Dio’s Black Sabbath Is the Best Black Sabbath

The Deep End #30

What I’m about to say should shock no one. Ronnie James Dio is the best singer Black Sabbath ever had. Wait, he’s the best singer (I’m sorry Billy Corgan) rock music has ever had—ever. I’m serious. You can disagree, but I know I’m right and I know you know I know I’m right. I mean seriously, his songs are epic. Holy Diver is a perfect album and the three Rainbow albums he was on are masterpieces. However, nothing, and I mean nothing, showcases the brilliance that was Dio quite like his time with Black Sabbath. (For the purposes of this piece, I’m counting the Heaven & Hell band as Black Sabbath, which they were anyway.)

I was first introduced to Dio (the man, not the band) when I was 22. I had been a Black Sabbath fan for a few years without ever thinking to venture into their post-Ozzy stuff. The first of his songs I heard was “Children of the Sea” (the first he had written with Sabbath), and I quickly realized that that Ronnie James Dio guy was pretty good. From “Children of the Sea” I discovered a second Dio-led Sabbath song, “I”. No matter how many times I listen to it that song still blows me away. Those two songs quickly became my top two favorite Black Sabbath songs. (Don’t worry, Tony Martin, “The Shining” ironically and then unironically has remained in the top ten.) Still, for whatever reason I had not thought to dive deeper.

Then I got married. Actually, it was two days before my wedding—October 16^th to be exact. I was listening to “Children of the Sea” on my way to work when Spotify gave me a gift. That song ended and majestic acoustic guitar picking flooded my speakers. The smart shuffle feature chose “Sign of the Southern Cross” to randomly come up next and I was completely blown away. It was the first time I heard one of the songs from Mob Rules and the fourth Dio-sung song I had ever heard.

HOLY SHIT was an understatement. Before then, I had jokingly mentioned Dio as having the best Sabbath songs Black Sabbath had to offer, but this gave a whole new meaning to the argument. My immediate response to the discovery was to perform an internet deep dive. I needed to know more. My mind was spinning; that was genius-level stuff. Within a few hours between breaks, chugging away at my desk, I had found out everything there ever was to know about Ronnie James Dio. I liked what I found. How could I not? He was raised in the upstate New York town I used to binge drink in when visiting my friends in college, he was of Sicilian ancestry (which admittedly instantly earned him a few extra notches of respect from me), and the consensus on him was that he was an absolute ROCK GOD.

“Wait, what’s Holy Diver?” I said as I clicked Dio’s (the band) debut album. By the time the last chord was struck on the album’s closer I was a full convert, a Dio-sciple if you will.

Thus marked the beginning of a beautiful relationship between me, Melissa, and the vocalist. I listened to the Holy Diver album six times in two days leading up to the wedding (sprinkled in with Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, and Dehumanizer). During that time, Melissa and I hadn’t seen each other. She had left her fiancé one day only to unknowingly marry the world’s biggest Ronnie James Dio fan just two days later. Then Holy Diver became the soundtrack of our honeymoon. I think we listened to the album thirty times front-to-back across the entire road trip. If you haven’t heard it, go listen to it now and report back. If you don’t have time for the entire album, may I suggest the holy trinity?¹

Anyway, the point is this. The Black Sabbath albums with Dio singing are their best—by far. It makes sense, too. After Ozzy got fired from Black Sabbath in 1979 the band was at a crossroads. Enter Ronnie James Dio. Because of the sheer greatness of Dio’s voice, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler could do nothing but push their own performances to new heights to match the level of power that came barreling out of their new singer’s throat.

In my Dio-laden stupor, I stumbled across an interview with him from the late-ninties. During the interview, he was shown covers of albums he was a part of to get him to comment on them. When his Black Sabbath albums appeared, Dio shook his head and said they blew the chances of, “the best band that ever could have been.” I couldn’t agree more. Seriously, songs like “I”, “Die Young,” “Heaven and Hell,” “Bible Black,” and “Sign of the Southern Cross” easily beat any of the Sabbath hits with Ozzy Osbourne fronting.

Dio’s resume is impressive. Throughout his career he fronted the bands Elf, Rainbow (whose albums stand up to any Led Zeppelin albums of their era), Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven & Hell (consisting of the lineup from the Mob Rules/Dehumanizer era Black Sabbath). He was the guy that made the horn hand gesture popular in heavy metal.

Fun fact: he picked up the gesture from his Sicilian grandmother’s use of the corno (horns) which is used to ward off the malocchio “evil eye,” which my family and I still do to this day in case we sense some bad vibes coming our way. (Like right now to any haters reading this. Nice try, Melissa.) But as impressive as that resume is, I can only imagine how much greater it could have been had he, Iommi, and Butler been able to look past their differences to keep making incredible music. They broke up after only two albums in the early eighties and reunited briefly for Dehumanizer in 1992 before disbanding again. Oh, what could have been. I mean, “Bible Black” was their last single together and that song is epic. Their final reunion, which was supposed to last forever, was equally short-lived as Dio tragically died of stomach cancer in May 2010, two months before a new European tour was supposed to have begun. Dio was just 67 years old at the time of his death.

Pictured: Dio’s signature horns

My obsessive fandom aside, I was really bothered to find out that Dio’s life was cut so short, right as it seemed like all the pieces were falling back into place for him. His star had faded a bit in the early 2000s, and Heaven & Hell’s massive tour and success had them planning a second album to be recorded in 2010. Meanwhile, Dio had plans for at least two more Dio albums. How much great music did we miss out on from him being taken from us so early? It was a travesty! I couldn’t get over it and found myself saying what a shame it was that he died so young almost every time I listened to one of his songs.

That’s when it hit me. On Thinking Man, some of you may know I have made mention of my grandfather (my mom’s dad) who has passed away a few years ago. But I shamefully rarely have mentioned, if at all, my grandmother (my dad’s mom) who died when I was 13 in May of 2010 just a few months after she had turned 68. Does that sound familiar? It should. Ronnie James Dio and my Nonna Maria were both born in 1942 and died seven days apart from each other in May 2010. While the rock world mourned the loss of an icon, my family mourned the loss of a matriarch. I’m sure I saw the news mention his death during that tumultuous time, and I’m sure there were people at my grandmother’s wake (she had a big one) who at the very least knew who Dio was and that he had just died. Thinking of this sent my mind off the rails a bit. As a new Dio-fanboy, I couldn’t get over the fact that my grandmother and him were both: Sicilian, born in 1942, died in 2010, and both used the horns on a daily basis. The only difference being that I thought his death was tragic and had thought Nonna’s was to be expected. What a POS, right?

Don’t get me wrong. I have great memories of her, and many of her weird quirks were passed down straight to me, for better or worse. What gets me is this. My grandmother had been in poor health for as long as I could remember. I’m sure that at the time my little thirteen-year-old brain thought of her as being an old lady. As sad as it was for her to have passed, it was what happened to old people, right? Wrong.

The tragedy of losing Dio so young has kind of convoluted my brain. If Dio was planning new albums and tour dates at the time of his death that meant he was certainly not old when he died, which means neither was Nonna, which means that 67 isn’t old. So, when does someone get old? Maybe never. Life is weird like that. You could be making albums at 70 or knitting blankets for your kids at 55 or writing books in your late eighties. You could be here one day and gone the next. All this means is one thing; dying, no matter what age, is always a tragedy. I say all this as I sit at Nonna’s dining room table, watching her 87-year-old husband who just came home from the hospital after we almost lost him. He’s still kicking; Dio and Nonna aren’t. All this tells me is that we just have to appreciate the time we have with whoever we have. When they are gone, be thankful for what they left behind, be it great music or great memories.

So yeah, I might have gotten a bit off track, but that’s the story. Dio is the best Black Sabbath singer, and due to some insane cosmic coincidence, his music reminds me of my nonna, which I’m sure isn’t something either her or my dad would be particularly happy about.

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1. Listen to Holy Diver, Gypsy, and Caught in the Middle back to back to back the way God, and Dio, meant it to be. What was that? Dio means God in Italian? Whatever, I think you know who I’m talking about.