So I was in Los Angeles over the weekend and David Geffen calls me up and says he’s hanging out with Ronnie James Dio and that Dio is a huge Apple fanboy and it would be like his life’s dream to meet me. So I said fine, whatever, I had a free half hour between my last meeting at Disney and my aromatherapy appointment. So they came up. Ronnie James comes in wearing spandex and throwing the devil’s horns and screaming, “Hello Silicon Valley! How you doing tonight? I said how you doing tonight! Are you ready to rock? I said are you ready to rock? I can’t hear you! Come on! Give it up, Bay Area!”

I was like, “Hey,” but I didn’t reach out to shake hands because I never shake hands with people. (It’s a germ thing.) He goes, “What’s that? I can’t hear you! Come on, Silicon Valley! I can’t hear you!”

I turned to Geffen and said, “What’s up with the I can’t hear you shtick?” Geffen says, “It’s not a shtick. He really can’t hear you. He’s pretty much stone deaf. Ten years on the road with Rainbow and Sabbath will do that to you.”

But here’s the amazing thing. Someone produced an acoustic guitar and Ronnie James sat down and did a slowed-down, unplugged version of “Man on the Silver Mountain” that blew my friggin mind. Who knew that song was about loss and longing?

Anyway it also turns out that Ronnie James really is a huge Apple fan and has been for years — he carries a MacBook Air and an iPhone everywhere he goes, and even asked me to autograph the MacBook Air for him — and his big dream has been to play at one of our shows. Problem is we’ve already booked Yael Naim. But I’d really like to do something. We’re thinking maybe we could get them to do a duet or something. More as this develops.