way he felt the music should be. Okay. Yeah. Because, you know, for the music historians in the crowd, my impression, and you tell me, because you were there,

Richie kind of sees Elf and basically... Oh, took Elf. Thank you. I was trying to say the nice version of that. Everyone except the guitar. I mean, Rainbow. The first Rainbow record sounds a lot like Elf. It was Elf.

It was all of Elf except Richie. I think in a clever way, and I do think Richie's a musical genius, so I'm with you on that. I think he saw something enough that he thought, okay, if I take that and I kind of put me... No, he wanted Ronnie. And the only way he could get Ronnie... Well, then he got rid of Elf, right?

The only way could get Ronnie was to take the band, because there's only been minted forever, and it was very sad to see one by one by one goal. And how did Ronnie take all that? It was very hurt by it, especially with Jimmy Bain firing. That was the real crucial thing of almost the end. Because him and Jimmy were pretty tight. Very, very tight, very tight. And Jimmy Bob Bain, Ronnie called him Jimmy Bob Bain. He was just a character.

You know, he was such a character. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, now you're on tour with this, it's hard to call it a fledgling rock band, but like I said, Ronnie's got something to prove. I mean, he's now bursting on to the bigger... I mean, you're playing with Richie Blackmore. You're not just playing with some guy in the band. So there's a lot of pressure on Ronnie. In many fans' minds, he's following Ingeal,

even though he's not, or Coverdale, too, on top of that. And then, of course, Richie's very much got something to prove that he can stand on his own without purple. So what was your impression of the vibe of that time? Well, I can think of the time was this big rainbow that they carried around a huge thing that never worked. Every night, it broke down. Every night it broke down.

No, but that was, it was very exciting time. Yeah. We were young and it was an exciting time. And, you know, first time we're played to big audiences for Ronnie. It was, it was, it was a bittersweet time. Okay, can you explain that a little bit? Bittersweet. Well, sometimes Richie was in a good mode and sometimes he was in a bad mode.

Sometimes if he was in a bad mode, you could not say hello to him or good morning to him until he felt like you're speaking to you. You had a lot of very odd things that went on. But as I said, he was a musical genius, so that comes along with... Yeah. I mean, there's certainly a lot of evidence to suggest, and I have my experiences with musicians being one myself, and my father was a musician, too, is they believe sometimes that what makes musicians such great musicians

is the brain doesn't sort of communicate. Some people might call it bipolarity, but the brain functioning is different. So they'll have a heightened sense of music, but maybe not a heightened sense of something else. It does not just say something bad. It's just a different. Because then, you know, the word you hear with the musician's office is an eccentric,

but they tend to be different types of... It was very eccentric, Richie. But there were a lot of fun times. Like, we would have all kinds of things going on, especially seances. Seances. Yeah. Okay, you got something about that.

When we recorded at Chateau Montmore, oh, Chateau, was it? Was it the one in France that everyone recorded at? Yeah. It was in a place. called her hero we called it horosville but it was little ovil i think and uh near pontois which we called pentehose and uh we had a lot of seances there and it was uh it was a lot of fun um until it turned to be quite scary um we did this one seance which i always thought somebody was pushing

the thing you know whatever and they say you're talking about wiji board stuff yeah they said who is this oh this is um this is uh this is uh ball right the devil. Really? Yeah. I say, oh, well, give us a sign. And so suddenly thunder struck out and was like, whoa, we're all kind of scared and everything.

So that was one time, and we all ran to bed. And then at the time, we have a seance, and I forget who it was, was one of these spirits that come in, and they said, ha, ha, ha, ha, don't worry, all your tapes wiped off. And it was the next day, taped all. wiped off, completely wiped off. In fact, on that album, it says, no thanks to ball on it. And another

time, we did a seance and the glass broke, and it was a round table, and it went around the table by itself and smashed the floor. That was really scary. And that's when I left. And as I was leaving, somebody pushed me down the stairs and there was no one behind me at all, but I got a hand shoved me down the stairs. Another time, Cozy got locked in his room. He felt the lock go and all the books came off the shelf. It was quite scary there. See? And I've never done a sound since. Since I got pushed down the stairs. But those are fun things they did. Yeah. And we used to do, like, Richie used to get a can of Coke and put it on a string, and it was like a three-story place, and go on the top skier and bang on it, and it would dangle on someone's window, so there was

tap it on me. So you never know if it was real or if it was. Oh, I see. So last thing on this, and I want to talk about you, did Ronnie in that early period with Rainbow, because it was about 75 to 78, if my memory's correct, but did, because again, he wasn't, and when I say young man, I mean, most people, when they're really hitting that other level in music, they tend to be in their 20s, their early 20s.

No, he was in his studies. Right. Did he have a sense that there was still this greater destiny ahead? Did he feel that, or was he very focused on just? He was very focused on what he was doing at the stage. like he never wrote songs on the road. He was always, this is touring, off the road, this is writing. Right, right, right.

So let's talk about you. So you were born in 1945, is that correct? Maybe. Okay, somewhere around there. But the reason I ask is so many people that were born in Britain, you know, either during the war years or post-war, they grew up in this kind of very difficult time in England

with, you know, there were still bomb craters. I mean, Sharon Osborne sat in that very chair you're sitting, and we were talking about people playing in bomb craters and stuff like that. What's your memory of post-war Britain? I remember mostly that because the food was still on ration for eight years after the war. And I remembered my mother giving me chocolate, which I'd never had before, and I spit it out because I did not like the taste of it, because I'd never had it before. Right.

You know, I'd never had a Coca-Cola. And where were your family at, sort of, in the socioeconomic scale? Because there's not, you know, to be fair to you, and I'm interviewing you, we obviously want to talk a lot about Ronnie, but there's not a lot of information about your life, you know. I grew up in probably middle-class family. We lived in Epping, in Essex, the countryside, live next door to a farm. We used to play with the kids on the farm, with the animals and everything, and became a vegetarian because of that.

I'm not anymore, but I became vegetarian at that time because, you know, I play with the animals. My mom said, every Sunday we'd have a roast dinner and I said one day, what's that? She said, oh, that's, you know, it's beef. It's like the cows. I said, with the big brown eyes, no, I don't eat that. So I didn't eat any meat except chicken

because I hated the chickens. I used to peck me. So, you know, remember that, you know, I left home. I worked for Decker Records for a while. Tell me about that because what years did you work for Decker Records? Oh, must have been like 68, something like that. See? I did my research. The biggest artist in Deca Records in 1968 were the Stones, Ingobert Humperdink, the Moody Blues,

and Tom Jones. Yep. And I'll tell you a funny story about that because my girlfriend, I'm I must have been about 18 or something. 17 or 18. And she got an interview for a job through the paper, and it was meeting at a hotel. And she said, I don't want to go to a hotel.

Come with me. So I did. And it was an interview for the Tom Jones show that they were for America, recording it for America. Okay. So, and it was an assistant job which she got, but she didn't drive. So they said, well, we,

you come. So I said, yes. So they recorded Elstree Studios, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. They rehearsed Thursday and Friday, and then they were to record with a live audience on Saturday and Sunday. And Engelbert was there, I met him, Goldie Horn and all the laughing people were on it, moody blues. I took them all to the pub. That was my job to drive them to the pub. It was, and Liberace. It was a very interesting. So, you know, and my girlfriend at the time, how I got into music really was my girlfriend at the time was going out with a chap from Romford in Essex in a band called the Paramounts. Okay.

Okay. Who later became the moody, the proquelhoom. It was Robin Trow. She was dating. Oh, okay, wow. Yeah, so I used to go to all the shows with them. Did you, because I always love to talk, because it's such an incredible period of time for music. Did you like the music of the time? Were you attracted to the music of the time?

Yeah, I love the animals. That was one of my favorite bands. When Deep Purple came out, I love that band. Zeppelin, of course, was like, well, Beatles, of course. I mean, I saw the Beatles when they were third on the bill with Chris Montez and Tommy Roe in my hometown. Wow. So I've been about 66, probably. Something like that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's dizzy. Yeah. Remember Tommy Roe hit the picket. It was a very interesting. Yeah. It was an interesting time. He's got the speakeys, of course. See everybody down there?

Yeah. The reason I ask, I mean, not just because you got to see some of these great artists and be around them a bit, but also, you know, you end up working in music, you know. Yeah. In fact, David Bowie brought an acetate. It was an acetate at that time. And he was turned down. And I had that acetate for many, many years, and then somebody stole it.

Really? Yeah. I mean, I think there's some, I could be wrong, but I think David had 11 or 12 failed singles before he had space out of it. Yeah, yeah. It was basically considered a kind of a... He was an amazing musician. I mean, it was like a chameleon.

He was always something different. Every time you saw it. Did you see something in David early? You know, did you see that star quality? No, because he was like, his ascetic sounded like something like Anthony Newley at that time. Well, he loved Anthony Newley. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Very exaggerated. Yeah. But kind of funny, David was one of those people. He borrowed enough things that when he finally put it together in the right formula la Ziggy Stardust. It was like, it took off. He was amazing.

So how does you, sorry, how do you end up going to America at some point? Because again, there's so, there's no information on you out there that I can find. I married an idiot. Was he a musician? No, it was a ski instructor. I was in Zermat skiing. And I was stupid. Was it the way he skied or?

No, he was, I don't know. I don't know. He was good looking. He said, come over here. I came to California. I had a visa. I ended up marrying him and realized after I married him that all he wanted to do was ski. He did not want to work. He didn't want to do anything. I just couldn't deal with it. And I didn't want to go home and say, oh, I failed, so I stayed. Okay. Because this is this Southern California, you sort of drift here. Yeah, and I started doing some movies and things. Okay. Tell me about that. I did a film called Death Race 2000. I love that movie. Okay, so there's a scene in it where I was a masseuse. I had little white shorts, a little white T-shirt.

Now I have to go back and see you in this movie. And so when the race came in... Wait, was Keith Carradine? Yes, no, it was David Caradine. I got my carotene smooth. And so my thing was to Massuse when they came in from Ride, right? So this one guy who I was like Massus, he was said to me, I'm not doing these B movies for a run.

I've written a script and it's going to be huge. You know who that was? Let's see. Let's take a guess. Sylvester Sloan. Correct. Correct. Wow.

Yep. Yep. And he was. He became a huge star. Hello. Mm-hmm. All right. Now I've got to go watch you in this movie.

I love that movie. I think it's such a fun movie. Yeah. It's definitely a cold. People still make that joke, you know, if you're going to run over somebody on the street, 3,000 points. Yeah, I do too. I say, oh, oh, I get sick.

Points for that one. Exactly. So let's go back to Rainbow for a sec. So obviously we talked about you meet Ronnie, now you're on tour with Rainbow. It's such an easy thing now to say that Ronnie was a pioneer of hard rock and heavy metal. But at the time, hard rock wasn't necessarily, and many people thought it was on the Wayne. Yeah, yeah. So did he feel, did he have a sense that he was developing something new?

No, he just always stuck to his guns. He did what he wanted to do musically. Nobody could tell Ronnie what to do. He knew what he wanted to do. So is that part of Wyham and Richie? Yeah, yeah, because, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was musical differences. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's kind of funny because they're both brilliant, so you can't say one was right and one was wrong. No, no, no, no. Richie wanted to be more commercial, and Ronnie didn't. He wanted to stick to his guns. He always stuck to his guns. And I think that's why his fans, I mean,

he's been dead like 15 years now. right and there's still two and a half million people on his Facebook we have we kept keep it alive but because he was true to himself it was always true to yourself yeah i went back and listened to some of his early recordings i have to uh an angel is missing oh yeah uh because you know at some point because i because i was coming of age in those times and there was ronnie i didn't understand there was sort of age difference or anything. I didn't know that, I just assume Ronnie was the same age of everybody else. Right, right, which a lot of people did because he was very young.

He was a very youthful look. Yeah. I mean, I saw him perform when he was 71 years old, and you wouldn't say, as a 71-year-old man. But his brain was, you know, he was always up to the minute of what was going on in the world. And as I said, musicians, he knew who the new musicians were. He knew who he liked and who he did like, yeah. And he always said, you know, somebody asked him, what's your favorite kind of music? And he said, you know what, there's no bad music because that person created it. Oh, that's beautiful.

I wish I thought like he did. But there's this evolution where it's like early Ronnie kind of due up, New York stuff, very kind of typical for the time. Yep, yep. And then there's a little bit of evolution. Like there's, I heard like a version of Love Potion number nine, starts to rock a little bit more. Well, he heard the Beatles. Okay. That's what changed his life was the Beatles.

It's amazing how many people saw the Beatles and thought. Absolutely. But it's funny, because even when you listen to those early recordings, there's Ronnie. It's not like you think, like, he sounds like somebody else. Yeah, yeah. His diction is very, you know, it's very interesting. He's got a perfect diction as a singer. He used to read a book a day.

Okay. It was very, and do crosswords all the time. What was, in terms of what he was interested in reading about what was his focus? Science fiction. Okay. And autobiographies. Okay. Is there a reason that he was found?

was fascinated with those things, just like to learn? I don't know. I don't know. You were married to, right? Yeah, I don't know what he liked. I mean, I know what he liked. I know, you know, and writing music. He was a huge sports fan, huge sports fan.

Oh, he knew everything about any team you would ask him about. Okay. He would write songs watching football or watching baseball or something. So tell me about your falling in love and life together because, you know, and you know, The life of a wife in rock and roll, especially back then, there were a lot of expectations and, you know, you had a very successful partnership. And when it dumped to manage him on top of it, when it decided that I was going to manage him? Well, we're not there yet. Oh, okay.

Hold on. No, because I'm, and I don't mean to stop you, I'm saying is, you know, it's one thing to fall in love. It's another thing to be with the famous musician. It's another thing to navigate the insecurities. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's a hard life. It's a hard life. And there's ups and downs. We, I mean, we, scream here. You don't strike me as a shy personality. No, absolutely. No, we would knock heads like this. In fact, people would walk out the room as

like, well, good, you know, they're at it. I was the only person I think in the world who could tell Ronnie's, shut up, you know, because sometimes he would get arrogant and it wasn't called for. Particular time when he had flown this was with his own band. He had, or do you want to take that way? No, it's fine, it's fine. He had flown

with his assistant to wherever it was we were going. I don't remember where it was, but it was a long way. It was about 10 hours on a bus. And they had sent the bus, but it was a stand-up bus. And we were meeting him. Oh, well, I know, it was a stand-up bus, and we were, the band of the crew and I were on the bus. We met him at the airport, wherever it was.

It probably was four hours, but it seemed like 11 hours. We got there, and he was having a drink in the bar, and I said, come on, we've got to go. Well, I haven't finished my drink yet. I said, we have to go now, and he didn't. And so he got on the bus, and I was really angry with him. I'm really angry with him. And I said, you know, you need to apologize.

Every single person, this is a day off for everybody. You've failed everybody. up, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, it's all about you, isn't it? It's all about you. Well, yeah, it is. So he did apologize to everyone. And then he bought me a pillow that said, it's all about me. Because he could, that's how he was. You could fight with him. And then the next minute he would be, and then he was mean to the crew sometimes on the band. He would yell at people if they were not on the spot like that, you know? Well, my view of him, from an outside point of view, he was a true professional.

He was a very much professional. Totally, totally. It didn't work at home. Okay. So, you know, in my estimation, and I love my rock music, I mean, there's no better band on the planet in 1978 than Rainbow. I mean, they are at their peak. Cozy Powell, are the greatest drummers of all time.

Your husband, argue with the greatest rock singer of all time. Richie Blackmore, a true savant at the peak of his powers. Incredible lineup. And Jimmy. And Jimmy, right, I was getting there. And so usually when you're at that moment, you know, and you, like you said, there's this tension. So when you say Richie wanted the band to be more commercial, is it we need to be played on the radio because of dot, dot, dot, dot. Is there a logic to that?

I think the record company was in his ear and in the manager's ear all the time. Yeah. and pushing Ronnie to write a love song, which funny said no. Funny. In the business side of the rainbow, it was obviously Richie's thing. It was Billed as Richie's thing. Richie later joked and said it should have been called Richie Blackmore and Ronnie James Steele's rainbow.

But was Ronnie, I assume, but you tell me, Ronnie wasn't a full participant in the business, right? Yeah, he was 50-50 on the publishing. Okay. Okay, which we got screwed off later on. And on record royalties, Ronnie was on a scale. So I think he got like 35% first of all, and then it went up to where he would be equal.

Okay. So at least by 1978, he's a fully vested member of the band. The band's very successful. But never got any money. Because? Well, because management, we had a big house in Connecticut. They made us move to Connecticut. Is that because it was a Richie,

living there? Yeah. Okay. We had a big house there, five, five acres, so we had no neighbors, very lonely time for me. Um, um, car, big car leased. Everything was leased and we got $150 a week. Oh, it was one of those. So when it, when it all got added up, they told you had no money. Yeah, we had no money. We, and I fought for Ronnie's publishing for years and years and years. And finally got one rainbow rising back with the rest of it. No. Really? Yeah.

And when Ronnie and Richie parted company, as, I don't know, because Richie says that Ronnie left and Ronnie says he got fired, so I don't know what happened. But anyway, I know we were left in Connecticut with my grandmother died and left me $50,000. We had that money. It was all we had. And we drove across country from Connecticut back to because I said, we're going to go back to California, you know, where he wanted to stop a bed. and we had two dogs and a cat and us,

and we drove back to California, and Ronnie was working. He was trying to get band together with Skunk Baxter. Really? Yep. There's the band that never was. Yeah, and then there was old elf people and stuff, and he was doing all that stuff.

And then I was friends with Sharon before. So Sharon and we were friends. And so Sharon was to come up to the, we used to go up to the Sabbath place all the time and that. And then Tony and Ronnie got together in the rainbow and I guess they had decided that Ozzy wasn't able to perform anymore. It was their 10th anniversary. I remember that. And I'm going to be their 10th anniversary.

And Ronnie came back and said, you know, we didn't get a band together with Tony. Oh, sounds good, you know. And then all of a sudden it was a way. well, it's going to be, geese's in and bills in. I said, Black Sabbath, he said, I don't know if I like their music. I said, we have $800 in the bank. You love their music. And then he did love their music.

Yeah. But is it true that Sharon recommended Ronnie for the job? I don't know. That's what she said. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. We used to go up to the rainbow all the time. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

That's a beautiful thing that people don't always understand about that world. Is this a lot more closeness goes on? Oh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, it was, Don was managing the band at the time. Sure, yeah. He was not happy about it at all. He wanted Ronnie to write and record and for Ozzy to go on tour. And Ronnie said, no, that's not why I do.

So he left. And then Don wrote a note and said, I'm done with you all. And so they said, oh, we're out of the management. So that's what happened there. What I love about those, there's obviously the first couple albums, the Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules. What I love about those records was it showed that Sabbath had this other musical side. Oh, Tommy's brilliant.

Brilliant. I mean, they're brilliant, brilliant people. Well, Bill did the record and then. Bill did the record, yeah, we went down to Miami. Yeah, went down to Miami. They recorded it in Miami. Was it a criteria? Yeah, and we studied at the Bejews House too there.

And that was a fun, that was a fun time. I tell you a funny story about that, which is actually in Ronnie's book that he tells. So when Ronnie was playing in Elf or Elves or one of those bands, they play like cover tunes and they play for hours on end in different little clubs and things. And he was playing in his club in St. George, I think it's called up in upstate New York. And this guy there was said, oh, Dio, he said, are you related to Johnny Dio, the big mafia guy? Ronny said, yeah, that's my uncle, right? So he said, oh, I'm going to bring him down here. So Ronnie was like, just going to kill himself because he was so scared of it.

He said he was there. And one night all these suits came in and he was terrified. He said, you know, they're going to find out that's not really my uncle, whatever. Oh, it was kind of a joke that went wrong. Yeah, yeah, we say it wasn't true. So, anyway, they left, and Ronnie forgot about years and years went by, whatever. Ronnie, we're down in Miami, we caught in Heaven and Hell, and it's the first time we had any money or anything, you know, was Ronnie was an equal sharing partner.

And so we went to this place called the Ford. It's a big, fancy restaurant in Miami. I've been there. You've been there. Yeah, yeah. The steaks, I think, is their specialty. So anyway, I had coordinated made the reservation, and we got there, and this matre d took us for a private room.

They had a beautiful room and everything. I know where this is. Having food and they're bringing champagne and everything. I said, have we going to pay for all this? So, because we just don't have any money. Anyway, then Ronnie said, could I have the bill? And he said, it's, thank you. It's from your uncle, Johnny.

Ah. So he must have been following Ronnie's career. And they thought, oh, this is good to say that. Wow, that's beautiful. Yeah, it was a funny story. Anyway, that was that. When we had a fun time down there, that was a lot of fun. And then they went on the road and everything was good.

And then Bill was having a real bad problem with his family. He was total alcoholic at the time and it was just awful. And then one day he just left. It wasn't there. We woke up in the morning. It was gone. Yeah. So.

But here comes Vinnie Apice, and I know that Ronnie and Vinnie got on like House of Fire. Well, they're both from New Yorkers. But you see the strength there, even in the relationships. That's what I love to talk about. You know, as fans, we can think this person, but what people don't understand is like, Vinny's relationship with Ronnie. Right. Well, they were both Americans, too.

But also it's the key to so much great music. Oh, absolutely. And Vinny's an amazing drama and amazing drama. I love Vinny's a drum. That just fit so well. And poor Vinny. I mean, he was just like, throw into it. Well, in many ways, without trying to be commercial,

they kind of became more commercial. Vinny was more of an 80-style drummer. Yes. Where Bill was obviously Bill Ward. He kind of created the genre of heavy drumming. Sorry, and they're apparently dragging a body off at the moment over there. Camp-wise, and you tell me, I'm guessing, as a somewhat outside observer, but, you know,

the Sabbath vibe, meaning, Gieser and Tony is a little bit of a lighter vibe than the Blackmore vibe on a day-to-day level. Is that accurate? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Ronnie. A little bit more jokey and silly. Yeah, well, the beginning it was really good.

Everybody was, well, they were doing drugs at the time. Ronnie only smoked pot. He didn't do anything else. But, and that's one of the reasons why it fell apart the first time. But, and Vinny didn't do anything except smoke pot. I don't know if we know if he smoked pot, actually. Anyway, that was, no, they did, but they always joked. They loved each other's company.

They would, and they were. Yeah, it's a lighter. Yeah, Tony stuffed Vinny's briefcases, ham sandwiches one day. I mean, they did silly things all the time. Tony was terrified of snakes, and Ronnie found a, found a rubber snake and tied it to his, inside as he opened his car. I mean, they did silly things, silly things, but they were, well, they were all great musicians. And I think that's what they were, they were, they were all great musicians.

had respect for each other. Yeah. Well, so much great music. Yeah. Just so much great music. So am I right in assuming your fortunes are improving? Oh, God, yes. Absolutely, absolutely.

And those were big records. Yeah, yeah. We bought our first house then, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So happy times. Yeah, happy times. So that, for me, as a fan from the outside,

that's where you really started hear Ronnie's name a lot. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Because now he's in too successful. It was hard for him, first of all, because, you know, kids were giving the finger on Ozzy. Yeah, he's not Ozzy. But then after that, it just, you know, I'm running, of course,

he, his grandma used to always do this when he was taking it. When he was five years old, he'd go walk to the steel mill where his grandpa worked with his grandma and she would do this all the time, and the Moloic. And so actually, you know, Ozzy always did the peace sign. I'm wondering he was, I can't do that. And one day, you just did it. And it was, yeah, that was that. The rest is.

I remember somewhere along the way Ronnie got into a whole public thing about the devil horns and people were mad at him because he said he invented it. No, he didn't say. I know what I'm saying is this typical... He said he made it. He made it popular. That's what he said. I don't know what's going on next door.

I got, when that all went down, because somebody called me from, I think, the BBC or somewhere and said, Gene Simmons is going to trademark the Malloy. And I said, Gene sat in this very chair and told me that he trademarked the dollar sign. Yeah, well, yeah, that's what Ronnie always said. He would trademark that. So anyway, they called me and I said, no, I said, it doesn't belong to anybody. Ronnie just made it popular. Yeah. It's an old goes back centuries ago, whatever. And they said, what do you think about Gene Simmons trademark? I said, I think it's disgusting. Headline, Wendy Dio caused Gene Simmons disgusting. I was like, oh, God, I did not say that. heartening loves. Now, to make you laugh, hopefully, in the 90s, because we love heavy metal, and of course we love Ronnie, the pumpkins started doing the devil horns on stage and in pictures, and we got for it. You did? Oh, yeah, because it's heavy metal. No, it doesn't. It belongs to anybody. I know, but you understand. We did it because we loved the genre, and we loved Ronnie,

and it was our way of showing respect. Yeah, exactly. But to alternate. alternative music, this was, well, tell me, I've lifted for 30-something years. But there's stupid people everywhere. So there's pictures all through the 90s of the pumpkins, and now everybody in alternative music, and I'm not taking any credit. It goes back to Ronnie and everything. But the point is, we started doing it to piss people off, because once they got mad, then, of course, we did it everywhere.

And to this day, I'm still doing it. Of course, of course. Ronnie would do things to piss people off all the time. He'd love to do that. So, all right, at some point, your loving husband turns out. you says, okay, now you're going to manage. Oh, God. Tell me about that conversation.

Okay, so that started actually when he thought that Richie's manager, which actually Bruce Payne, who was actually Elf's manager. Okay. And so Richie, when Ronnie went into Rainbow, Richie said, I don't like our manager. What's your manager? He said, oh, it's great. So Ronnie thought that he was going to continue managing him, but he said, no, He's got Rich, you know, I didn't need you.

So, don't you love the music business? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Ronnie said, you're going to have to do it, right? So, but then, luckily, I didn't have to do it because we went, he got into Black Sabbath. Okay. And Black Sabbath had Sandy Pearlman. Okay. Was the manager.

And Steve Schenck. Do you know those guys? I know the names, I don't know. Yeah. So anyway, they managed. They managed the first slot of Sabbath. They managed, right? And then Ronnie left.

That's when he formed his own band, and that's when I had to start being managed. So before Dio was formed or as Dio was formed or after, where do you start managing this? Before Dio was before the band Dio was formed. What was Ronnie's logic for asking you to manage? Because I'd rather get screwed by you than screwed by your manager. How much did you take, Wendy? About 20%. I did indeed, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely, yeah, because I did business management as well. Yeah. And what happened was when we started with Holy Diver, we mortgaged our house to start, because Ronnie said, we've got to go out, it's got to be as big as it was. Sabbath. So smart, though. Yeah. Right call.

But, you know, we, I did, I hired the trucks. I hired the people. I did all that. I learned about production. I learned that production managers take a cut back. So, you know, with the band, with the places that, use and everything. And so I went back to where Ronnie had used in Rainbow, which were all actually British people. It was like at the timeline and sound design. It was Tesco.

Was it people if you felt you could trust? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got to use them to the day. I mean, Ronnie took them into Sabbaths with him. I mean, they were great people. Anyway, so I was like, oh, God, I don't know about managing. Well, maybe I should start with some little bands and see how I can do. Sure. So we had Roughcut, Alcatraz, Cooney, a bunch of different bears. Yeah. So I put those together. In fact, I was the one I found Jake Lee.

I was the one who took Jackie Lee to the interview with, to get the job with Ozzy. Did know that? Yeah. Fantastic. They did want anything to do with me after that because don't mess it up for me because they offered him a little bit of money. I said get you more, no, no, don't know, no. So I backed out of that. I mean, I had rough cut quite good success with them.

They could have been guns and roses, but they got too big for their boots, thought they could manage themselves and started wearing stupid things. This is a Redding Festival, right? And they decided where red, white, and blue sat, and I said, you're going to get stuff thrown at you. Of course they did. But things have changed, obviously, in the last 30, 40 years, but, you know, you faced it, Sharon faced it.

We were the only two women managers. You know where I'm going with that. really bad time because all the men managers come up so you don't know what you're doing, they would just really berate us all the time and everything. And Sharon just told them all to F off. I listened nicely and said, oh, thank you very much and did it my own way. So we did it our own ways, but we both did it, what we wanted to do. Yeah.

Yeah. So. We opened the door for a lot of women managers. Women managers are very, very good because they're, they're, listen to details, silly things that bands come up with. He got more t-shirts than I did or something. And they listen to it. They don't just shove it away.

Yeah. Well, now, I mean... Oh, there's a lot of women managers, good managers. God bless, because, you know, because I know it couldn't have been easy. I mean, I wasn't there, but I just... Wasn't easy. You know, I understand the business. You know the business, and we know how the business can be.

Oh, yeah. When it's cruel, it's really cruel. It was very cruel. It's still cruel sometimes. I get people going, oh, cash cow, because I still keep running his memory and music alive, you know, but I'm the cash cow. I want to talk about that, but let's just stay focused here because it's such a beautiful moment. Because I wrote it down because I wanted to make sure.

I think Ronnie was 37 years old when the first deal record came out. I mean, that's a very late number to finally be like it's all about him. Oh, yeah. It's so obvious in reverse, because we consider it to say, well, look at what he did, the Sabbath. Look what he did. I mean, the elf music is very good. I had no idea what was going to happen with that. He wrote Holy Diver, actually.

He wrote Holy Diver and Don't Talks to Strangers, actually for Sabbath. Really? Really? Really? Really? He's just a lyricist. No. He plays trumpet.

He plays piano. He plays guitar, bass. Yeah, when I met him the time, we talked a lot of him. He played bass. He wrote music. He wrote a lot of, I mean, a lot of those songs are written totally by him. In fact, I interviewed Rudy Sarzo, and we talked about Ronnie a bit, and he said Ronnie was a really good musician.

a doll, that's a doll. Rudy Zazzo, one of the most special people. He's a sweetheart. Yeah. So it's your husband. It's your life together. As you said, you're mortgaging. You're like, you're not living like rock stars. No, no. I wasn't finding socks anymore. Right. So here you are. And then boom, MTV. It just felt, I mean, you tell me, you were from the inside. From the outside, it looked like Roddy just exploded. That's so they spent the record label, didn't really do much for us on Holy Diver. Classic, right? But they did spend some money on making a record,

making the video for Holy Diver. Yeah. So they spent like all day with this Holy Diver video. And they had a bit of time left. So they said, well, why don't you do Rainbow in the Dark? So he goes up on the roof at the place we were at. That explains where the video is so kind of basic. And it was huge. The Rainbow in the Dark, they didn't care about Holy Diver.

And Ronnie said, I love that video. It makes me look tall. tall. And Sebastian Bark was telling me, he told me, he says, you know, I love those white boots. I had to get those white boots after seeing Rainbow in the Dark. It's, it's Ronnie's fault, yeah. Yeah. So, so it must have been, I mean, again, you tell me, but it must have just been a really beautiful moment because all the hard work, all the shows, all of it. All the stuff. When the first show we did was, well, we went, they went out with ERISM. First of all, we did like 10 shows with Erasmuth.

But Erasmuth at that time were falling off the stage and doing all kinds of stuff. And we had a hold of a dime, Rainbow the Dark, something it was in the charts. And I know they were this one show and they went over time. And the crew guy was going to, Erasmus' crew guy was going to pull the blood. And Stephen Silas said, no, the audiences would obviously come to see them. He was such a gentleman. Anyway, then this guy came to me from William Morris, and he said, Kevin, his name was, and he said, you know,

I could get you some good shows. I said, well, William Morris, they don't have anything at Rock. He said, well, that's the thing. We could be, and actually they opened the Rock Department because of Ronnie. Wow. And I said, you get me some shows for $10,000 a piece, and I'll go with you. And, of course, it is a ceremony of a civet. It's sold out in like 10 minutes.

So we did two shows. We did a six o'clock show and a nine o'clock show. And then they did a in-store, and the kids broke the window. There were so many kids. It was like unbelievable. I remember the first time of Ronnie playing, we played Antioch somewhere. I thought cows were going to come. It was out in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah. And there were so many people there, and I still got shivers seeing him on stage there and thinking, you know what, we did it. Yeah, we did it. Yeah. We did it. Yeah. Yeah. Because Ronnie, that was, I think, why he was successful because I never interviewed Ronnie's music at all, and he never interviewed my business.

That's beautiful. He would complain about things, but he would always... So he was willing to say, look, you... Yeah, oh, absolutely, absolutely. Because, you know, you'd assume husband, wife, he's micromanaging a lot of stuff. No, no, no. Fantastic. He hated doing interviews. He'd always do them and he'd be fine, but he hated doing them. And it was like a hot potato. Like, the tour manager would say, oh, oh, no.

you know, this is important, you better talk to him. So I talked to him. We have this big fight I'm on the phone about him doing this interview. And one day I said, Ronnie, look, I've got 10 minutes. I'm busy. You always end up doing it. Why do you make me go through this? He said, I have to suffer.

You have to suffer. So your life basically changes overnight after all these years of hard work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And we bought the other house. I got the house. I bought that house in Encina, which I still live in. in 1985.

And that was, Ronnie goes, I don't need to live in a big house. I said, well, I do. So we got the house, which everyone calls the castle. I've heard about the castle. I've not been to the castle.

I'm not asking for an invitation, but I've heard about the castle. Then we went at that time. Because, you know, everybody talks, right? So when you're a kid in the music business, you meet somebody, go, Ronnie, he lives in a castle. So in your mind is dragons and, you know, yeah, that's what I had.

We went to England at the time. We bought back two semis full of stuff. Cathedral windows, antique fireplaces, flooring. I mean, you name it. It's there. It's there. The bar is very famous. We bought the bar from a pub in Epping, an actual pub bar.

And we had that installed in the house. Yeah. Everybody loves the bar. So when I don't know how to define the way say it's like there's personal vindication and there's public and in the music business public vindication becomes the thing by which you look back and say you were wrong you were wrong yeah yeah was ronnie did he feel okay finally like i i haven't struggled with the question because i'm not trying to put a bitterness on him or something like that but you know did he finally feel like okay i

wasn't crazy everything he's a very humble person you know he didn't I used to make him, oh, he had all his stage clothes made and everything else and that, but otherwise he'd wear sweats. He'd go to Walmart. He'd love to go to Walmart. Or Ace Hardware or one of these hardware stores. And, you know, I mean, he just, he was a very, he never, sometimes he could be arrogant, yes, especially in the beginning, very arrogant in the, in the news, because people would, they would

say about his age and his height. And he would say, what different, what does it matter? how tall I am, how old I am. Yeah. You know, but they always would get that. And then he'd get really arrogant with people. But my sense of it is, is he had complete confidence in his voice. Absolutely, absolutely, yes.

Like an almost, because I don't have that. Okay, because I admire that in him because I see that in him as a fellow performance. But he's, you're going to imagine. He came from a working-class family up in upstate New York, love sports even as a kid, and when he ran out and play baseball when his father at five years old said, oh, listen to the radio, pick an instrument, oh, that one. It was a trumpet.

So he took him down to the store, got him a trumpet, and that poor kid had to practice every single day for hours on end to the point where he decided he was going to get. Was it because somebody wanted him to be a musician? No, I don't know why he did it, why his father did it. I have no idea. Oh, okay. His father was a very, very, very,

His mother was a saint. His father was very old Italian. Like old school Italian, yeah. Yeah, and he was very mean to the mother. I mean, always like she had to do everything. And I one time bought her a really nice coat. And he sent it back and he said, don't be wasting my son's money on frivolous things.

My money. But let's see, he was that. Anyway, he made him practice and practice. And Ronnie at the time said he just wanted to go out and play. So he figured if he just did it, right, then he would go out and play. And he got to the point where the Trudeau, he knew more than he did.

So he went on to do that. And then he actually played, I mean, he played with Bobby Darren and he played with all these people in big bands at that time. Yeah. Well, that was normal back then as a Bobby Darren would tour and they would just pick up local bands. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they just recruit, hey, you, come play.

Exactly. And he was 15, I think, at the time. Even Bob Dylan played some of those types of things, yeah. But he always, so that was pushed in him to be successful. You have to be the best you can all the time. But he, sorry, but he had that inner drive. That's just. Yeah, the inner drive, but he also had that vocal where he sing from the stomach because of

the trumpet player. Very much from here. From the trumpet playing, all those years and years of that that made him, that's, and he knew he could sing. He didn't know he could sing when he had to first band, the singer quit, and he had to sing, singing. I was like, oh, okay. So, I don't want to dwell on the sad part, but, you know, I mean, I saw him not that long before he passed. He was, I was literally turning the person next to me going, how old is Ronnie? And I think he was 71 at the time and saying, how is he singing like this?

No, he wasn't 71 because he died when he's 67. Okay, my bad. But, but I'm saying is most men in their 60s don't sing like your husband. And by the way, he's not singing. the, you know, he's not singing, uh, Volare. No, he's singing, yeah. He's singing mob rules and we rock and Rainbow in the Dark. These are, yeah, yeah, operatic, like, power. Yep. So you're looking at each other, like, how is this humanly possible?

So, uh, did he start to feel, like, you know, with there signs or just one day he just didn't feel right? Like, no, about five years before he passed away, was complaining of indigestion. I took him to a very famous Beverly Hills doctor who gave him heart tests and all kinds of stuff and just said, oh, don't worry, it's just gas. Just gas. Had I know what I know now, I would have made sure he had. So that was that first sign that the dingy had caught. And he always had indigestion. He was eat tums all the time. He went out indigestion, indigestion. But, you You see, with things like stomach cancer, gastric cancers and pancreatic cancer, there's not really any signs until it's too late.

That's why I've got the cancer thing that I promote now with early detection. You want to talk about that a bit? Sure. Please. Yeah. We started that when Ronnie passed. I'll tell you about when Ronnie passed away. Okay.

So we found out that he was not feeling good. He finished a tour with Sabbath. That was my... happiest memory that I have now is that he went back with Sabbath and did that heaven and hell tour. Yeah, it was the last thing because, and everybody loved each other. Everybody was back to loving each other, having fun, really enjoying themselves, everybody pushing each other to the limit for, because they were all such good musicians. And they created Bible Black, all those songs are really good songs and did a great time. And it had a really fun time. I was going to go out and do another album. Okay, so,

They stopped them because Vinny had something wrong with his hand or something. He had to do something. I don't know, whatever. They took a break. And Ronnie wasn't feeling good at all. And that last story wasn't feeling good at all. And so I took him to my just local doctor, actually. He did a blood test and he called me back and he said, Wendy, it's not good news.

I think we need to do an ultrasound and a colonoscopy. We did all that. I really didn't know, and he said he's got stage four cancer. Wow. And I said, don't tell him. Don't tell him what. So I spent the whole weekend trying to find out the best oncologist I could find at what hospital. And they said that MD Anderson, but I couldn't get into MD Anderson.

I was trying everything, and then somebody said, go to the Mayo Clinic. So we flew to Minneapolis, went to the Mayo Clinic. and the guy, horrible doctor, he said, test, he said, no, you're going to die, so, you know, just go back and put your life together. You've probably got six months. Wow. So we went, stayed in the hotel, we cried all night long, I remember that. And then I got a text that from MD Anderson that we could get in there. you know, Tito Martel, Tony Martel, who we'd done some, we'd done some stuff for him before and giving him money and stuff. He was like, he's, we've got, so we flew from Minneapolis to

Houston for, to see this doctor, this doctor of Johnny, and he said, look, I don't, I'll do the best, there's some trials out there that we can try. I can't promise you anything, but nobody can tell you except God when you're going to die. He said that doctor should be. He's drunk. Anyway, he started doing the treatment. We used to go every two weeks. We'd go fly to Houston for six hours. He would do chemo. And do you know, there was a kid there, 19 that was there. And Ronnie spent more time caring about him than caring about himself. It was really, and we used to skip down the horse going, we're going to kill the dragon. We called it killing the dragon. we never, ever, either one I thought that Ronnie was going to die, because he did very well.

He did very well. Three weeks before he passed away, he was getting the award from whatever award it was, a golden something. And then, but I just feel sometimes they don't want to find a cure because they make too much money with things. because I know for a fact that at one point, Ronnie lost the eyesight of his eye because it had masticized up there and his hand was like this. And I took him to an optician, a specialist,

and he said, well, you know, there's nothing we can do about it because he said, but there's another specialist. Let me see in a couple of weeks. I said, okay. So we went to Houston again, and they tried a new drug called a Vastin. I'll never forget the name of that. We got off the plane, and I said,

I think I can see better in my eye. My hands stopped shaking. We went to the opticians, and he said, I can't believe, I can't understand this. Your site's back. I cannot understand this. And then the next time we went there, the Avastin was taken off the market. Oh. But, you know, anyway, we, he, we did that last show, the last award thing.

And three weeks later, he passed. away. He wasn't feeling that good. He was feeling really in a lot of pain. Went to the hospital and Gloria and Terry were with me and he passed away. Sorry. Yeah. But then, okay, so then everybody was saying I wanted to give money for cancer and I made and sent me $10,000 and said, where do you want it to go? And I said, well, you know, a lot of, uh, you know, big organizations, they have so much administration costs. I would really like it to go right

where it should go. And so we formed the Ronnie James Deo a stand-up and shout Cancer Fund. And 14 of his good friends that were on the board, actually one of the directors of Claire brothers from PRG, from upstaging,

Adam Parsons, Rick Sales, Andy Gord, they're all on the board. And we've raised almost $3 million. dollars for research and we support T.J. Martell, we support a lot of other cancer things, and it goes into, we were actually been supporting Dr. Wong from UCLA with a cancer test from a swab. Yeah. So that instead of, because men, a lot of times don't get checked out because they don't want to finger up the butt. This would be a swab in the mouth. And it could, early detection of if you've got stomach cancer or pancreature.

cancer, those are two killers. And they just named one of the labs at UCLA after running. Oh. Last thing. Thank you for sharing all that. It's hard. I lost a lot of people with cancer, too. It's the hardest thing.

It's just, you know, and it doesn't seem like he's been gone for 15 years at all. When you said 15 years, a few minutes ago, I was kind of like, doesn't seem like he's gone that long. It doesn't seem like that long. I don't know. I just tried to keep his music and. and memory alive as much as I can. Well, you've done a great job.

So let's talk about that because you brought up that people were critical of you. And to me, that's so the stupidest thing I can imagine. First of all, and again, you stop me because I'm going to say what I want to say, and you tell me if I'm wrong. First of all, it seems to me you're his wife and the manager. Your number one responsibility is to keep his mutual. music alive. Absolutely.

Okay. Number two, why wouldn't your family and the ones he loved be the beneficiaries of his gift, which was a God-given gift? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and put this way, if I'm a fan and I buy these things that come out, I want the money going to you or your family and his family. What is so hard for that, for people to understand about that?

And as we sat here, For every dollar Ronnie made in this business, there's all the times where you guys didn't make money and didn't get paid and got ripped off. Absolutely. I remember, you know, when we drove all those miles from Kineetics to LA and we rented a house because I had that money from my grandma.

We had like about 12 people. It's a two bedroom house. We had about 12 people sleep in there, living there. Because we were trying to struggle and get something happening. There was this article that came out after Michael Jackson died. The New York Times wrote it. And they were, the basis the article is they were shocked at how little money Michael Jackson made.

Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing that most people understand. And we're not crying poor, but we're saying is it's not what people think it is. Oh, no, of course not. Of course not. Yeah. I mean, we bought the castle in 1985, you know. Sorry, when you say we bought a castle.

It's not really a castle, but it's, it's on a hill. We live next door to Vin Diesel. Oh, very good. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know where he is lately. he's not there. But yeah, so it's,

we made it the way it is. It's very medieval inside and everything is very medieval. So last thing, because I'm just curious, and of course, we wish Ronnie was still here to help us market the music and do all those fantastic things. Just talk a little bit about what it's like to, because first you have the emotional navigation of you have to constantly be in the energy

of old times, reishing a concert, there's his voice. It's got to be hard at certain days, I imagine. I don't know. Or do you feel close because you're always together? I feel close because in my office, I've got an office in Canoga Park, and it's pictures of him and things all, because we have, in our house, Ronnie refused to have any gold records whatsoever,

nothing, because he's very humble person. So they're all in my office, everything's in my office. So I walk in the office and Ronnie everywhere, everywhere is Ronnie, yeah, exactly. Exactly, yeah. So, but past the emotional part, just talk about the business of the posthumous business of, you know, how to manage a legacy. Right.

Well, you know, we've found things in the vault. Actually, I did find recently some things that have not come out. So, because Ronnie would go down in the studio and he put a song down, and he put it down with his playing guitar, playing the bass, drum machine, whatever, and then he would go into a proper studio with the musicians and drink. So there are a lot of those things with songs that didn't make it. Okay. With his vocal on. So we've talked about taking the band, his band, and keeping his vocal and then recording. So those are the things, you know, that we were talking about and doing things.

There's a couple of songs, actually, funny enough, he would never write a lot of song, but he did write two love songs for me, which are recorded, have never been out. And I'm tempted to put them out, but then I'm like, would he kill me for this because they're love songs? Well, it's obvious that he loved you and you loved him, and I think that's... Oh, yeah, we were soulmates, I think. You know, obviously we had ups and downs all the time. I left a few times and came back.

But, you know, those things happen. No, it's beautiful because I'm in business with my wife as well, and it just strikes me that the family of music is the best way to say it. And here we are talking about Sharon and Ozzy and Tony. We're in this kind of bigger family. And unfortunately, the music business has a terrible history of ripping people like us off. Oh, absolutely. So it makes total sense that he turned to the one person he trusted the most in you.

Exactly. That's what I said. You'd rather screw me than get screwed. That's what I used to always say. Well, thank you so much, Wendy. It's so nice talking. Thank you. It's been absolutely very, very interesting. Thank you. Very interesting. Thank you.