Ronnie James Dio, epic lead singer of some of hard rock and metal's best bands, died Sunday morning at 67. From stomache cancer. He was a hero.
As you may see from the above photo, this post was to be about some other stuff--weekend hair loss, approaching this phase of the fight with a little grit, blah blah blah.
But when a friend sent a simple 'ride the tiger, Dio RIP at 67' email, I thought maybe the best thing was to roll with it. To step outside my own navel-gazing and look over there somewhere and just celebrate a life. When someone dies of cancer and you get the email in the cancer ward, sure, that horse-kick is a little worse, but c'mon, we're dropping like flies out here all the time. How 'bout we just celebrate for a minute?
Indulge me?
Ronald James Padavona was born in New Hampshire, that hot-bed of heavy metal, in 1942.
He was born into an actively Italian Catholic family and spent a lot of time with his tiny but powerful Italian grandmother. Dio himself is a wisp of a man, tipping in at a thin-framed 5'4" in rocker boots. It is yet another reason his soaring vocals are such a joy, pouring out of this elfin man.
His grandmother, old-world, had a common gesture--the Corna--that had become a mixture of admonishing her grandson to pay attention while at the same time warding off the evil eye:
-Curl your two middle fingers down and hold them in place with your thumb.
-Extend your pointer finger and pinky out, making a rude Y shape with your hand.
-Knuckles to the floor, you use the whole hands an an indicator, waving it at evil spirits, errant grandsons, and probably mangy New Hampshire dogs who smell your pasta fagoili from the window sill.
This gesture, instilled and distilled into a hand-waving, crowd-connecting thrust of the arm, is now the universally accepted gesture of might and right and being an outsider briefly surrounded by comrades, and love, and power, and celebration that is the heart of heavy metal music. Beyond warding off the evil eye, it has nothing to do with Satan. Almost nothing in heavy metal has anything to do with Satan. Satan is our eyeliner. This is just about people. From a tiny Grandma, through a tiny man, to the world. I love that.
In brief, his career started well and never stopped. He fronted the band Elf--which had to have been named for him--and laid the groundwork for his vocal style: his voice was always and incredibly huge. He hit high clean notes where others yelled, he bent the note at the end just right, tucked it into a powerful little ball and rolled it toward some overwhelming next line. He, in some ways, took a croon and a cry and made them explode when he needed them to.
Richie Blackmore had just left Deep Purple, a hugely influential band--c'mon, Smoke On The Water? What a-hole hasn't learned that guitar riff until his friends throw Doritoes at him or her?--in the world of hard rock right before heavy metal became its own genre. Blackmore saw Dio's potential and brought him to sing for Rainbow, a successful collaboration of years, spawning some classics.
Then Ozzy Osbourne left Black Sabbath, and Dio stepped in. 1980. Bon Scott of AC/DC had died, and that band successfully brought in Brian Johnson for a 30 year run. Metallica would lose their glorious bass player to a tour-bus accident half a decade later and still make music nonstop till the present. It was possible, if the chemistry worked, to bring a completely new personage into an iconic band and succeed.
The first albums for both AC/DC and Sabbath with heir 'new guys' were huge successes: 'Back in Black' and 'Heaven and Hell.' Both still stand as well-wrought examples of the best of the form at the time, and possibly forever. The tiny man with the huge voice had stepped up again.
After years of success with Sabbath, Dio struck out on his own with the band Dio, and along with re-upping stints with Sabbath over the years, he had been successful ever since.
The album Holy Diver stepped so smoothly into the newer, more musically technical, cleaner heavy metal that was being made by the mid-eighties that Dio found himself fully on top, and for three albums he didn't step down.
And one of the reasons is collaboration. Never concerned with spotlight-sharing, he spent his career surrounding himself with guitarists and musicians of the highest order, men sometimes one and almost two feet taller almost, who often took center stage in the recording studio and on tour. And Dio lapped it up, just enjoying the virtuosos with whom he was lucky enough to work. He had started as a horn-player, citing his breath control for french horn and trumpet as the secret to his singing; he was always a guy in the band.
But for me it all came from a live recording of a song Dio did for the wrestling movie 'Vision Quest.' As a young wrestler I had loved that the film was made and had seen it, and had certainly heard he racing light-metal song in the movie, but it was a B-side recorded from a concert that made me really love Dio.
Because the B-side was an addition to the 'Hearin' Aid' album. During the plague-and-drought-and-white-guilt mid Eighties, a group of Heavy Metal musicians that included Dio wanted to put together a hard rocking version of the Band Aid and USA for Africa-style charity albums, to reach out and grab another group of fans and try to help fight famine and hunger. The album, released in 1986, raised a million dollars.
All the metal luminaries (and gloriously, Spinal Tap!) came to a studio in LA to record the many-versed, each-guy-gets-a-line and the guitar-solo-soars-for-three-minutes song, which is a hoot. But the rest of the album--back when there had to be a whole album--are gems or B-sides donated by the bands. And Dio's was 'Hungry For Heaven,' live.
An on the live track I learned what was behind the voice I had already grown to love: There's a some banter before the song gets going; just Ronnie James introducing what's coming next. Amidst all these screaming adrenalized young men, and the spotlights and the fireballs and the leather, he just says something like "Hey, you know we're just up here for you guys, and we're just happy to be here playing music that you love, because that's our job, man; this is Hungry For Heaven.'
A working man. A lunch-pail rock god. Simple. Play your heart out. Play for the fans. Give them whatever you have inside while you're up there. Leave empty. Leave in a box if you have to. Just hand us that huge voice, and wrench those big big notes down through your tiny body, and lay them at our feet. Night after night for thirty years.
There are any number of overly poetic, quasi-mystical Dio lines I could end with. But I'll bring it back to cancer instead. It got him, after a pretty good long run and a career that gave so much to so many.
I love his music, and he was a bit of a hero for how he made it. All the websites have already added (deceased) next to his name, in less than 24 hours. I'm furious at their efficiency.
If you are still reading, I also want you to know that I am very moved that you stuck with me this far. Maybe you learned something. Maybe you will download "Holy Diver" [there's a true Pat Boone big-band version Dio sings on that's actually really good too] or "Man on the Silver Mountain" or "Heaven and Hell." That would be nice. Ronnie would like that. Even though he's dead.
Have a good day.
