The 1983 song Ronnie James Dio wrote to put Black Sabbath behind him: “A statement of intent”
If you’d have told anyone following the rise of Black Sabbath in the early 1970s that the end of the decade would see the face of the band, Ozzy Osbourne, be deposed from his role as their frontman, many people would have looked at you with a sense of incredulous disbelief.
Obviously, he wasn’t the only part of the band who had a say in their direction, nor was he the only good thing about them, but to collectively decide to dismiss him felt like an extreme response that could have catastrophic consequences for the fate of the band. Where exactly could a band like Black Sabbath go without Osbourne, who had been part of an unchanged lineup since the band’s inception, and could they possibly evolve without people wanting things to return to how they were?
While many scoffed at the idea of Rainbow vocalist Ronnie James Dio being the chosen replacement, he proved to be more up to the task of replacing the Prince of Darkness than many could have predicted, even if he added his own flair to it rather than directly filling his shoes. The albums released immediately after his appointment, Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules, showcased an evolution into something new and were considerably better received than the last two under Osbourne’s reign, but things still weren’t exactly perfect.
That said, while the members of the band may have initially seen him as the ideal long-term replacement, eyebrows began to be raised at the overall compatibility of the new lineup, with Dio being at the centre of all of the issues that began to arise.
Drummer Bill Ward struggled to accept that the band were choosing to continue without their original frontman, and people quickly began to get weary of Dio’s insistence that he was able to direct the band however he wanted to and shoehorn in more of his own ideas. Ward would leave and be replaced by Vinny Appice, but Dio himself wouldn’t be far behind in exiting.
When he stormed out, naturally he started to lay down some of his own ideas that Sabbath had rejected, evidently frustrated at the fact that he’d not been given the freedom he desired to, and one particular hit of note that he released with his eponymous group, Dio, in 1983, was made specifically for him to be able to cast his expulsion from the band out of his mind.
Speaking to Classic Rock in 2005, he said that ‘Holy Diver’ was one of the first things he turned his attention to after going out on his own. “This was a song I’d written between leaving Sabbath and putting my band together,” he claimed. “I went into my little studio, which at that time was nothing more than a room with a Revox in it, and wrote ‘Holy Diver’.”
He continued, noting how he felt immediately prepared when it came to assembling a group around him to perform. “When it came time for us to rehearse in England, where we found Vivian [Campbell] and Jimmy [Bain], luckily that was one of the songs that I could present to them,” he added. “It was a statement of intent for us at that early stage.”
While Black Sabbath were left in the lurch by Dio, and still struggling to find their feet after having parted company with Osbourne, Dio himself seemingly flourished. Granted, he probably shouldn’t have ever found himself in the position of trying to become an integral part of a band who had already existed with their own clear identity, but at least he managed to make it work for him eventually, rubbing it in the faces of those who had dismissed him.
