Dio: Dreamers Never Die (2022) - full transcript
The first career spanning documentary on the heavy metal vocalist to be authorized by the artist's estate includes scenes with peers, family and friends; never before seen footage; personal photos.
[shutter clicking]
[cat meows]
[birds chirping]
[dog barking in distance]
raucous rock instrumental
[music stops, engine turns off]
[dog continues barking
in distance]
[Craig] Back in the day,
we were the people
that stood in line
at a record store
waiting for the gate to open.
Because the discovery
of music was everything.
For years,
the only way you would be able
to judge what you should get
was you'd look
at the cover and be like,
"Oh, that's cool. That's gonna
piss off my parents"
or "That looks rockin',"
or whatever.
And it was all
we looked forward to
was to open that cellophane
and see what would
fall out of the jacket.
Sometimes there would
be a picture or something,
and smell it and hold it,
put it on the turntable,
drop the needle, and when
this music's in your blood
and Dio and the music
he made's in your blood,
it's just impossible to--
to get out.
[heavy metal instrumental
playing]
[crowd cheering]
When you're a kid,
you're looking for a voice,
somethin' that says,
"This is my generation."
And for us,
it was heavy metal.
And then all
of a sudden comes this dude
with the most powerful voice
of all!
Stand up and shout
[Ronnie vocalizing]
With a heavy metal band,
the music is so powerful
and so potent,
you really have to know
how to control it--
specifically singers
because we have a message.
We have things to say.
Listen to me
and believe what I say today
He found a way to create music
that makes people
unable to contain themselves
to the point where they refuse
to live without that music.
I was amazed by the way
he was able to
captivate people.
I want to know how, why--
How do you get there?
[roars]
We rock
There are a lot of people
that think of Ronnie
as being the guy that
did this and singing metal.
That is him,
but there's another side.
The million dollar question--
How do you
describe Ronnie James Dio?
I tend to be an enigma
to a lot of people, I think.
There was
something about the guy.
There was just
something about him.
When Ronnie sang,
he wanted to make sure
that everyone never forgot it.
People took it home with them
and they named their pet "Dio,"
and they named
their firstborn "Ronnie."
It was like,
"This is rock 'n' roll
that is gonna
change your fucking life."
'Cause we rock
We rock
See how we rock
We rock
[dog barking in distance]
It's been years
since Ronnie passed.
He passed on
the 16th of May, 2010.
I think he's here. I think
he's here still, all the time.
Sometimes I hear my name called,
but there's nobody here.
[distant echoing voice] Wendy.
[Wendy]
I'm probably just imagining it.
Hello. Welcome to my home
and welcome to
Behind Closed Doors.
This was a Christmas present
from my wife, from Wendy.
We can see
the lions and whatnot.
Mick, away we go. I'm gonna
make this ball here,
- and then we can talk.
- [Mick] Okay.
Ronnie's story traverses,
really, the whole history
of rock music.
His career went on
for decade after decade.
Here we are all
these years after he died,
and he's still this
huge figure in heavy metal.
You know,
some of these guys are immortal,
but none more so
than Ronnie James Dio.
We now have a media room here,
but I still have the lions
and I still have the nostalgia
of when we used to
have the pool table here.
Well, you've
caught me in the library,
one of my favorite places
in all the world
because it contains words.
You know, he had a message.
He was a messenger.
His message was for the people
that lived regular lives,
had regular dreams
that meant something real.
[plays discordant chords]
You know I don't play piano.
I'm a singer.
Let's go to the bar.
It's my favorite place anyway.
This is his favorite place,
was the bar.
So I feel his presence
much more here.
And it's a warm,
comforting feeling.
Obviously, you've had
a lot of elbows resting
on this
at one time or another.
We never started with this.
And why should we think
that this should last forever?
I was just as happy, and I'm
sure Wendy was just as happy
before struggling
and being happy together.
I think this is all
very transitory anyway.
It's--It comes and it goes.
I mean, you have ups and downs.
It's like life.
Life goes through great waves
of emotion and passion
and great lows
of despair and whatnot.
That's the way life is.
[creaks]
There it is.
That's his beautiful trumpet
that hasn't been played
in a long time.
He used to play this from
when he was five years old.
He never played it for me.
It's a beautiful thing,
but he had had enough of it,
I think from all
the hours of practice
he had to do with his dad.
smooth swing instrumental
[Ronnie]
I started as a trumpet player
when I was five years old.
[reporter] Oh, so you've been
very musical. Where was that?
[Ronnie] Upstate New York,
a town called
Cortland, New York,
which is right
in the middle of nowhere.
Dairy farming community.
18,000 people.
It was a great place to grow up
because you got
a good moral attitude.
You grew up well.
This is the house
where Ronnie grew up.
After he became famous,
the city decided
that they were gonna name
the street after him
'cause it was on
the corner of his house.
So, this is the Dio way.
This had been
stolen a couple of times.
His immediate family,
they were pretty straight-laced.
His mother was, you know,
a sweetheart, of course.
You know, the moms
were always easier on the kids
than the father.
[Ronnie]
My father was harsh with me.
You know, these were the days
when a good hiding was,
you know, right around
the corner. And boy, I--
Believe me, I was
always up for one of those.
I wasn't up for it,
but I always caused
one of those, apparently.
Everyone had the same ideas.
They were good ethics,
good morals,
a lot of church involved.
Whether I believed in it
or didn't, it gave you rules.
[Dave]
You know, Catholic, ya know?
Ronnie was an altar boy.
Ronnie loved classical music.
His father
insisted he practice trumpet
three hours every day,
for years.
He was a voracious reader.
He was a smart kid in school.
High grades, very intelligent,
president of his class,
actually.
And he was a little bit crazy.
One time we were
riding in the car.
There was a nun
walking down the street,
and Ronnie stuck
his ass out the window
and he mooned her,
so he mooned a nun.
[Mick] He was a bit of a rebel.
He had a gang
called The Angels.
Stole a car here and there
and got in some trouble.
It could have escalated,
but I think not
in that family background.
I mean,
it wasn't just his father.
There was his grandmother,
and there are pictures of her.
She doesn't look
like the kind of lady
anybody would want to cross.
I think for him,
can you imagine in the '50s
how conservative times were?
Like most musicians,
he realized music
was a route out of that.
This was a road to good times.
And what blows me away,
as a fan,
when I discovered
that Ronnie James Dio,
best metal voice
you ever heard,
he was singing in
the '50s before the Beatles.
How is that possible?
Like, that's fascinating.
Other than wine and weed.
[laughing]
[birds chirping]
Everybody has their things.
Some people like
to go to football games.
Some people like to bowl.
I collect Ronnie James Dio.
["Conquest" by Ronnie
and the Redcaps playing]
I was a radio guy,
so I came out of Syracuse radio
in the early '60s.
Ronnie first started
in bands back in--around 1958,
playing trumpets and horns
and bass at the time.
It was earlier
than the Beatles.
So, it was Bill Haley.
It was Elvis Presley.
It was all those rockers.
That's what
the inspiration was.
[Wendy] So, Ronnie was
born Ronald James Padavona.
But when he was
in bands and stuff,
it was too long a name
and not hip enough for him.
Ronnie got his name, "Dio,"
famously from
a real life Mafia mob guy
called Johnny Dio.
[Wendy] Ronnie was like,
"This is evil, but it's cool."
And so he decided,
"That's gonna be my name."
And that was it.
I was the guy who
didn't want to do anything
but play the music.
I didn't want to sing.
And everyone tried,
and everyone kind of
fell by the wayside,
and they finally said,
"Okay, it's your turn."
[record needle scratches]
["An Angel is Missing"
playing]
An angel is missing
From heaven tonight
The training as a horn player
was so absolutely perfect
as a singer.
You play from the same place
as you sing from,
from your diaphragm.
In my mind,
my voice was a trumpet.
For how could she be
When that angel
Is here with me?
In the Red Caps,
Ronnie was so clean
and could hit any note
he was looking for.
You could tell this guy
is professional already
and he's only 18.
Don't hold my hand
Don't let me kiss you
I'll be untrue
Unfaithful to you,
I'll never miss you
[Ron] The Red Caps
eventually became The Prophets
and through the years,
The Prophets,
they formed something special.
He really had the passion
to do the best he can
with the abilities
that he was God-given.
[Dick] Ronnie got the dream,
so we used to talk
about that all the time.
Ronnie was gonna
be the lead singer,
star of the show.
And then I was going to
be his lead guitar player.
Nicky was gonna be the leader
of any orchestration
or the band.
[Mick] Nick Pantas
was Ronnie's kind of
musical soulmate at that point,
that he writes with,
builds bands with,
builds dreams with.
Even from those
very, very early days,
you can tell his mission
in life was to be a singer.
You can tell it.
One of the problems
that we really had back then--
we could not find the genre
that would fit Ronnie perfectly.
He was capable of singing
anything, basically.
He would be doing songs
by Engelbert Humperdinck,
Tom Jones.
Ronnie did a version
of "The Way of Love"
that Cher had a big hit on.
When you meet a boy
Before Cher recorded it.
It's phenomenal.
When you meet a girl
That you like a lot
[Dave] I got in the band.
I was just out
of high school in 1965, '66.
We had a manager
at the time from Ithaca,
and he was pushing Ronnie
into following
that Tom Jones route, you know?
Say you're mine again
[Ronnie] Careers go
in different directions.
In those days,
it wasn't fashionable
to be in rock 'n' roll
in order
to want to pursue that
as a career.
It really made no sense
at all to do.
Well, I loved it so much
that it was going to
make sense for me to do.
Oh, darling,
say you're mine
discordant chords
[rock 'n' roll music playing]
We found
a way to be discovered
[Dave] All the series
of pictures were taken
in my parents' basement.
And we took rolls of tinfoil,
and we hung it up in the back.
And that's when
the Beatles first came out,
so everybody started
to grow their hair long.
We decided to change the name
to The Electric Elves.
I mean, we used to have
a van that said
"Electric Elves" on it.
They thought we were
electrical contractors.
"Uh, my house needs wiring.
Call The Electric Elves over.
They're small. They can get into
the crawl space really easily."
[laughs]
You know and at that time,
playing clubs,
you're doing cover songs.
When The Beatles album came out,
we learned the whole album.
You know, because Ronnie
could sing the whole album.
[Ronnie] We were doing so well
from a playing standpoint,
you know, going from Maine
to North Carolina to Detroit.
We wanted to be
better musically
and wanted to be
something special.
spacey instrumental
1968, I had been out
of the band for a while
and Ronnie was playing clubs,
like they were
always playing clubs,
and they were
called The Electric Elves.
We played in, uh...
I think it was Waterbury,
Connecticut, for a week.
And, uh, we decided not to
stay overnight the last night.
Our gear was in the back of
the van. We all rode in the van,
so we decided to
drive home that night
rather than stay another night.
And a drunk driver
ends up crossing the lane
and hits us head on.
[horn blares, crash]
I woke up in
a hospital bed with Ronnie
next to me in the other bed.
We looked like zombies.
Ronnie hit the windshield.
His whole scalp was torn back.
He had over a hundred stitches
in his scalp.
[Dick] Nicky was driving,
and it impacted the front,
pinned him
in the steering wheel
and he actually bled to death.
somber music
Uh...it--it--it was
really hard to believe,
to understand that
that could happen.
[Mick]
This is such a catastrophe,
not just for, obviously,
for Nick and his family,
but for Ronnie,
it becomes a moment of,
"Is this time to throw
in the towel? Is this a sign?
Is this just not meant to be?"
That's a slide--
That's one slide of Ronnie's.
You can see it's--
it's after the accident
when his hair was
just starting to grow in.
Ronnie, when he was a kid,
succeeded really greatly
as far as academics.
At some point he started college
and he was taking pharmacy.
So, after the accident,
he could have chosen anything,
any avenue to go to.
I remember
the moment when I said,
"We gonna put this thing
back together?" And he said,
"Yeah, we're gonna put
this thing back together."
In our minds,
we were wanting to go
to Led Zeppelin, The Who.
We idolized Deep Purple.
Deep Purple, that's what
was heaviest, you know?
"Good golly,"
said little Miss Molly
When she was rockin'
in the house of blue light
And we just said, "Okay,
that's what we wanna do."
[Mick] And the death
of Nick Pantas,
that terrible crash
that could have
easily dissuaded lesser men
just to say,
"You know what? I'm done,"
Ronnie decides,
"No, I'm not done.
In fact, I'm only
just getting started."
rock music
Lord, help me
Someone's sleeping
in my bed at night
He decides to build this
into something
more contemporary
with, you know,
a shit ton of power.
[Eddie] There's just
a power and a presence.
It's remarkable
when you think that a man
of such small stature
had the biggest voice
you're ever going to hear.
[Dick]
Eventually, we became Elf.
We were very small
and all kinds of hair and beards
and the whole deal.
We'd walk out on stage
and actually,
people started to chuckle.
But when we hit
the first note, it was like,
jaws dropped, you know?
[laughs]
[Mick] And suddenly,
you've got not just a new band
but a new sound,
a new attitude.
And the beginnings
of the Ronnie James Dio
that would become famous.
soft acoustic instrumental
[Dave] We came up
with those songs,
and that's what ended up
getting us an audition
with, you know, Columbia.
[Dick] Elf were auditioning
for the famous Clive Davis
who discovered everybody,
just everybody.
And we were gonna
audition for him. Wow.
At the time,
Roger Glover and Ian Paice
from Deep Purple,
out of the blue,
for some reason,
they wanted to
become producers.
So, somehow they got involved
in coming to this audition.
[Dick] We were told
just at the last moment
that Roger and Ian
were coming.
Well, that put us
in quite a turmoil
because two of our heroes?
Oh, my Lord.
"Oh, my God.
Like, you know, two people
from Deep Purple are
gonna be here, you know?"
It's like, and I idolized
the band, you know?
Some chairs set up,
and Clive comes in
and a couple people with him.
And then Roger and Ian come in.
Well, well, well.
There were probably,
I don't know,
15 or 20 suits in the room.
You know,
Clive Davis, et cetera,
all these people
and white wine
and you know, It's all,
"Thank you very much."
And then these
four midgets walked out.
And I go, "What's this? A circus
act or something?" You know.
Standing there
and playing in front of, like,
you know, record executives,
and not to mention
two guys in Deep Purple,
and you have to
try to sell yourself.
It was, like, a big deal.
You know, we played the songs,
and it was like,
"All right, that's enough.
We don't need to
hear any more songs."
And everybody gets up.
You know, we couldn't hear
what they were talking about,
and everybody leaves.
We don't know if they
hated it or if they loved it.
I mean, we were knocked out.
Absolutely knocked out.
And we said, "Yeah,
we'll do this. We'll do this."
And we flew down to Atlanta
and recorded the album.
And then we got to go
on tour with Deep Purple.
So we went from playing bars
to playing arenas.
We really felt like we made it
at that time, you know? [laughs]
Little did we know
there's a long way to go
before you really make it.
[Ronnie] I always had places
that I wanted to get to.
Deep Purple
were my favorite band.
We must have done
probably eight full tours
with the band.
So, Elf took on the world.
You know, that was
the beginning, certainly for me.
Baby, you know
I'm coming back for you
I'm coming back for you
So, over the course
of the next
couple of years touring,
Ronnie was always around us.
I fell in love with
the sound of his voice,
then I fell in love
with his personality,
then I fell in love with him
as a human being.
He was great.
He was funny, strong-willed.
And he believed
in what he did.
Go for what you believe in,
and that's what Ronnie was.
He was--he was
a hard fist coming at you.
You know,
I just loved the guy.
I just genuinely loved him.
It was born into him
from generations of eons
of lifetimes ago
to be...kind.
[crowd cheering]
Growing up a Deep Purple fan,
it's just, like,
they were the biggest
and the fucking baddest
of all the musicians
on the planet.
And--And fucking Blackmore.
Oh, my fucking God.
funk instrumental
[Roger] Ritchie Blackmore--
he's like the "Deep"
in Deep Purple.
Uh, he's a mystery
within a riddle.
He's not the easiest man
to get on with.
I barely saw Ritchie
in Deep Purple
when I was in the band.
Ritchie was an isolator,
and this is in the days
where there was no
separate dressing rooms.
Well, he had
his own dressing room.
He stayed at
different hotels, basically.
And he never partook
in any group endeavors.
No after dinner parties, no...
No.
Blackmore left Purple
because they were going
in a more funk direction.
[Ritchie] I was going
to leave Deep Purple
no matter what because I didn't
respect that type of music
that we were getting into,
but luckily at the same time,
I met Ronnie.
Ritchie and I really had
the same kind
of musical feelings.
We were engrossed in
the classical kind of music,
Bach especially.
And we felt that there was
a great place in music
to kind of revive
that mystical, magical aura
and put it into
today's kind of, uh, context.
[Glenn] Ritchie left
and went to start, you know,
putting Rainbow together
with the guys in Elf,
you know, pretty much.
By the time Rainbow gets going,
you got the Mount Rushmore
of heavy rock--
Purple, Sabbath, Zeppelin.
All of them shared
a common denominator
in the sense that they were
all coming from the blues.
Ronnie James Dio
and Ritchie Blackmore wanted
to explore this kind of
neoclassical heavy rock music
that is something way beyond,
so Rainbow is taking
this spaceship to a new place.
[rocket roaring]
As a teenager,
I came from an abusive family,
physically and verbally abusive,
in and out of hospitals
and stitches and, um, surgeries.
So, music was
extremely important to me
because I had no one.
I remember I was in a car.
Deep Purple had just broken up.
Disco was starting
to make its scene.
The world was upside down.
[radio static, rock music plays]
And all of a sudden,
"Men on the Silver Mountain"
comes on the radio.
And I was like, "Yeah!"
You know,
you're just all fired up.
Ritchie Blackmore was back.
Then, I first heard
Ronnie James Dio's voice,
and I was like,
"Who the hell is that?"
And the man on the silver
Mountain
He was like a whole universe
that was concealed
within one man.
And so at one point,
the world was upside down,
and it turned it
right side up again.
[Mick] This is not
just another rock band.
It's gonna take what
we used to call "heavy rock"
into a whole vista that
really hasn't existed before.
And it was all
about this dynamic
between
this incredible guitarist
and this extraordinary singer
that almost
everybody had never heard of.
I remember going to
Munich to do an album,
and Ritchie was
in the same studio.
And he said,
"Oh, I gotta play you a song."
"Stargazer," full blast.
High noon
Oh, I'd sell my soul for water
I was blown away.
That was like a masterpiece.
Ronnie sang about
mystical, magical stars
and universe and dreams.
[Ronnie] That's what I do
with my music. I'm a narrator.
I give people avenues
which they can go down.
Safe avenues.
I don't shove it
down their throats.
They're your dreams
to try to attain.
I don't tell them
this is what they must do.
So, a narrator is what I am.
In the "Runaways" days,
I would put on "Stargazer."
All my dreams and all
my hopes would come out.
That gave me all the strength
and all the power
I ever needed
in guitar playing and music
and just my everyday shit.
Even though Ronnie
could really sing blues
if he wanted to,
lyrically, he was never
the victim in his lyrics.
It was more of a sage.
You can see, but you're blind
Someone turn the sun around
What you can see in your mind
The gates of Babylon
[Ronnie] And the things
we wrote were so different.
That was the band, you know,
I wanted to be in forever.
That was my chance to do
what I was born to do,
which is to write
classically oriented
fantasy kind of music.
[Mick] Ronnie was now
firmly embedded
into the gothic
and medieval rock of Rainbow.
He'd found his niche.
He'd found his new character.
Well, here we are--
the famous
Rainbow Bar and Grill.
Uh, land of fruits and nuts,
and, uh, they always
used to say that.
Moving and, uh, it was--
it still is the place to be
on Sunset Strip.
I came to Los Angeles
in around '74.
I got a job in a--in a diner,
and then I was doing
a little bit of acting.
I didn't mean to
do acting, actually.
Uh, I went with a girlfriend
of mine,
and we went there, uh, as, um,
stand-in, what do you call it?
Uh...
[producer] Extras?
Extras.
Yeah, we went in as extras.
It was a movie called
Death Race 2000.
And this guy that I had to rub
his shoulders and stuff,
he was telling me that
he had written a movie and it
was gonna be a big time.
And I thought,
"Yeah, yeah, right, whatever."
It actually turned out
to be Sylvester Stallone.
You schmuck.
And then, I met a-a girl
at a party and she said,
"Well, why don't you
get a job at The Rainbow?"
jazz piano instrumental
We had everyone in here--
Led Zeppelin,
Deep Purple, The Who.
Anyone you could possibly
think of was in here.
So this is the table
where it all happened.
This is where
I met Ronnie, uh, with Ritchie,
and he introduced me
to Ronnie.
And they invited me to go
to a party afterwards
up at their house,
and so I went up there.
We talked, and, uh,
followed me around a lot.
I said,
"He's too short for me."
But then he talked to me more,
and we talked on the phone,
and Ronnie being Ronnie,
he's a very personal person,
he was so interesting
and such a very wonderful person
who loved animals as I did.
He love to talk about books,
movies, uh, everything.
I think I fell in love
with his brain, actually,
and the way he was,
his graciousness.
You felt the same way
And then he went
on tour with Rainbow.
And then he asked me
to go on the road with him.
I'd only known him for
a few weeks, and I said,
"No, I can't quit my job.
"I'll come
for a couple of days,"
which ended up
being a couple of months,
which ended up being
for the rest of my life.
melancholy instrumental
We were both young when
we were experiencing the road.
And it was fun for a while,
and then it got
a little bit tense.
Rainbow are enormous in Japan.
Rainbow are bigger in Japan
than The Stones.
Rainbow are huge
in Britain and Europe.
Rainbow are not huge in America.
In America,
Rainbow never got there
with Ronnie as the singer,
and I know that that bothered
Blackmore tremendously.
And he was consumed
with getting Rainbow
on U.S. radio.
[Mick] Long Live Rock 'n' Roll
was the last Rainbow album.
They're working on
the next one, early stages.
Ritchie decided
it was time to get a hit.
I was staying at
Bruce's house one day.
And he played me a song,
"Since You've Been Gone."
Since you've been gone,
since you've been gone
I'm out of my head,
can't take it
He said,
"Well, Ritchie wants to do it."
I said, "Get outta here.
"After...
after what he's done?"
You know, especially
with Rainbow rising,
how could he want to do this?
You know, Ronnie spent,
you know,
the first 10, 15 years
of his career
putting on a suit,
looking for the hit song.
You know, this is
something he'd left behind
many years ago
and believed that the unique
selling point of Rainbow
had nothing to do with
"Since You Been Gone, Baby."
And Ronnie spoke up.
[Lita]
He stayed true to himself,
and I think it really
pissed off a few people.
[Wendy] It got very tense,
and so Ronnie
was actually fired.
Since you've been gone,
since you've been gone
I'm out of my head,
can't take it
[Eddie] That was the time
where Rainbow
did get airplay in America.
It wasn't with Ronnie.
For Ronnie on a personal level,
it was a disaster.
He and Wendy were in a situation
where the house they lived in,
you know,
was owned by the band.
Uh, Ronnie didn't
even see any royalties.
This is a guy who
co-wrote all the big songs.
Ronnie didn't get
any royalties from Rainbow
until after he died.
So they had no money.
You know, Ronnie was
a very, very proud, man.
He didn't want to admit
that he'd been hurt by this.
He didn't want to admit
that maybe he'd blown it.
[playing "Never Say Die"]
I was a young Sabbath fan.
I remember watching
Don Kirshner's rock concerts,
seeing them do,
"Never Say Die" live
without lip syncing.
[vocalizing, voice cracking]
You could tell that Ozzy
was sounding a little rough
and kind of just
doing that penguin clap,
you know,
just running around, just,
looks like a wind-up toy
after a while.
Black Sabbath is
pretty much yesterday's news
in the late '70s.
The original Black Sabbath
is some of the greatest metal
ever made.
No one was disputing that.
But at that point,
ten years into the business,
coming off of a couple
lackluster records,
beat up from the road,
it was a mess at that time.
Things weren't working out
at the end of the '70s for us.
I think it was probably
a lot of different things.
Disarray.
Maybe "disillusionment"
might be a better word.
We'd been in
rock 'n' roll for years, man.
[Eddie] All of them
were very badly riddled
with drug problems.
Ozzy was considered, like,
a huge mess and can't sing,
can't write, can't do this.
He was just a crazy dude
from Birmingham,
like a juvenile delinquent.
He was never a professional,
and that's what
was great about him.
And Ozzy's a sweetheart.
We all know that.
But he--he was crazy in--
in the '70s.
I mean,
one night at the Rainbow,
he set himself on fire
at a booth in the Rainbow.
Fire extinguisher came out.
He could have died.
He's laughing his ass off.
[Mick] And--And Oz,
he came to such a place.
He needed to leave.
Ozzy leaves,
and everybody was just like...
"Okay, so that's it,
they're done.
"Black Sabbath is just done."
[Mick]
So, by the end of the '70s,
Ronnie and Wendy
take off for L.A.
Ronnie would not
go down the, you know,
"Hey, baby,
let's have a hit," route.
He's already in his 30s.
He's already been around
the block a zillion times.
He's got no career.
I mean, you know, "What the fuck
am I gonna do?"
rock instrumental
But the Rainbow
seems to have been
such a lucky place for him.
You know,
he meets Wendy in the Rainbow.
And now who does he
meet in the Rainbow one night?
Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath.
Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath,
who has just sacked Ozzy.
[Ronnie] At the Rainbow
Bar and Grill, I met Tony.
Saw him and I went
to the rehearsal place.
I only went up there
just to say, "Hello."
He came over to the house
and, um, I played him
a bit of the stuff,
some of the riffs I got.
And, uh, he said, "Oh, let me
have a go at that."
[Ronnie] Went off to
the other room and wrote
the beginning
and a verse to a song called,
"Children the Sea."
In the misty morning
On the edge of time
We lost the rising sun
The fire inside
He'd walk out and just sing.
You know,
this voice would come out.
I mean, he was just,
you know, unbelievable.
When he first
got offered the job
in Black Sabbath, he was like,
"I don't know if
I like this music or not."
And I said, "We have
$800 left in the bank.
You love this music."
And so he... [laughs]
he joined the band,
and he did love the music.
[Ronnie] This was
going into a band that to me,
had been the heavy metal band,
a band that didn't
apologize for coming to town.
It just stepped on buildings
when it came to town.
And to be included in that band
was very special to me.
Takin' over for Ozzy in Sabbath?
Can you imagine the pressure?
To replace a singer is...
[chuckles] really a...
It can go either way.
And then putting in Ronnie,
in a tough spot, really.
[Ronnie] You know, again,
I'm a very positive person.
I said to them,
"They're never gonna say
anything bad about you.
They're only gonna
say something bad
about the new guy who came in.
And my shoulders
are big enough to take it.
You know what we'll do? We're
gonna write some great songs.
Don't worry about it.
I'll take care of it."
At this point, I'm working
for the biggest, uh,
rock and heavy metal
P.R. company in the U.K.
Suddenly, it comes 'round,
"Sabbath have sacked Ozzy,
but they're gonna bring
Ronnie James Dio in."
And there was
a lot of blowback.
"Where's Ozzy?
This guy can't be Ozzy."
From the outside looking in,
it doesn't sound promising.
[laughs]
It does not sound promising.
They had to rise above
and create an album
that was far above anything
that they had
done in the past.
mystical instrumental
You could think it's good,
you could think it's bad
but you don't know
until the audience, the fans,
they're going to tell you
if it's good or not.
As a fan, you're
established to the singer,
the drummer, the guitar player,
whoever--
that's the band.
And if there's something
that's different,
what's going on, you know?
Is it even gonna work?
Is it even gonna connect?
Now, of course, there's
always gonna be a lot of, like,
die-hard Sabbath followers
who are like,
"No, there's only one singer
of Black Sabbath."
And then, all of a sudden,
here comes Ronnie James Dio.
[explosion]
[Glenn] I think it's a creation
that happened many realms ago
that Ronnie would be
the singer in Sabbath.
It's all been written in stone.
[thunderclap]
He was supposed to be there.
He was supposed to replace Ozzy.
He was supposed
to take that microphone.
He was supposed to write
"Heaven and Hell."
When it actually starts to
blast out through the speakers
and it's like, "Well, let's see
what you got, dude." You know?
Sing me a song
You're a singer
Do me a wrong,
you're a bringer of evil
The devil is...
And then when everybody
had saw what Ronnie had got...
[laughs] it's like, "Okay."
So, it's on and on and on
It's heaven and hell
There was just like,
this is what I have
always wanted to hear were
those Black Sabbath riffs,
with Ronnie's voice.
It goes on and on and on
Heaven and hell
I can tell
Everything about it was great.
I mean, "Heaven and Hell"
is probably to this day
my favorite Sabbath record.
It's a masterpiece in--
in a lot of--in a lot of ways.
And it's a very,
very important record.
One of the best albums ever.
Period.
Ronnie was a big dreamer,
but he wasn't afraid
to tell you,
if you're gonna fall,
you can't be frightened.
You've got to get up
and do it again.
[Ronnie]
I made the statement that was,
that I've
always wanted to make,
which was, "The world
is full of kings and queens
who blind your eyes
and steal your dreams.
And that all
means they're your dreams.
If you have those dreams,
don't let
anyone rob you of those,
those wonderful ideas."
That statement
has been something
that I've tried to
live with in my life.
[birds chirping]
This is Ronnie's
very iconic white blouse.
He wore this when he was--
the first round
of Black Sabbath in the '80s.
He loved this shirt. He loved--
always loved these sleeves,
these medieval sleeves.
[Glenn] Going into Sabbath
with the sleeves
and the drama,
he was able to captivate people
with an amazing presence.
[Tony] Well, yeah,
it did become more mystical.
And we built up
the stage show,
basically around the image of--
uh, he had got this
theatrical way about him.
I was always a little bit
intimidated by Ronnie
because of not only his voice,
but everything else
around him.
He projected something,
you know.
"Oh, my God, there's Dio?"
But on those occasions
that we did get a chance
to sit and talk,
he was just a very comforting,
welcoming kind of a guy
in every aspect.
Every time I was with him,
we'd laugh.
- [can clanks]
- We would laugh our asses off.
Clownish behavior,
boyish, you know?
[water trickling]
[blender whirring]
And that--that behavior
was very rampant.
He was just Ronnie.
He was just mellow.
But when he sang,
he became a character.
'Cause Dio,
not Ronnie and Ronnie James,
Dio was a huge character.
[vocalizing soulfully]
[continues vocalizing]
Ozzy Osbourne, obviously,
was there before me,
was throwing the peace sign
around everywhere.
I felt something else
was, you know,
was needed to incorporate me
into my own thing
with that band.
[Mick] You know,
I worked with Dio in Sabbath
as his publicist.
And I'll never forget this.
Ronnie said,
"I-I thought about this thing,
and I think it could be
a bridge between Ozzy and me."
And he said,
"What do you think of this?"
I said, "What's that?"
He goes,
"I'm thinking, it's like Ozzy,
spirit of Ozzy is still here.
This is still Black Sabbath,
but it's me now."
- [thunderclap]
- I went, "That's brilliant."
It was iconic as
soon as you saw it.
Even if you didn't know
what it meant, it was iconic.
What's he doing?
[Dave] It became a trademark
for him, you know, to do that.
And--And the fans,
you know, attached to that.
Now, in a situation which is
not even involving metal,
you see crowds,
and they're like, "Ah."
I mean, even today,
you go on Facebook,
and there's all these kind
of middle-aged women going,
When you see somebody do that,
you know where it
came from, you know,
who originated that.
People think this
means something
other than what it really is.
If you'd all join us,
I'll tell you what it means.
Ronnie who'd always,
he'd grown up in
the Italian family, of course,
would walk around
with his grandmother.
And his grandmother
was very superstitious
and she would walk around
going like this,
to ward off evil
or give the evil eye
or ward the evil eye off,
which is called the malocchio.
So, this, what we now
call the devil horns,
that is Ronnie James Dio,
and it was out something
his fierce-looking grandmother
used to do.
It means, "Long live
rock 'n' roll." Put 'em up!
[crowd cheering]
And suddenly,
by the end of every show,
the whole audience
was doing it back.
And again, it was
another one of those moments,
I thought, "This is
interesting shit here.
You know,
this is really interesting.
He's gonna work this
until it is just his band."
And that's exactly what he did.
So come with me,
I'll give you the desire
But first,
you're gonna burn in fire
[crowd cheering]
The rest,
as they say, is history.
I mean, I'm not the only person
who's ever used it, of course,
but you know, I must say
that I've been
the one who's used it most
and probably
the most known for it now.
It's only meant as
a, you know, connection
between the--the music
that we play,
which is hard and heavy
and pretty damn evil.
So, uh, that's what
that's all about, anyway.
The whole thing
was difficult for me.
And Ronnie knew that
I was, um,
feeling uncomfortable
with certain things.
I really missed Oz.
I felt like
I'd lost a best friend.
And so I was grieving there,
and my drinking
had accelerated.
And that plays
a huge part in my departure
from Black Sabbath.
But Ronnie was
supportive towards me
as a--as a person throughout.
So, that's how
I first met Ronnie,
and we hit it off right away.
He's from upstate New York--
Cortland.
And I'm from Brooklyn, New York.
And, uh, Tony and Geezer--
I couldn't
understand them very well.
I was pretty young,
and they were kind of
scary-looking
with the mustaches and,
you know, "These are the guys."
And they talk to me and I go,
"Ronnie, what did they say?"
I'd keep asking Ronnie,
"What'd he say?
What does that mean? "Blimey"?"
So Sabbath follows
Heaven and Hell
with Mob Rules.
Mob Rules
is an unbelievable record.
"Sign of the Southern Cross."
Look at my arms.
Just saying the name
of the song does this to me.
It's the sign
of the Southern cross
It's the sign
of the Southern cross
All right!
[Vinny]
We finished Mob Rules,
the tour was fantastic,
so everything's going great.
Then,
I don't know what happened,
but it's business between
those guys, three of 'em.
A lot of times
success breeds problems,
and that happened.
I-I felt that that
really did happen,
that, uh, all of the bad things
that--that could be used
were used, you know,
from drug abuse
to, um, mental abuse.
I'm not sure what happened.
It was, uh...
I mean, we were all, uh, doing
quite a bit
of nose powder at the time.
This is the era of cocaine.
Everybody in the music business
is doing too much cocaine,
but not at all, Ronnie Dio.
That was--It was never--never
his thing, and they clashed.
You know, sorry.
It--It got difficult for him
behind the scenes.
Egos getting involved.
[Vinny] We recorded
the Live Evil album,
and the mixing of that record
became a problem.
When we're
doing the Live album,
he did get sort of...
upset about things.
Ronnie could be
fierce, very fierce.
He cared about
every single detail.
I've heard a lot
of rumors, you know,
that I'm a control freak
and you know,
that, of course, led to, uh,
"I think we should
let Tony mix this album."
In other words,
"Your services are
not required anymore."
Dio joined the band,
and he turned it into
something incredible.
But don't forget,
Tony's still thinking,
"Yeah, but I built this band
for ten years
before you came along
and I offered you the gig."
Another gram of coke, and it
gets even worse than that.
Two more grams and, "I don't
even know who the fuck you are.
Why don't you fuck off
and back where you came from?"
It just got to the point
where Ronnie
wasn't happy anymore.
It was his choice to leavem
and he left.
Lonely is the word
He had
been through Rainbow,
and even when he found
the sweet smell of success,
it turned sour so quick.
And then he does it again
with Sabbath,
and it turned sour so quick.
[Ronnie] You know, it was
a very traumatic time for me.
You don't go from being,
you know,
one of the biggest bands
in the world
to not having a job anymore,
and what do you do?
To me,
it's always what comes next
and what your ideas are,
how many chances
you want to take.
I had no one, you know?
So I thought,
"Well, better get
off your ass and go out
and start writing songs
on your own."
I had a garage in the back,
and off the side of the garage
was this tiny little shed
kind of thing.
And so I went in there
and went to Radio Shack
and put all these little
boxes and plugged things
into my little
reel-to-reel tape recorder,
and that sounded so terrible
but you know, I loved it.
I woke up and I went out
in that horrible little place
that I set up as
a little living room.
I can do this.
And so for me,
it was like a real genesis.
heavy rock music
I was a wife then.
I wasn't a manager.
And then he said, "Okay,
so now you're managing me."
Oh, this is
like, wait a minute. Um...
I manage your affairs,
but I don't know
about managing a band,
but I figured if
he's got confidence in me,
then I'll do the best I can.
In fact, I think it
was Ritchie who said,
"You know, she just
wants to make him a star."
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, that was my goal.
[bell dings]
[Vinny] One night, Ronnie goes,
"Look, I'm gonna
put my own band together.
"You want to join me?"
I went, "Wow. Yeah."
[bell dings]
When we put it together,
it was just me and him.
He's playing bass.
We played "Holy Diver."
[Vinny mimicking bass guitar]
Ronnie had written
a bunch of material,
and they begin the search
for the hotshot guitar player
which everybody had
to have at that time.
[Ronnie]
So we went to London.
Vinny and I went,
going around to clubs.
[Vinny] Here's a band playing.
Let's go see them.
We went to all
these different clubs.
[Ronnie] And I knew
the kind of player I wanted.
I didn't like
the style of playing
that American guitar players
were using at the time.
They all wanted to be
as fast as Eddie Van Halen.
I mean, after having played
with Tony and with Ritchie,
I wanted someone
who could be fast,
but had to have romance
in his soul.
I said, "You know what?
"I'm gonna give
Jimmy a call, Jimmy Bain."
Because of course, Jimmy had
played with me in Rainbow.
And I thought,
who better to know
guitar players than Jimmy?"
So the call was only to ask him
if he knew guitar players.
Jimmy just assumed that he was
gonna be the bass player.
- So, he was.
- [bell dings]
[Vinny] Jimmy called
this guitar player's house
at two in the morning,
a young shredder from Ireland,
this guy, Vivian Campbell.
And the thing
that sold Ronnie,
we were jammin', and then
Viv was all out of things
to play so he played,
like, a Chuck Berry thing.
[Vinny mimicking guitar riff]
Just in this little section.
That was it.
[Ronnie] The missing ingredient
was Vivian Campbell,
the guitar hero.
So, now we've become
a family in a band, Dio.
[birds chirping]
These are tapes
that I found that are, uh...
from the beginning.
You know,
I haven't heard this stuff.
"Jam."
Let's see what's on here.
One, two,
one, two, three--
[upbeat rock playing]
Jam!
So, we needed
a place to rehearse,
so Ronnie got this place
called "Sound City."
It was like every night
at seven o'clock
going to the boys club.
They let us do anything there.
They had candy machines.
We'd go in--
"You want some candy?"
"Yeah." Boom-boom-boom
till all the candy fell out.
You know, pinball games.
We got to make little ramps
so you never lost a ball.
Have some drinks
and smoked some pot.
And we were playing.
Life was fantastic.
Straight through the heart
So, he's singing that
in the room.
You go, "Holy shit."
[producer] What was the feeling
like with the band back then?
[Ronnie] Oh, it was great.
It was such a wonderful
family atmosphere,
just a magical situation
where everybody
loved being in that room,
playing, and we experimented.
So this one's a version
of "Rainbow in the Dark."
There's no
keyboard part in it.
Ronnie's still
testing the waters
with where
the vocals should go.
When there's lightning
It always
breaks me down
We had
"Rainbow in the Dark."
We're playing it back.
And Jimmy's got
a cigarette in his mouth
with a big ash ready to fall
and a Jim Beam and Coke.
And he goes over to
this little shitty keyboard
of Ronnie's and he goes,
[Vinny mimicking
keyboard playing]
And he wrote that part
without the ash fallin'.
What? That's killer, dude.
[Ronnie]
Um, "Rainbow in the Dark."
uh, it's a song that
I really disliked.
And when it was finished,
I announced to
everyone that I was going
to take a razor blade
and just cut the tape up.
And so
I went for the razor blade.
And they all went,
"No, no. Don't, don't."
And I didn't do that,
and I thanked them
over and over and over.
And so, you know, kudos
to them forever and ever.
We were just
having time of our life,
and the roadies used to go,
"This is going platinum, dude."
Nah, never.
[seabirds calling]
At that time,
you had vinyl records
so on the first um,
"Holy Diver,"
we both wanted
to push the edges,
and the record company
were not that happy about it,
but we've got this idea.
We know what we want.
In the '80s, I was working,
uh, with Ronnie and Wendy
on pictures
and just in general,
doing stuff that they
wanted me to do and everything.
I get a phone call from
this guy named Gene Hunter.
He says, "Wendy gave me
your phone number.
And do you know
of a good cove to go to?"
I said, "Cove?"
We ended up down at a place
called Paradise Cove.
So we get down there,
and he's got this wet suit
'cause it's really cold.
And on the top
is a priest outfit,
and he's got the shitload
of chains, a lot of chains.
I'm going, "What's he doin'?"
So, he found a spot,
and he's trying
to drag these chains
into this middle
of this little cove.
It looked like he was
standing on a slippery rock
or something, but he
kept bobbing up and down.
I'm not taking pictures.
I'm just--He said,
"Take the fucking picture.
Take pictures!"
And he's bobbing
and going up and down.
So, I'm taking,
and snap, snap, snap.
"Are you all right?
Are you coming back up?
Oh, crap. Are you--"
"Take the pic--"
So he's... Glug-glug.
I don't know if I took
more than a roll and a half
before it's like,
this is not good.
This is now bad
because it's like
he's trying to breathe.
And he's trying
to throw me the chain
to bring him in,
but he can't lift it.
So I'm slipping.
He's drowning or falling
and going under again,
and it's like...
[sighs] So, somehow I yank him.
He pulls, and he gets up.
He--He's like, half-drowned.
I got the pictures developed,
and I turned them over to him,
and he said,
"I'm working on the cover
for this 'Holy Diver' record."
[angelic vocalizing]
So after the record
came out, I'm like,
"That's what we were doing."
That was him. He was
literally fighting the waves.
And I was like,
"This is so beyond awesome."
So Ronnie now,
he's been the singer
of two of the biggest
heavy metal bands in history.
Now, they say three times
a charm, but not in music.
You know?
This doesn't happen, man.
But this was Dio.
He's determined that
either he goes down in flames
or he finds glory.
Holy diver
You've been down too long
in the midnight sea
[Mick] Ronnie and Wendy
have got enough money
to make this album,
put together a tour,
pay for it themselves.
They bet the farm on it.
They really did.
Huge risk. Uh, we didn't
know what was going to happen.
We actually
mortgaged our house
to take the first tour out.
He had to start the whole
circuit of playing anywhere.
The first show was Antioch,
California. It was a barn.
He played
Bronco Bowl in Dallas,
which is a bowling alley.
So we'd like
to do a song for you
called "Rainbow in the Dark."
Let's go!
It was just crazy. You could
feel it, the excitement.
The radio stations here was
playing the shit out of that
first record, and you just
heard it every ten minutes.
When there's lightning
You know it
always brings me down
[Wendy] We did
Santa Monica Civic, sold out in,
I think, in an hour,
and then they did an in-store
after that where they smashed
through the window,
there was so many fans.
[Vinny] I think, because of
the introduction of a new band
just under Ronnie's name
with a new, young
hotshot guitar player...
...Dio, the band,
it was an introduction for him
to a whole new world,
a whole new start for him,
this rising scene,
at the time, of heavy metal.
[vocalizing]
[song ends, crowd cheering]
[indistinct conversations]
This is where we'd always sit,
and there's pictures
of Ronnie and Rainbow there.
Oh, how young we were.
So young. Babyface.
They're all babyfaces.
Soft and warm
Oh.
She'll touch my face
A bed of straw
[Ronnie] There were some
of these songs that I think
reflect my own trauma
at the time as well.
I mean, you know, I had
some personal things
that were going on
that bothered me quite a bit.
[Vinny]
Yeah, in the beginning,
it was, like,
a normal relationship.
Everything was
hunky dory, you know.
And then, things changed
between Wendy and Ronnie,
you know?
You know, obviously
it's very hard being married
to a musician for a start,
and managing him,
as well, was very hard.
Ronnie was a wonderful,
sweet, loving,
giving person,
but he was a perfectionist.
He had dreams, and he was
gonna fulfill them.
And if you were
not to his standard,
you were going to get it.
He would give it
to his crew, his band, to me.
So, we had a lot
of fights, a lot of, um...
I'll leave for a while,
come back for a while,
back and forth and back and
forth during our relationship.
You know, their relationship
was unique. Let's face it.
It wasn't
traditional by any means.
It wasn't just
an artist-manager relationship,
and it wasn't just a husband
and wife relationship.
It was a lot
of very complex things.
Any relationship
has ups and downs,
and we had many
ups and downs,
but we were always a team.
I had his back,
he had my back,
so we were gonna
fight to the end together.
In the early '80s,
Los Angeles was just the most
exciting place on Earth.
The early '80s were badass.
They were badass.
[Vinny] It was magic. All of
a sudden, the Strip came alive.
[Jeff] Rock bands everywhere,
and there were parties
every night,
but everybody was into music.
Everybody was also kind of
into recreational things
that perhaps
weren't as healthy for you.
Most of all, there was
just all this great rock music
and all these great bands.
And my distinct memory
is Ronnie kind of being
in the center of all that.
You know, he fit in
in a different way.
Ronnie wasn't
a guy that was like,
"Hey, let's go out
and chase chicks," you know?
Always the conversation seemed
to go to the same thing--music.
I think he acted
more like a role model.
There was this whole
undercurrent of metal bands
around L.A.
that looked up to him,
and he was aware of that,
and he was very nurturing
to everybody.
"Are you doing your best?
Are you doing
the greatest thing
you could possibly be doing?"
[Rudy]
Globally, metal was thriving,
was getting on the radio,
it was selling.
And it's getting
introduced to a lot of people
on what was a new thing
at the time called MTV.
The advantages
of the MTV video explosion,
you can't understate it, really,
'cause it--
it had a lot of value.
When I was in Quiet Riot,
"Cum On Feel the Noise"
was on every half-hour.
It's timing.
Ronnie had just put together
the Dio band,
and all of a sudden
he's getting the MTV exposure.
"Rainbow in the Dark"
became the one that
MTV played all the time.
Ronnie loved that one
because it made him
look really tall.
Him in the white boots
on the roof walking around,
I was like, "I want
white boots like that."
[Lita] Record companies
would dump all this money
into the music videos.
I mean, now if you had to
look back, you could probably
do something way better
with your cellphone.
[laughs] It's true.
So, he was at the forefront
of that, but he--he looked mean.
You know, he looked tough.
He was one
of the very few artists
that actually
had that metal image going.
You know, look at Dokken,
"Breaking the Chains,"
They got me chained down
in a kimono and I'm like,
"Oh boy."
And then you cut to Dio--
That was
a totally different vibe.
[Rudy] Ronnie was pretty much
all about just going out there
and being as metal
as you could ever be.
[thunderclap]
I got this mysterious phone call
from these producers
that wanted me to come over
to Warner Bros.
They told me that
they had had great success
with "Holy Diver," and they
wanted to do something epic
to launch "The Last in Line."
So, Jeff, the Warner Bros.
executive, popped a cassette in,
and I'm going,
"Oh, this is kind of cool,"
We're a laugh without a tear
And there's this moment
in that song where...
We are coming
And then Ronnie
uncorks his amazing voice,
and I'm not going
to try to even imitate it.
Home
[continues vocalizing]
You know, a chill goes
down my spine, and I thought,
"Okay, I--there could be
a video in this song."
Jeff pitched me an idea.
He wanted to have a video
about teenagers in hell.
So, uh, the studio wants to do
a video about teenagers in hell,
and Ronnie had a much
more philosophical take on it.
And he basically told me,
"Well, from birth to death,
we're all in a line.
And imagine
if you're the last in line."
And then he says,
"And of course,
you've got to put Murray in it."
Murray? who's Murray?"
[Vinny] Well, Murray,
you think his name would be
Damien or fucking Lucifer.
Ronnie one day, said "Murray."
So, he became Murray.
We'll know
for the first time
If we're evil or divine
We're the last in line
[Don]
And so, I basically came up
with this slightly wonky idea
which is about a, you know,
a normal teenage kid.
He's, you know, going around.
He's got his delivery,
and he goes into the elevator,
and he pushes the button.
And I kind of took
The Wizard of Oz motif
of, you know, being swept up
in a tornado and inverted it.
I got the teenagers in hell,
and I got the line
and, um,
Murray in the distance.
Last in line
See how we shine
[Glenn] All the elements
of Ronnie's career seem
to come together with Dio,
the culmination
of his extraordinary presence
and extraordinary ability
to write songs.
They weren't top 40 songs,
but the key factor
is that he knew
how to connect.
That was the key,
that very direct connection
with his audience,
which fans felt.
[cheering]
Is that good?
Is that in focus?
You got that shit?
[crew member] I got it.
Where I really came online
as a-a metal head,
you know, '80s,
that period was real, like...
Devil-heavy.
Faceless creatures
in robes, from my study,
symbolize Druids,
which, of course,
you go back to, uh,
Satan worship.
It was Satan. There was
something extra seductive
and...and powerful about that.
Looking back on it now,
there is some humor.
All right now, now you're
going to play this backwards?
Right. And then you'll
hear there's power in Satan.
There is power in Satan
- Did y'all hear that?
- [audience member] I heard it!
[Jack] My mom was
a little concerned
with my consumption
of Devil music.
And she gave me this tape
that was a preacher
who was talking
about evil music.
Daily, young people
are bombarded
by distorted visual images
and twisted music messages.
[Jack] It was supposed to, like,
turn me away from the evil ways
but I was like, "Oh."
It was just sort of this
rad tape that turned me on
to new music that
I hadn't listened to before.
It had the opposite effect
of what it was supposed to do.
[chuckles]
Dio had some Devil.
Dio's Devil was
a little more theatrical,
like a Shakespearean Devil.
It's the thing that makes
all great stories interesting
is like,
how good is your villain?
What's Star Wars
without Darth Vader?
How good is the Bible
without the Devil?
Dude, no spice.
[Vinny] There was
blowback of people thinking,
"Oh, he's just some
sort of demonic guy."
I'm sure the evangelical church,
for instance,
in the States, isn't too
happy about what you do.
Not too pleased, no.
Well, they think that, uh,
I'm the Devil
or this particular sign means
I'm putting a curse on you.
And what does that sign mean,
with two fingers?
Oh, I just cursed you,
and you're gonna die in hell.
Well, there's a myth
that the Dio logo says devil
when turned upside down.
That's not true at all.
Not at all.
Christians ruin everything.
I'm a--I'm an ordained minister,
you know.
I believe in God
and Jesus and all that stuff.
They just ruin everything.
They're idiots.
You want it to be dark.
You want it to be scary.
You want it to be powerful.
You want it to be intense.
For Ronnie, it was a tool.
He knew how to communicate.
[Ronnie] I don't believe
in either heaven and hell
as a place to go to.
At the end of the day, if we all
just believe in the same thing,
you know, that we've got a
choice between good and evil.
Okay, make your choice.
That's all it's about to me.
[Vinny]
The whole good and evil thing,
it came from
a very deep place within him
where he wanted
to empower people.
He authentically
believed that the weaker guy
needs to stand up for himself.
[Dan] You can accomplish
anything without people
influencing you to do stuff
that you don't want to do.
As a kid,
I just remember how strong
and resonant
and powerful it was.
[Ronnie] I've always felt
to be somewhat of a spokesman
for people who may be lonely,
maybe have been
looked down upon.
[Craig] His heart
was for the downtrodden
and the black sheep
of the globe.
He was our voice because
that's how he saw himself.
Climb the rainbow
You're a star
We are forever you and I
We stand
At the time, uh, they were
doing, uh, "We are the World."
We are the world
We are the world
We are the children
Yeah, we are the children
Ronnie had wanted
to be part of that,
but we were nasty,
heavy metal, dirty people.
We are fire and stone
And we all want
to touch a rainbow
[Eddie] You know, often,
metal is marginalized
and thought of
as lowbrow or whatever.
So, many times those artists
are not invited
to the charity events
and the charity recordings.
So, Ronnie decided
to do his own heavy metal,
"We are the World,"
and it was awesome.
This project came
about because of a radio-thon
that the station KLOS
held for two days.
Our bass player, Jimmy Bain,
and guitar player,
Vivian Campbell,
noticed the lack of people
representing our genre
of music, our kind of stuff.
Ronnie just wanted
to show that we wanted--
We want to help, too,
but do something
that's a little bit different.
[Rudy] Every single musician
that made it in the '80s,
you know, we grew up
listening to Ronnie.
So, any time Ronnie would say,
"Listen, I need you guys,"
and we'll say,
"Yes, we're there,"
because we wanted
to be like him.
He was a hero to all of us.
[Eddie] You can think
about anybody who was anybody
on top at that time,
and they were there.
[reporter] Do you know
a lot of the people
involved with it?
Well, I'm meeting
them out there, aren't I?
I met the Yngwie Malmsteen
person, you know. He's great.
I like the way he puts
"Yngwie J. Malmsteen"
on his album,
so you know, you don't
confuse him with all the other
Yngwie Malmsteens
in the business.
[Rob] You've got
all of these people.
We all know about each other
and what we're famous
for doing or not doing.
Ronnie was the captain
of the ship, and he steered us
through what could have
been an absolute catastrophe.
But singers and songs
will never change it alone
So we are calling you,
calling you
- You can do better than that.
- Yeah.
Everybody's giving a thousand
percent. You know, you can't...
[groaning]
"It's just a couple of notes."
You can't do that because
there's Ronnie Dio,
and he's the boss.
'Cause we are fire
'Cause we are fire
And I have to say,
I admit it, you know.
I was scared shitless.
I'm like, "I'm playing
with Ronnie James Dio."
We are shadows,
we are light
- [music turns off]
- Shit.
Does "Dokken" really
rhyme with "rockin'"?
[Don laughing]
There's some debate in here,
but we'll sort that out later.
Okay, here we go.
[laughs] I'm just nervous, man.
Fuckin' Ronnie James Dio
producin', I'll stand out here.
Goddamn. Never in my wildest
dreams have I thought
- this would ever happen to me.
- Good man.
Great. Right. Nice job.
I'm proud of you.
- Mark.
- [camera shutter clicks]
- We should have--
- Rhymes with "rockin'."
[Eddie] The Hear 'N Aid song
is about eight minutes long,
in its full length version,
and I think about six and a half
of those minutes
are guitar soloing
going back and forth,
'cause there's about 15 players
taking different sections.
But I-I don't know.
I mean, I'm such a fan
that I love every note of it.
I'm totally down with it
to this day.
And I love
that it showed that just
'cause you're into metal,
it doesn't mean you're a moron.
You can still
have social issues.
You can still
care about things.
You can still
care about people.
After you stop listening
to this, to this record,
to what I say,
people will still be starving,
and only you can change it.
So, if this is the vehicle
to make you think,
to make you help another
human being, then so be it.
We've done our part.
We actually made,
I don't know, it was like over
a million dollars that we got
to send to, uh, to Africa.
We're stars
We're stars
[Eddie] It's easy
to look back on that stuff
with a snicker now,
but at that time,
that was the coolest thing
in the world.
[Don] You know, I can't name
all the rock stars
who were in that video.
Rock 'n' roll was king.
MTV was king.
This was our prime.
We're stars
We're stars
Hello. I'm Ronnie James Dio.
We're about to embark
on our Sacred Heart tour.
It's a show that we feel
is the most spectacular
that we've ever produced.
And when we get to your town,
we're hoping to transport you
back to the days
of knights and dragons,
damsels in distress,
crystal balls,
and lots and lots of magic.
We feel we've got
a great show for you.
I hope to see all of you
really soon.
[Eddie] The original Dio band
made a third record
called Sacred Heart,
and the music videos got bigger,
the stage show got bigger.
[Don] He knew how to dream,
make that dream materialize,
and it just kept growing
and growing and growing.
[Wendy] He wanted a bigger
stage set and bigger and more,
and it cost a fortune,
but he wanted it.
We had this huge 18-foot fire
breathing dragon with lasers.
He had this thing
about dragons, you know,
dragons and rainbows.
What a great thing.
You know, I've got leather studs
and whips and chains,
and Ronnie's got
dragons and rainbows.
I wish we could flip.
[Wendy]
He would slay the dragon
with a laser sword at the end.
It was absolutely
like going to Disneyland.
[deep voice]
Greetings, my children.
Come with me now
and discover the magic
that lies beyond
the sea of dreams.
[Mick] At that point, Ronnie
had reinvented himself fully
as being the caretaker
of the name, "Dio."
1986, Sacred Heart tour.
I remember bumping
into him on that tour.
I'd never seen him
so full of joy.
I'd never seen him
so fulfilled.
He knew, I think, that he'd--
he'd done something remarkable
with his career at this point.
But it's taken Ronnie,
you know, what,
nearly 40 years to get there.
And Ronnie
defeating the dragon becomes
a kind of metaphor
for the man.
His whole life
had been a battle.
Everything Ronnie had,
he'd had to work for,
fight for, earn.
He's like Muhammad Ali,
the guy that became
world champion three times.
And, um, every time
Ronnie slew that dragon,
that was heavy metal
is all about--authenticity.
Here he is, top of
the mountain,
and he'd done it
by not writing the hit single.
He'd done it by not kowtowing.
He stuck to his guns,
come what may.
[Wendy] We've had about
five offices, I think,
and I've always
had "Holy Diver,"
uh, which is very,
very precious to me.
The original artwork
of "Holy Diver"--
I've always had
that hanging above my desk.
And of course,
gold records is just something
you always hang in your office
and things I'm proud of.
You know,
Ronnie didn't care, you know.
In our house, we never had one
gold record hanging, not one.
He was a humble person.
He thought that was showing off,
so I showed off
for him in my office. [laughs]
This is his first gold record
that Ronnie ever got
in 1975 for "Love is All,"
which is a song he performed
on The Butterfly Ball.
Love is all, yes,
love is all
At the Butterfly Ball!
And then I found a scrapbook.
I think his mum might
have made it.
Wow, this is all Rainbow.
Black Sabbath here.
This is Black Sabbath now.
A lot of, uh,
press releases here on...
Dio.
Those were fun days,
real fun days.
Yes, yes. It was
a great time in our lives.
A great time in our lives.
Well, that's the end
of that book.
Now, the entertainment.
Tonight, we got for you,
you know him, you love him.
He's a neighborhood boy,
Ronnie James Dio
and the Dioski brothers!
Yay!
[Mick] At this point with
Ronnie's career, you know,
he'd been following his own path
since he was a kid
and reached a kind
of new pinnacle with Dio.
[Vivian] We had a lot of fun
on the first two records,
by the time we were
doing the Sacred Heart album,
it was a very dark record
for us to make.
It was really,
really difficult.
[Vinny] All those fun times
we had at Sound City,
it was a great atmosphere.
It wasn't such a business.
And then,
the business end of this
started getting
really frustrating.
and Viv was the one that would
point it out after a while.
[Vivian] The promise was made
to us that by the third album,
it would be more
of an equitable situation,
and I was--
I was a squeaky wheel.
I mean, the third album came,
and I was the one going...
- [knocking]
- "Uh, excuse me." [chuckles]
[Vinny] Vivian had just told me
that he wanted more money,
From Ronnie's perspective,
when I'd bring it up to him,
he looked at it
as a young kid who he found
and put on the map
that was being ungrateful
and pulling the leverage play.
Well, you know, you should
get paid for what you do.
And when Sacred Heart
came around, I said,
"What do you got, Viv?
We've had four months off."
"Oh, nothing." "Oh, really?"
"Nope, not a thing."
"Oh, I guess I didn't
pay you enough, then did I?"
Money is not what
music is all about.
[Wendy] Ronnie had years
and years and years of banging
on the doors, and Elf
and Rainbow and everything else.
You can't just have
somebody come in the door
and go, "Oh, yeah, well,
I'm as important as you."
The band was called Dio...
for a reason.
[Mick] He understands that
whether he likes it or not,
this time I'm the Blackmore,
I'm the Iommi.
He's the boss.
After a while,
Ronnie got tired of it and said,
"We're going to get rid of him
and get somebody else,"
and I'm like, "Are you crazy?"
Back in those days, losing
a band member was a huge deal,
especially a guy
that was a budding guitar hero
in Vivian Campbell.
[Wendy] Yes, it was magical.
It was great in the beginning,
but people
have to go sometimes.
You know,
Vivian Campbell had to go.
I mean. It was Ronnie's band.
[Ronnie] You sometimes
get very trapped
by your own existence,
uh, you must maintain.
When you get
to a certain success plateau,
the only thing you can do is
to either try to maintain it
or reach above that.
When I got the call to,
to join, you know,
headlining 20,000-seat arenas
every night,
it was like... [exhales deeply]
And so back then,
heavy metal was going strong.
[Don] And that was during
the time that bands came to L.A.
to find their fame and fortune,
and they all got their hair
ran up to, you know,
ten feet and tons of makeup.
This is the reason I am
a rock 'n' roll drummer, see?
Because girls like this
hang out with guys like me!
Can you believe it?
Motley Crue, Skid Row.
We looked like girls.
[laughs]
I mean, not just us, but you
know, all that look was huge.
And I'll always say it,
that the rock scene of the '80s,
we were our own undoing.
It became more important
about their look,
and not the songs--
bands like Poison.
Unskinny Bop
"Unskinny Bop" bop?
Ronnie couldn't
write "Unskinny Bop" bop
if they put a gun to his head.
[Dan] Dio--he was never a part
of that hair metal thing.
He wasn't singing about
getting laid and doing drugs
and, you know, crap like that.
I mean,
the music was rubbish,
and they destroyed
what the rest of us created.
[Vinny] There's Sacred Heart
and what's the other one?
Dream Evil, I don't know.
Was there another one
after that? I don't know.
Sales, they started going
down, you know?
And MTV, that was built
upon heavy metal music,
suddenly went,
"Oh, no more of that."
- [screeching]
- [announcer] 120 minutes.
[reporter] Right here,
the second of tonight's
two world premiere videos.
It's from the Seattle band,
Nirvana.
Here is
the planet's first look at...
[sniffs]
"Smells like Teen Spirit."
["Smells Like Teen Spirit"
plays]
Basically, right after
Nirvana had their first play
of "Teen Spirit,"
it changed everything.
It needed it.
You know, the MTV toilet
needed to be flushed,
you know and clean up
and--and get something else
in there, you know?
You're talking to a guy
who worked
in rock radio for decades.
I literally saw the day
the program director comes in
and says, "All of these CDs--
in a box. No more.
Here's what
we're playing now."
There's a big misconception
that the birth of Nirvana
and all that
took down the "hair bands,"
and it certainly did.
But it didn't
discriminate to just that.
It took down everything.
Everybody got hit with that.
I don't care if
you were Black Sabbath,
Judas Priest, Iron Maiden,
whoever you were,
across the board, was one of
the most harsh, abrupt things
I've ever seen in my life.
All of this goes away,
and all of this
is suddenly uncool.
It was like that, cut and dry.
- [producer] Dio in the box?
- Dio was in the box.
[thud]
somber acoustic instrumental
[Wendy] The '90s
were the darkest period
because he got
dropped from Warner Bros.
Losing a record deal
was devastating.
Absolute devastating.
The music industry
at that time, it was like...
Pfft. "We don't care, we don't
care about you anymore."
For someone like Ronnie,
it did get
a little awkward in the '90s.
Nu metal and grunge
became what the public face
of metal was depicted as.
Underground,
death metal, grindcore,
black metal got more intense.
The point being that stuff
like Ronnie James Dio,
people just
kind of maybe said,
"We don't need any of that
stuff. That's dinosaur shit."
[Ronnie] Bands like Dio
will find it very difficult.
It's only really
alternate rock that seems
to be getting
most of the attention.
Where--Where is it going?
God knows. I mean, that's--
A lot of that has
to do with, you know,
with its acceptance, really.
It'll go as far as
people allow us to go.
[Mick] The mid-'90s,
I remember he came over
to London to do interviews
to promote his latest album.
I had to beg, borrow, and steal
to try and get someone
to interview Ronnie James Dio.
I couldn't get anybody
interested in interviewing him.
[Wendy] That was, like,
a really down time for him.
He didn't feel loved anymore.
Well, because it's
a world that, uh, you know,
it's not a very happy place.
It's a world we live in that's,
uh, just really depressing.
And it couldn't allow me
to talk about dreams
and everything's
going to be wonderful
and the world will be happy.
Just, you know, work hard
and your dreams will come true.
Shit. I look at the world
around me now,
and I see that that's pretty
impossible to happen.
So I couldn't
in my conscience,
write about dreams
and happiness.
[birds chirping,
traffic passing]
I didn't really start going
to his house until the '90s.
I remember going
and taking photos of him,
and that's when
everything was changing.
He noticed it,
because he wasn't
selling out arenas anymore.
[Ronnie] I got here because
I believed in the music I made,
and somebody liked it.
So, hey, I got a nice house.
You know, as I told you
many times before,
I don't give a damn
about this house.
What do I care about this?
I could sleep on this table.
I could sleep on the floor.
It's not important.
It's all about playing.
It's all about
playing for people.
It's the only thing
that matters to me.
So, through the hard times,
love what you do.
He's one of those guys I don't
think would have ever retired
cause when you're an artist,
you're an artist.
That's what
you do forever, you know.
You just...you...till you die.
[reporter]
You've got such a long career.
You haven't had any breaks.
[Ronnie] No, I never--
I haven't taken vacations.
I don't. I wouldn't
know what to do with myself.
What am I gonna do,
lay on a beach?
Waste--That's a waste
of my life.
Eating, sleeping, and vacations
are a waste of my life.
You only got so many years,
you may as well get
all you can out of it.
Just grind it out,
bring it out, go for it
because I got
a lot more to do yet.
Start with this one.
Title track of Dio LP #2.
This is called
"The Last in Line."
[John] It was very much a
different thing from the '80s.
For you,
we especially do this one.
It's called
"The Last in Line."
[crowd cheering]
But, uh, he would go to
the ends of the Earth
to play in front of people.
And I'd be the one going,
"Oh, Christ, I don't know.
You should think
about this, you know?"
He didn't care if 80 people
showed up to a show or 80,000.
[Jeff] He never
lost sight of the guy
from Cortland, New York,
who, music was his salvation.
He never lost sight of that.
[vocalizing]
Ronnie never, ever complained.
You know,
he never phoned it in.
That was--He couldn't
do that. It was impossible.
The enthusiasm and the hunger
and the conviction,
it was unbreakable.
We're off to the witch
We may never,
never, never, come home
But the magic
that we'll feel
Is worth the lifetime
[Wendy] Hard rock was
out of favor. MTV was gone.
We got record deals
on smaller labels.
[Eddie] Ronnie just continued
to keep making records
and keep creating, putting
together some great bands.
There were some great lineups,
people that were
in and out of Dio.
They still did some
great work during that time,
whether it sold anything
or anybody acknowledged it.
Ronnie just kept going.
Think about the miles
that are on that voice.
And I always felt maybe
he would have sort of started
to relax a little bit.
But we did four whole albums,
maybe five DVDs,
and he would be
here every minute,
of every day
for every part of it.
Being in the studio with Ronnie,
it was un-fucking believable.
He was on a level
that some people never get to
in their prime when they're 21.
[Wyn]
He would sing with the band
while they were cutting
all day long, every time.
I mean, I told him
a hundred times and said,
"We could just use the vocal
you just sang, you know,
every time they go through it.
You know, you don't
have to keep singing it."
He said, "No, no, no,
I'm singing with the band."
I said, "Okay."
He's such a remarkable person.
There's certain people out
there, people with conviction,
people who have it here.
"This is what I want to do,
and I'm doing it."
And that's all
that should fucking matter,
you know, forever.
I must say,
I'm not going to go away.
No matter what happens.
I'm gonna be here again
to haunt you next year, too.
Perhaps the year after that
and the year after that.
I love to do what I do
very much, and as long as people
will accept me for what I am,
I'll still be back
year after year after year
doing this, and hopefully
getting better at it if I can.
[Simon] There was always
that hardcore faction of fans.
They'd always be there,
and, uh, he felt
immensely grateful for that.
Dio's the best!
I told him to say that.
[laughter]
If there was 200 people
or one person,
he'd treat them as if
he was their long lost friend.
[laughs] And sometimes
we used to argue about that
because he'd be, like,
talking to two fans
till about three in the morning.
And we'd be going, "Come on,
Ronnie. It's time to leave.
We gotta get on
the bus to the next gig."
He's going,
"Yeah, just a minute."
[Mick] He had this remarkable
way of, uh, remembering people
and what they were about.
You know, he'd see somebody,
you know, ten years later
and he'd go,
"Oh, hi, Mary,
how's your mother doing?"
[Rudy]
"Hey, Larry, how you doing?
How's your cousin, Bill?"
And he would
rattle on all these names.
And I'm going, like...
He would say, "Hey, wait
a minute, your dad was sick
last time I saw you.
How's he doing?"
And you know,
the look on fans' faces
would be like,
"He remembered that?"
[Mick] He fed off that energy,
that direct connection
with every single fan.
You know,
they've got the records.
They got the dreams.
That's living in the face
of career death, if you like.
[guitar riffing]
Thank you!
[crowd cheering]
Aah!
[smacking]
In the movie,
The Pick of Destiny.
It's, uh, the origin story
of my band, Tenacious D.
We took some
creative liberties,
but it starts off at
the beginning, you know,
when I'm a kid and, uh,
my parents disapprove
of my rocking.
You gotta praise the Lord
when you're in my home
And I pray to Ronnie James Dio
to please show me the way.
And then, he, like,
comes to life in the poster,
and he delivers the advice.
Escape your father's clutches
In this
oppressive neighborhood
On a journey you must go
To find
the land of Hollywood
A lot of people say it's the
best part of the whole movie,
which is awesome
and a little bit sad,
'cause me and Kyle
aren't even in it.
It's Dio, Meat Loaf, and a
little kid that looks like me.
We had to record all the songs
before we started
filming the movie.
Can you play it
for me from the end
of "Go my--Now, go my son
and rock" into the softer bit?
So, he came over to the studio,
and, um, he brought a microphone
still, like, attached
to a stand with a cord.
And he was like,
"I brought my mic,"
and we're like,
"Awesome, but you know,
we're at John King's Studio.
He's a dust brother.
We've got, like, the best mics
in the world here.
Let's try it on
the Sennheiser 5000, first."
He was like, "Sure,
whatever you want to do."
And this sounds
like I'm making this up
but dude laid down
such a heavy vocal,
it, like, was distorting.
We're all just like, "Holy fuck,
turn down the levels."
"I did turn down the levels!"
And so, then he said, "Let's
take out the Sennheiser 5000,
bring in the Robotron 6000.
This is--"
And it's like, you know.
We went through, like,
three different, like,
state-of-the-art, cutting edge
bleeding edge microphones.
And he was just,
like, too big a voice
for these fucking microphones.
And he's like,
"I kind of told you guys.
"That's why
I bring my own mic."
And so, they're like,
"Oh, yeah."
And they plugged in his mic,
and it was like, ding.
And it was like,
it just sounded like Dio.
Now, go, my son
And rock
[applause]
- [laughter]
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I just can't believe
this is really happening.
I just felt an obligation
to thank him for, you know,
gracing us with his gift
of, uh, of his singing
and--and music ability
and inspiration.
It was deeply moving to me.
Holy diver
You've been down too long
in the midnight sea
Oh, what's becoming of me
Look out
Ride the tiger
You can see his stripes,
but you know he's clean
Oh,
don't you see what I mean
Whatever happens,
wherever you are,
as a musician,
you have to play through it.
Let the music push through
and play through
and still stay strong.
Yeah
The music industry
and music, it's--
everything has a season.
People missed
that kind of music again.
I'll never forget it.
I was married to a woman.
She had two boys and they had
a ball because they were
kicking my ass in Guitar Hero
with "Holy Diver."
I was getting my ass
kicked on Guitar Hero
by these two nine-year-olds
on a Dio song
and I was in Dio,
for fuck's sake, you know?
Holy diver
Sole survivor
[Mick]
Suddenly, rock and heavy metal,
people are starting to dig it.
It's not a passing fad.
It's something
much deeper than that.
And sure enough,
within a few years,
the whole classic rock market
has matured.
And it's the ones
that really, really mean
something to people
that will always endure.
[Wendy] And we got a phone call
from the record label.
And they're going to re-release
the Dio years with Sabbath.
And I don't know,
out of the blue, Ronnie goes,
"Well, maybe we should just
write a couple of songs."
We worked on these songs
to go into the box set
and, uh, we really enjoyed it.
We really enjoyed doing it.
When we got together,
it was like old friends
meeting again.
I don't know.
just a certain vibe that you get
that just feels right.
And we said,
"Well, let's get together,
"Let's make another album
and go on tours
and get
the band back together."
[Wendy] And they decided
they were not going to call it
Black Sabbath, this time.
They were going
to call it Heaven and Hell.
All right,
let's check this out, guys.
Oh, for God's sakes,
my eyes suck.
Can you tell me which...
God, I'm a little jittery
from coffee.
[guitar riff playing]
Now to pretend
And make up an ending
Somewhere
Far away
Here's one thing that is true.
I think that Ronnie James Dio's
best-ever song
was his very last song,
which was called "Bible Black"
off the Heaven and Hell
record.
How many artists can say that
their last single
was among the best?
To me, it's the best.
I love that song.
Thank God, I remembered
to say that on here
because it's totally true.
You can put it on.
Thank me later.
Bible black
How heavy is that?!
What's this world I see?
Who are you
and who are me?
The fact
that Ronnie got back together
with Tony
and Geezer and Vinnie,
I've never known him
quite so, uh, Zen.
This was exactly
the way it was supposed to be.
Just like the early days, just
like Heaven and Hell again.
And it was just so much fun.
It was just, wow.
[Wendy] Everybody was absolutely
kickin' ass, being friends.
Everybody was having
such an amazing time together.
[Mick] You could tell.
Even Iommi would
smile occasionally.
It was really great
because we've gone through
a lot together over the years.
And you get
to appreciate things a lot--
Sometimes you can't see it
when you're involved in it.
But later on, you think, "Oh,
wow, that was great." You know?
We seemed to have grown
out of all our miserable days.
Life's too short now.
You realize as you get older,
you go, "Why carry
a grudge or be unhappy?"
[Rob] You realize,
you know, you don't get
these kind
of friendships, really good,
strong friendships.
They're so hard to get.
[Ronnie] So, this is
a wonderful, wonderful time
of all of our lives.
Heaven and Hell
has made great difference
in just my, my attitude
as a human being now.
Let him go
He can't come back
He's reading
from the Bible Black
[Vinny] Heaven and Hell
took off. It was killer.
[Rob] Got a great reception.
The album did really well.
[Mick] Heaven and Hell
embodied a time when the big,
major, important heavy metal
stars were authentic.
They didn't learn it from
the bands that came before.
They didn't learn it from MTV.
They invented it.
Heaven and Hell
is an important band
because they
came along at a time
when you need
a kick in the ass.
And there's this man
all these years later,
still loving what he does
to do as a legendary singer.
That's remarkable, considering
we go all the way back
to The Red Caps.
[Mick] It was like all
the chickens were coming home
to roost, and Heaven and Hell
was as much
about the culmination
of his journey, his music,
his universe, the love
he gave out every night
he walked on stage.
It seemed to me
that Heaven and Hell
was the encompassment
of all that good stuff.
[Don] It was awesome. I went to
a couple of different shows.
There he was
in a 20,000-seat arena again.
And it was like,
"Ah, you're back home, man."
Thank you!
[song ends, cheering]
[cheers and applause]
[Tony]
It was absolutely fantastic.
Everybody was
enjoying what we were doing.
And I remember sitting
with Ronnie and saying,
"You know, do you fancy
doing another album?"
He said,
"Yeah, I'll be up for that."
But of course, we never did.
backstage
with Ronnie James Dio
after performing
the last show on the tour.
Ronnie, sum up
the tour for us. How was it?
Uh, it was, uh, tiring. It was--
Every show was great,
as always.
This band is never not great.
Uh, it was--
It was very productive.
We've been on the road
for such a long, long time.
Uh, you know, the music
made all the difference,
the shows we did
made all the difference.
And that's all why we do it.
So, I guess I'll you know,
I'll give it a nine and a half
out of ten.
And is that half point because
of a little bit of sadness
that now the tour is ending?
Or is this actually
the beginning,
the start of something new?
You always say,
"Well, gee, maybe I--
I'm going home. Oh, what
am I gonna do when I get home?
Maybe we should have done more."
Of course,
there's always sadness for that,
but, uh, we will do--
we'll do more,
and we'll
probably do another album,
and I'm sure we'll
certainly do another tour.
And for me, I know nothing else
other than to--to play.
[Doug] Yeah, it was on
the last--We didn't know
it was the last tour
at the time. Heaven and Hell.
And before he was
going on stage, he'd be, like,
doubled up some nights,
terrible pain in the stomach.
And we're going, "Come on,
Ronnie. Go and see a doctor."
And he's going, "No, it will
pass. It will pass."
And he'd go on, as if nothing
was going on
when he got on stage.
He was just the usual Ronnie.
He wouldn't let it
interfere with him.
And then, he'd come off
and he'd be doubled up in pain.
[Wendy] He'd had problems
for about a year
of, um, indigestion.
So he did a blood test.
The doctor called me
and he said,
"It's not good news."
somber instrumental
When we first found out
that he had cancer,
the two of us cried all night.
My life fell apart then.
I...Actually,
Ronnie was comforting me.
That night, when we both cried,
he was comforting me
'cause I was hysterically
crying. I couldn't--
I just couldn't think
of life without Ronnie.
You know, I mean,
I just couldn't think of life
without Ronnie at all.
And he was comforting me,
telling me,
"It's going to be okay,
it's going to be okay."
somber music
Every time I tried
to express concern and direct
the conversation towards
what he was dealing with
and let him know that I loved
him and I cared for him,
and I was there for him,
if I could do anything for him,
a lot of the conversation
was about him lifting me up
and making me feel good.
Where I was supposed
to be doing that to him,
as much as I tried,
that kept coming back to me.
[Wendy] Ronnie lost
the eyesight in one of his eyes.
Also, his hands
started shaking as well.
[producer]
Did he lose his voice?
No. No.
Never lost his voice. No.
Um, no.
That would have killed him.
[reporter] A heavy metal music
icon is in Houston
dealing with some
serious health issues.
The staff are
just so wonderful.
They just are the best people,
as you can see.
[reporter]
This is the Ronnie James Dio
few people have ever seen.
He's a bit soft-spoken.
He's relaxed.
Dio has stomach cancer.
You know, I've been
poked and prodded in holes
I didn't know I had before,
and they probably
made a few new ones. I don't
even know where they are.
I'm lucky
that I am a very, you know,
hard person and strong
within my beliefs.
[reporter]
Dio calls this experience
"Something to roll with."
I refuse to be beaten
in any way, shape or form
so I'm going
to beat this, too.
I just want to get better.
I just want to be cured,
you know?
[Wendy] They were trying a lot
of experimental drugs on him.
So, eyesight
came completely back.
His hands stopped shaking.
[reporter]
Wendy Dio is always with him.
The treatment
seems to be working.
She says the tumor in
his stomach is getting smaller.
[Wendy] We used to call it
"killing the dragon."
We used to skip
down the halls going,
"We're killing the dragon.
We're coming to kill
the dragon."
And the Golden God goes to...
Ah! Ronnie James Dio!
[Wendy] About the Golden Gods,
I remember very much that
because that was
the night that we thought,
"This is it.
He's back on track."
It's great to be
back amongst people again.
It's been a little while since
I've been able to do that,
but I feel pretty good.
Can't wait to get back
on the stage again. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
I love everybody.
Thanks a lot.
[crowd cheering]
[chanting] Dio, Dio, Dio!
"Dio, Dio, Dio."
Yeah, they were chanting
because I think that they also
were being as positive as I was.
It's all going to be over.
It's all going
to be a bad dream.
[crowd] Dio! Dio! Dio!
[Wyn]
During Angry Machines,
the first record
I ever made with him,
the record was done,
and he came in and he said,
"I wanna do one more song."
And I thought,
"Oh, really? You mean, so--"
I thought he meant, you know,
bring the whole band in.
And he said, "Oh, no,
it's just gonna be
just me and some piano."
And I thought,
"Oh, okay, cool."
And just went out
and sang that song,
"This is Your Life."
["This Is Your Life" playing]
There are people
in this world that are...
There are people that make
the world a better place.
Who cares
what came before
We were only starlight
One day then nevermore
And he was one of them.
Because we're
whispers in the wind
[Wendy] He was in the hospital.
Everybody left.
I slept on the bed with him,
holding his hand.
It was like 7:15
in the morning,
and he just, like,
shot up and looked at me.
And I was calling the nurse.
It's fine.
Like, what's happened?
And then he died.
It was like--it was like,
almost like he said goodbye.
This is your life
This is your time
What if the flame
won't last forever?
Ronnie and I had
a mutual friend that called me,
and I heard him in tears,
and he just said to me,
"He's gone."
[voice breaking] And, um...
Sorry, 'cause it's still...
Ronnie was that special, man.
All these years later,
it can still hit ya.
[Lita] He was the heart and soul
of so many things,
so much music.
You don't always see that
while it's happening
because you feel like
there's gonna be more.
When Ronnie died,
there wasn't more.
There's not more Ronnies
out there.
[sniffling]
He was the real deal.
That's who he was--is.
To me it's all about "is."
Ronnie still is in my head,
in my ears,
you know, in my heart.
[Rob] Most importantly,
the music is what lets us know
that Ronnie is alive
and living with us.
Ronnie's beautiful messages
in his songs,
you know,
they're lifting people.
They're helping people get
through their own challenges.
These are the beautiful elements
of Ronnie
that will live forever.
That's why he's everlasting.
[Mick] And that's one of
the things he once said to me.
He said, "The important thing
is it isn't just what you do
and what you learn,"
He said, "You gotta pass it on.
Then you've lived a life
worth living."
And now he passed his message
on to millions of us.
The message is, if you do
put your heart and soul
into something, no one
can take that away from you.
If you really
have something to say,
if you have
that love in your heart,
that really is
the most important thing.
[Craig]
There's a quote that I live by,
that Ronnie definitely nailed,
is from Horace Mann,
the educator.
He said, "Be ashamed to die
until you've won some
victory for mankind."
Ronnie ought not be ashamed.
This is your life
This is your time
Look at your world
This is your life
I still talk to him, but it's
not like talking to him.
You know? I miss him.
[sniffles]
The fans are still there.
I'm sure Ronnie
would love to know that.
He would love to know that
his memory is still there.
He's not forgotten.
He'll never be forgotten.
I will never allow him to be
forgotten as long as I live.
I believe in reincarnation.
I think you have
to be the ultimate being
before you get to that point.
You have to keep coming back
till you get it right.
I think Ronnie got it right.
I really think he got it right.
["The Last in Line" playing]
We're the ship
without a storm
The cold
without the warm
Light inside the darkness
That it needs, yeah
We're a laugh without tear
The hope without the fear
We are coming...
Home
[vocalizing]
We're off to the witch
We may never, never,
never, come home
But the magic that we'll feel
Is worth the lifetime
We're all born upon the cross
We're the throw
before the toss
You can release yourself
But the only way is down
We don't come alone
We are fire, we are stone
We're the hand that writes
Then quickly moves away
We'll know for the first time
If we're evil or divine
We're the last in line
Yeah
We're the last in line
See how we shine
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the first in line
Oh-oh
We're a ship without a storm
We're the cold inside the warm
We're the laugh
without the tear
We're the smile
without the mirror
We're the last in line
We're the last in line
We're the last in line
See how we shine
We're the last in line
[cat meows]
[birds chirping]
[dog barking in distance]
raucous rock instrumental
[music stops, engine turns off]
[dog continues barking
in distance]
[Craig] Back in the day,
we were the people
that stood in line
at a record store
waiting for the gate to open.
Because the discovery
of music was everything.
For years,
the only way you would be able
to judge what you should get
was you'd look
at the cover and be like,
"Oh, that's cool. That's gonna
piss off my parents"
or "That looks rockin',"
or whatever.
And it was all
we looked forward to
was to open that cellophane
and see what would
fall out of the jacket.
Sometimes there would
be a picture or something,
and smell it and hold it,
put it on the turntable,
drop the needle, and when
this music's in your blood
and Dio and the music
he made's in your blood,
it's just impossible to--
to get out.
[heavy metal instrumental
playing]
[crowd cheering]
When you're a kid,
you're looking for a voice,
somethin' that says,
"This is my generation."
And for us,
it was heavy metal.
And then all
of a sudden comes this dude
with the most powerful voice
of all!
Stand up and shout
[Ronnie vocalizing]
With a heavy metal band,
the music is so powerful
and so potent,
you really have to know
how to control it--
specifically singers
because we have a message.
We have things to say.
Listen to me
and believe what I say today
He found a way to create music
that makes people
unable to contain themselves
to the point where they refuse
to live without that music.
I was amazed by the way
he was able to
captivate people.
I want to know how, why--
How do you get there?
[roars]
We rock
There are a lot of people
that think of Ronnie
as being the guy that
did this and singing metal.
That is him,
but there's another side.
The million dollar question--
How do you
describe Ronnie James Dio?
I tend to be an enigma
to a lot of people, I think.
There was
something about the guy.
There was just
something about him.
When Ronnie sang,
he wanted to make sure
that everyone never forgot it.
People took it home with them
and they named their pet "Dio,"
and they named
their firstborn "Ronnie."
It was like,
"This is rock 'n' roll
that is gonna
change your fucking life."
'Cause we rock
We rock
See how we rock
We rock
[dog barking in distance]
It's been years
since Ronnie passed.
He passed on
the 16th of May, 2010.
I think he's here. I think
he's here still, all the time.
Sometimes I hear my name called,
but there's nobody here.
[distant echoing voice] Wendy.
[Wendy]
I'm probably just imagining it.
Hello. Welcome to my home
and welcome to
Behind Closed Doors.
This was a Christmas present
from my wife, from Wendy.
We can see
the lions and whatnot.
Mick, away we go. I'm gonna
make this ball here,
- and then we can talk.
- [Mick] Okay.
Ronnie's story traverses,
really, the whole history
of rock music.
His career went on
for decade after decade.
Here we are all
these years after he died,
and he's still this
huge figure in heavy metal.
You know,
some of these guys are immortal,
but none more so
than Ronnie James Dio.
We now have a media room here,
but I still have the lions
and I still have the nostalgia
of when we used to
have the pool table here.
Well, you've
caught me in the library,
one of my favorite places
in all the world
because it contains words.
You know, he had a message.
He was a messenger.
His message was for the people
that lived regular lives,
had regular dreams
that meant something real.
[plays discordant chords]
You know I don't play piano.
I'm a singer.
Let's go to the bar.
It's my favorite place anyway.
This is his favorite place,
was the bar.
So I feel his presence
much more here.
And it's a warm,
comforting feeling.
Obviously, you've had
a lot of elbows resting
on this
at one time or another.
We never started with this.
And why should we think
that this should last forever?
I was just as happy, and I'm
sure Wendy was just as happy
before struggling
and being happy together.
I think this is all
very transitory anyway.
It's--It comes and it goes.
I mean, you have ups and downs.
It's like life.
Life goes through great waves
of emotion and passion
and great lows
of despair and whatnot.
That's the way life is.
[creaks]
There it is.
That's his beautiful trumpet
that hasn't been played
in a long time.
He used to play this from
when he was five years old.
He never played it for me.
It's a beautiful thing,
but he had had enough of it,
I think from all
the hours of practice
he had to do with his dad.
smooth swing instrumental
[Ronnie]
I started as a trumpet player
when I was five years old.
[reporter] Oh, so you've been
very musical. Where was that?
[Ronnie] Upstate New York,
a town called
Cortland, New York,
which is right
in the middle of nowhere.
Dairy farming community.
18,000 people.
It was a great place to grow up
because you got
a good moral attitude.
You grew up well.
This is the house
where Ronnie grew up.
After he became famous,
the city decided
that they were gonna name
the street after him
'cause it was on
the corner of his house.
So, this is the Dio way.
This had been
stolen a couple of times.
His immediate family,
they were pretty straight-laced.
His mother was, you know,
a sweetheart, of course.
You know, the moms
were always easier on the kids
than the father.
[Ronnie]
My father was harsh with me.
You know, these were the days
when a good hiding was,
you know, right around
the corner. And boy, I--
Believe me, I was
always up for one of those.
I wasn't up for it,
but I always caused
one of those, apparently.
Everyone had the same ideas.
They were good ethics,
good morals,
a lot of church involved.
Whether I believed in it
or didn't, it gave you rules.
[Dave]
You know, Catholic, ya know?
Ronnie was an altar boy.
Ronnie loved classical music.
His father
insisted he practice trumpet
three hours every day,
for years.
He was a voracious reader.
He was a smart kid in school.
High grades, very intelligent,
president of his class,
actually.
And he was a little bit crazy.
One time we were
riding in the car.
There was a nun
walking down the street,
and Ronnie stuck
his ass out the window
and he mooned her,
so he mooned a nun.
[Mick] He was a bit of a rebel.
He had a gang
called The Angels.
Stole a car here and there
and got in some trouble.
It could have escalated,
but I think not
in that family background.
I mean,
it wasn't just his father.
There was his grandmother,
and there are pictures of her.
She doesn't look
like the kind of lady
anybody would want to cross.
I think for him,
can you imagine in the '50s
how conservative times were?
Like most musicians,
he realized music
was a route out of that.
This was a road to good times.
And what blows me away,
as a fan,
when I discovered
that Ronnie James Dio,
best metal voice
you ever heard,
he was singing in
the '50s before the Beatles.
How is that possible?
Like, that's fascinating.
Other than wine and weed.
[laughing]
[birds chirping]
Everybody has their things.
Some people like
to go to football games.
Some people like to bowl.
I collect Ronnie James Dio.
["Conquest" by Ronnie
and the Redcaps playing]
I was a radio guy,
so I came out of Syracuse radio
in the early '60s.
Ronnie first started
in bands back in--around 1958,
playing trumpets and horns
and bass at the time.
It was earlier
than the Beatles.
So, it was Bill Haley.
It was Elvis Presley.
It was all those rockers.
That's what
the inspiration was.
[Wendy] So, Ronnie was
born Ronald James Padavona.
But when he was
in bands and stuff,
it was too long a name
and not hip enough for him.
Ronnie got his name, "Dio,"
famously from
a real life Mafia mob guy
called Johnny Dio.
[Wendy] Ronnie was like,
"This is evil, but it's cool."
And so he decided,
"That's gonna be my name."
And that was it.
I was the guy who
didn't want to do anything
but play the music.
I didn't want to sing.
And everyone tried,
and everyone kind of
fell by the wayside,
and they finally said,
"Okay, it's your turn."
[record needle scratches]
["An Angel is Missing"
playing]
An angel is missing
From heaven tonight
The training as a horn player
was so absolutely perfect
as a singer.
You play from the same place
as you sing from,
from your diaphragm.
In my mind,
my voice was a trumpet.
For how could she be
When that angel
Is here with me?
In the Red Caps,
Ronnie was so clean
and could hit any note
he was looking for.
You could tell this guy
is professional already
and he's only 18.
Don't hold my hand
Don't let me kiss you
I'll be untrue
Unfaithful to you,
I'll never miss you
[Ron] The Red Caps
eventually became The Prophets
and through the years,
The Prophets,
they formed something special.
He really had the passion
to do the best he can
with the abilities
that he was God-given.
[Dick] Ronnie got the dream,
so we used to talk
about that all the time.
Ronnie was gonna
be the lead singer,
star of the show.
And then I was going to
be his lead guitar player.
Nicky was gonna be the leader
of any orchestration
or the band.
[Mick] Nick Pantas
was Ronnie's kind of
musical soulmate at that point,
that he writes with,
builds bands with,
builds dreams with.
Even from those
very, very early days,
you can tell his mission
in life was to be a singer.
You can tell it.
One of the problems
that we really had back then--
we could not find the genre
that would fit Ronnie perfectly.
He was capable of singing
anything, basically.
He would be doing songs
by Engelbert Humperdinck,
Tom Jones.
Ronnie did a version
of "The Way of Love"
that Cher had a big hit on.
When you meet a boy
Before Cher recorded it.
It's phenomenal.
When you meet a girl
That you like a lot
[Dave] I got in the band.
I was just out
of high school in 1965, '66.
We had a manager
at the time from Ithaca,
and he was pushing Ronnie
into following
that Tom Jones route, you know?
Say you're mine again
[Ronnie] Careers go
in different directions.
In those days,
it wasn't fashionable
to be in rock 'n' roll
in order
to want to pursue that
as a career.
It really made no sense
at all to do.
Well, I loved it so much
that it was going to
make sense for me to do.
Oh, darling,
say you're mine
discordant chords
[rock 'n' roll music playing]
We found
a way to be discovered
[Dave] All the series
of pictures were taken
in my parents' basement.
And we took rolls of tinfoil,
and we hung it up in the back.
And that's when
the Beatles first came out,
so everybody started
to grow their hair long.
We decided to change the name
to The Electric Elves.
I mean, we used to have
a van that said
"Electric Elves" on it.
They thought we were
electrical contractors.
"Uh, my house needs wiring.
Call The Electric Elves over.
They're small. They can get into
the crawl space really easily."
[laughs]
You know and at that time,
playing clubs,
you're doing cover songs.
When The Beatles album came out,
we learned the whole album.
You know, because Ronnie
could sing the whole album.
[Ronnie] We were doing so well
from a playing standpoint,
you know, going from Maine
to North Carolina to Detroit.
We wanted to be
better musically
and wanted to be
something special.
spacey instrumental
1968, I had been out
of the band for a while
and Ronnie was playing clubs,
like they were
always playing clubs,
and they were
called The Electric Elves.
We played in, uh...
I think it was Waterbury,
Connecticut, for a week.
And, uh, we decided not to
stay overnight the last night.
Our gear was in the back of
the van. We all rode in the van,
so we decided to
drive home that night
rather than stay another night.
And a drunk driver
ends up crossing the lane
and hits us head on.
[horn blares, crash]
I woke up in
a hospital bed with Ronnie
next to me in the other bed.
We looked like zombies.
Ronnie hit the windshield.
His whole scalp was torn back.
He had over a hundred stitches
in his scalp.
[Dick] Nicky was driving,
and it impacted the front,
pinned him
in the steering wheel
and he actually bled to death.
somber music
Uh...it--it--it was
really hard to believe,
to understand that
that could happen.
[Mick]
This is such a catastrophe,
not just for, obviously,
for Nick and his family,
but for Ronnie,
it becomes a moment of,
"Is this time to throw
in the towel? Is this a sign?
Is this just not meant to be?"
That's a slide--
That's one slide of Ronnie's.
You can see it's--
it's after the accident
when his hair was
just starting to grow in.
Ronnie, when he was a kid,
succeeded really greatly
as far as academics.
At some point he started college
and he was taking pharmacy.
So, after the accident,
he could have chosen anything,
any avenue to go to.
I remember
the moment when I said,
"We gonna put this thing
back together?" And he said,
"Yeah, we're gonna put
this thing back together."
In our minds,
we were wanting to go
to Led Zeppelin, The Who.
We idolized Deep Purple.
Deep Purple, that's what
was heaviest, you know?
"Good golly,"
said little Miss Molly
When she was rockin'
in the house of blue light
And we just said, "Okay,
that's what we wanna do."
[Mick] And the death
of Nick Pantas,
that terrible crash
that could have
easily dissuaded lesser men
just to say,
"You know what? I'm done,"
Ronnie decides,
"No, I'm not done.
In fact, I'm only
just getting started."
rock music
Lord, help me
Someone's sleeping
in my bed at night
He decides to build this
into something
more contemporary
with, you know,
a shit ton of power.
[Eddie] There's just
a power and a presence.
It's remarkable
when you think that a man
of such small stature
had the biggest voice
you're ever going to hear.
[Dick]
Eventually, we became Elf.
We were very small
and all kinds of hair and beards
and the whole deal.
We'd walk out on stage
and actually,
people started to chuckle.
But when we hit
the first note, it was like,
jaws dropped, you know?
[laughs]
[Mick] And suddenly,
you've got not just a new band
but a new sound,
a new attitude.
And the beginnings
of the Ronnie James Dio
that would become famous.
soft acoustic instrumental
[Dave] We came up
with those songs,
and that's what ended up
getting us an audition
with, you know, Columbia.
[Dick] Elf were auditioning
for the famous Clive Davis
who discovered everybody,
just everybody.
And we were gonna
audition for him. Wow.
At the time,
Roger Glover and Ian Paice
from Deep Purple,
out of the blue,
for some reason,
they wanted to
become producers.
So, somehow they got involved
in coming to this audition.
[Dick] We were told
just at the last moment
that Roger and Ian
were coming.
Well, that put us
in quite a turmoil
because two of our heroes?
Oh, my Lord.
"Oh, my God.
Like, you know, two people
from Deep Purple are
gonna be here, you know?"
It's like, and I idolized
the band, you know?
Some chairs set up,
and Clive comes in
and a couple people with him.
And then Roger and Ian come in.
Well, well, well.
There were probably,
I don't know,
15 or 20 suits in the room.
You know,
Clive Davis, et cetera,
all these people
and white wine
and you know, It's all,
"Thank you very much."
And then these
four midgets walked out.
And I go, "What's this? A circus
act or something?" You know.
Standing there
and playing in front of, like,
you know, record executives,
and not to mention
two guys in Deep Purple,
and you have to
try to sell yourself.
It was, like, a big deal.
You know, we played the songs,
and it was like,
"All right, that's enough.
We don't need to
hear any more songs."
And everybody gets up.
You know, we couldn't hear
what they were talking about,
and everybody leaves.
We don't know if they
hated it or if they loved it.
I mean, we were knocked out.
Absolutely knocked out.
And we said, "Yeah,
we'll do this. We'll do this."
And we flew down to Atlanta
and recorded the album.
And then we got to go
on tour with Deep Purple.
So we went from playing bars
to playing arenas.
We really felt like we made it
at that time, you know? [laughs]
Little did we know
there's a long way to go
before you really make it.
[Ronnie] I always had places
that I wanted to get to.
Deep Purple
were my favorite band.
We must have done
probably eight full tours
with the band.
So, Elf took on the world.
You know, that was
the beginning, certainly for me.
Baby, you know
I'm coming back for you
I'm coming back for you
So, over the course
of the next
couple of years touring,
Ronnie was always around us.
I fell in love with
the sound of his voice,
then I fell in love
with his personality,
then I fell in love with him
as a human being.
He was great.
He was funny, strong-willed.
And he believed
in what he did.
Go for what you believe in,
and that's what Ronnie was.
He was--he was
a hard fist coming at you.
You know,
I just loved the guy.
I just genuinely loved him.
It was born into him
from generations of eons
of lifetimes ago
to be...kind.
[crowd cheering]
Growing up a Deep Purple fan,
it's just, like,
they were the biggest
and the fucking baddest
of all the musicians
on the planet.
And--And fucking Blackmore.
Oh, my fucking God.
funk instrumental
[Roger] Ritchie Blackmore--
he's like the "Deep"
in Deep Purple.
Uh, he's a mystery
within a riddle.
He's not the easiest man
to get on with.
I barely saw Ritchie
in Deep Purple
when I was in the band.
Ritchie was an isolator,
and this is in the days
where there was no
separate dressing rooms.
Well, he had
his own dressing room.
He stayed at
different hotels, basically.
And he never partook
in any group endeavors.
No after dinner parties, no...
No.
Blackmore left Purple
because they were going
in a more funk direction.
[Ritchie] I was going
to leave Deep Purple
no matter what because I didn't
respect that type of music
that we were getting into,
but luckily at the same time,
I met Ronnie.
Ritchie and I really had
the same kind
of musical feelings.
We were engrossed in
the classical kind of music,
Bach especially.
And we felt that there was
a great place in music
to kind of revive
that mystical, magical aura
and put it into
today's kind of, uh, context.
[Glenn] Ritchie left
and went to start, you know,
putting Rainbow together
with the guys in Elf,
you know, pretty much.
By the time Rainbow gets going,
you got the Mount Rushmore
of heavy rock--
Purple, Sabbath, Zeppelin.
All of them shared
a common denominator
in the sense that they were
all coming from the blues.
Ronnie James Dio
and Ritchie Blackmore wanted
to explore this kind of
neoclassical heavy rock music
that is something way beyond,
so Rainbow is taking
this spaceship to a new place.
[rocket roaring]
As a teenager,
I came from an abusive family,
physically and verbally abusive,
in and out of hospitals
and stitches and, um, surgeries.
So, music was
extremely important to me
because I had no one.
I remember I was in a car.
Deep Purple had just broken up.
Disco was starting
to make its scene.
The world was upside down.
[radio static, rock music plays]
And all of a sudden,
"Men on the Silver Mountain"
comes on the radio.
And I was like, "Yeah!"
You know,
you're just all fired up.
Ritchie Blackmore was back.
Then, I first heard
Ronnie James Dio's voice,
and I was like,
"Who the hell is that?"
And the man on the silver
Mountain
He was like a whole universe
that was concealed
within one man.
And so at one point,
the world was upside down,
and it turned it
right side up again.
[Mick] This is not
just another rock band.
It's gonna take what
we used to call "heavy rock"
into a whole vista that
really hasn't existed before.
And it was all
about this dynamic
between
this incredible guitarist
and this extraordinary singer
that almost
everybody had never heard of.
I remember going to
Munich to do an album,
and Ritchie was
in the same studio.
And he said,
"Oh, I gotta play you a song."
"Stargazer," full blast.
High noon
Oh, I'd sell my soul for water
I was blown away.
That was like a masterpiece.
Ronnie sang about
mystical, magical stars
and universe and dreams.
[Ronnie] That's what I do
with my music. I'm a narrator.
I give people avenues
which they can go down.
Safe avenues.
I don't shove it
down their throats.
They're your dreams
to try to attain.
I don't tell them
this is what they must do.
So, a narrator is what I am.
In the "Runaways" days,
I would put on "Stargazer."
All my dreams and all
my hopes would come out.
That gave me all the strength
and all the power
I ever needed
in guitar playing and music
and just my everyday shit.
Even though Ronnie
could really sing blues
if he wanted to,
lyrically, he was never
the victim in his lyrics.
It was more of a sage.
You can see, but you're blind
Someone turn the sun around
What you can see in your mind
The gates of Babylon
[Ronnie] And the things
we wrote were so different.
That was the band, you know,
I wanted to be in forever.
That was my chance to do
what I was born to do,
which is to write
classically oriented
fantasy kind of music.
[Mick] Ronnie was now
firmly embedded
into the gothic
and medieval rock of Rainbow.
He'd found his niche.
He'd found his new character.
Well, here we are--
the famous
Rainbow Bar and Grill.
Uh, land of fruits and nuts,
and, uh, they always
used to say that.
Moving and, uh, it was--
it still is the place to be
on Sunset Strip.
I came to Los Angeles
in around '74.
I got a job in a--in a diner,
and then I was doing
a little bit of acting.
I didn't mean to
do acting, actually.
Uh, I went with a girlfriend
of mine,
and we went there, uh, as, um,
stand-in, what do you call it?
Uh...
[producer] Extras?
Extras.
Yeah, we went in as extras.
It was a movie called
Death Race 2000.
And this guy that I had to rub
his shoulders and stuff,
he was telling me that
he had written a movie and it
was gonna be a big time.
And I thought,
"Yeah, yeah, right, whatever."
It actually turned out
to be Sylvester Stallone.
You schmuck.
And then, I met a-a girl
at a party and she said,
"Well, why don't you
get a job at The Rainbow?"
jazz piano instrumental
We had everyone in here--
Led Zeppelin,
Deep Purple, The Who.
Anyone you could possibly
think of was in here.
So this is the table
where it all happened.
This is where
I met Ronnie, uh, with Ritchie,
and he introduced me
to Ronnie.
And they invited me to go
to a party afterwards
up at their house,
and so I went up there.
We talked, and, uh,
followed me around a lot.
I said,
"He's too short for me."
But then he talked to me more,
and we talked on the phone,
and Ronnie being Ronnie,
he's a very personal person,
he was so interesting
and such a very wonderful person
who loved animals as I did.
He love to talk about books,
movies, uh, everything.
I think I fell in love
with his brain, actually,
and the way he was,
his graciousness.
You felt the same way
And then he went
on tour with Rainbow.
And then he asked me
to go on the road with him.
I'd only known him for
a few weeks, and I said,
"No, I can't quit my job.
"I'll come
for a couple of days,"
which ended up
being a couple of months,
which ended up being
for the rest of my life.
melancholy instrumental
We were both young when
we were experiencing the road.
And it was fun for a while,
and then it got
a little bit tense.
Rainbow are enormous in Japan.
Rainbow are bigger in Japan
than The Stones.
Rainbow are huge
in Britain and Europe.
Rainbow are not huge in America.
In America,
Rainbow never got there
with Ronnie as the singer,
and I know that that bothered
Blackmore tremendously.
And he was consumed
with getting Rainbow
on U.S. radio.
[Mick] Long Live Rock 'n' Roll
was the last Rainbow album.
They're working on
the next one, early stages.
Ritchie decided
it was time to get a hit.
I was staying at
Bruce's house one day.
And he played me a song,
"Since You've Been Gone."
Since you've been gone,
since you've been gone
I'm out of my head,
can't take it
He said,
"Well, Ritchie wants to do it."
I said, "Get outta here.
"After...
after what he's done?"
You know, especially
with Rainbow rising,
how could he want to do this?
You know, Ronnie spent,
you know,
the first 10, 15 years
of his career
putting on a suit,
looking for the hit song.
You know, this is
something he'd left behind
many years ago
and believed that the unique
selling point of Rainbow
had nothing to do with
"Since You Been Gone, Baby."
And Ronnie spoke up.
[Lita]
He stayed true to himself,
and I think it really
pissed off a few people.
[Wendy] It got very tense,
and so Ronnie
was actually fired.
Since you've been gone,
since you've been gone
I'm out of my head,
can't take it
[Eddie] That was the time
where Rainbow
did get airplay in America.
It wasn't with Ronnie.
For Ronnie on a personal level,
it was a disaster.
He and Wendy were in a situation
where the house they lived in,
you know,
was owned by the band.
Uh, Ronnie didn't
even see any royalties.
This is a guy who
co-wrote all the big songs.
Ronnie didn't get
any royalties from Rainbow
until after he died.
So they had no money.
You know, Ronnie was
a very, very proud, man.
He didn't want to admit
that he'd been hurt by this.
He didn't want to admit
that maybe he'd blown it.
[playing "Never Say Die"]
I was a young Sabbath fan.
I remember watching
Don Kirshner's rock concerts,
seeing them do,
"Never Say Die" live
without lip syncing.
[vocalizing, voice cracking]
You could tell that Ozzy
was sounding a little rough
and kind of just
doing that penguin clap,
you know,
just running around, just,
looks like a wind-up toy
after a while.
Black Sabbath is
pretty much yesterday's news
in the late '70s.
The original Black Sabbath
is some of the greatest metal
ever made.
No one was disputing that.
But at that point,
ten years into the business,
coming off of a couple
lackluster records,
beat up from the road,
it was a mess at that time.
Things weren't working out
at the end of the '70s for us.
I think it was probably
a lot of different things.
Disarray.
Maybe "disillusionment"
might be a better word.
We'd been in
rock 'n' roll for years, man.
[Eddie] All of them
were very badly riddled
with drug problems.
Ozzy was considered, like,
a huge mess and can't sing,
can't write, can't do this.
He was just a crazy dude
from Birmingham,
like a juvenile delinquent.
He was never a professional,
and that's what
was great about him.
And Ozzy's a sweetheart.
We all know that.
But he--he was crazy in--
in the '70s.
I mean,
one night at the Rainbow,
he set himself on fire
at a booth in the Rainbow.
Fire extinguisher came out.
He could have died.
He's laughing his ass off.
[Mick] And--And Oz,
he came to such a place.
He needed to leave.
Ozzy leaves,
and everybody was just like...
"Okay, so that's it,
they're done.
"Black Sabbath is just done."
[Mick]
So, by the end of the '70s,
Ronnie and Wendy
take off for L.A.
Ronnie would not
go down the, you know,
"Hey, baby,
let's have a hit," route.
He's already in his 30s.
He's already been around
the block a zillion times.
He's got no career.
I mean, you know, "What the fuck
am I gonna do?"
rock instrumental
But the Rainbow
seems to have been
such a lucky place for him.
You know,
he meets Wendy in the Rainbow.
And now who does he
meet in the Rainbow one night?
Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath.
Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath,
who has just sacked Ozzy.
[Ronnie] At the Rainbow
Bar and Grill, I met Tony.
Saw him and I went
to the rehearsal place.
I only went up there
just to say, "Hello."
He came over to the house
and, um, I played him
a bit of the stuff,
some of the riffs I got.
And, uh, he said, "Oh, let me
have a go at that."
[Ronnie] Went off to
the other room and wrote
the beginning
and a verse to a song called,
"Children the Sea."
In the misty morning
On the edge of time
We lost the rising sun
The fire inside
He'd walk out and just sing.
You know,
this voice would come out.
I mean, he was just,
you know, unbelievable.
When he first
got offered the job
in Black Sabbath, he was like,
"I don't know if
I like this music or not."
And I said, "We have
$800 left in the bank.
You love this music."
And so he... [laughs]
he joined the band,
and he did love the music.
[Ronnie] This was
going into a band that to me,
had been the heavy metal band,
a band that didn't
apologize for coming to town.
It just stepped on buildings
when it came to town.
And to be included in that band
was very special to me.
Takin' over for Ozzy in Sabbath?
Can you imagine the pressure?
To replace a singer is...
[chuckles] really a...
It can go either way.
And then putting in Ronnie,
in a tough spot, really.
[Ronnie] You know, again,
I'm a very positive person.
I said to them,
"They're never gonna say
anything bad about you.
They're only gonna
say something bad
about the new guy who came in.
And my shoulders
are big enough to take it.
You know what we'll do? We're
gonna write some great songs.
Don't worry about it.
I'll take care of it."
At this point, I'm working
for the biggest, uh,
rock and heavy metal
P.R. company in the U.K.
Suddenly, it comes 'round,
"Sabbath have sacked Ozzy,
but they're gonna bring
Ronnie James Dio in."
And there was
a lot of blowback.
"Where's Ozzy?
This guy can't be Ozzy."
From the outside looking in,
it doesn't sound promising.
[laughs]
It does not sound promising.
They had to rise above
and create an album
that was far above anything
that they had
done in the past.
mystical instrumental
You could think it's good,
you could think it's bad
but you don't know
until the audience, the fans,
they're going to tell you
if it's good or not.
As a fan, you're
established to the singer,
the drummer, the guitar player,
whoever--
that's the band.
And if there's something
that's different,
what's going on, you know?
Is it even gonna work?
Is it even gonna connect?
Now, of course, there's
always gonna be a lot of, like,
die-hard Sabbath followers
who are like,
"No, there's only one singer
of Black Sabbath."
And then, all of a sudden,
here comes Ronnie James Dio.
[explosion]
[Glenn] I think it's a creation
that happened many realms ago
that Ronnie would be
the singer in Sabbath.
It's all been written in stone.
[thunderclap]
He was supposed to be there.
He was supposed to replace Ozzy.
He was supposed
to take that microphone.
He was supposed to write
"Heaven and Hell."
When it actually starts to
blast out through the speakers
and it's like, "Well, let's see
what you got, dude." You know?
Sing me a song
You're a singer
Do me a wrong,
you're a bringer of evil
The devil is...
And then when everybody
had saw what Ronnie had got...
[laughs] it's like, "Okay."
So, it's on and on and on
It's heaven and hell
There was just like,
this is what I have
always wanted to hear were
those Black Sabbath riffs,
with Ronnie's voice.
It goes on and on and on
Heaven and hell
I can tell
Everything about it was great.
I mean, "Heaven and Hell"
is probably to this day
my favorite Sabbath record.
It's a masterpiece in--
in a lot of--in a lot of ways.
And it's a very,
very important record.
One of the best albums ever.
Period.
Ronnie was a big dreamer,
but he wasn't afraid
to tell you,
if you're gonna fall,
you can't be frightened.
You've got to get up
and do it again.
[Ronnie]
I made the statement that was,
that I've
always wanted to make,
which was, "The world
is full of kings and queens
who blind your eyes
and steal your dreams.
And that all
means they're your dreams.
If you have those dreams,
don't let
anyone rob you of those,
those wonderful ideas."
That statement
has been something
that I've tried to
live with in my life.
[birds chirping]
This is Ronnie's
very iconic white blouse.
He wore this when he was--
the first round
of Black Sabbath in the '80s.
He loved this shirt. He loved--
always loved these sleeves,
these medieval sleeves.
[Glenn] Going into Sabbath
with the sleeves
and the drama,
he was able to captivate people
with an amazing presence.
[Tony] Well, yeah,
it did become more mystical.
And we built up
the stage show,
basically around the image of--
uh, he had got this
theatrical way about him.
I was always a little bit
intimidated by Ronnie
because of not only his voice,
but everything else
around him.
He projected something,
you know.
"Oh, my God, there's Dio?"
But on those occasions
that we did get a chance
to sit and talk,
he was just a very comforting,
welcoming kind of a guy
in every aspect.
Every time I was with him,
we'd laugh.
- [can clanks]
- We would laugh our asses off.
Clownish behavior,
boyish, you know?
[water trickling]
[blender whirring]
And that--that behavior
was very rampant.
He was just Ronnie.
He was just mellow.
But when he sang,
he became a character.
'Cause Dio,
not Ronnie and Ronnie James,
Dio was a huge character.
[vocalizing soulfully]
[continues vocalizing]
Ozzy Osbourne, obviously,
was there before me,
was throwing the peace sign
around everywhere.
I felt something else
was, you know,
was needed to incorporate me
into my own thing
with that band.
[Mick] You know,
I worked with Dio in Sabbath
as his publicist.
And I'll never forget this.
Ronnie said,
"I-I thought about this thing,
and I think it could be
a bridge between Ozzy and me."
And he said,
"What do you think of this?"
I said, "What's that?"
He goes,
"I'm thinking, it's like Ozzy,
spirit of Ozzy is still here.
This is still Black Sabbath,
but it's me now."
- [thunderclap]
- I went, "That's brilliant."
It was iconic as
soon as you saw it.
Even if you didn't know
what it meant, it was iconic.
What's he doing?
[Dave] It became a trademark
for him, you know, to do that.
And--And the fans,
you know, attached to that.
Now, in a situation which is
not even involving metal,
you see crowds,
and they're like, "Ah."
I mean, even today,
you go on Facebook,
and there's all these kind
of middle-aged women going,
When you see somebody do that,
you know where it
came from, you know,
who originated that.
People think this
means something
other than what it really is.
If you'd all join us,
I'll tell you what it means.
Ronnie who'd always,
he'd grown up in
the Italian family, of course,
would walk around
with his grandmother.
And his grandmother
was very superstitious
and she would walk around
going like this,
to ward off evil
or give the evil eye
or ward the evil eye off,
which is called the malocchio.
So, this, what we now
call the devil horns,
that is Ronnie James Dio,
and it was out something
his fierce-looking grandmother
used to do.
It means, "Long live
rock 'n' roll." Put 'em up!
[crowd cheering]
And suddenly,
by the end of every show,
the whole audience
was doing it back.
And again, it was
another one of those moments,
I thought, "This is
interesting shit here.
You know,
this is really interesting.
He's gonna work this
until it is just his band."
And that's exactly what he did.
So come with me,
I'll give you the desire
But first,
you're gonna burn in fire
[crowd cheering]
The rest,
as they say, is history.
I mean, I'm not the only person
who's ever used it, of course,
but you know, I must say
that I've been
the one who's used it most
and probably
the most known for it now.
It's only meant as
a, you know, connection
between the--the music
that we play,
which is hard and heavy
and pretty damn evil.
So, uh, that's what
that's all about, anyway.
The whole thing
was difficult for me.
And Ronnie knew that
I was, um,
feeling uncomfortable
with certain things.
I really missed Oz.
I felt like
I'd lost a best friend.
And so I was grieving there,
and my drinking
had accelerated.
And that plays
a huge part in my departure
from Black Sabbath.
But Ronnie was
supportive towards me
as a--as a person throughout.
So, that's how
I first met Ronnie,
and we hit it off right away.
He's from upstate New York--
Cortland.
And I'm from Brooklyn, New York.
And, uh, Tony and Geezer--
I couldn't
understand them very well.
I was pretty young,
and they were kind of
scary-looking
with the mustaches and,
you know, "These are the guys."
And they talk to me and I go,
"Ronnie, what did they say?"
I'd keep asking Ronnie,
"What'd he say?
What does that mean? "Blimey"?"
So Sabbath follows
Heaven and Hell
with Mob Rules.
Mob Rules
is an unbelievable record.
"Sign of the Southern Cross."
Look at my arms.
Just saying the name
of the song does this to me.
It's the sign
of the Southern cross
It's the sign
of the Southern cross
All right!
[Vinny]
We finished Mob Rules,
the tour was fantastic,
so everything's going great.
Then,
I don't know what happened,
but it's business between
those guys, three of 'em.
A lot of times
success breeds problems,
and that happened.
I-I felt that that
really did happen,
that, uh, all of the bad things
that--that could be used
were used, you know,
from drug abuse
to, um, mental abuse.
I'm not sure what happened.
It was, uh...
I mean, we were all, uh, doing
quite a bit
of nose powder at the time.
This is the era of cocaine.
Everybody in the music business
is doing too much cocaine,
but not at all, Ronnie Dio.
That was--It was never--never
his thing, and they clashed.
You know, sorry.
It--It got difficult for him
behind the scenes.
Egos getting involved.
[Vinny] We recorded
the Live Evil album,
and the mixing of that record
became a problem.
When we're
doing the Live album,
he did get sort of...
upset about things.
Ronnie could be
fierce, very fierce.
He cared about
every single detail.
I've heard a lot
of rumors, you know,
that I'm a control freak
and you know,
that, of course, led to, uh,
"I think we should
let Tony mix this album."
In other words,
"Your services are
not required anymore."
Dio joined the band,
and he turned it into
something incredible.
But don't forget,
Tony's still thinking,
"Yeah, but I built this band
for ten years
before you came along
and I offered you the gig."
Another gram of coke, and it
gets even worse than that.
Two more grams and, "I don't
even know who the fuck you are.
Why don't you fuck off
and back where you came from?"
It just got to the point
where Ronnie
wasn't happy anymore.
It was his choice to leavem
and he left.
Lonely is the word
He had
been through Rainbow,
and even when he found
the sweet smell of success,
it turned sour so quick.
And then he does it again
with Sabbath,
and it turned sour so quick.
[Ronnie] You know, it was
a very traumatic time for me.
You don't go from being,
you know,
one of the biggest bands
in the world
to not having a job anymore,
and what do you do?
To me,
it's always what comes next
and what your ideas are,
how many chances
you want to take.
I had no one, you know?
So I thought,
"Well, better get
off your ass and go out
and start writing songs
on your own."
I had a garage in the back,
and off the side of the garage
was this tiny little shed
kind of thing.
And so I went in there
and went to Radio Shack
and put all these little
boxes and plugged things
into my little
reel-to-reel tape recorder,
and that sounded so terrible
but you know, I loved it.
I woke up and I went out
in that horrible little place
that I set up as
a little living room.
I can do this.
And so for me,
it was like a real genesis.
heavy rock music
I was a wife then.
I wasn't a manager.
And then he said, "Okay,
so now you're managing me."
Oh, this is
like, wait a minute. Um...
I manage your affairs,
but I don't know
about managing a band,
but I figured if
he's got confidence in me,
then I'll do the best I can.
In fact, I think it
was Ritchie who said,
"You know, she just
wants to make him a star."
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, that was my goal.
[bell dings]
[Vinny] One night, Ronnie goes,
"Look, I'm gonna
put my own band together.
"You want to join me?"
I went, "Wow. Yeah."
[bell dings]
When we put it together,
it was just me and him.
He's playing bass.
We played "Holy Diver."
[Vinny mimicking bass guitar]
Ronnie had written
a bunch of material,
and they begin the search
for the hotshot guitar player
which everybody had
to have at that time.
[Ronnie]
So we went to London.
Vinny and I went,
going around to clubs.
[Vinny] Here's a band playing.
Let's go see them.
We went to all
these different clubs.
[Ronnie] And I knew
the kind of player I wanted.
I didn't like
the style of playing
that American guitar players
were using at the time.
They all wanted to be
as fast as Eddie Van Halen.
I mean, after having played
with Tony and with Ritchie,
I wanted someone
who could be fast,
but had to have romance
in his soul.
I said, "You know what?
"I'm gonna give
Jimmy a call, Jimmy Bain."
Because of course, Jimmy had
played with me in Rainbow.
And I thought,
who better to know
guitar players than Jimmy?"
So the call was only to ask him
if he knew guitar players.
Jimmy just assumed that he was
gonna be the bass player.
- So, he was.
- [bell dings]
[Vinny] Jimmy called
this guitar player's house
at two in the morning,
a young shredder from Ireland,
this guy, Vivian Campbell.
And the thing
that sold Ronnie,
we were jammin', and then
Viv was all out of things
to play so he played,
like, a Chuck Berry thing.
[Vinny mimicking guitar riff]
Just in this little section.
That was it.
[Ronnie] The missing ingredient
was Vivian Campbell,
the guitar hero.
So, now we've become
a family in a band, Dio.
[birds chirping]
These are tapes
that I found that are, uh...
from the beginning.
You know,
I haven't heard this stuff.
"Jam."
Let's see what's on here.
One, two,
one, two, three--
[upbeat rock playing]
Jam!
So, we needed
a place to rehearse,
so Ronnie got this place
called "Sound City."
It was like every night
at seven o'clock
going to the boys club.
They let us do anything there.
They had candy machines.
We'd go in--
"You want some candy?"
"Yeah." Boom-boom-boom
till all the candy fell out.
You know, pinball games.
We got to make little ramps
so you never lost a ball.
Have some drinks
and smoked some pot.
And we were playing.
Life was fantastic.
Straight through the heart
So, he's singing that
in the room.
You go, "Holy shit."
[producer] What was the feeling
like with the band back then?
[Ronnie] Oh, it was great.
It was such a wonderful
family atmosphere,
just a magical situation
where everybody
loved being in that room,
playing, and we experimented.
So this one's a version
of "Rainbow in the Dark."
There's no
keyboard part in it.
Ronnie's still
testing the waters
with where
the vocals should go.
When there's lightning
It always
breaks me down
We had
"Rainbow in the Dark."
We're playing it back.
And Jimmy's got
a cigarette in his mouth
with a big ash ready to fall
and a Jim Beam and Coke.
And he goes over to
this little shitty keyboard
of Ronnie's and he goes,
[Vinny mimicking
keyboard playing]
And he wrote that part
without the ash fallin'.
What? That's killer, dude.
[Ronnie]
Um, "Rainbow in the Dark."
uh, it's a song that
I really disliked.
And when it was finished,
I announced to
everyone that I was going
to take a razor blade
and just cut the tape up.
And so
I went for the razor blade.
And they all went,
"No, no. Don't, don't."
And I didn't do that,
and I thanked them
over and over and over.
And so, you know, kudos
to them forever and ever.
We were just
having time of our life,
and the roadies used to go,
"This is going platinum, dude."
Nah, never.
[seabirds calling]
At that time,
you had vinyl records
so on the first um,
"Holy Diver,"
we both wanted
to push the edges,
and the record company
were not that happy about it,
but we've got this idea.
We know what we want.
In the '80s, I was working,
uh, with Ronnie and Wendy
on pictures
and just in general,
doing stuff that they
wanted me to do and everything.
I get a phone call from
this guy named Gene Hunter.
He says, "Wendy gave me
your phone number.
And do you know
of a good cove to go to?"
I said, "Cove?"
We ended up down at a place
called Paradise Cove.
So we get down there,
and he's got this wet suit
'cause it's really cold.
And on the top
is a priest outfit,
and he's got the shitload
of chains, a lot of chains.
I'm going, "What's he doin'?"
So, he found a spot,
and he's trying
to drag these chains
into this middle
of this little cove.
It looked like he was
standing on a slippery rock
or something, but he
kept bobbing up and down.
I'm not taking pictures.
I'm just--He said,
"Take the fucking picture.
Take pictures!"
And he's bobbing
and going up and down.
So, I'm taking,
and snap, snap, snap.
"Are you all right?
Are you coming back up?
Oh, crap. Are you--"
"Take the pic--"
So he's... Glug-glug.
I don't know if I took
more than a roll and a half
before it's like,
this is not good.
This is now bad
because it's like
he's trying to breathe.
And he's trying
to throw me the chain
to bring him in,
but he can't lift it.
So I'm slipping.
He's drowning or falling
and going under again,
and it's like...
[sighs] So, somehow I yank him.
He pulls, and he gets up.
He--He's like, half-drowned.
I got the pictures developed,
and I turned them over to him,
and he said,
"I'm working on the cover
for this 'Holy Diver' record."
[angelic vocalizing]
So after the record
came out, I'm like,
"That's what we were doing."
That was him. He was
literally fighting the waves.
And I was like,
"This is so beyond awesome."
So Ronnie now,
he's been the singer
of two of the biggest
heavy metal bands in history.
Now, they say three times
a charm, but not in music.
You know?
This doesn't happen, man.
But this was Dio.
He's determined that
either he goes down in flames
or he finds glory.
Holy diver
You've been down too long
in the midnight sea
[Mick] Ronnie and Wendy
have got enough money
to make this album,
put together a tour,
pay for it themselves.
They bet the farm on it.
They really did.
Huge risk. Uh, we didn't
know what was going to happen.
We actually
mortgaged our house
to take the first tour out.
He had to start the whole
circuit of playing anywhere.
The first show was Antioch,
California. It was a barn.
He played
Bronco Bowl in Dallas,
which is a bowling alley.
So we'd like
to do a song for you
called "Rainbow in the Dark."
Let's go!
It was just crazy. You could
feel it, the excitement.
The radio stations here was
playing the shit out of that
first record, and you just
heard it every ten minutes.
When there's lightning
You know it
always brings me down
[Wendy] We did
Santa Monica Civic, sold out in,
I think, in an hour,
and then they did an in-store
after that where they smashed
through the window,
there was so many fans.
[Vinny] I think, because of
the introduction of a new band
just under Ronnie's name
with a new, young
hotshot guitar player...
...Dio, the band,
it was an introduction for him
to a whole new world,
a whole new start for him,
this rising scene,
at the time, of heavy metal.
[vocalizing]
[song ends, crowd cheering]
[indistinct conversations]
This is where we'd always sit,
and there's pictures
of Ronnie and Rainbow there.
Oh, how young we were.
So young. Babyface.
They're all babyfaces.
Soft and warm
Oh.
She'll touch my face
A bed of straw
[Ronnie] There were some
of these songs that I think
reflect my own trauma
at the time as well.
I mean, you know, I had
some personal things
that were going on
that bothered me quite a bit.
[Vinny]
Yeah, in the beginning,
it was, like,
a normal relationship.
Everything was
hunky dory, you know.
And then, things changed
between Wendy and Ronnie,
you know?
You know, obviously
it's very hard being married
to a musician for a start,
and managing him,
as well, was very hard.
Ronnie was a wonderful,
sweet, loving,
giving person,
but he was a perfectionist.
He had dreams, and he was
gonna fulfill them.
And if you were
not to his standard,
you were going to get it.
He would give it
to his crew, his band, to me.
So, we had a lot
of fights, a lot of, um...
I'll leave for a while,
come back for a while,
back and forth and back and
forth during our relationship.
You know, their relationship
was unique. Let's face it.
It wasn't
traditional by any means.
It wasn't just
an artist-manager relationship,
and it wasn't just a husband
and wife relationship.
It was a lot
of very complex things.
Any relationship
has ups and downs,
and we had many
ups and downs,
but we were always a team.
I had his back,
he had my back,
so we were gonna
fight to the end together.
In the early '80s,
Los Angeles was just the most
exciting place on Earth.
The early '80s were badass.
They were badass.
[Vinny] It was magic. All of
a sudden, the Strip came alive.
[Jeff] Rock bands everywhere,
and there were parties
every night,
but everybody was into music.
Everybody was also kind of
into recreational things
that perhaps
weren't as healthy for you.
Most of all, there was
just all this great rock music
and all these great bands.
And my distinct memory
is Ronnie kind of being
in the center of all that.
You know, he fit in
in a different way.
Ronnie wasn't
a guy that was like,
"Hey, let's go out
and chase chicks," you know?
Always the conversation seemed
to go to the same thing--music.
I think he acted
more like a role model.
There was this whole
undercurrent of metal bands
around L.A.
that looked up to him,
and he was aware of that,
and he was very nurturing
to everybody.
"Are you doing your best?
Are you doing
the greatest thing
you could possibly be doing?"
[Rudy]
Globally, metal was thriving,
was getting on the radio,
it was selling.
And it's getting
introduced to a lot of people
on what was a new thing
at the time called MTV.
The advantages
of the MTV video explosion,
you can't understate it, really,
'cause it--
it had a lot of value.
When I was in Quiet Riot,
"Cum On Feel the Noise"
was on every half-hour.
It's timing.
Ronnie had just put together
the Dio band,
and all of a sudden
he's getting the MTV exposure.
"Rainbow in the Dark"
became the one that
MTV played all the time.
Ronnie loved that one
because it made him
look really tall.
Him in the white boots
on the roof walking around,
I was like, "I want
white boots like that."
[Lita] Record companies
would dump all this money
into the music videos.
I mean, now if you had to
look back, you could probably
do something way better
with your cellphone.
[laughs] It's true.
So, he was at the forefront
of that, but he--he looked mean.
You know, he looked tough.
He was one
of the very few artists
that actually
had that metal image going.
You know, look at Dokken,
"Breaking the Chains,"
They got me chained down
in a kimono and I'm like,
"Oh boy."
And then you cut to Dio--
That was
a totally different vibe.
[Rudy] Ronnie was pretty much
all about just going out there
and being as metal
as you could ever be.
[thunderclap]
I got this mysterious phone call
from these producers
that wanted me to come over
to Warner Bros.
They told me that
they had had great success
with "Holy Diver," and they
wanted to do something epic
to launch "The Last in Line."
So, Jeff, the Warner Bros.
executive, popped a cassette in,
and I'm going,
"Oh, this is kind of cool,"
We're a laugh without a tear
And there's this moment
in that song where...
We are coming
And then Ronnie
uncorks his amazing voice,
and I'm not going
to try to even imitate it.
Home
[continues vocalizing]
You know, a chill goes
down my spine, and I thought,
"Okay, I--there could be
a video in this song."
Jeff pitched me an idea.
He wanted to have a video
about teenagers in hell.
So, uh, the studio wants to do
a video about teenagers in hell,
and Ronnie had a much
more philosophical take on it.
And he basically told me,
"Well, from birth to death,
we're all in a line.
And imagine
if you're the last in line."
And then he says,
"And of course,
you've got to put Murray in it."
Murray? who's Murray?"
[Vinny] Well, Murray,
you think his name would be
Damien or fucking Lucifer.
Ronnie one day, said "Murray."
So, he became Murray.
We'll know
for the first time
If we're evil or divine
We're the last in line
[Don]
And so, I basically came up
with this slightly wonky idea
which is about a, you know,
a normal teenage kid.
He's, you know, going around.
He's got his delivery,
and he goes into the elevator,
and he pushes the button.
And I kind of took
The Wizard of Oz motif
of, you know, being swept up
in a tornado and inverted it.
I got the teenagers in hell,
and I got the line
and, um,
Murray in the distance.
Last in line
See how we shine
[Glenn] All the elements
of Ronnie's career seem
to come together with Dio,
the culmination
of his extraordinary presence
and extraordinary ability
to write songs.
They weren't top 40 songs,
but the key factor
is that he knew
how to connect.
That was the key,
that very direct connection
with his audience,
which fans felt.
[cheering]
Is that good?
Is that in focus?
You got that shit?
[crew member] I got it.
Where I really came online
as a-a metal head,
you know, '80s,
that period was real, like...
Devil-heavy.
Faceless creatures
in robes, from my study,
symbolize Druids,
which, of course,
you go back to, uh,
Satan worship.
It was Satan. There was
something extra seductive
and...and powerful about that.
Looking back on it now,
there is some humor.
All right now, now you're
going to play this backwards?
Right. And then you'll
hear there's power in Satan.
There is power in Satan
- Did y'all hear that?
- [audience member] I heard it!
[Jack] My mom was
a little concerned
with my consumption
of Devil music.
And she gave me this tape
that was a preacher
who was talking
about evil music.
Daily, young people
are bombarded
by distorted visual images
and twisted music messages.
[Jack] It was supposed to, like,
turn me away from the evil ways
but I was like, "Oh."
It was just sort of this
rad tape that turned me on
to new music that
I hadn't listened to before.
It had the opposite effect
of what it was supposed to do.
[chuckles]
Dio had some Devil.
Dio's Devil was
a little more theatrical,
like a Shakespearean Devil.
It's the thing that makes
all great stories interesting
is like,
how good is your villain?
What's Star Wars
without Darth Vader?
How good is the Bible
without the Devil?
Dude, no spice.
[Vinny] There was
blowback of people thinking,
"Oh, he's just some
sort of demonic guy."
I'm sure the evangelical church,
for instance,
in the States, isn't too
happy about what you do.
Not too pleased, no.
Well, they think that, uh,
I'm the Devil
or this particular sign means
I'm putting a curse on you.
And what does that sign mean,
with two fingers?
Oh, I just cursed you,
and you're gonna die in hell.
Well, there's a myth
that the Dio logo says devil
when turned upside down.
That's not true at all.
Not at all.
Christians ruin everything.
I'm a--I'm an ordained minister,
you know.
I believe in God
and Jesus and all that stuff.
They just ruin everything.
They're idiots.
You want it to be dark.
You want it to be scary.
You want it to be powerful.
You want it to be intense.
For Ronnie, it was a tool.
He knew how to communicate.
[Ronnie] I don't believe
in either heaven and hell
as a place to go to.
At the end of the day, if we all
just believe in the same thing,
you know, that we've got a
choice between good and evil.
Okay, make your choice.
That's all it's about to me.
[Vinny]
The whole good and evil thing,
it came from
a very deep place within him
where he wanted
to empower people.
He authentically
believed that the weaker guy
needs to stand up for himself.
[Dan] You can accomplish
anything without people
influencing you to do stuff
that you don't want to do.
As a kid,
I just remember how strong
and resonant
and powerful it was.
[Ronnie] I've always felt
to be somewhat of a spokesman
for people who may be lonely,
maybe have been
looked down upon.
[Craig] His heart
was for the downtrodden
and the black sheep
of the globe.
He was our voice because
that's how he saw himself.
Climb the rainbow
You're a star
We are forever you and I
We stand
At the time, uh, they were
doing, uh, "We are the World."
We are the world
We are the world
We are the children
Yeah, we are the children
Ronnie had wanted
to be part of that,
but we were nasty,
heavy metal, dirty people.
We are fire and stone
And we all want
to touch a rainbow
[Eddie] You know, often,
metal is marginalized
and thought of
as lowbrow or whatever.
So, many times those artists
are not invited
to the charity events
and the charity recordings.
So, Ronnie decided
to do his own heavy metal,
"We are the World,"
and it was awesome.
This project came
about because of a radio-thon
that the station KLOS
held for two days.
Our bass player, Jimmy Bain,
and guitar player,
Vivian Campbell,
noticed the lack of people
representing our genre
of music, our kind of stuff.
Ronnie just wanted
to show that we wanted--
We want to help, too,
but do something
that's a little bit different.
[Rudy] Every single musician
that made it in the '80s,
you know, we grew up
listening to Ronnie.
So, any time Ronnie would say,
"Listen, I need you guys,"
and we'll say,
"Yes, we're there,"
because we wanted
to be like him.
He was a hero to all of us.
[Eddie] You can think
about anybody who was anybody
on top at that time,
and they were there.
[reporter] Do you know
a lot of the people
involved with it?
Well, I'm meeting
them out there, aren't I?
I met the Yngwie Malmsteen
person, you know. He's great.
I like the way he puts
"Yngwie J. Malmsteen"
on his album,
so you know, you don't
confuse him with all the other
Yngwie Malmsteens
in the business.
[Rob] You've got
all of these people.
We all know about each other
and what we're famous
for doing or not doing.
Ronnie was the captain
of the ship, and he steered us
through what could have
been an absolute catastrophe.
But singers and songs
will never change it alone
So we are calling you,
calling you
- You can do better than that.
- Yeah.
Everybody's giving a thousand
percent. You know, you can't...
[groaning]
"It's just a couple of notes."
You can't do that because
there's Ronnie Dio,
and he's the boss.
'Cause we are fire
'Cause we are fire
And I have to say,
I admit it, you know.
I was scared shitless.
I'm like, "I'm playing
with Ronnie James Dio."
We are shadows,
we are light
- [music turns off]
- Shit.
Does "Dokken" really
rhyme with "rockin'"?
[Don laughing]
There's some debate in here,
but we'll sort that out later.
Okay, here we go.
[laughs] I'm just nervous, man.
Fuckin' Ronnie James Dio
producin', I'll stand out here.
Goddamn. Never in my wildest
dreams have I thought
- this would ever happen to me.
- Good man.
Great. Right. Nice job.
I'm proud of you.
- Mark.
- [camera shutter clicks]
- We should have--
- Rhymes with "rockin'."
[Eddie] The Hear 'N Aid song
is about eight minutes long,
in its full length version,
and I think about six and a half
of those minutes
are guitar soloing
going back and forth,
'cause there's about 15 players
taking different sections.
But I-I don't know.
I mean, I'm such a fan
that I love every note of it.
I'm totally down with it
to this day.
And I love
that it showed that just
'cause you're into metal,
it doesn't mean you're a moron.
You can still
have social issues.
You can still
care about things.
You can still
care about people.
After you stop listening
to this, to this record,
to what I say,
people will still be starving,
and only you can change it.
So, if this is the vehicle
to make you think,
to make you help another
human being, then so be it.
We've done our part.
We actually made,
I don't know, it was like over
a million dollars that we got
to send to, uh, to Africa.
We're stars
We're stars
[Eddie] It's easy
to look back on that stuff
with a snicker now,
but at that time,
that was the coolest thing
in the world.
[Don] You know, I can't name
all the rock stars
who were in that video.
Rock 'n' roll was king.
MTV was king.
This was our prime.
We're stars
We're stars
Hello. I'm Ronnie James Dio.
We're about to embark
on our Sacred Heart tour.
It's a show that we feel
is the most spectacular
that we've ever produced.
And when we get to your town,
we're hoping to transport you
back to the days
of knights and dragons,
damsels in distress,
crystal balls,
and lots and lots of magic.
We feel we've got
a great show for you.
I hope to see all of you
really soon.
[Eddie] The original Dio band
made a third record
called Sacred Heart,
and the music videos got bigger,
the stage show got bigger.
[Don] He knew how to dream,
make that dream materialize,
and it just kept growing
and growing and growing.
[Wendy] He wanted a bigger
stage set and bigger and more,
and it cost a fortune,
but he wanted it.
We had this huge 18-foot fire
breathing dragon with lasers.
He had this thing
about dragons, you know,
dragons and rainbows.
What a great thing.
You know, I've got leather studs
and whips and chains,
and Ronnie's got
dragons and rainbows.
I wish we could flip.
[Wendy]
He would slay the dragon
with a laser sword at the end.
It was absolutely
like going to Disneyland.
[deep voice]
Greetings, my children.
Come with me now
and discover the magic
that lies beyond
the sea of dreams.
[Mick] At that point, Ronnie
had reinvented himself fully
as being the caretaker
of the name, "Dio."
1986, Sacred Heart tour.
I remember bumping
into him on that tour.
I'd never seen him
so full of joy.
I'd never seen him
so fulfilled.
He knew, I think, that he'd--
he'd done something remarkable
with his career at this point.
But it's taken Ronnie,
you know, what,
nearly 40 years to get there.
And Ronnie
defeating the dragon becomes
a kind of metaphor
for the man.
His whole life
had been a battle.
Everything Ronnie had,
he'd had to work for,
fight for, earn.
He's like Muhammad Ali,
the guy that became
world champion three times.
And, um, every time
Ronnie slew that dragon,
that was heavy metal
is all about--authenticity.
Here he is, top of
the mountain,
and he'd done it
by not writing the hit single.
He'd done it by not kowtowing.
He stuck to his guns,
come what may.
[Wendy] We've had about
five offices, I think,
and I've always
had "Holy Diver,"
uh, which is very,
very precious to me.
The original artwork
of "Holy Diver"--
I've always had
that hanging above my desk.
And of course,
gold records is just something
you always hang in your office
and things I'm proud of.
You know,
Ronnie didn't care, you know.
In our house, we never had one
gold record hanging, not one.
He was a humble person.
He thought that was showing off,
so I showed off
for him in my office. [laughs]
This is his first gold record
that Ronnie ever got
in 1975 for "Love is All,"
which is a song he performed
on The Butterfly Ball.
Love is all, yes,
love is all
At the Butterfly Ball!
And then I found a scrapbook.
I think his mum might
have made it.
Wow, this is all Rainbow.
Black Sabbath here.
This is Black Sabbath now.
A lot of, uh,
press releases here on...
Dio.
Those were fun days,
real fun days.
Yes, yes. It was
a great time in our lives.
A great time in our lives.
Well, that's the end
of that book.
Now, the entertainment.
Tonight, we got for you,
you know him, you love him.
He's a neighborhood boy,
Ronnie James Dio
and the Dioski brothers!
Yay!
[Mick] At this point with
Ronnie's career, you know,
he'd been following his own path
since he was a kid
and reached a kind
of new pinnacle with Dio.
[Vivian] We had a lot of fun
on the first two records,
by the time we were
doing the Sacred Heart album,
it was a very dark record
for us to make.
It was really,
really difficult.
[Vinny] All those fun times
we had at Sound City,
it was a great atmosphere.
It wasn't such a business.
And then,
the business end of this
started getting
really frustrating.
and Viv was the one that would
point it out after a while.
[Vivian] The promise was made
to us that by the third album,
it would be more
of an equitable situation,
and I was--
I was a squeaky wheel.
I mean, the third album came,
and I was the one going...
- [knocking]
- "Uh, excuse me." [chuckles]
[Vinny] Vivian had just told me
that he wanted more money,
From Ronnie's perspective,
when I'd bring it up to him,
he looked at it
as a young kid who he found
and put on the map
that was being ungrateful
and pulling the leverage play.
Well, you know, you should
get paid for what you do.
And when Sacred Heart
came around, I said,
"What do you got, Viv?
We've had four months off."
"Oh, nothing." "Oh, really?"
"Nope, not a thing."
"Oh, I guess I didn't
pay you enough, then did I?"
Money is not what
music is all about.
[Wendy] Ronnie had years
and years and years of banging
on the doors, and Elf
and Rainbow and everything else.
You can't just have
somebody come in the door
and go, "Oh, yeah, well,
I'm as important as you."
The band was called Dio...
for a reason.
[Mick] He understands that
whether he likes it or not,
this time I'm the Blackmore,
I'm the Iommi.
He's the boss.
After a while,
Ronnie got tired of it and said,
"We're going to get rid of him
and get somebody else,"
and I'm like, "Are you crazy?"
Back in those days, losing
a band member was a huge deal,
especially a guy
that was a budding guitar hero
in Vivian Campbell.
[Wendy] Yes, it was magical.
It was great in the beginning,
but people
have to go sometimes.
You know,
Vivian Campbell had to go.
I mean. It was Ronnie's band.
[Ronnie] You sometimes
get very trapped
by your own existence,
uh, you must maintain.
When you get
to a certain success plateau,
the only thing you can do is
to either try to maintain it
or reach above that.
When I got the call to,
to join, you know,
headlining 20,000-seat arenas
every night,
it was like... [exhales deeply]
And so back then,
heavy metal was going strong.
[Don] And that was during
the time that bands came to L.A.
to find their fame and fortune,
and they all got their hair
ran up to, you know,
ten feet and tons of makeup.
This is the reason I am
a rock 'n' roll drummer, see?
Because girls like this
hang out with guys like me!
Can you believe it?
Motley Crue, Skid Row.
We looked like girls.
[laughs]
I mean, not just us, but you
know, all that look was huge.
And I'll always say it,
that the rock scene of the '80s,
we were our own undoing.
It became more important
about their look,
and not the songs--
bands like Poison.
Unskinny Bop
"Unskinny Bop" bop?
Ronnie couldn't
write "Unskinny Bop" bop
if they put a gun to his head.
[Dan] Dio--he was never a part
of that hair metal thing.
He wasn't singing about
getting laid and doing drugs
and, you know, crap like that.
I mean,
the music was rubbish,
and they destroyed
what the rest of us created.
[Vinny] There's Sacred Heart
and what's the other one?
Dream Evil, I don't know.
Was there another one
after that? I don't know.
Sales, they started going
down, you know?
And MTV, that was built
upon heavy metal music,
suddenly went,
"Oh, no more of that."
- [screeching]
- [announcer] 120 minutes.
[reporter] Right here,
the second of tonight's
two world premiere videos.
It's from the Seattle band,
Nirvana.
Here is
the planet's first look at...
[sniffs]
"Smells like Teen Spirit."
["Smells Like Teen Spirit"
plays]
Basically, right after
Nirvana had their first play
of "Teen Spirit,"
it changed everything.
It needed it.
You know, the MTV toilet
needed to be flushed,
you know and clean up
and--and get something else
in there, you know?
You're talking to a guy
who worked
in rock radio for decades.
I literally saw the day
the program director comes in
and says, "All of these CDs--
in a box. No more.
Here's what
we're playing now."
There's a big misconception
that the birth of Nirvana
and all that
took down the "hair bands,"
and it certainly did.
But it didn't
discriminate to just that.
It took down everything.
Everybody got hit with that.
I don't care if
you were Black Sabbath,
Judas Priest, Iron Maiden,
whoever you were,
across the board, was one of
the most harsh, abrupt things
I've ever seen in my life.
All of this goes away,
and all of this
is suddenly uncool.
It was like that, cut and dry.
- [producer] Dio in the box?
- Dio was in the box.
[thud]
somber acoustic instrumental
[Wendy] The '90s
were the darkest period
because he got
dropped from Warner Bros.
Losing a record deal
was devastating.
Absolute devastating.
The music industry
at that time, it was like...
Pfft. "We don't care, we don't
care about you anymore."
For someone like Ronnie,
it did get
a little awkward in the '90s.
Nu metal and grunge
became what the public face
of metal was depicted as.
Underground,
death metal, grindcore,
black metal got more intense.
The point being that stuff
like Ronnie James Dio,
people just
kind of maybe said,
"We don't need any of that
stuff. That's dinosaur shit."
[Ronnie] Bands like Dio
will find it very difficult.
It's only really
alternate rock that seems
to be getting
most of the attention.
Where--Where is it going?
God knows. I mean, that's--
A lot of that has
to do with, you know,
with its acceptance, really.
It'll go as far as
people allow us to go.
[Mick] The mid-'90s,
I remember he came over
to London to do interviews
to promote his latest album.
I had to beg, borrow, and steal
to try and get someone
to interview Ronnie James Dio.
I couldn't get anybody
interested in interviewing him.
[Wendy] That was, like,
a really down time for him.
He didn't feel loved anymore.
Well, because it's
a world that, uh, you know,
it's not a very happy place.
It's a world we live in that's,
uh, just really depressing.
And it couldn't allow me
to talk about dreams
and everything's
going to be wonderful
and the world will be happy.
Just, you know, work hard
and your dreams will come true.
Shit. I look at the world
around me now,
and I see that that's pretty
impossible to happen.
So I couldn't
in my conscience,
write about dreams
and happiness.
[birds chirping,
traffic passing]
I didn't really start going
to his house until the '90s.
I remember going
and taking photos of him,
and that's when
everything was changing.
He noticed it,
because he wasn't
selling out arenas anymore.
[Ronnie] I got here because
I believed in the music I made,
and somebody liked it.
So, hey, I got a nice house.
You know, as I told you
many times before,
I don't give a damn
about this house.
What do I care about this?
I could sleep on this table.
I could sleep on the floor.
It's not important.
It's all about playing.
It's all about
playing for people.
It's the only thing
that matters to me.
So, through the hard times,
love what you do.
He's one of those guys I don't
think would have ever retired
cause when you're an artist,
you're an artist.
That's what
you do forever, you know.
You just...you...till you die.
[reporter]
You've got such a long career.
You haven't had any breaks.
[Ronnie] No, I never--
I haven't taken vacations.
I don't. I wouldn't
know what to do with myself.
What am I gonna do,
lay on a beach?
Waste--That's a waste
of my life.
Eating, sleeping, and vacations
are a waste of my life.
You only got so many years,
you may as well get
all you can out of it.
Just grind it out,
bring it out, go for it
because I got
a lot more to do yet.
Start with this one.
Title track of Dio LP #2.
This is called
"The Last in Line."
[John] It was very much a
different thing from the '80s.
For you,
we especially do this one.
It's called
"The Last in Line."
[crowd cheering]
But, uh, he would go to
the ends of the Earth
to play in front of people.
And I'd be the one going,
"Oh, Christ, I don't know.
You should think
about this, you know?"
He didn't care if 80 people
showed up to a show or 80,000.
[Jeff] He never
lost sight of the guy
from Cortland, New York,
who, music was his salvation.
He never lost sight of that.
[vocalizing]
Ronnie never, ever complained.
You know,
he never phoned it in.
That was--He couldn't
do that. It was impossible.
The enthusiasm and the hunger
and the conviction,
it was unbreakable.
We're off to the witch
We may never,
never, never, come home
But the magic
that we'll feel
Is worth the lifetime
[Wendy] Hard rock was
out of favor. MTV was gone.
We got record deals
on smaller labels.
[Eddie] Ronnie just continued
to keep making records
and keep creating, putting
together some great bands.
There were some great lineups,
people that were
in and out of Dio.
They still did some
great work during that time,
whether it sold anything
or anybody acknowledged it.
Ronnie just kept going.
Think about the miles
that are on that voice.
And I always felt maybe
he would have sort of started
to relax a little bit.
But we did four whole albums,
maybe five DVDs,
and he would be
here every minute,
of every day
for every part of it.
Being in the studio with Ronnie,
it was un-fucking believable.
He was on a level
that some people never get to
in their prime when they're 21.
[Wyn]
He would sing with the band
while they were cutting
all day long, every time.
I mean, I told him
a hundred times and said,
"We could just use the vocal
you just sang, you know,
every time they go through it.
You know, you don't
have to keep singing it."
He said, "No, no, no,
I'm singing with the band."
I said, "Okay."
He's such a remarkable person.
There's certain people out
there, people with conviction,
people who have it here.
"This is what I want to do,
and I'm doing it."
And that's all
that should fucking matter,
you know, forever.
I must say,
I'm not going to go away.
No matter what happens.
I'm gonna be here again
to haunt you next year, too.
Perhaps the year after that
and the year after that.
I love to do what I do
very much, and as long as people
will accept me for what I am,
I'll still be back
year after year after year
doing this, and hopefully
getting better at it if I can.
[Simon] There was always
that hardcore faction of fans.
They'd always be there,
and, uh, he felt
immensely grateful for that.
Dio's the best!
I told him to say that.
[laughter]
If there was 200 people
or one person,
he'd treat them as if
he was their long lost friend.
[laughs] And sometimes
we used to argue about that
because he'd be, like,
talking to two fans
till about three in the morning.
And we'd be going, "Come on,
Ronnie. It's time to leave.
We gotta get on
the bus to the next gig."
He's going,
"Yeah, just a minute."
[Mick] He had this remarkable
way of, uh, remembering people
and what they were about.
You know, he'd see somebody,
you know, ten years later
and he'd go,
"Oh, hi, Mary,
how's your mother doing?"
[Rudy]
"Hey, Larry, how you doing?
How's your cousin, Bill?"
And he would
rattle on all these names.
And I'm going, like...
He would say, "Hey, wait
a minute, your dad was sick
last time I saw you.
How's he doing?"
And you know,
the look on fans' faces
would be like,
"He remembered that?"
[Mick] He fed off that energy,
that direct connection
with every single fan.
You know,
they've got the records.
They got the dreams.
That's living in the face
of career death, if you like.
[guitar riffing]
Thank you!
[crowd cheering]
Aah!
[smacking]
In the movie,
The Pick of Destiny.
It's, uh, the origin story
of my band, Tenacious D.
We took some
creative liberties,
but it starts off at
the beginning, you know,
when I'm a kid and, uh,
my parents disapprove
of my rocking.
You gotta praise the Lord
when you're in my home
And I pray to Ronnie James Dio
to please show me the way.
And then, he, like,
comes to life in the poster,
and he delivers the advice.
Escape your father's clutches
In this
oppressive neighborhood
On a journey you must go
To find
the land of Hollywood
A lot of people say it's the
best part of the whole movie,
which is awesome
and a little bit sad,
'cause me and Kyle
aren't even in it.
It's Dio, Meat Loaf, and a
little kid that looks like me.
We had to record all the songs
before we started
filming the movie.
Can you play it
for me from the end
of "Go my--Now, go my son
and rock" into the softer bit?
So, he came over to the studio,
and, um, he brought a microphone
still, like, attached
to a stand with a cord.
And he was like,
"I brought my mic,"
and we're like,
"Awesome, but you know,
we're at John King's Studio.
He's a dust brother.
We've got, like, the best mics
in the world here.
Let's try it on
the Sennheiser 5000, first."
He was like, "Sure,
whatever you want to do."
And this sounds
like I'm making this up
but dude laid down
such a heavy vocal,
it, like, was distorting.
We're all just like, "Holy fuck,
turn down the levels."
"I did turn down the levels!"
And so, then he said, "Let's
take out the Sennheiser 5000,
bring in the Robotron 6000.
This is--"
And it's like, you know.
We went through, like,
three different, like,
state-of-the-art, cutting edge
bleeding edge microphones.
And he was just,
like, too big a voice
for these fucking microphones.
And he's like,
"I kind of told you guys.
"That's why
I bring my own mic."
And so, they're like,
"Oh, yeah."
And they plugged in his mic,
and it was like, ding.
And it was like,
it just sounded like Dio.
Now, go, my son
And rock
[applause]
- [laughter]
- Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I just can't believe
this is really happening.
I just felt an obligation
to thank him for, you know,
gracing us with his gift
of, uh, of his singing
and--and music ability
and inspiration.
It was deeply moving to me.
Holy diver
You've been down too long
in the midnight sea
Oh, what's becoming of me
Look out
Ride the tiger
You can see his stripes,
but you know he's clean
Oh,
don't you see what I mean
Whatever happens,
wherever you are,
as a musician,
you have to play through it.
Let the music push through
and play through
and still stay strong.
Yeah
The music industry
and music, it's--
everything has a season.
People missed
that kind of music again.
I'll never forget it.
I was married to a woman.
She had two boys and they had
a ball because they were
kicking my ass in Guitar Hero
with "Holy Diver."
I was getting my ass
kicked on Guitar Hero
by these two nine-year-olds
on a Dio song
and I was in Dio,
for fuck's sake, you know?
Holy diver
Sole survivor
[Mick]
Suddenly, rock and heavy metal,
people are starting to dig it.
It's not a passing fad.
It's something
much deeper than that.
And sure enough,
within a few years,
the whole classic rock market
has matured.
And it's the ones
that really, really mean
something to people
that will always endure.
[Wendy] And we got a phone call
from the record label.
And they're going to re-release
the Dio years with Sabbath.
And I don't know,
out of the blue, Ronnie goes,
"Well, maybe we should just
write a couple of songs."
We worked on these songs
to go into the box set
and, uh, we really enjoyed it.
We really enjoyed doing it.
When we got together,
it was like old friends
meeting again.
I don't know.
just a certain vibe that you get
that just feels right.
And we said,
"Well, let's get together,
"Let's make another album
and go on tours
and get
the band back together."
[Wendy] And they decided
they were not going to call it
Black Sabbath, this time.
They were going
to call it Heaven and Hell.
All right,
let's check this out, guys.
Oh, for God's sakes,
my eyes suck.
Can you tell me which...
God, I'm a little jittery
from coffee.
[guitar riff playing]
Now to pretend
And make up an ending
Somewhere
Far away
Here's one thing that is true.
I think that Ronnie James Dio's
best-ever song
was his very last song,
which was called "Bible Black"
off the Heaven and Hell
record.
How many artists can say that
their last single
was among the best?
To me, it's the best.
I love that song.
Thank God, I remembered
to say that on here
because it's totally true.
You can put it on.
Thank me later.
Bible black
How heavy is that?!
What's this world I see?
Who are you
and who are me?
The fact
that Ronnie got back together
with Tony
and Geezer and Vinnie,
I've never known him
quite so, uh, Zen.
This was exactly
the way it was supposed to be.
Just like the early days, just
like Heaven and Hell again.
And it was just so much fun.
It was just, wow.
[Wendy] Everybody was absolutely
kickin' ass, being friends.
Everybody was having
such an amazing time together.
[Mick] You could tell.
Even Iommi would
smile occasionally.
It was really great
because we've gone through
a lot together over the years.
And you get
to appreciate things a lot--
Sometimes you can't see it
when you're involved in it.
But later on, you think, "Oh,
wow, that was great." You know?
We seemed to have grown
out of all our miserable days.
Life's too short now.
You realize as you get older,
you go, "Why carry
a grudge or be unhappy?"
[Rob] You realize,
you know, you don't get
these kind
of friendships, really good,
strong friendships.
They're so hard to get.
[Ronnie] So, this is
a wonderful, wonderful time
of all of our lives.
Heaven and Hell
has made great difference
in just my, my attitude
as a human being now.
Let him go
He can't come back
He's reading
from the Bible Black
[Vinny] Heaven and Hell
took off. It was killer.
[Rob] Got a great reception.
The album did really well.
[Mick] Heaven and Hell
embodied a time when the big,
major, important heavy metal
stars were authentic.
They didn't learn it from
the bands that came before.
They didn't learn it from MTV.
They invented it.
Heaven and Hell
is an important band
because they
came along at a time
when you need
a kick in the ass.
And there's this man
all these years later,
still loving what he does
to do as a legendary singer.
That's remarkable, considering
we go all the way back
to The Red Caps.
[Mick] It was like all
the chickens were coming home
to roost, and Heaven and Hell
was as much
about the culmination
of his journey, his music,
his universe, the love
he gave out every night
he walked on stage.
It seemed to me
that Heaven and Hell
was the encompassment
of all that good stuff.
[Don] It was awesome. I went to
a couple of different shows.
There he was
in a 20,000-seat arena again.
And it was like,
"Ah, you're back home, man."
Thank you!
[song ends, cheering]
[cheers and applause]
[Tony]
It was absolutely fantastic.
Everybody was
enjoying what we were doing.
And I remember sitting
with Ronnie and saying,
"You know, do you fancy
doing another album?"
He said,
"Yeah, I'll be up for that."
But of course, we never did.
backstage
with Ronnie James Dio
after performing
the last show on the tour.
Ronnie, sum up
the tour for us. How was it?
Uh, it was, uh, tiring. It was--
Every show was great,
as always.
This band is never not great.
Uh, it was--
It was very productive.
We've been on the road
for such a long, long time.
Uh, you know, the music
made all the difference,
the shows we did
made all the difference.
And that's all why we do it.
So, I guess I'll you know,
I'll give it a nine and a half
out of ten.
And is that half point because
of a little bit of sadness
that now the tour is ending?
Or is this actually
the beginning,
the start of something new?
You always say,
"Well, gee, maybe I--
I'm going home. Oh, what
am I gonna do when I get home?
Maybe we should have done more."
Of course,
there's always sadness for that,
but, uh, we will do--
we'll do more,
and we'll
probably do another album,
and I'm sure we'll
certainly do another tour.
And for me, I know nothing else
other than to--to play.
[Doug] Yeah, it was on
the last--We didn't know
it was the last tour
at the time. Heaven and Hell.
And before he was
going on stage, he'd be, like,
doubled up some nights,
terrible pain in the stomach.
And we're going, "Come on,
Ronnie. Go and see a doctor."
And he's going, "No, it will
pass. It will pass."
And he'd go on, as if nothing
was going on
when he got on stage.
He was just the usual Ronnie.
He wouldn't let it
interfere with him.
And then, he'd come off
and he'd be doubled up in pain.
[Wendy] He'd had problems
for about a year
of, um, indigestion.
So he did a blood test.
The doctor called me
and he said,
"It's not good news."
somber instrumental
When we first found out
that he had cancer,
the two of us cried all night.
My life fell apart then.
I...Actually,
Ronnie was comforting me.
That night, when we both cried,
he was comforting me
'cause I was hysterically
crying. I couldn't--
I just couldn't think
of life without Ronnie.
You know, I mean,
I just couldn't think of life
without Ronnie at all.
And he was comforting me,
telling me,
"It's going to be okay,
it's going to be okay."
somber music
Every time I tried
to express concern and direct
the conversation towards
what he was dealing with
and let him know that I loved
him and I cared for him,
and I was there for him,
if I could do anything for him,
a lot of the conversation
was about him lifting me up
and making me feel good.
Where I was supposed
to be doing that to him,
as much as I tried,
that kept coming back to me.
[Wendy] Ronnie lost
the eyesight in one of his eyes.
Also, his hands
started shaking as well.
[producer]
Did he lose his voice?
No. No.
Never lost his voice. No.
Um, no.
That would have killed him.
[reporter] A heavy metal music
icon is in Houston
dealing with some
serious health issues.
The staff are
just so wonderful.
They just are the best people,
as you can see.
[reporter]
This is the Ronnie James Dio
few people have ever seen.
He's a bit soft-spoken.
He's relaxed.
Dio has stomach cancer.
You know, I've been
poked and prodded in holes
I didn't know I had before,
and they probably
made a few new ones. I don't
even know where they are.
I'm lucky
that I am a very, you know,
hard person and strong
within my beliefs.
[reporter]
Dio calls this experience
"Something to roll with."
I refuse to be beaten
in any way, shape or form
so I'm going
to beat this, too.
I just want to get better.
I just want to be cured,
you know?
[Wendy] They were trying a lot
of experimental drugs on him.
So, eyesight
came completely back.
His hands stopped shaking.
[reporter]
Wendy Dio is always with him.
The treatment
seems to be working.
She says the tumor in
his stomach is getting smaller.
[Wendy] We used to call it
"killing the dragon."
We used to skip
down the halls going,
"We're killing the dragon.
We're coming to kill
the dragon."
And the Golden God goes to...
Ah! Ronnie James Dio!
[Wendy] About the Golden Gods,
I remember very much that
because that was
the night that we thought,
"This is it.
He's back on track."
It's great to be
back amongst people again.
It's been a little while since
I've been able to do that,
but I feel pretty good.
Can't wait to get back
on the stage again. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
I love everybody.
Thanks a lot.
[crowd cheering]
[chanting] Dio, Dio, Dio!
"Dio, Dio, Dio."
Yeah, they were chanting
because I think that they also
were being as positive as I was.
It's all going to be over.
It's all going
to be a bad dream.
[crowd] Dio! Dio! Dio!
[Wyn]
During Angry Machines,
the first record
I ever made with him,
the record was done,
and he came in and he said,
"I wanna do one more song."
And I thought,
"Oh, really? You mean, so--"
I thought he meant, you know,
bring the whole band in.
And he said, "Oh, no,
it's just gonna be
just me and some piano."
And I thought,
"Oh, okay, cool."
And just went out
and sang that song,
"This is Your Life."
["This Is Your Life" playing]
There are people
in this world that are...
There are people that make
the world a better place.
Who cares
what came before
We were only starlight
One day then nevermore
And he was one of them.
Because we're
whispers in the wind
[Wendy] He was in the hospital.
Everybody left.
I slept on the bed with him,
holding his hand.
It was like 7:15
in the morning,
and he just, like,
shot up and looked at me.
And I was calling the nurse.
It's fine.
Like, what's happened?
And then he died.
It was like--it was like,
almost like he said goodbye.
This is your life
This is your time
What if the flame
won't last forever?
Ronnie and I had
a mutual friend that called me,
and I heard him in tears,
and he just said to me,
"He's gone."
[voice breaking] And, um...
Sorry, 'cause it's still...
Ronnie was that special, man.
All these years later,
it can still hit ya.
[Lita] He was the heart and soul
of so many things,
so much music.
You don't always see that
while it's happening
because you feel like
there's gonna be more.
When Ronnie died,
there wasn't more.
There's not more Ronnies
out there.
[sniffling]
He was the real deal.
That's who he was--is.
To me it's all about "is."
Ronnie still is in my head,
in my ears,
you know, in my heart.
[Rob] Most importantly,
the music is what lets us know
that Ronnie is alive
and living with us.
Ronnie's beautiful messages
in his songs,
you know,
they're lifting people.
They're helping people get
through their own challenges.
These are the beautiful elements
of Ronnie
that will live forever.
That's why he's everlasting.
[Mick] And that's one of
the things he once said to me.
He said, "The important thing
is it isn't just what you do
and what you learn,"
He said, "You gotta pass it on.
Then you've lived a life
worth living."
And now he passed his message
on to millions of us.
The message is, if you do
put your heart and soul
into something, no one
can take that away from you.
If you really
have something to say,
if you have
that love in your heart,
that really is
the most important thing.
[Craig]
There's a quote that I live by,
that Ronnie definitely nailed,
is from Horace Mann,
the educator.
He said, "Be ashamed to die
until you've won some
victory for mankind."
Ronnie ought not be ashamed.
This is your life
This is your time
Look at your world
This is your life
I still talk to him, but it's
not like talking to him.
You know? I miss him.
[sniffles]
The fans are still there.
I'm sure Ronnie
would love to know that.
He would love to know that
his memory is still there.
He's not forgotten.
He'll never be forgotten.
I will never allow him to be
forgotten as long as I live.
I believe in reincarnation.
I think you have
to be the ultimate being
before you get to that point.
You have to keep coming back
till you get it right.
I think Ronnie got it right.
I really think he got it right.
["The Last in Line" playing]
We're the ship
without a storm
The cold
without the warm
Light inside the darkness
That it needs, yeah
We're a laugh without tear
The hope without the fear
We are coming...
Home
[vocalizing]
We're off to the witch
We may never, never,
never, come home
But the magic that we'll feel
Is worth the lifetime
We're all born upon the cross
We're the throw
before the toss
You can release yourself
But the only way is down
We don't come alone
We are fire, we are stone
We're the hand that writes
Then quickly moves away
We'll know for the first time
If we're evil or divine
We're the last in line
Yeah
We're the last in line
See how we shine
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the last in
We're the first in line
Oh-oh
We're a ship without a storm
We're the cold inside the warm
We're the laugh
without the tear
We're the smile
without the mirror
We're the last in line
We're the last in line
We're the last in line
See how we shine
We're the last in line