The singer Rob Halford said would last for “100 years”
In the big book of rock and roll, Rob Halford has a much better case for being the epitome of all things heavy metal.
While the genre had been around in its primal form for years before he suited up in Judas Priest, the act of using denim and leather as a de facto uniform in the genre was pioneered by what he did first. He exemplified everything great about what metallic bombast should be, but the true testament to any good frontman is about what happens when they unleash that scream.
And while Ozzy Osbourne had an impressive shout on him in Black Sabbath’s early days, Halford deserves to be in the same conversation as people like Pavarotti. His voice has become one of the most impressive instruments in metal music, and even for someone in their 70s, the fact that Firepower sounded so great in the 2010s is a feat of human strength that doesn’t really seem possible.
Then again, metal is all about making the impossible feats that no one dared to make. No one imagined that someone like Eddie Van Halen would come along in the late 1970s or Freddie Mercury would become the ultimate version of a showman, but when it came to metal, Halford was only a mere suggestion of where rock and roll could go.
He had clearly studied under the other screamers that came before him like Robert Plant and Ian Gillan of Deep Purple, but when Ritchie Blackmore left Purple in the 1970s, there was bound to be a lot more magic when hearing Rainbow for the first time. Because long before Sabbath were in need of a new singer, Ronnie James Dio was introduced to the world with the greatest set of pipes anyone could have dreamed of.
Whereas Halford was more about approaching his craft almost like an opera singer, Dio’s voice was pure muscle half the time. It was almost comical seeing this humongous voice coming out of this tiny human being, but when listening to tunes like ‘Stargazer’, there was no doubt that he could go toe-to-toe with anyone in the rock sphere and still sound like one of the most commanding presences in the world.
And even if Dio succumbed to cancer in the 2000s, Halford knew that his voice would be ringing out for generations to come, saying, “His voice is still with us. As it always will be, and the power and honesty in it will always give me a thrill and a chill. As a fellow singer, his standalone voice means everything, possessing such uniqueness with instant recognition — 10 years or 100 years, it doesn’t really matter. Ronnie and all we love about him is eternal.”
Although Halford could definitely boast that kind of credential as well, what makes Dio’s voice so timeless is how much gusto he put into everything. A lot of his lyrics had to do with incredibly abstract subjects or tales of mythical creatures, so having the audience imagine what it was like to fight off the most formidable foes in musical fiction would be a lot more interesting than the standard love song everyone would get sick of.
Halford certainly did his fair share of shrieking over the most gargantuan riffs possible, but there’s a good chance that Dio could have made an easy listening record and still sounded like one of the biggest musical giants in the world. The voice may have been taken too soon, but it’s impossible to make people forget the way they felt listening to ‘Rainbow in the Dark’ for the first time.
