Dio Creates a Monster

After shouting for three bone-crushing bands, Ronnie Dio broke ranks to belt his own blend of good and evil. He talks with JOHN SREBALUS about the birth of a beast called Holy Diver.

A hard rock fixture since the early '70s, Ronnie James Dio formed his own group for the first time in 1983. With metal in the air and label backing in the bag, the band known simply as Dio was off to an auspicious start. "It was a good time to be in that band. It was perfect for us. Everything just fell into place," says the singer. "The ethic in rehearsal was amazing. The effort in the recording was just as good. Everybody wanted it to be great. We really believed in what we were doing and couldn't wait to get that product out and have people hear it." That product, of course, is the now-classic slab of metal, Holy Diver. It was the start of a solo career that has lasted to this day. It was also the end of Dio's membership in one of metal's most famous franchises, Black Sabbath. The singer, who'd already made noise with proto-hard rockers Elf and Rainbow, helmed the Sabs through two of their most respected albums, 1980's Heaven And Hell and 1981's Mob Rules (if you think I'm hypin' on behalf of the record company, just spend a few minutes on any Sabbath message board).

But head-butting soon sapped Sabbath's creative synergy, and Dio fell out with Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi. Taking drummer Vinny Appice with him, the singer began work on a solo career that was already written into his Sabbath contract. "This is the time for me to strike out on my own and take advantage of this," Dio figured. "So we went into the studio, did the rehearsals, and started recording. And about three weeks into it we got a call from Warner Bros., who said, `What are you doing in the studio?' because they'd obviously gotten the bills. And we said, `We're doing an album. So they said, `Could you come in and see Ted Templeman? We need to speak to you.' So I go in at 10:00 and Ted drags himself in about a quarter 'til 11. He says, `What are you here for? Oh, it's about the album you're doing. Who's producing it?' `I am,' I said. And he says, `Great, go make a good one.'"

It was only a matter of time before label staff paid them a visit, but that went smoothly as well. "I think the first thing they heard was `Rainbow In The Dark,' and of course that was the end for them," explains Ronnie. "They just went, `Whoa, check this out.' And obviously the rest of the album was so good as well that they were behind it a million percent. Ted's someone who knows that you don't have to be the most famous producer on Earth to do a good job."

With a record company that didn't need convincing, it was up to Dio to claim metal fans under a banner of their own. "You're looked after a lot," Ronnie said to Melody Maker in 1983 of the Sabbath experience, "and you almost have a built-in following, but I also felt there were a lot of things that I needed to do myself. Do completely my own kind of music for one, and not modify my ideas because I'm in someone else's band with its own particular image."

Dio's own image might appear a continuation of Sabbath's, but Ronnie deserves more credit. In the case of metal bands, anyway, all evil is not created equal. "I've read extensively, and most of the things I read were great science fiction or writers like Walter Scott who wrote in terms of medieval imagery," he told KNAC.com in 2002. "I don't write love songs. That's not my aim, but most of the time I've been involved in more moral issues because most of the songs have been morality plays if nothing else. Having been in Black Sabbath and using darker terms causes a lot of people to go, `he's an evil man because he wrote an evil song,' but it's completely untrue. My aim is always to make people aware of the fact that without good there can't be evil and without evil there can be no good, and it's your choice to make. All the songs are written with a positive conclusion."

And it might just be that Murray, the familiar monster who graces most of Dio's album covers, doesn't exist purely to terrorize world and underworld alike. Murray debuted on Holy Diver and was conceived as a recurring character, much as Iron Maiden's familiar Eddie. As much a nod to Dio's über-loyal fan base as a symbol of ever-present wickedness, Murray is just as likely getting his ass kicked on the cover of Holy Diver. "My purpose was to have what appeared to most to be a monster killing what appeared to most to be a priest," he explained to KNAC. "I did this for a purpose, and my purpose was so that when people asked me that question about why I would have a monster killing a priest, my answer would be to ask them how they knew that it wasn't a priest killing a monster.... Don't judge the package; judge what's inside the package."

Whether or not the fans explored the complexity of Dio's message, they embraced the band right from the start. "The first show was at a place called the Concert Barn in Antioch, California," says Ronnie. "I had no idea what to expect. We got there, and it was actually a barn with a dirt floor where they would store cattle. We thought, `Oh my God, this is gonna be a nightmare, isn't it?' I think the place held 3,000 people and we put 5,000 people in it, broke all their records. It was almost a matter of, `So this is going to work.' That was the first one, and it just went up from there." Dio's barn-busting word-of-mouth proved to be a promotional battleaxe, slashing their name into the flesh of metaldom before the marketing guys even knew what hit 'em. Pretty soon Holy Diver would be heard pounding from the P.A. between sets at other metal shows, and videos for "Rainbow In The Dark" and the title track would see daily rotation on MTV.

It was a level of success they hadn't anticipated, and one that surely came as a relief to Ronnie Dio. Although he says he's not one to lack confidence, launching a solo act brought a weight he wasn't accustomed to shouldering. "I can equate it to when Ritchie [Blackmore] and I put Rainbow together and did the first album," he says. "I remember Ritchie being very skeptical about it -- not about doing it but, you know, `God, I hope it's gonna be successful. What do you think?' I was like, `This is gonna be the greatest thing you've ever heard.' Then when the shoe was on the other foot and it was my turn, I was exactly the same way he was. I thought, `God, what do you think, guys, is this any good?' So I understand what he went through. Once the onus gets on your shoulders, it makes it a lot easier to be skeptical about what's going to happen."

On the other side of the ownership dilemma are the obvious benefits of choice and control. The latter is something Ronnie admits to liking, even though he wields it differently than he has in the past. "I'm a rather impatient person," he confesses. "I kind of see through things right away and say, `Why don't we do it this way?' But sometimes you have to politically take a back seat and sit there and let them make their own mistakes and not say, `See, I told you so.'" In the case of Holy Diver, he didn't have to exercise much of that restraint, because cooperation seemed to be built into the design: "There were no problems. It was everybody with exactly the same work ethic and a whole bunch of talent.... We just tried to enjoy recording. That's what I always thought recording was about, the enjoyment of it all."

It was easy once Dio and Appice had found the right guys. "That became a bit difficult in the beginning," says the singer. "I wanted another English guitar player. I liked what they brought to the table. So Vinny and I went over to London and looked around at some clubs to see if we could find somebody we were interested in, and we found absolutely nothing. So I called Jimmy Bain, who was at the time working with Phil Lynott in a band called The Greedy Bastards. I asked him if he knew any guitar players, and he said, `I've got two you might like.' One was Viv [Vivian Campbell] and one was John Sykes -- both obviously great. But Viv just did something on his tape that was so special. He just chucked these things in that seemed like they shouldn't be there but were supposed to be. He just had this wonderful style of not just playing rhythms but playing the entire instrument like Tony [Iommi] did.... He had the fastest wrist on the face of the planet. He worked at his guitar all the time. He played with such feeling and was certainly no slouch in any other category. We were sold on him right away. And there was Jimmy, the bass player that I'd played with before [in Rainbow]. I knew Vinny would like him, so the band was there."

While Dio had played with his new rhythm section separately in other bands, Campbell presented a new dynamic. I ask Ronnie if it was intimidating for any of the guys to be joining a new band with Black Sabbath's singer. "Jimmy's not intimidated by anybody or anything, so that was never a problem," he replies. "He was my best friend in [Rainbow]. Vivian was a horse of a different color. Viv was only 19 years old and he'd not played on that level. I think he was intimidated, but he soon learned not to be. I think that early intimidation was what set the ball in motion for his eventual leaving. I think he built a barrier between himself and myself at that particular time -- whether it's my fault or his fault, it doesn't really matter. But in the early days it was great. He was the most wonderful tool that I think I was ever able to work with."

No outside producer was hired for Holy Diver, so imagination became another tool. "In the case of Sabbath it was Martin Birch [producing] most of the time," Dio says. "So I learned from those people and watched their techniques. The only newer things around then were computerized desks. Other than that, there wasn't an awful lot of incredible technology out there. I went into it pretty much as a novice, and our engineer was our out-front live mixer who had grown up around the Record Plant in New York at the time when John Lennon was working there with Jack Douglas. So he obviously had some working knowledge of a studio, but we both could be considered babes in the woods. Anything we did that was different was purely conceived in our minds. We didn't know you couldn't do it or we didn't know you could do it. We just tried everything that came to our minds and experimented."

Whatever went into Holy Diver's meaty brew, the album took hold like a vice grip in 1983. Old metal heads rejoiced. New ones reared their hairy heads. Leather hadn't yet succumbed to spandex on the Sunset Strip, and riffs ruled people's lives. It was a great time to walk the earth, but Ronnie Dio's nostalgia is reserved for the people who brought Holy Diver to life. "The songs are the songs," he says, "but the people who sweated and worried and made all that possible, that's what should be remembered. Not that it's just this blank piece of vinyl or a CD. There's life inside of that."

Five tracks from Holy Diver, including "Holy Diver," "Stand Up And Shout," and "Rainbow In The Dark," are featured on Rhino's two-disc Stand Up And Shout: The Anthology.