Ronnie James Dio: Still Rockin' After All These Years

In the course of musical evolution there has developed a mythical world far apart from our own. It is a land of fire-breathing dragons, sword-wielding knights and unadulterated heavy metal music. It is a place that is beyond the scope of human time and space, where epic battles of good and evil are commonplace and wanking guitar solos are the voices by which these stories are told. It is a world where Ronnie James Dio reigns supreme.

"Good music will always be here," said the voice of Dio, bridging the gap between the two worlds with a telephone call. "It will always move people. It will always be appreciated."

The Godfather of the Goathead: Metal legend Ronnie James Dio prepares to rock. (photo courtesy of www.dio.net)

And when Ronnie James Dio says "always," he means it. In over thirty years of making music Dio has established himself as an eternal god of the heavy metal world. (And in fact if anyone knows Italian they know that "God" and "Dio" are really one and the same). The eternal life of a god is not an easy burden to bear however, and on the question of age, Dio is truly an enigma.

"I don't deal with the age to tell you the truth, I used to, but I find that that is kind of a slap in the face," Dio said with an edge in his voice. The gods are angry. "I am not young, let me put it that way. I am not ashamed or embarrassed of my age, I just don't think it has anything to do with it. I have been in the business since I was five years old, and that's a long time."

It took a long time to achieve the status Dio now enjoys. If students of metal had to make a spiritual journey to ask one question to a living metal guru, they would find Dio sitting on top of that fabled mountain. For Ronnie James Dio metal is not just music, it is a way of life and no one has a more profound understanding of it than the inventor himself.

"You have black metal, death metal, white metal, dark metal, death metal, speed metal," Dio explained. "For years I played good hard rock music and then it became heavy metal and that is kind of where it started."

Though inventing metal might seem like a fairly ambitious statement for anyone, Dio has the resume to back it up. As well as leading seminal metal bands Ronnie Dio and the Prophets and Rainbow, Ronnie James Dio also fronted Black Sabbath after Ozzy Osborne left the band in 1979. It is rumored that he even invented the "heavy metal sign" (where one's hand is held in fist with the index finger and the little finger raised in what some call the "goat head") in 1980.

For a man whose fifteen minutes of fame has lasted more than some peoples' lifetimes, Dio has managed to persevere three decades of popular trends and still have an audience. "Anyone can follow current trends and they will die out. People won't believe in you if you just ride the tide and just ride the tide where it takes you, you must be one who creates something," Dio said.

Being out of touch with pop culture is apparently one secret to the success of Dio's musical career, which hasn't had the fortune of musical trend on its side since the fall of spandex fashion and perms for men. What is another gem of wisdom from the legend? Be eternally true to your fans.

"I feel fortunate that my fans have been with me for all these years. They connect to the music and they connect with me because it is something that I give to them. The audience I have now is the same one that I have had for the last twenty years."

Well, not exactly the same one. In the heyday of Sabbath, Dio was used to selling out arenas. When he comes through Cleveland on the 23rd with the "Dio Magica World Tour 2000," he will be lucky to fill the Odeon, and he has to concede to the fact that not every Dio fan that was with him back in the day is still around.

Nearly approaching senior citizen status, Dio has stayed around by realizing that bigger is not always better. When Dio called it quits with Black Sabbath in 1982 after three big years with the band, and then dumped them again in 1992 after a short lived reunion, Dio learned about the down side of super-stardom.

"When it was all done (in 1982) it was just too much money and too much drugs and it got to be too much. I think success breeds those kinds of things," Dio said.

If the out-of-control life from too much success forced Dio from the band when they were near their peak in the '80's it was the opposite problem that prompted him to leave the band in the '90's. The reunited Black Sabbath was trying to sell their brand of stadium metal to a different generation of listeners who were only interested in grunge.

The final straw was when Ozzy Osborne asked Dio-fronted Sabbath to open for what was then billed as Osborne's "last two shows" and Dio refused. Ronnie James Dio invented heavy metal. He is not an opening act, especially for the man that he had replaced 15 years before. The situation rekindled sensitive issues concerning Dio's real standing with Black Sabbath.

"I realized from the beginning that I was not the creator of the band and that it was always more Ozzy. I had other bands that I loved more like my children. When I came into Black Sabbath, after Ozzy, I never thought I was the end-all be-all of the band. I knew I hadn't been there from the beginning and I felt kind of like a fifth wheel. But at the same time, I thought it was going to last forever, just as I always thought every band I have been in would last forever," Dio said.

Well, even though Dio's day in Sabbath didn't come close to lasting forever, Ronnie James Dio just might. And Dio makes his most recent attempt at immortality with his latest, "Magica." In heavy metal Dio might have discovered the key to living forever: the concept album.

"The album tells an entire story. It is a fantasy piece. It is a morality play that approaches the battle of good versus evil, the conclusion being that good never conquers evil and evil never conquers good it is an ongoing struggle," Dio said.

Dio fans of years past will get a chance to see the legend take his new epic to the stage.

"I have always insisted on giving back to people for charging them ticket prices, but because we are playing doesn't generate the kind of money to spend that, so we'll focus on what most important, and that's the music," said Dio. "So as far as looking for dragons and sword-wielding knights and all that don't expect that."

Without dragons and knights, it might be possible to see the man behind the creations in a more exposed light, but rest assured, for Dio fans the timeless metal maniac will probably be exactly how you remembered.

And he might just be like that forever-for Ronnie James Dio the epic struggle to change with the times and remain unchanged is a part of every day life.

"The end for me will not be a palace in the sky or hell down below. I try to live my heaven and hell every day." The end of Ronnie James Dio is nowhere in sight.