My favorite tangentially related self-own was Craig Goldy quitting Dio in 1987, some time after the Dream Evil tour, because he was convinced that he was such hot shit that he didn’t need to be a guitarist in someone else’s band. He went on to do… *checks notes* absolutely fuck-all until 1990-91, when he co-wrote one fucking song for David Lee Roth’s A Little Ain’t Enough album and then one again decided he was such a pillar of guitar godhood that he could strike out on his own solo career. Where did that bring him? Back to Dio, eventually; but not before he ended up with a guitar credit on Edward fucking Furlong’s breakout smash hit pop album, 1992’s Hold on Tight, a cultural touchstone of such rising stardom that Craig would never again have his last can of tuna swiped by his hair metal himbo bandmates.

I swear, Rough Cutt was the 80’s hair metal version of one of those tech startup incubators, complete with all the coked-out hubris. Wendy Dio had to have been feeding them a steady diet of coke and hair spray fumes, because it’s kind of uncanny watching Jake E. Lee go through a similar trajectory after his stint.

Edit: don’t get me wrong, the touring musician life can be hard as fuck, and I’m all for artistic integrity and whatnot, but damn. This shit is like acting up like some kind of fucking diva because you were brought on as a hired gun for one album with a major-ish act, and continuing to hoist yourself by your own petard.