SIMON WRIGHT Says Performing With RONNIE JAMES DIO Hologram Was An 'Enjoyable' Experience

Simon Wright says that playing along with a Ronnie James Dio hologram was an "enjoyable" experience.

Dio died in 2010 at the age of 67 from stomach cancer. The singer's hologram was created by a company called Eyellusion and made its debut at the Wacken Open Air festival in August 2016 in front of more than 75,000 fans.

The Dio hologram production used audio of Ronnie's live performances from throughout his career, with the DIO band playing live under the DIO DISCIPLES banner, consisting of Craig Goldy on guitar, Simon Wright on drums and Scott Warren on keyboards, along with Bjorn Englen on bass. Also appearing with them were ex-JUDAS PRIEST singer Tim "Ripper" Owens and former LYNCH MOB frontman Oni Logan.

Asked by Thomas S. Orwat, Jr. of Rock Interview Series what it was like to perform with the Dio hologram, Simon said: "Well, I had to play along to a click track, and just for myself, I don't use in-ears. I don't like things inside my ears for some reason. And I would use headphones. So I had the headphones on and play along to a click track. We had to do it that way because we were kind of following Ronnie's voice a lot of the time. But it was enjoyable. It was really cool. I had a great mix inside of there. I couldn't really see the hologram, so to speak. Now and again I could, but I had a lot to concentrate on, so I wasn't really watching it anyway. I had a lot of count-ins to certain songs and parts, so I had to really concentrate on what I was doing. But it was enjoyable; it really was. It sounded great inside of those headphones."

Asked if the upcoming DIO DISCIPLES shows will incorporate any old footage of Ronnie James Dio in the show, Simon said: "Yeah, it won't be the hologram, I don't think. But we do plan on, if we can, it all depends on how things pan out, but we'd like to put some footage together on the big screens. And that would be very cool 'cause I think Wendy [Dio, Ronnie's widow and longtime manager] has a whole bunch of footage of performances by Ronnie that I'm not sure if people have seen them already. I think there's some they haven't. And there'll be stories and snippets of Ronnie talking and moments from his great career. And hopefully we can do that, but we'll just have to see how it all pans out, whether the budget can take that or what's happening with it."

Elaborating on the attention to detail he and the rest of the DIO DISCIPLES team have paid when it comes to putting the show together, Simon said: "Well, it means a lot to us. I mean, we still talk a lot about Ronnie when we get together — good memories and stuff. And we care about what how things are and how they look. It's gotta be a cool show, 'cause we know how hardcore his fans are. And that's the most important thing."

Last November, Wendy discussed the status of the Ronnie James Dio hologram during an appearance on an episode of "Interviewing The Legends With Ray Shasho". She said: "[The hologram] worked for a while. It was 50-50 — [50 percent of the] people loved it, 50 [percent of the] people hated it. It was done. It was an experiment. We did it. I think it worked out fine at the time. But I'm not doing that again. We are planning to go out with [official Dio tribute band DIO] DISCIPLES next year, but I'm gonna use video of Ronnie and different eras from whatever pieces we have and it'll be just a walk down the memory lane again with different stuff for Ronnie with the band playing. So, yeah, I'm working on that. We'll have special effects with it. And hopefully it'll be a good show."

Wendy previously talked the status of the Ronnie James Dio hologram during a September 2021 appearance on an episode of the "Hangin' & Bangin': Artists On Lockdown" online show. Speaking about how her reaction to the hologram evolved over the years, she said: "When I first saw it, I cried. Then I got used to it because it wasn't Ronnie. And then we took it out [on tour]. The first [version] was not that good. The second one was a lot better. But I decided that I don't wanna do it anymore; I decided I want real Ronnie. So we're working on a stage with the DIO band. Instead of having a hologram, it will have film of Ronnie with the live band playing and with special effects and everything else. So that's what we're working on. We're working on it with Paul Dexter [who was Ronnie's lighting designer and stage designer for years] and a bunch of other people. And also the Eyellusion people, who did do the hologram, are doing a bunch of special effects for us with it."

Wendy continued: "I never say never [about bringing back the hologram], but technology gets different every day, every day, every day. And I just decided that I wanted to see real Ronnie. … QUEEN does [something similar, using footage of Freddie Mercury]. Ours will be a little bit different to that because we have all these great effects, 3D effects. It's almost like going into — what's that ride at Disneyland, when you go through, and it's like a 3D effect? That's what we're working on right now."

Two former DIO guitarists have publicly expressed their doubts about the Ronnie James Dio hologram. In December 2019, Tracy "G" Grijalva, who played for DIO from 1993 through 1999, said that the hologram "looks creepy" and resembles "a puppet." Nine months earlier, Doug Aldrich, who was in DIO between 2002 and 2006, told XS Rock that "Ronnie would probably not" like the hologram. "He would probably be, like, 'This is not what I signed up for.' A hologram? It's not really what he would want to be. I'm just guessing, you know, that it's something that Wendy thought about and she decided that Ronnie would be fine with it. But I knew Ronnie well enough to know that he was very particular and he would prefer for them to let him just die and be in peace."

After the "Dio Returns" tour's initial seven-date run was completed in December 2017, Ronnie's hologram underwent some changes before the launch of the 2019 leg of the trek, which took place in May and June of that year.

The "Dio Returns" 17-song set consisted of seven tunes sung by the Dio hologram — the rest featured Owens and Logan separately or together — and encompassed material from Dio's lengthy career, including his earlier days in RAINBOW and BLACK SABBATH.

A few years ago, Wendy told Patch.com that critics of the Dio hologram were "entitled to their opinion. I just ask that people come and see the show first before criticizing," she said. "We got a lot of flak in the beginning but I think more and more people are getting used to it. It's for the fans. It's for the fans who would love to see Ronnie back up on the stage and the ones that never got a chance to see him. I think Ronnie would approve. If anybody saw the 'Sacred Heart' tour in 1986 we tried to make a hologram then. We had Ronnie in a crystal ball hanging from the stage talking through it. Also he was an innovator in music, so why not be an innovator in technology."

In 2020, TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick, who toured with Ronnie on two separate occasions a decade and a half apart — in 1992 when Dio fronted BLACK SABBATH and again in 2008 when Ronnie was the singer of SABBATH offshoot band HEAVEN & HELL — offered his opinion on the Dio hologram on Twitter, writing: "I don't believe in those hologram shows. It would be one thing if the artist was still alive, chose not to tour for whatever reason, gave his or her approval & maybe even had a hand in the process. But Dio had no say." Skolnick also added a thumbs-down emoji as a way of voicing his disapproval.

DISTURBED frontman David Draiman said in a 2016 interview that he had mixed feelings about concerts featuring the Dio hologram. He said about the prospect of seeing a holographic version of Ronnie: "It makes me sad. I'm always happy to hear any music from anybody that's left us, that we've lost. But I don't know… The hologram thing, to me, it almost isn't letting the dead be dead." He added, "It just seems weird... Is there a difference between a hologram and a guy dressing up like Ronnie James and doing it?"