RONNIE JAMES DIO has announced the possibility of further collaborations with Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi: "We've already written one (new) song together. The reason for that is that there's a release coming out, it's called Black Sabbath: The Dio Years - they've already done one, of course, Black Sabbath: The Ozzy Years; that was the beginning and, really, the best part of it all - but they've decided to do one, again, Black Sabbath: The Dio Years, and we wanted to make it a little but more special, not just give you things you've not heard from a live perspective. These are two things you'll never hear again - two new songs. We are going to do that. It's been fun already. The one we've done - the one that I've done with Tony has been really wonderful - just great to realize how magnificent a player he was. You forget that after 10 years at a time that you don't work with someone. So we are gonna be doing that. And I hope you'll like it. I think it'll be great." On the rumors of him possibly rejoining Black Sabbath, Dio said, "There's always rumors about everything - about a RAINBOW reunion, about a Black Sabbath reunion. Our purpose was to do this because we wanted to have this product be a bit more special than anything else - not just, 'Here's a live track you've never heard before.' I mean, that's cool, but I'm sure people have heard that. We wanted to do something a bit more special, so the whole band would write and play these songs, and... They've wanted to hear them long enough, so here they are. But it's not anything that we've talked about leading to anything other than that. No, it's for that project." Meanwhile, Black-Sabbath.com webmaster Joe Siegler has commented on the rumors as follows: "Today was not the first time I had heard these rumours. Running this site I hear all kinds of things, and generally I tend to discount them - but this one had some more weight to it, so I decided to do some poking around on my own. While I can't get anyone to officially say anything about this, it does seem to have the air of an authentic story to me. Heck, I can't get any official word about who is even playing on the new tracks for the Dio Years set, besides Iommi & Dio. One would hope it's the same four guys (Iommi/Butler/Ward/Dio), but I can't get official confirmation of that one, either. So it's known that the Dio Years box set is happening. When - who knows, although I would imagine sooner rather than later. What the contents of the set are is also officially unknown. I've been hearing some rumours about specific content, but I don't really want to spread any more FUD about that issue, so I'll leave that out for now. Suffice it to say if what I heard is true, fans will really like it."

---