Dream Evil

Dream Evil, Dio's fourth studio album, was the first with Craig Goldy on guitar in place of Vivian Campbell, who had played on the first three; Goldy and keyboard player Claude Schnell had both come from Rough Cutt. Goldy said Ronnie James Dio had long seen him as first choice for the job, so no auditions were held. With bassist Jimmy Bain and drummer Vinny Appice, the five were working up ideas at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles in the spring of 1987. The album was recorded at the Village Recorder and mixed at the Record Plant, both in Los Angeles, with Dio producing and Angelo Arcuri engineering. For the first time the band wrote songs in the studio rather than arriving with the album finished, Goldy recalled; "Sunset Superman" and "I Could Have Been a Dreamer" came out of the sessions. The seven-minute "All the Fools Sailed Away" grew from a theme Ronnie James Dio already had, with a chorus sung by the Mitchell Singing Boys, and Billboard's review singled it out with the title track. Vinny Appice later felt the record had lost the band's early rawness, citing more keyboards, Goldy's different style and Dio's tighter grip as producer. Steve Huston painted the cover from an original concept credited to Wendy Dio. Vertigo released the album in Europe in July 1987 and Warner Bros. in the United States that summer. It entered the UK chart at number eight and the Billboard 200 at number 86, peaking there at number 43, and the first single, "I Could Have Been a Dreamer", reached number 69 in the UK and number 33 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. Ronnie James Dio told Billboard the band would play Europe first, including the Monsters of Rock festivals in England and Germany, and not tour the United States until January; the Castle Donington set of 22 August 1987 fills most of the second disc of the 2013 deluxe edition. Soon after the release Dio dismissed Goldy and then replaced the rest of the band, and nearly three years passed before Lock Up the Wolves.