Dio: Dreamers Never Die
Dio: Dreamers Never Die
Directed: Don Argott, Demian Fenton
Produced: BMG
2022
Review by Chris Galea
8.5/10
“They’re your dreams to try to attain – I don’t tell you what you must do. I just provide safe avenues for you to go down.”
Dio might have seen himself as a conduit for our dreams but he was so much more than that. “Dio: Dreamers Never Die” celebrates the life of Ronald James Padavona, a.k.a. Ronnie James Dio, quintessential Heavy Metal singer and forger of dreams. The documentary examines the effect Dio has had not only on Metal music from an artistic perspective but also on individual lives. It does this through the testimony of family, musicians, friends… People who knew him and who bonded with his music.
The film goes back to the very beginning of Dio’s musical adventures and reveals how his childhood training as a trumpeter shaped his skills as a singer for the rest of his life. We learn about the tragedies that Dio had to face early in his career which he overcame through determination and a deep-held love for the music. As guitarist Don Dokken reminds us: “Ronnie was never about chasing chicks, for him it was always about the music.”
“Dreamers Never Die” contains lots of fascinating trivia on Dio’s life. Amazingly we get to hear the very first song he recorded back in 1957… Before the Beatles were even formed.
Dio didn’t just lay the template for Heavy Metal vocals. He also pioneered fantasy theatrics and lyrics that today are virtually inextricable from Metal. There’s an intriguing scene filmed in his home library where he says “This is one of my favourite places in the world because it contains words.”
The documentary delves into the strong bond Dio had with his fans, something that set him apart from his contemporaries. It also explains how Dio assimilated the ‘devil’s horns’ into Heavy Metal lore.
Of course “Dio: Dreamers Never Die” revisits the milestones of Dio’s musical career, i.e. the bands he joined or formed. This includes Rainbow, Black Sabbath and his solo band. As fans will be aware, he joined Black Sabbath twice – the second time under the Heaven & Hell moniker – and we get to understand how different the circumstances were in each case.
We also gain some insight on most of Dio’s solo albums. I was particularly fascinated by the story behind the artwork of his “Holy Diver” album.
On the other hand, when his “Sacred Heart” album came out, cracks started to appear within the bonds that held the band members together and sometimes you have to read between the lines to understand what really happened. This preceded the dark times of the 1990s when Heavy Metal experienced a slump in popularity and of course Dio was not immune to all that.
I remember watching the ‘Stars’ video on TV in the mid-1980s and the documentary gives us some background info on that project. It was a charity single co-ordinated by Dio and which featured the who’s who of the biggest names in Rock and Metal at the time… Yngwie Malmsteen, Geoff Tate, Rob Halford, Neal Schon, Brad Gillis and many more.
Of course the documentary covers Dio’s death, including the diagnosis and his last weeks alive. Mick Wall – author, Rock journalist and Dio biographer, shares quite a few insightful thoughts of that time. Eventually, he notes: “The music is what lets us know that Ronnie is alive and living with us.”
Perhaps if the documentary has one fault it’s that Dio comes across as too infallible and it would have been great to hear the views of musicians who might not have shared the same views of Dio and his wife.
As mentioned, a lot of musicians provide intriguing testimonies about Dio. This includes, among many others, Rob Halford, Roger Glover, Dave Feinstein (Dio’s cousin and ex-bandmate), Rudi Sarzo, Craig Goldie, Dan Lilker and Lita Ford. Frankly I failed to see why Jack Black was involved in the documentary. Sebastian Bach, on the other hand, provides an interesting idea that Dio’s best ever song was the last one he ever recorded (with Heaven & Hell).
Glenn Hughes is deterministic when describing Dio’s relationship with Metal: “It was all written in stone ages ago… he was supposed to be there… he was supposed to replace Ozzy with Black Sabbath… he was supposed to take that microphone… he was supposed to write “Heaven & Hell”…”
There are a number of heart-wrenching moments in the documentary, such as when the song ‘This is your Life’ (from the “Angry Machines” album) is discussed or when Lita Ford remembers when she received news of Dio’s death. But the most poignant moment is probably the final scene when Wendy Dio walks to Dio’s grave in silence and place flowers under his epitaph which reads: “The man on the silver mountain’.
