Like a Rainbow in the Dark

Too many greats are passing in short succession. Last week it was Frank Frazetta, now it’s Ronnie James Dio, -whose name should have probably appeared in bold gothic caps on his birth certificate accompanied by flames. Such was the scale of this physically unprepossessing, diminutive man who sang with a powerful, outsized voice.

Ronald James Padavona, or “Ronnie James Dio” to reformed, or “lapsed” skids like me was born on July 10, 1942. He was a singer-songwriter in a type of Rock n’ Roll that many still insist contains no singing or songwriting in it, and it’s really for those who don’t like Heavy Metal at all that I write this appreciation of one of the last true gentlemen in 20th century popular music.

Along his career, Dio performed with bands with names like “Elf,” “Rainbow,” “Black Sabbath,” “Heaven & Hell,” and of course “Dio.” While all Heavy Metal necessarily sounds the same to those who are “deaf” to it, Dio was known for principally operating within the artistic sub-genre known as “Power Metal.” According to documentary filmmaker Sam Dunn, “Think Swords and sorcery” and you have a superficial but legitimate understanding of its lyrical content at least.

People have asked me, an avid listener of music whose fanatical tastes still range across the boards from folk music (Bob Dylan), to Country (Johnny Cash, The Cramps), to so-called lounge singers (Bill Henderson), to Garage bands, 70s punk, Ska (all eras) 80s Hardcore, Hip Hop and so on; What the hell do I see (hear) in Heavy Metal? While I could use an oft-recited but still inarguable cop-out like “who has a single reason for liking anything?” I choose to answer the question directly to people who hate this kind of music:

–Heavy Metal offers the world that dreams only imply.

…and you can quote me on that, friend.

All of the power and sex, adventure, horror, excitement and violence of our longing is made manifest in Heavy Metal music. This is why it appeals principally to adolescents, young adults and secondarily to people who feel a need to keep in touch with their youth and see an importance in remaining connected to the turmoil of their coming of age.

A few years back, Robert Halford, an aesthetic fellow traveler of Dio’s, came out of the closet, revealing himself to a notoriously homophobic audience and culture that he was and always had been, Gay. While many of us who grew up listening to Judas Priest weren’t surprised (Halford’s stage persona and mode of dress seemed straight out of New York’s leather-clad West Village culture in the 1980s) it was an unprecedented disclosure. While people argued about whether this changed everything or whether it even meant anything at all, I can remember thinking to myself: “Who better than a longtime closeted Gay man to speak to the youth of the world about anger, oppression and rebellion?” And that’s the singular, central thing about Heavy Metal, unlike any other of kind of Rock n’ Roll: It tells the listener to come on in and absorb some power, some courage, and some voltage. Dio and other singer songwriters in the Power Metal sub genre invited, excited and assured you, -whatever you’d been told, “there’s nothing wrong with you that is actually important,” -a necessary assurance amongst all the judgment, exclusion and nonsense of life in modern society.

Ronnie James Dio was not good looking. He was short. He was perpetually balding. None of this mattered to anyone. Ronnie James Dio showed and proved to me and the world that there’s more than meets the eye.
Sometimes you just have to listen.

-SJ