The guitarist Doug Aldrich was a member of Dio from 2002 to 2003 and in 2005 and 2009. But he also worked in the meantime on and off with Whitesnake from 2003 to 2014. That was the main reason why the late legendary singer Ronnie James Dio got really upset with him one time and booted him out of his house.
The guitar player recalled that in an interview with 96.7 KCAL-FM “Wired In The Empire” (Transcribed by Blabbermouth). It all happened when he accepted Whitesnake’s offer to tour for a couple more months and then discovered that Dio had a new tour opening for Iron Maiden.
Doug Aldrich recalls when Dio booted him out of his house
“That tour was in 2003. So what happened is, originally Whitesnake asked me to play [with them], and I asked Ronnie [James Dio if he was okay with it], and he said, ‘Yeah.’ And it was gonna be a two-month tour. And we just had a blast. I mean, the Whitesnake band was on fire, just like the Dio band. And Coverdale said, ‘Do you wanna carry on? I’ve got dates.”
“I’m gonna finish out the year.’ I’m, like, ‘Hell yeah. Let’s do it.’ And in the breaks, I was going up to Ronnie’s. We were writing — starting to write for what turned out to be ‘Master Of The Moon’, which I actually in the end didn’t contribute anything to. But we started writing. And one day he goes, ‘Oh, we’ve got this tour with Iron Maiden coming up in the summertime.'”
He continued:
“And I was, like, ‘Oh, Ronnie. Are you serious? Are you sure?’ He’s, like, ‘Yeah.’ I go. ”Cause I just committed to David Coverdale about the summer run.’ And he was pissed, man. He was, like, ‘What the fuck?’ I was really upset. He kind of booted me out of the house. It was, like, ‘The writing session’s over. Get the fuck out,’ kind of thing. He was pissed. And I felt horrible.”
“But I had a great opportunity to work with Coverdale, and in the end it paid off with a lot of new music for Whitesnake. And I went back to Ronnie a couple of times. In 2005, he asked me to come back and fill in on a tour in Europe. Then I ended up doing another tour in Europe with him in 2005, which ended up being the ‘Holy Diver Live’ DVD.”
“That’s when Coverdale was, like, ‘Hey, I hear you’re back with Ronnie. And some people are saying it’s full time.’ And I just said, ‘Look, if you wanna keep Whitesnake going, we’ve gotta do some new music.’ And he agreed. And that’s when we started writing together. But it’s all kind of intertwined. But the bottom line is that I missed that tour, and I heard it was a great tour,” Doug Aldrich said.
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina back in 1963, Aldrich worked with a huge number of famous artists during his career. He is active since 1982 and besides Dio and Whitesnake, he also played with Lion, Bad Moon Rising, W.A.S.P. and for more than a decade has been a member of the supergroup The Dead Daises.