I saw Dio perform with Heaven and Hell last October. It was a great show and I consider myself lucky to have seen it. He was a showman to the end and will surely be missed.
I suppose I’m best known for loving oh-so-sensitive female vocals, but I did go through a Black Sabbath phase (up to and including Master of Reality, so, pre-Dio), and a Southern Rock phase (especially Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Oak Arkansas, ZZ Top and Molly Hatchet), and, believe it or not, an Elf phase.
Man, I played the first Elf album to pieces. Wore. It. OUT! LOVED IT! I was especially in love with Micky Lee Soule’s dixieland/ragtime/God,-I-didn’t-know-what-it-was-called-but-I-loved-it PIANO all over the album!
And besides the music I loved, it had the greatest cover ever! It always made me happy just to look at it.
- “Hoochie Koochie Lady”
- “First Avenue”
- “Never More”
- “I’m Coming Back For You”
- “Sit Down Honey (Everything Will Be Alright)”
- “Dixie Lee Junction” (my favorite song, but I love them all)
- “Love Me Like A Woman”
- “Gambler, Gambler”
RIP RJD. Thanks for that album. Listening to it now I still get chills. Good times man.
I saw RJD for the first and only time Aug 2008. He was fantastic. I had hoped to see him this year. I feel so sad for his family, friends, and us (the fans).
Rest in peace. If you belt out Neon Knights in heaven I bet we could hear you.
I saw him years and years ago and thought he was awesome.
25 years ago or so, one of my older brothers was friends with a few sound guys and roadies working a Dio tour. When the show came to his town, he called these guys up and invited them over to the house after their show.
He and his wife were surprised when two buses showed up with the entire crew, band, and Dio himself. As wild as that sounds, my brother said they were totally cool, and didn’t even earn a single complaint from the neighbors in their quiet suburb.
He was a major rocker, but not a jerk, or self-destructive. A good example to entertainers everywhere.
:eek::(:(
…
I’m at a loss for words.
Aw, bummer. The only time I saw him was around '99 or '00 in Seattle with some great friends who had introduced me to his solo material. It was a fun concert, but recently I went back to download Holy Diver and found that my tastes had apparently moved on (I downloaded some Judas Priest instead) but he was a true legend and a class act, and it tickles me that he appeared in the Tenacious D film.
Dio, forever our Rainbow in the Dark…
A big black shape looked up at me.
Said, "I know where you ought to be.
Said, “Come with me and I’ll give you your desire,
but first, you gotta burn, burn, burn, burn in fire!”
Then a little white shape looked down at me.
Said, “I know where you ought to be.
Come with me 'cause I know just what to do.”
But I said, “No, I’m gonna burn in hell with all of you! With every last one of you!”
The epitome of the heavy metal attitude.
All the stories are that he was always cool to fans too. Always friendly and appreciative of fans. Never a dick.
I also give Ronnie major props for inviting Spinal Tap to take part in that project. Harry Shearer and Michael McKean actually took him up on the offer.
Just last week, in the thread about “before they were famous,” I posted an old, old song by Ronnie back when he was a young, clean cut pop/doo wop singer. He was, after all, a nice Italian boy from New York, and his first musical idol was another nice Italian boy from New York: Dion!
I bought the debut Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow album when I was a freshman in high school. I guess I assumed at the time that he was a young newcomer to the rock scene. In reality, he’d been singing since the early Sixties, and was a lot older than many of his fans knew.
Even though I loved a lot of his music (and have loads of his stuff on my iPod), I also remember him with just a twinge of sadness. Back in 1984, I saw Dio at the New Jersey Meadowlands, with Dokken as opening act. The show itself was fine, but as I looked around the crowd, I realized that I was, at 23, about the oldest fan there. Everybody else seemed to be a drunk, belligerent teenager… and I could almost hear an Amityville Horror-style voice whispering to me “GET OUT.”
That was the first time I sort of realized that, however much I might like the music, I just wasn’t ever going to feel comfortable in a metal crowd again.
Of course, any tribute to Ronnie has to include his most enduring legacy: he didn’t invent it, but he did more than anyone else to popularize the “Hook 'em Horns” hand gesture that you see at every metal show. He copied it from his grandmother, a little old Sicilian woman of peasant stock who taught young Ronnie that this gesture would repel curses and black magic. So if, for instance, some old Gypsy tried to give him the Evil Eye, Ronnie was to ward it off by giving that forefinger-pinkie gesture.
Instead, he made it part of music lore!
A real shame, Dio was one of my favourite vocalists of all time. Sadly I never saw him live and now I never will.
But at least I can track down a copy of Live Evil.
This just bears repeating.
I saw Dio at least twice on his own, but now I can’t remember if I ever got to see him with Heaven and Hell or not. I think I did if they played with Priest a few years ago. I wanted to go last year but didn’t.
I recently turned my son onto Dio - he loves Last in Line, Man on the Silver Mountain, Rainbow in the Dark - he gave us a lot of cool, lasting music.
Very sad news. I never got to see him in concert, but my guitar teacher did (several times), and got to meet him once…much like the other stories in this thread, my teacher tells me that Dio was really a class act.
Will have to crank through “Holy Diver” on my guitar tonight in tribute.
I seen it mentioned in the Jim Henson thread , but thought that Ronnie deserved a thread of his own.
This one got my attention, not for his passing as we all will at some point, nor was it because he was one of my favourites. I listened to a variety of music as we all probably did when we crossed over from being 12 into our teenage years, and at some point , Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, AC/DC would caress the tender ears of up and coming teenagers.
Not that these bands were the end all be all (except for those that think they are) of metal. Rock encompassed many different genres in the late 70’s to mid 90’s, that one could be listening to power ballads from maiden, jump into some van halen, and at some point complete the night with some pink floyd. Others have their own version of this.
The man was part of a collective of musicians and bands that were the sound track for my growing up period.
Declan