Was Ronnie James Dio fired for betraying Black Sabbath?
Black Sabbath recently played their final ever show. It brought to a close the legacy of one of the greatest heavy metal bands on the planet.
The show was equal parts emotional and epic, as Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Bill Ward all came together to play one final show for the fans who have stood by them their entire career.
Of course, while those fans certainly rejoiced in watching Sabbath perform one final time, they are also well aware of the fact that things haven’t been that harmonious for their entire career. While Ozzy Osbourne is renowned for being the formidable frontman of Black Sabbath and is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time, things haven’t always been smooth sailing between him and his bandmates.
Osbourne really leaned into the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll side of being in a band, to the point that his chaotic lifestyle began to impede the band. They tried to work through it, but it didn’t work out, and Osbourne was eventually kicked out of the band.
Black Sabbath wound up having a range of different singers, and while all were good, the only one who came close to Ozzy Osbourne was Ronnie James Dio. While other members of the band would likely agree with this sentiment, they wouldn’t have agreed when Dio first joined the band. It was, to put it lightly, a nightmare, and that nightmare then led to the production of some poor Sabbath albums.
The first album that Dio worked on with the band was Heaven and Hell. This is by no means a bad Sabbath album, but Dio seems to be holding back somewhat, unwilling to fully throw himself into the record. When talking about the album, Iommi said that he thinks Dio struggled with the idea of filling Osbourne’s shoes.
“Ronnie was very excited about joining the band,” he said, “But I think it was difficult for him to fill Ozzy’s shoes.”
So what happened?
Sabbath decided to do a live album, as it was during the live shows when the power of Dio’s voice really came into its own. As such, they started working on Live Evil, but this album would prove to be the one that caused Dio to leave the band. The problem was one of supposed betrayal, as Iommi and Geezer Butler thought that Dio was making changes to the album when they weren’t in the studio.
“By the time we came to mix it, me and Tony would go in in the daytime and fix bits, and make sure everything was working,” said Butler, “And then apparently Ronnie would go in after that and change it to what he thought it was going to sound like. And me and Tony go in the next day and go, ‘What the hell’s going on? It didn’t sound anything like it did yesterday’. And the engineer eventually said that Ronnie kept coming in and changing everything.”
It transpired that Dio hadn’t been making these changes, but the singer was so frustrated that the two had been telling people he was going behind the band’s back, he decided to leave. The live album was released and does clearly show good his voice is, which fans would be able to appreciate once again when he rejoined the band almost ten years later.
The second run with Sabbath proved much more successful, cementing Dio as one of the most legendary Black Sabbath singers ever.
