When There’s Lightning: The Ronnie James Dio Story Ronnie James Padavona or Dio was born on July 10th, 1942 and started his way to fame. Dio made his name known as that he performed and sang in bands like Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow and his own project Dio. He is also most frequently cited as popularizing the metal horns hand gesture.
Ronnie Dio joined a band playing the bass guitar called The Vegas Kings. He was an excellent student and was offered a scholarship to Julliard School of Music, but didn’t pursue it because of the love for rock music. In the long run, Dio started initially to form their own band called Electric Elves. After shortening their name to Elf, Dio and the gang went on to record three studio albums and tour with Deep Purple where he met Ritchie Blackmore, with whom however later continue to form the critically acclaimed band Rainbow.
After recording three oft-hailed albums with Elf, Dio was recruited by Deep Purple’s guitarist Ritchie Blackmore for his project Rainbow. Rainbow released their self-titled debut album in 1975. After two more albums with the band, Rising and Long Live Rock ‘n’ Roll, and a live disc, Dio left Rainbow citing creative differences when Blackmore wanted to just take the band in a more commercial direction.
Dio later quit the band Rainbow and was wanted to replace Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath. Everyone including heavy metal news reporters desired to get them back on Tour. Ronnie then did two albums using them called Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules which cut back Black Sabbath. Later later on Dio started to have problem with some of the other band member on the mixing of their albums. He chose to cut his ties from the band and begin his or her own band named after himself Dio.
There is one other person who followed him from Black Sabbath, Vinnie Appice. This was the inspiration for the band. Holy Diver was launched as their debut album for the new band. They later released an overall total of 10 albums and Dio became the only original member when the band released their last album.
In the late 2000’s Dio started to tour once more with a number of his old band member and played all their old stuff. The band continue steadily to tour and played on doing a followup album, but then the bad news of cancer struck Dio. The stomach cancer was getting worse and Dio was no more able to continue to tour or record any more albums or songs. And on May 16, 2010 the stomach cancer would simply take Dio. The last recording from Dio was a song called Metal Won’t ever Die, also to this day that song still holds true.
