Ronnie James Dio - Rainbow in the Dark

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

Rainbow in the Dark:

The Autobiography

2021 by Niji Entertainment Group Inc.

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-974-3

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-975-0

Cover design by Jeff Chenault / eleven07.com

Cover photo by Neil Zlozower/Atlasicons

Interior design and composition, Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

This is a work of nonfiction. All people, locations, events, and situations are portrayed to the best of the authors memory.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Permuted Press, LLC

New York Nashville

permutedpress.com

Published in the United States of America

For Wendy
and all my wonderful friends
and fans.

Contents

by Wendy Dio

W hen Ronnie first began writing this book his intention was that it would have no end. The cancer that would eventually overcome him had not yet struck, and as far as he was concerned, the future was still full of promise.

That was the Ronnie James Dio I first fell in love with and later marriedan unstoppable force of nature for whom all things were possible, even when fate appeared to conspire against him. You might say, especially when fate appeared to conspire against him.

As you will discover from reading his extraordinary story, Ronnie was a born fighter. Tell him something could not be done; he would move heaven and earth to prove that it could. Once Ronnie set his sights on something, he rarely, if ever, missed the target. So it was with his autobiography. Even after he became ill in 2009, he was determined to leave behind a written record. As with his lyrics, everything was handwritten. He never used a computer. He had beautiful handwriting and would write out his memories, then pass me the pages, which I would have my assistant type up.

Ronnie was always a voracious reader and a born storyteller. He could make you laugh until tears ran down your face. And he could make you jump and cry with some of the stories of the desperately hard times he lived through to finally make his dream come true.

If Ronnies rich and imaginative lyrics were his poetry, this book became his personal valediction, written from the heart, playing no favors, just telling it, because that was always Ronnies wayhis code.

Ronnie had gone deep as far as the Rainbow years before his encroaching illness forced him to slow the pace. At that point, he began writing notes and planning out how the rest of the book would go. I was able to help him sketch out his thoughts and memories almost up to the present. Whenever we discussed it, Ronnie was insistent that the story he ultimately wanted to tell was one of hope triumphing over despair, how joy and positivity, magic and light, will always overcome the dark. Never be afraid of the nightdawn is always on the horizon.

After Ronnies death in 2010, the plan was to publish his memoirs as soon as possible. It didnt happen then because, at that moment, with my heart broken, I just couldnt face working on something so deeply personal to him. I always planned to help bring it to its rightful conclusion one day. It was the least Ronnie deserved. His story simply had to be heard.

Ronnie was a great believer that the right time for something will always make itself obvious if you can just be patient for the universe to reveal its truths to you.

Ronnie and I first met Mick Wall in 1980 when he was the UK publicist for Black Sabbath, working to promote the Heaven and Hell album, the one Ronnie considered his best with the band. Mick was only twenty, and he later laughingly told me how scared he was of Ronnie at the time, but it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the two. By the time Ronnies post-Sabbath band Dio had exploded onto the scene, Mick was a familiar face. Hed gone on to become a legendary music writer and presenter of some great TV and radio shows, including a memorable at-home-with-the-stars-style TV documentary where he hung out at our house, playing pool with Ronnie, drinking beer with us at Ronnies English-pub-style home bar, and wandering around looking at suits of armor and Ronnies vast collection of antique and gothic artifacts.

In the mid-90s, Mick returned to being Ronnies PR in London. And in 1998 he became the creative editorial force behind the launch and subsequent huge success of Classic Rock magazine. It was while receiving the Metal Guru award at the 2006 Classic Rock awards in London that Ronnie renewed his friendship with Mick.

When a few years ago Mick inquired whether I was ready to start thinking about getting Ronnies memoir off the ground, it was the beginning of a long conversation over many months and, eventually, years. Having had time since Ronnies passing to finally put together a proper archive of his interviews over the course of his career, from thousands of newspapers, magazines, TV and radio appearances, and a ton of other stuff where he was being interviewed at length, first for videos we released, or later added as extras for various CDs and DVDs, sifting through and cataloguing a lifetime of incredible photos, stories and other personal mementoes, and, of course, his original notes and unfinished manuscript, we started our journey of finishing the book you now hold in your hands.

Holding the folders containing all the original handwritten pages, all the scrupulous notes and scattered thoughts, all the old computer printouts, was a powerful reminder of how important it was to make this book happen the way Ronnie had always planned it. I knew I would need help. Mick was the obvious choice. He had known Ronnie for thirty years and was clearly the best writer and editor I could get to work on the book. He didnt let us down, doing honor to Ronnies incomparable story, first of all, then to the fans and me.

Mick was able to reconstruct the original draft of Ronnies words and help flesh them out, where appropriate, by adding some of Ronnies words from other sources, including his own cavernous archive, which holds many long and deep conversations with Ronnie over the many years they knew each other.

As anybody that ever spoke to him will testify, Ronnie liked to talk. Try shutting him up! Opinions on every subject under the sun! What didnt he know about? At the same time, Ronnie loved just hanging out with the fans, listening to what they had to say. From long before he became famous right up to his dying day, three legendary rock bands and over 150 million albums sold behind him, Ronnie would talk to people all day and all night, and still go out and sing better than any other rock singer youve ever heard.

Whenever Ronnie and I talked about where the book should end, he was adamant that this first memoir should end in 1986, on the very night Dio headlined Madison Square Garden. Ronnie was just a few weeks shy of his forty-fourth birthday that magical June night. He had headlined the Garden twice before with Sabbath, but this was his first headlining show there under his own namea momentous occasion for the boy from Upstate New York who had dreamed of seeing his name in lights at the citys most famous arena since he was a teenager. It became the crowning glory of Ronnies career. Literally and figuratively his dream come true. I was with him that night, as his wife, his manager, but most of all as his biggest fan. I knew what this show meant to him. He had finally climbed to the top of the highest mountain, against all odds, entirely on his own terms. As he put it that night, If my life ended tomorrow, it wouldnt matter. This is as good as it gets for me.