One week from now, on July 10th, Ronnie James Dio will celebrate his 66th birthday - or is it, as many old school music fans claim, already his 70th birthday?

This year also marks the 50th anniversary of his recording career that begun with Ronnie And The Red Caps making their debut 7" single.

The age of Ronnie James Dio is basically irrelevant when compared to the power of his musical legacy and today's live performances, but nevertheless it's intriguing. People who say Ronnie James Dio was born in 1949 must be totally wrong since the debut recording was made in 1958 and some source said that Ronnie James Dio graduated from a high-school in 1960.

Whatever his age may be...Happy birthday Ronnie James Dio: always, still and forever the Master of Metal!!!

# The Vegas Kings (1957-1958)
# Ronnie & The Rumblers (1958)
# Ronnie and the Red Caps (1958-1967)
# The Elves (1968)
# Elf (1969-1975)
# Rainbow (1975-1979)
# Black Sabbath (1979-1982)
# Dio (1982-1991)
# Black Sabbath (1991-1992)
# Dio (1993-present)
# Heaven and Hell (2006-present)

Never let it be said the man stopped working...

Personally I feel pretty confident about Dio's age. He's said he was born in 1949 but sources indicating it are few and far between.

You were right about recording in 1958, his first band was formed in 1957.

On official copyright records, both under his original name (Padavona) and his alias (Dio), that Dio would have filled in and signed, state 1942.

His wedding records say 1942.

His passport says 1942.

He graduated in 1960, most graduates are 18 at that point in their lives.

There's no doubt about it anymore, just old stories that don't stop circulating.

Everything that I've read and heard indicates that RJD was 15 when that first record was recorded. And about 5 years ago Klaus Meine, Matthias Jabs, and Rudolf Schenker were on a local radio show talking about the festivities at Ronnie's 60th birthday party. I also tend to believe that 66 now is correct.

there's an official Dio release that states a year for the birth, but I won't bother reproducing it here because it is of no importance.

When he was in Sabbath in the '80s, a 1981 article said he was 33.

However, records from Cortland High School show that Ronald Padavona graduated in 1960. If he were 18, this would put his birth year as 1942.

Ronnie is 66.

LOL, he is old enough to be my grandfather but he still kicks ass.

I'm watching the Heaven and Hell DVD as I write this. Dio might be old enough to be a great-grandfather, but he kicks bloody ass.

In the 70s and 80s all kinds of numbers went flying.

I read somewhere he may have been born in 1937, which would put him at 71...but who cares, the dude is timeless!!!!

yeh dio is Amzing. Im proble gone Dj all dio/rainbow/elf/sabbath ect for my radio online. ill post more info on it before his bDay.

I have the book DIO-Light Beyond The Black, published in 2006, written by Martin Popoff (who also writes for the Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles magazine, and also wrote several other books on hard rock and metal artists).

It says in the beginning that Ronald Padovana was born on July 10, 1940. So, Ronnie would be 68 next week according to Popoff.

However old the man is, he is fucking amazing! Happy Birthday, RJD!

Just think about it how amazing it actually is:

Ronnie James Dio's career spans:

- 6 decades between 1957 - 2008
- 3 world-reknown bands Rainbow, Black Sabbath/Heaven And Hell and Dio (no other heavy rock/metal vocalist has this status)
- numerous artist affiliations/contributions along the run
- many timeless and genre-defining classic albums...

...and still, after all the decades of recording and performing quality music world-wide, Ronnie James Dio is going strong as a rock, now touring actively and making a highly anticipated Heaven And Hell album - and, of course, planning yet another world tour to promote it. And what makes this all so wonderful is that Ronnie James Dio is doing it for the sake of music and his fans.

Definitely his specific age is of no importance at all compared to his musical legacy and on-going prowess. I've read that gods are ageless and timeless...

Long Live Rock 'n' Roll and Ronnie James Dio making more of it for us all!!!

Ronnie really is a machine! 66-70 years old and still going strong!

Happy birthday RJD

IMHO his age doesn't matter as long as he's still here performing the great music that has been such a huge part of my life since I was a young buck in 1981. Long live my all time favorite singer and may he keep on putting out quality music be it with DIO or Sabbath (H&H)! I doubt Rainbow would happen but it would be nice as a finishing touch to a great legacy (that hopefully won't end any time soon).

A big happy birthday to Ronnie from Finland as well!

Ronnie is actually Highlander

You and your exaggerated statements Sabbathman! You always do this!

Ian Gillan:
Deep Purple
Black Sabbath
Gillan

Chris Cornell:
Soundgarden
Audioslave
Temple of the Dog
Chris Cornell

David Coverdale:
Whitesnake
David Coverdale
Deep Purple
Coverdale-Page

Blaze Bayley:
Wolfsbane
Iron Maiden
Blaze/Blaze Bayley Band

Max Cavalera:
Sepultura
Cavalera Conspiracy
Nailbomb
Soulfly

Phil Anselmo:
Pantera
Down
Christ Inversion

Tim "Ripper" Owens:
Judas Priest
Iced Earth
Yngwie Malmsteem's Rising Force

Sammy Hagar:
Montrose
Van Halen
Sammy Hagar & The Waboritas

He's no vocalist but worth looking at this too:

Robert Trujillo:
Metallica
Ozzy Osbourne Band
Suicidal Tendancies
Black Label Society
Infectious Grooves

I don't think anyone can beat that for number of major bands they've been in. Ozzy AND Metallica.

well, none of those has all three bands with the same status as Rainbow, Black Sabbath, and Dio. Sabbathman is right! Even Gillan; the band Gillan was a partly jazzy partly hard rock band, and it never attained status worth of the singer... the exception might be Trujillo (Metallica, Ozzy, ST), but last time I looked he is not a "heavy rock/metal vocalist"... and I looked from close up front last month.

Elfoid.... No manners again... YOU always do this.

None of the singers you mentioned have have the same amount of sustained success as Dio.... The Blaze Bailey Band??? Do us all a favor... what bollocks!

what about this one and i know this man is 1000 times better, popular and well known as your Dio. Paul mccartney. Check these three bands and let me know if Dio has had more sustained success than him. The Beatles, Wings, Mccartney Solo. I don't think anyone in music has had that success.

I believe Sabbathman's quote was

"no other heavy rock/metal vocalist has this status"

check that.

You better be careful, you could be accused of "elder abuse" after this one. And on the man's birthday, too!

i was not knocking him or his statement. i was not even putting down Dio or all of his success. i was just saying there are other performer, musicians out there who have done more. it was sorta a tounge and cheek response to nunoni when he basically put all the other singers down and dismissing there talents in many groups. i take it he is a Dio fan and thats cool but the others listed did alot as well. dont take it all seriously and im not starting a war or debate just having some fun.

I'm not a Dio fan by any means, but I respect the man for working non stop for 50 years

danzig, my response was done with a smile, bro. We are just trying to have some fun.

cool

Sabbathman said, and I quote "- 3 world-reknown bands Rainbow, Black Sabbath/Heaven And Hell and Dio (no other heavy rock/metal vocalist has this status)"

I stated Trujillo is an exception and a bassist, I just noted he's probably been with the most high profile acts.


Forums are for discussion; if people want to tear apart my posts in return, so be it. Such things would be boring if everyone agreed on everything. Much as I find Sabbathman's flamboyancy fun, as I have said in topics before, he often exaggerates things without considering it.



Exactly right. He was infact referring to "world renown", if you read it yourself. If you look at most of the people I mentioned, world renown is not contested at all. Some, like Blaze, as you mentioned, aren't really global (Blaze is big in Germany and Scandinavia on the live scene but not a hell of a lot elsewhere other than perhaps Brazil), but a number really, really aren't.

Chris Cornell did the soundtrack to the new James Bond. Soundgarden were frontrunners of the grunge movement, among the very first to form and among the biggest stars of the genre when it peaked (though behind Pearl Jam and Nirvana, obviously). Audioslave achieved an identity, rather than being considered "Rage with a different singer" - a trap Velvet Revolver fell into, being "Guns N' Roses without Axl". Cornell also released an album with Temple of the Dog which ALSO achieved Platinum status. I don't even like grunge, though I do like Cornell's voice, but I can accept he's easily had more "repeat" success than Dio.

Rainbow's peak chart position was number 30, arguably to a large extent because it was the band run by a Deep Purple bloke (big commercial drop off after the first release). They didn't influence people nearly as much Soundgarden either (if we're comparing the first bands of either artist), who were around in the mid 1980s when grunge was just coming together. Dio's work with Rainbow wasn't terribly influential at all, despite being fantastic.

Or what about Max Cavalera? Member of the biggest and most important band to ever come out of the Brazilian thrash scene. Cavalera Conspiracy is looking to turn into a repeat performance of the same quality. Soulfly have done remarkably well in the USA, Canada, and the UK, where music from South America is typically not well received; it is only since the late 1990s that the European scene has been seen on equal ground with the English-speaking nations' own work and South America has catching up to do.

Dio is a more influential vocalist than any of the others? Yes. Dio is better? Probably, it's an opinion but one I agree with. More of a legacy? That too. Only vocalist in 3 world renowned hard rock/heavy metal bands? That's an insult to the others.

And someone said Gillan was more jazz? You're thinking of The Ian Gillan Band, a seperate entity to the hard blues rock of Gillan - think more like early-days Whitesnake. Gillan were a major act in the UK, Europe and Japan but failed to crack into the USA.

I didn't even mention the black metal scene in Norway, where it's common for artists to be in a half a dozen bands at once. In a career they can be in bands of "renown" accross the world many, many times. Black metal is huge in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, France, Japan (is anything not big in Japan?!). A more ambient, softer style of black metal is growing in the USA too though.

Check that. He's no favorite of mine, but I admire his work
ethic. 50 years is a long time to do anything.

Especially with his touring schedule.

# Dio at Dominos (1963)
# Elf (1972)
# Carolina County Ball (1974)
# The History of Syracuse Music Volume VI (1974)
# Trying to Burn the Sun (1975)
# Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow (1975)
# Rainbow Rising (1976)
# Long Live Rock 'n' Roll (1978)
# Heaven and Hell (1980)
# Mob Rules (1981)
# Holy Diver (1983)
# The Last in Line (1984)
# Sacred Heart (1985)
# Dream Evil (1987)
# Lock up the Wolves (1990)
# Dehumanizer (1992)
# Strange Highways (1994)
# Angry Machines (1996)
# Magica (2000)
# Killing the Dragon (2002)
# Master of the Moon (2004)

For such a long career he hasn't actually done many albums. Must just be cuz he's so road-crazy.
# The Dio Years (2007)

Phil Anselmo

Body and blood
Christ Inversion
Superjoint Ritual
Down
Viking crown
Pantera

Plus he has worked with Iommi
And there is a demo of him with Southern Isolation!

and with Down and Pantera what else can I say?

I love dio's work.
But I am sorry to say.I hate everything prior to the Rainbow stuff.
All the elf stuff and everything else was horrible.

it was all this boogie woogie blues bullshit.
Or sounded like earth angel.
I am a metal fan.
That is what he represents to me.
The best metal singer that ever lived.