Ronnie & The Red Caps (1958–1961)
Ronnie Dio & The Prophets (1961–1967)
The Elves (1967–1970)
Elf (1970–1975)
Rainbow (1975–1979)
Black Sabbath (1980-2010)
Dio (1982-2010)
Some time in my early teens in the nineties I put side one of Rainbow Rising on the spindle
of my parents vinyl record player and I had no idea who Ronnie was, nor had I ever heard of Rainbow before.
My father had most of the Rainbow albums and many other great bands from the seventies like Styx, Deep Purple,
Stones, Zeppelin, Sabbath, Yes, Camel, Wishbone Ash, Kiss.
The Tarot Woman intro started and I was instantly a fan for life.
Since then I have listened to pretty much everything Ronnie ever created, in bands,
solo, collaborations, demos and outtakes and watched countless interviews.
The kind of genres he went through from the late 1950's to early 2010's was
truly unique. I have never come across an artist with such range as Ronnie had.
Don't think I ever will. From 50's style do-wop to dark and heavy metal singing about
the fires of Hell.
I was really lucky once a few years ago when I found Seeds of Change on vinyl for only 2 dollars.
It is a rare album made by Kerry Livgren of Kansas fame, where Ronnie guest sang on two tracks.
One of them being the beautiful To Live For The King. Last time I checked Amazon that vinyl
went for a hundred dollars.
In September of 2009 I got hold of tickets for a December show where Dio would come to my hometown
to a very small venue. I've gone to see other bands at this place and the capacity
crowd is no more than two hundred people. I was ecstatic as I would finally get to see one of the biggest
musical influences of my life for the first time.
But unfortunately by the time November came around Ronnie had to cancel all his tour dates due to his newly discovered
cancer and because of the treatments he would have to go through.
He made a statement that he would honor all of the canceled shows and come back at a later date as soon as he had
slayed the cancer dragon. I hoped for the best and knew that the gig would be even better because of the prolonged wait
and the building anticipation.
It didn't happen though. Ronnie passed away on May 16, 2010 and I never got to see him sing live.
But his music still lives on for me.
He was working on the Magica II and III albums and also on a follow-up album to The Devil You Know with Tony and Geezer.
It's such a shame too because those albums would have been something special there's no doubt about that.
From 2004 and onwards I felt Ronnie's voice just got better and better because it got a much darker and deeper tone
as he got older. A more menacing tone.
Master Of The Moon and The Devil You Know were albums where Ronnie sang his heart out
and his voice was just perfect on those songs.
The album closer Breaking Into Heaven, on the very last studio album he created, proved to be eerily foretelling.
