Harder Beat May 1998

DIO -LONG LIVE ROCK 'N ROLL

Vocalists come and go every day in the rock and roll world, but only once in a while does there come along a truly gifted singer. The list is a short one - Paul Rodgers, Bruce Dickinson, Rob Halford and a handful of others make up the upper echelon, the true masters of their craft. No list would be complete, however, without the Man On The Silver Mountain, Ronnie James Dio.

Dio's work with Black Sabbath, Rainbow and, most notably his own band, is among the finest vocal portfolios out there. While the ear for singing may be an inherent talent, the power behind a range such as Dio's must be developed. Ironically, Dio discovered the secret behind his power largely against his will. "I was five years old," he recalls, "and I had my bat and glove and was headed outside to play baseball. That's all I ever wanted to be when I was young was a baseball player. My dad pulled me into the kitchen," he recounts, "and said, 'We've decided you need to have some music education along with your schoolwork. What instrument do you think you'd like to play?' Of course, I couldn't care less about that," Dio insists. "I was thinking, 'I don't know. I wanna play with a baseball bat!' and so I walked over and turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard, I said, 'That's what I wanna play. See ya!' and headed out the door. But," he continues, "Dad stopped me and took me down to the music store that day and bought me the instrument that had been playing. It was a trumpet."

The young Dio was a natural talent on the instrument, and developed as a player throughout high school. "The day I graduated, I gave the horn back to my dad and swore I would never touch it again, and I haven't. But the same muscles used in playing the trumpet are the ones I use for singing, so it really has helped me as far as power and endurance," he states. "Trumpet playing involves pushing air up through the diaphragm, and I use the same techniques as a singer. If my nuts aren't hurting at the end of the night," he laughs, "I know I'm doing something wrong."

The town of Cortland, New York, where Dio grew up, was a veritable breeding ground for great jazz trumpeters, and he could have easily pursued that route. The trumpet, though, isn't what got Dio jazzed - his calling was in rock and roll. He formed his first band, Elf, around his early influences: The Beatles, Deep Purple, Free and Rod Stewart, and his own style and persona began to develop from those roots. By the time he joined Richie Blackmore's Rainbow in the late 70s, he had come into his own as a performer.

"I think my being influenced by anyone else completely stopped then," he confirms. "I wanted it to stop so that I could stay me, and not take things from other styles, but rather work on what Ronnie Dio could do." When his split with Rainbow became inevitable ("Richie wanted to start getting into pop music," he recalls), the darker, heavier side of rock held its hand out to Dio, and he embraced it. With their relationship with Ozzy Osbourne on the fritz, Black Sabbath needed Dio - and Dio needed Sabbath.

"I went to a club called The Rainbow (ironically enough) in LA and Tony (Iommi, Sabbath guitarist) was in there. He sent somebody over to ask me to come say hello, and say he'd always admired my work and knew I wasn't in Rainbow anymore and wanted to talk to me. So I went over and we talked," he continues, "and he said, 'Would you like to come out to the house we have in Bellaire?' They were all living up there writing for what was to be their tenth anniversary album. So, I went out to the house and met Geezer (Butler, bassist) and Bill (Ward, drummer) but Ozzy wasn't there. I didn't go up there for an audition, because I already had a couple of other things I was considering, so we just talked for a while and ended up playing together a bit," he remembers. "Then Tony said, 'Look, I've got this melody that we can't seem to do anything with. Can you do anything with it?' So he played it, and I said, 'Well give me a minute and let me see what I can do.'" The song Dio came up with was called "Children Of The Sea," and a new era of Black Sabbath was born.

"It was the right thing that Ozzy was gone, because it just wasn't working anymore," Dio says. "And It was the best move on Earth for his career. Really, it was the best for all of us. As far as it being a perfect match, it was. It was absolutely perfect. I will always go down as saying my favorite album is Heaven and Hell and my favorite band to be in, to write with and to be with was always Sabbath, and always will be."

1982 saw fate strike Dio again, as he parted ways with Sabbath and embarked on his storied solo career. He and drummer Vinnie Appice, who had joined the Sabs for The Mob Rules, decided to stay together, and they formed the backbone of what would become DIO. "I had already written 'Holy Diver' and 'Don't Talk To Strangers' before we even got the band together, so we already had two songs under our belt before we even had a band." After an exhaustive search for a guitarist, Dio called his friend Jimmy Bain, who coincidentally played bass, to ask if he knew of anyone. Bain came up with Irish axe master Vivian Campbell, and along with Bain on bass, Dio had his band.

DIO enjoyed two highly acclaimed records, Holy Diver and The Last In Line, before undergoing its first lineup changes. Now, some 15 years after its inception, DIO has settled in on a lineup featuring Appice on drums, Larry Denison on bass and Tracy G on guitar. "We've gone back and forth the last couple of years," Dio notes, "between Larry and Jeff Pilson on bass. We're more than happy with Larry, but the thing with Jeff is that we wrote well together. We've not yet written with Larry, so we'll see how that goes. Depending on Jeff's commitments to Dokken, we'd still like to do some writing with him, but for the moment, Larry is the bass player."

The latest DIO project is Last In Live, a two-CD live set spanning Dio's solo career, as well as highlights from Sabbath and Rainbow. "Truthfully, we've been trying for a long time to do a live record. I thought that after The Last In Line album was the perfect time to do it, because we had two strong albums under our belt, and plus we'd still have the original band on there, with Vivian. I wanted to try to capture that while it was happening, but the record company wanted more studio product."

DIO did release some live material in the mid 80s on a record called Intermission, which Dio says was "kind of half-live, half-studio and really half-assed as far as I'm concerned. If you're going to do a live record," he says, "do the whole show so it's got some scope and action to it. But," he says, "that's all they'd give us, so we did that. Then when we got a new record company [Mayhem], we decided to approach it again and they said, 'Yeah, great!' So unlike the others they were ready to go for it. We had been on the road for a while," he says, "and the band was sounding really tight and the set was good, so it finally all came together."

Tour plans are in the works, with the band setting out on the road this month, through June. A Dallas stop is planned, but no date has been set yet. "Our plans are always to go through Texas," Dio confirms. "Texas has always been a real strong area for us." If anyone knows of a place to have a damn show around here, please speak up so we don't get passed up by this tour! (Kevin White)