“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”: Dio Mexican Masters DVD – Column

“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”

Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns…
“I like a dead Mexican in my headphones and I’m ready to go.”

I interview rock guys two, three times a week. I use voice recognition software to transcribe these interviews. Works like this: I tape the phone conversation, then take the tape and speak my questions and their answers into a headset and voila, it’s a transcribed text file. It doesn’t always come out as planned though. Fun game: Repeat the wrongness out loud and you might be able to figure out what the guy actually said. Here are some of the more memorable miscues. More than a few of these gems ring truer than the actual words spoken…

by Martin Popoff
illustration by Jonathan Ian Mathers


Ronnie James Dio on the live DVD…
“You’re actually getting a CD anyway if you buy the DVD. If you don’t watch it… I mean, I’m going to take it into the studio and Mexican master it, of course, so it will be just like a CD with pictures, I guess.

George Lynch on playing live…
“I always thought it would be funny to go to Vegas on an off night and dress like Elvis or whatever. Hindu docking Elvis-style.”


Rick Wartell from Trouble on engineer Bill Metoyer…
“Actually, the ideas for any effects or anything on that record were ours. The only thing I can say about Bill is that he’s a great engineer and he gobbled what we wanted, you know?”