The vocalist Slash called “one of my favourite singers of all time”
Slash has never had the smoothest relationships with the singers he’s worked with. While he’s found stable ground during his solo career collaborating with artists like Myles Kennedy, his time working with Axl Rose and Scott Weiland was marked by intense dynamics. The guitar legend has often found himself at odds with frontmen who are the direct opposite of his laid-back onstage demeanour. However, Slash was never one for subtlety either, as evidenced by his admiration for Ronnie James Dio, whom he considered one of the finest singers he had ever heard.
Because for as much as he’s indebted to pure rock and roll, Slash has always been an avid fan of heavy metal. While Guns N’ Roses always fit in the realm of hard rock in the vein of Aerosmith and the later Rolling Stones, it wasn’t out of the question for him to come up with a riff in the style of Metallica or listen to the best of Black Sabbath or Van Halen in his spare time.
Despite being more indebted to blues rock, Slash wasn’t that far away from the same foundation that Tony Iommi had started with when putting together Sabbath. By the time the 1980s rolled around, though, the group were adrift after ditching Ozzy Osbourne until Dio gave them the kick in the ass that they needed.
While the difference between him and Osbourne was night and day, that wasn’t necessarily a drawback. If anything, Dio had a far greater range than his predecessor, and since the focus had shifted to newer heavy acts like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, Heaven and Hell was made even more epic because of what he contributed to tracks like ‘Neon Knights’.
It was hard to make out what Dio was talking about every time he sang, but with each line, he could paint subtle pictures in your mind, from the tortured voice on the title track to eventually moving onto his solo career and going full Dungeons and Dragons on tracks like ‘Holy Diver’. Still, no one could argue with anything he was saying the minute that immense voice came out of that tiny man.
Even with years removed from his death, Slash thought that no one came close to what Dio could do with his voice, saying, “Ronnie was awesome, one of my favourite singers of all time. It only seems like yesterday that he died. He was a true gentleman [and] one of the nicest, unassuming rock stars you’ll ever meet.”
Though Slash never got the chance to work alongside Dio, it’s easy to see where he could have fit into some of his solo work. After all, the round-robin singers behind Slash’s debut solo outing in 2010 meant everyone shaping his riffs into something new, so if Ozzy Osbourne could turn in a performance on ‘Crucify the Dead’, why couldn’t Dio lend a hand to tracks like, say, ‘Nothing to Say’ instead of M Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold?
We’ll probably never know what Dio could have done with Slash backing him up, but what he did give us during this lifetime was a manual on how every metal singer should approach their vocals. It didn’t always make for the most subtle performance, but when someone has chops like this, there’s no way they’re going to sit around crooning ballads for the rest of their lives.
