Monday, May 17, 2010
HE'LL KNOW FOR THE FIRST TIME, IF HE'S EVIL OR DIVINE. HE'S THE LAST IN LINE: I missed the news yesterday that one-time Black Sabbath front man Ronnie James Dio died of stomach cancer at the age of 67. I don't have anything particularly weighty to say except that -- with Black Sabbath or solo -- he was one of those acts that always sounded better at full volume.
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Dio has rocked for a long, long time,
ReplyDeleteNow it's time for him to pass the torch.
He has songs of wildebeests and angels,
He has soared on the wings of a demon...
"Holy Diver" was Pat Burrell's walk up music for most of the time he was with the Phils. RIP, Mr. Dio, and thank you for inspiring Pat the Bat, especially all those times he homered off the Mets.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmU7FshBwgg
ReplyDeleteGeez, thanks for bringing this up. This makes me tremendously -- I don't want to say sad; maybe nostalgic and feeling my age. Dio was unique among 70s-80s heavy metal vocalists in that he made sublime albums with three separate bands. I first heard him in the Mob Rules-Heaven and Hell-Live Evil period of Black Sabbath. Dio-era Sabbath is oft-maligned, but unfairly so. The live album is kind of BS (and poorly produced), but Mob Rules and H&H are somewhere between good and great. They led me to the first two albums that RJD did with Richie Blackmore's Rainbow, and those were really something special. The crescendo in "Stargazer," off of Rainbow Rising, was really the apex of long-form baroque metal. I have fond memories of popping Rising or the eponymous album into my walkman for my paper route.
ReplyDeleteThen, of course, there were the first two Dio albums, which were also excellent. "Rainbow in the Dark" (which begins with a wallop of a hanging pickup note before launching into that massive cascading riff), "Holy Diver," and "Last in Line" -- which probably owe as much to Dio's guitarist, Vivian something, as to Dio -- are emblematic of the muscular, pissed-off kind of metal that Dio was best at.
By all accounts, Ronnie James Dio was a dick. When I saw him live in 1984 or so, somebody threw a shoe that hit him, and he quit the concert for a while, then apparently was convinced to come back, whereupon he immediately instructed everybody in the front to kick the ass of the guy who threw the shoe. He seemed to be high-strung and petulant, with a huge ego. He was a tiny man with a beer belly and a receding hairline with a penchant for elf boots and fur vests. Social interaction probably did not come easily to him. But he shouted some great heavy metal songs.
RJD and my sister in law were inducted into the Cortland (NY) High School hall of fame at the same time, although for different career paths.
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