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Ronnie James Dio hologram retires

By | Published on Thursday 2 September 2021

Ronnie James Dio

The Ronnie James Dio hologram has retired from touring, five years after it was debuted at the Wacken Open Air festival. Turns out, despite all that talk of holograms of dead musicians playing concerts around the world being the future, it’s quite an effort to move them around from place to place.

“[The hologram] was well received sometimes, sometimes not – it all depends on the people”, says Dio’s wife and manager Wendy Dio, in an interview with Kazagastão. “The problem with the hologram, and it’s great – and I won’t say never say never again – but it costs so much money”.

“You can only go into certain venues because of the height of it and the size of it”, she adds. “It’s too expensive to travel, so therefore we couldn’t come to Brazil, couldn’t come to South America, couldn’t go to Japan, couldn’t go to Europe with it. So it limits you so much”.

This doesn’t mean the end of Dio’s posthumous performances though. He will just be in a more two dimensional form for his future shows. Wendy Dio explains that she has unearthed a multi-camera shoot of a full live show, in which one of the cameras follows the musician for the full performance.

“We took that, and we’re making this [new film for live shows] with special effects”, she says. “So it won’t be a hologram – it’ll be a film of Ronnie himself with the Dio live band and special effects. So we’re working on that. And that we can take anywhere”.

So, if you’ve been longing to see Ronnie James Dio ‘live’, don’t give up just yet. Though if it’s holograms that you’re excited about, you might have to switch your musical allegiances to Abba.



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