Interview

Metal great, Ronnie James Dio has been affiliated with a program called 'Children of the Night' for ten years. The program is designed to help and save children form the horrors of molestation and prostitution. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Dio about this cause and about the recent scandal involving pedophile priests.

On your new album [Killing The Dragon] there's a song called "Throw Away Children" what's the story behind that?

DIO: That's a very personal thing to me.. I've been part of the charity called "Children of the Night" a for years and I've gotten to know a lot of those kids who were taken into the homes and virtually ripped off the streets from their pimps.. Unfortunately many of these kids are condemned to death because many of them have HIV.. They don't really last too long, some do most don't and its just horrible. When I first got involved with this cause I realized that some of this was my fault too.. Not from an abusing kids standpoint or anything like that, but because some of these kids wanted to be like me. They wanted to run away from their abusive home and run to L.A. and go out and become rock stars or movie stars. All people who bare this responsibility of being a role model have to be serious about it, I think. So, in some ways, if these kids want to be like me, then I have to help them.. This particular song was inspired by a poem by one of those kids who is no longer with us and she entitled the song 'Throw Away Children' because that's what they call themselves and that's what they consider themselves. I just thought that was so heart wrenching and I wrote the song about that.

It must break you heart every time you see those kids?

DIO: Well, I've become a little bit more unaffected by it perhaps because I got to know the kids.. It kind of like being a surgeon and when you start doing enough operations you don't get queasy anymore, but it hasn't changed my feelings about this and my wanting to continue to help. We built a home for these kids and a school and a wonderful place for them to learn a trade and to have people around them.

And the song is for these kids?

DIO: It's for the kids who live on the streets and are afraid of anyone who smiles at them because they know what that means and I needed to make that statement. It's such a personal statement and I'm real glad that I got to do it..

Now, on that tip.. What do you think of all these recent charges against the Catholic priests molesting kids?

DIO: All I can say is take a look at the cover of an album called "Holy Diver"

(Laughs) That's where I was going with this..

DIO: (Laughs) Yeah, the whole point of "Holy Diver" was to have people ask me about it. I love it when people ask, "Why do you have a picture of a monster drowning a priest?" and my answer always was, "Well, how do you know that's not a priest drowning a monster?" Well, now it all comes back around doesn't it. That white collared figure in the water is the monster.. It comes full circle.. Look, that album wasn't meant to point it's fingers at priests generally, it was just a metaphor really, just an image that was supposed to be more shocking.. "How can you kill a man of God?" but by the same token, how can a man of God go off and rape little children? I think that album cover says a lot when it comes to what's going on today.

I remember I used to have to hide that album cover from my parents.. (Laughs)

DIO: (Laughs) That's funny.. Ya know I knew a lot of guys that were young when I did that album and they come up and ask me to sign it and tell me that they couldn't let their mother find it.. And our posters, nobody could have one of those, 'Oh, it's the devil.' But, in actuality all it was, like I said before, is a way to say "Judge people for what's inside of them, not what you se on the outside.. What a wonderful moral ethic. But, for those who don't take time to figure it out just say, "Wait, that's evil! You can't have that!" Maybe if more people just talked to their kids instead of just saying 'no' so blankly the world would be a better place.