“Too poppy”: The song Ronnie James Dio will always regret
Black Sabbath‘s formula was always going to work, whether they realised it or not at the time. Tony Iommi’s guitar style, Geezer Butler’s mimicking basslines, and Ozzy Osbourne’s iconic voice—their satanic and deadly sound—were always going to take the world by storm. They were the product of their surroundings, and every single member contributed a great deal to what people loved the most.
With this being the case when Ozzy Osbourne was originally kicked out of the band due to his drug and alcohol problems getting in the way of their productivity, it begged the question as to whether or not Black Sabbath would be able to keep going. How do you replace an iconic voice like Osbourne in a way that fans will accept? It’s something that Black Sabbath tried to do on multiple occasions, but their most successful attempt was when they started working with Ronnie James Dio.
It wasn’t just Osbourne’s voice that people were so drawn to, but his charisma as well. He was so well-liked that they ended up making a TV show where the whole purpose was simply following him around. It was hard for singers to come into Black Sabbath and connect with fans in the same way, but Dio came very close. People still debate who the greatest frontman was, and the jury is still out.
What made Dio such a good candidate for the band? The first is that his sense of humour fit in well with what Sabbath was doing. Because some of their songs had quite demonic themes, they were often protested at gigs. Dio experienced this firsthand when he started touring with Sabbath. At a show on Easter Sunday, people with bibles turned up at the venue and stopped them playing.
Dio already found this kind of outrage funny, which is why, on his debut solo album, he included a hidden message. He knew how many people were playing records backwards in the interest of discovering something sinister.
“I’ll tell you what, all the satanic stuff – nothing really went down, but when we made Holy Diver, Ronnie and I – we were talking, I said, ‘Hey, why don’t we put something backward on the record?’” said drummer Vinny Appice, who worked with Dio. He added: “Because everybody thinks that there’s stuff there that’s all subliminal on these albums. He goes, ‘Yeah, yeah’. So if you listen to ‘Shame on the Night’, the last track on Holy Diver, on the fade-out, there’s a thing, it’s Ronnie backward saying, ‘crucify the diver’.”
There’s even more evidence as to why Dio was such a good fit for Sabbath on the Holy Diver album. While it might be a solo record, his qualities as a singer and a frontman protrude on every track. It’s considered by many to be his best work and is a loved album by Metalheads worldwide. That being said, despite its success, there is one track on the album that Dio always regretted including, which is ironic, given it ended up being one of the most popular tracks on the record: ‘Rainbow in the Dark’.
“We almost didn’t do it. I mean, that was a jam, ‘Rainbow in the Dark’, even the beginning – I recorded it, I was always in charge of recording the tapes, and I hit it, and we just hit record,” said Appice, “And then that feeling was there, and I came in the next day, said, ‘Listen, this is cool’, and, ‘I know a couple of girls heard the riff, I played it for them, and they liked it’. […] It’s like, ‘That’s a good sign’. Ronnie didn’t want to do it, he thought it was too poppy, but then we kept working on it, and that was the biggest hit.”
