Dio is God

DIO-- Dreamers Never Die

Directed by Don Argot and Demian Fenton

Starring Ronnie James Dio

2hrs 7minutes

Fuckin’ Dio, man…

Mark Maron said he couldn’t afford to watch any more documentaries because he ‘didn’t know how much time he had left.’ It’s true—some documentaries rob us of precious moments that we might otherwise have been present for. Hours we won’t get back. But others are worth the minutes, especially when Ronnie James Dio is the subject.

We’ve all seen this movie before. The format was boilerplate and even a little Burnsian at times. (Yes, that is a word. Normally I don’t take such brazen liberties with the language, but today being my birthday, I feel emboldened to make up the word Burnsian).

We’ve all seen these same talking heads head-talking in other docs about how much the subject influenced them and blew their mind when they were making a sandwich when they were 11. And they’re all in this film, too, with a notable exception: no Slash or Grohl. (DG does make an unfilmed cameo in the extra features after the credits. But his absence in the film proper is quite refreshing, and with only a couple of predictable exceptions, the interviews are killer.)

Like This is Spinal Tap (ironically and yes genuinely ironically) the best stuff is in the movie and the outs are not that interesting, except for the story of how Ronnie’s left thumb got cut off by a garden gnome and he picked it up (the thumb) and took it to the hospital to have re-attached, only they put it on backwards so much later he went back and had it re-detached and subsequently re-re-attached correctly. That was just Ronnie being Ronnie!

The schematics of his career were super interesting to see developed. He actually was a doo-wop singer in the actual 1950s, and he played bass too. My favorite Dio quote did not find its way into the film, but it is relevant considering his own complicated relationship with the bass guitar and with bass guitar players. “I was a bass player once,” he famously said. “But I got out of it.”

Absent from the movie entirely was any evidence to support the myth of Dio as tyrant. He was involved, for sure—the first one to arrive at a session and the last to leave. But he is portrayed in his own estate-commissioned epic—and rightly so—as a mere perfectionist and not an egoctopus or even particularly megalomaniacal. Frequently he is offered up as the victim, the earnest team player let down by the pitiful mortality of others.

A huge focus of the film’s message is on Dio the human. His breathtaking body of work precedes this film, of course-- and it is adequately represented in the footage. But the story RJD INC wished told was the story of what a great fucking guy Ronnie was. He would stand in the rain outside the bus and talk to fans until he was late to the next gig. He greeted them by name and remembered the names of the parents and pets. He genuinely cared about the people who cared about him.

Part of it was probably that he wanted to be Ronnie James Dio for as many minutes of the day as possible. I guess once you get on the bus there are fewer people to talk to about Ronnie James Dio. Dio liked being Dio.

There were some surprises. I always thought of Dio as the rock star who was far above such earthly delights as drugs and alcohol. But there are a lot of images of him not only drinking but actually smoking. And I know he liked grass, because Sheila Rene told me so. But he wore it well. So many of the testimonials referenced the ‘miles’ on his voice. He sang hard his entire adult life, from his teens practically until the morning of his death. One of my favorite passages from the film is with a recording engineer who made some of the later records. No, I can’t remember his name—thanks for asking. Anyway, he was talking about getting basics and Ronnie would be in the room singing while the band tracked. The engineer said ‘you know, Ronnie, we can just use your scratch vocal. You don’t have to keep doing the take.’ And Ronnie was like ‘fuck that, I’m Ronnie James Dio.’

Those years were hard ones for Ronnie, the ‘90s. The film is a bit clumsy with the portrayal of the historic transition between metal and grunge, but the point is made. One day the unsustainable and quite mad Frankenstein monster of Metal that MtV had created was King, just eating and fucking everything in sight. Then the Teen Spirit video came on and metal was outlawed, like that same day. The film actually shows the tapes being tossed into cardboard boxes for archiving at a secret underground lab in asthenosphere.

But through it all, Ronnie never flinched. He got dropped from his label and shuffled backup players. His marriage wasn’t amazing. Record sales plummeted relative to metal’s anti-relevance. But he took it for the team-- no one was ever more proudful or more metal than Dio. He’d come this far without writing a pop song and there was no reason to start now. Murray and the mechanical dragon might have shrunk as the ‘90s wore on, squeezing into smaller and smaller venues. But it was always RJD slaying the dragon with laser sword (literally) at the end of every show and there were always geeks in the alley to catch up with afterward.

I’m glad they made this film if only to remind me of what an important role Ronnie James Dio played in my own development. There was a time there right after Holy Diver came out that I listened to little else. I just toggled between that and the Sab & Rainbow records. I had a homemade pin that said Dio is God and Ronnie and I were very close. Ultimately we drifted apart and eventually I wasn’t even aware of the records he was releasing every five years, right on schedule-- each just as lovingly crafted as the last. Even if I wasn’t buying or even listening. Ronnie wasn’t doing anything different than he ever had, rather it was I who had changed. And that’s on me. Can’t say the same for Sebastian Bach.

By all means see this movie and don’t forget to turn it up!