Dio

I don’t feel I have to apologize for having a soft spot for Ronnie James Dio. I saw Dio in 1986 at the UIC Pavilion in Chicago on the Sacred Haart tour when I was 16. I’m that age where I was adolescent at peak Dio. 1986 was the end of Dio’s relevance as he never fully recovered from kicking Vivian Campbell out of the band.

I finally watched the Dio documentary. His widow Wendy Dio made it almost unwatchable in her attempt to depict Dio as a saint beyond reproach. I hadn’t listened to Dio pontificate in awhile. He’s almost like Trump in the way he rambles coming from a place of narcissism.

I’m not gonna argue that Dio was a great singer and wrote decent lyrics, but he was not the Hank Williams of metal Wendy Dio made him out to be. Nothing was more Yoko than when Wendy coldly said about Dio’s guitarist, “Vivian Campbell had to go. He had to go.” And once Viv left, Camelot faded. Nice job, Wendy, who was Dio’s manager at the time.

I watched the DVD from the local library. The DVD had deleted scenes which were fantastic. Better than the movie. The part where Dio tried to place a garden gnome in his backyard on a hill, but it fell with him and rolled over him causing his thumb to get severed was great! The first doctor did a horrible job reattaching it so they found a specialist to re-sever it and then re-attach it. I also loved Wendy portraying Dio as a saint when he went up in a bucket truck to talk down a guy about to kill himself jumping from a water tower.

Really there were a lot of great moments like Don Dokken kissing Dio’s butt during the recording of the heavy metal Band Aid, Hearing Aid. Dio was giving Don a hard time about his performance recording his part. Then Dokken apologized saying he was nervous singing in front of someone as great as Dio. After his schpeel. Dio simply smiled slowly, hit the studio intercom and said, “Good man.” Fantastic!