Seitz. Writes.

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. … Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
- John Dunne “Meditation XVII”

“Between the velvet lies
There’s a truth that’s hard as steel
The vision never dies
Life’s a never ending wheel”
- Ronnie James Dio “Holy Diver”

If you haven’t heard yet, Ronnie James Dio died this morning at age 67. The cause of death hasn’t been announced, but he’s been battling stomach cancer since last year. Until that’s confirmed though, I’m just going to assume that the real cause was dragons. Those bastards.

There’s always a tendency to inflate a celebrity’s death into something more than it is, or to turn it into a personal thing. I’m certainly guilty; when Hunter S. Thompson’s died it put me into a real funk for a few weeks. It’s always terrible when anyone dies, and when it’s someone who’s made a major impact in a lot of lives, it’s easy to treat it as a big thing. But I don’t think that’s fair.

We, by which I mean pretty much all heavy metal fans, will remember Dio for the music we love. He’s in that rarefied echelon of artists whose influence can be seen in almost everyone who came after him. He’s absolutely one of the best vocalists of all time, and he helped define the style and substance of the entire genre. When we say things are “metal,” we’re saying it’s something Dio would have done.

He also popularized the devil horns, which is almost on par with inventing the high five.

In a world where most frontmen are histrionic man-children, from Ozzy Osbourne to David Lee Roth to Axl Rose and anyone else you can name, Dio stands out for never trying to be bigger than the music. Sure, he had the outrageous costumes and over-the-top videos (see below), but that always felt fun.

I guess my point with all this is that Dio never needed to be anything more than what he was in life, so let’s not make him something more in death. I’m just gonna crank up Holy Diver and rock out the way he would have wanted.

Tags: death, dio, Hunter S. Thompson, Metal, You're the star of the masquerade
Filed under: Music