Ronnie James Dio’s former guitarist says the late heavy metal singer would be “pissed” that he had been replaced by a hologram.

Dio, the former vocalist in Black Sabbath and Rainbow who died in 2010 aged 67, is now the subject of a touring show in which his three dimensional representation is backed by members of his band Dio.

“I would like to see it myself, just to see it. I love hearing those songs, I love Ronnie, so that would be cool," Doug Aldrich, who was in Dio between 2002 and 2006, tells the White Line Fever podcast. “But I think Ronnie would be pissed. I think so. Ronnie would be, like, ‘c’mon, let me be dead in peace!’ Ronnie was a no-frills guy. He was not down for stuff like that.”

What’s more, Aldrich says Prince’s former guitarist Wendy Melvoin believes her late boss would feel the same about similar tributes to the purple one. Aldrich takes up the story...

“At the Super Bowl, they had a half-time thing with Prince. A big curtain came down and there was a projection of Prince. It was, like, 300 feet tall. It was really cool, I thought. My neighbour is the old guitar players for Prince, Wendy. She had gotten her son a basketball hoop and was trying to assemble it by herself. I hadn’t met her yet. I went over and said ‘you need a hand, I think’ and she’s like ‘yeah, yeah. I don’t know how the hell … there’s all these parts’. We built this hoop for her together and said ‘oh, by the way, what do you think Prince would think about that?’ She goes ‘he’d hate it - hate, hate it!’. But I thought it was great so I’d love to see the hologram thing. I just hope they get it to be bigger than life because that’s how Ronnie was.”

Aldrich says a lost Dio track, recorded for the unfinished Magica II album, is close to being released. He says he still has the track on hard drive and understands Dio’s widow, Wendy, is planning to do something with it. “I think they’ve got some tracks and it might be one of them but I don’t know what’s going on with it,” said Aldrich. “At some point, I’m sure that stuff will come out.”