How did you find Dio?

[Holymagica]

I will admit...I had never heard of Ronnie James Dio before until he was in Rainbow and I found Rainbow via my love for Deep Purple and mainly Ritchie Blackmore's music.
Of course I was so young at the time when Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow came out in 1975 and my pocket money was not being spent on records....I was only 9 years old it would be a few more years before I discovered the Aladdin's Cave or my local record shop but until then I would be hearing and listening to my older brothers music...they are 9 and 10 years older.
I got my first record player when I was 12
Not sure of the name but it had 2 speakers
Was made in England not Japan
Alot of record players had those built in speakers
Then for Christmas I told all of my family,aunts,uncles...I just want records for my Christmas presents..I was lucky had 5 uncles and 4 aunts of course I knew this would mean money becoz they would not know what to buy
The first record I owned was Deep Purple 'In the Rock'
For the next few years all I would buy would be Deep Purple,Whitesnake and Rainbow records.
I never had enough pocket money for buying records so I would start delivering newspapers to earn that little extra.The first time I heard Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow record I must have played it non stopped all afternoon.
Remember back then you had to turn the record over but I was a lazy sod that day,so it was Side One all day, which had the songs
"Man on the Silver Mountain"
"Self Portrait"
"Black Sheep of the Family"
"Catch the Rainbow"
From that afternoon I was hooked with Ronnie James Dio vocals.
I will always remember the day I found out in Sounds that Ronnie James Dio had left Rainbow and was in Black Sabbath!
I had never owned a Sabbath record until Ronnie joined the band.
There is something more I remember from my youth,the release of Holy Diver
I was 17 years old and was already a fan but that day I got the record a group of us gathered around a record player not knowing what to expect...I was a whole year older than my group of friends...I will never forget the look on their faces as "Stand Up and Shout" belted out of the record player
And when we heard DIO was playing in Glasgow the following year.
That same group of friends would get a mini bus to go through to Glasgow to see them play.I still not sure who drove the mini bus or how we went about it but we got to the concert.

[EivindFP]

well mine aren't as long I had been listening to AC/DC and Black Sabbath w/Ozzy and some bands like that for some time, until I heard of Tenacious D, I saw their movie, and was really impressed of Dio's vocals, and promised myself to check it out.

I forgot to do that ofcourse, but heard Time To Burn on the radio and fell in love with the music. One year later I heard that he was going to play in Oslo, I freaked out!

But later found out that it had a 18-year old age limit but I have been lucky enough to see him with H&H...

Just wish that he will tour more with Dio, so I can see them live

[DevinMacGregor]

At 10 my school offered music lessons. KISS's pyroshow had come to our elementary school for a demo. I wanted to play the drums. I was listening to KISS and to AC/DC. My parents were never into music. My Mom always said she was a Beatles fan but she only had one greatest hits album and no actual albums. A few years ago I bought her the complete Beatles. My Dad was a graphic artist and they listened to elevator music when he did his work. He as well worked at home so if we had the stereo on you had to sit right next to it to hear it which at times was even too loud for him.

After a big fight with my parents over the music lessons to which they said hell no over their dead bodies with my Mom throwing in why not the clarinet which prompted what must had looked like the face of death from me she retorted back angrily I supposed you want to play the electric guitar then. Well yeah. That was my second choice. I was 10 at the time and did not think to slide in what about an acoustic guitar as a compromise. I instead said fuck it. I stopped listening to music altogether. I got into wargaming and dungeons and dragons.

A few years started to pass and none of my friends were really into music still I entered high school and took drafting/architecture for electives all 4 years. We got to listen to the radio and I started to listen to music again. They played mostly KLOS 95.5. 10th grade came and I had friends that were into New Wave shit. I thought the chick from Berlin was hot but the music never felt right to me. My Dad bought this black box that allowed us to get ON TV. This is the days before cable for us flatlanders and when ON TV and Select TV both pay channels along with MTV competed. They all had their own boxes. On ON TV they showed Black N Blue. I was like who the fuck are those people? But I had to sit practically on the TV to hear it or the gestapo noise police would make a comment and then jump back farther away from the TV or the gestapo you are going to go blind sitting so close police would make a comment.

We were in a flood in the summer of 83. My Dad for some reason was more out of the house. We had no carpet. We had to rip it out after the flood and were waiting for the insurance company to approve coverage to replace the carpet. I had pulled the stereo around to the dining room and put a recliner next to it. I had some headphones. I was listening to 99.9 KOLA and this song kept coming on but I could never hear what the name of the artist was. Then I watch Black N Blue again and said hey that is the same dude. I brought friends over to confirm. They denied it was the same dude. So it became a mission to prove that that dude was the same dude that I heard on the raDIO.

I needed some serious catching up. I stopped eating lunches and just pocketed my lunch money. I then went bargain hunting and bought current and then bought all past albums of that band. I bought concert shirts, buttons, pins, patches, bandannas, etc. I was listening to KMET 94.7 The Mighty Met of Southern California almost 24/7. I had heard the song Man on the Silver Mountain before but I had never associated it with Dio. The Rainbow I new was the Rainbow after him. I bought Creem and Circus monthly to read all the interviews and know who was what and in what and what before. I don't think Hit Parader came out till I was in the army. I had stacks of all three that filled up another wall locker. The army made me throw them all out. In High School I was in Junior ROTC and in our backroom people would bring in their compilations of what they recorded off the raDIO. A friend got MTV. There were a few video shows on free TV but they played a wide gambit of things.

I had about 100 cassettes by the time I went active duty, all bought with lunch money. I had about 500 more when I left the army.
_________________
Smacks & Manly Thumps,

The Cap'n

Sons of Griogair


http://www.atheists.org
http://www.clangregor.org/famous.htm
http://www.merchco-online.com/metalbladerecords/
'S Rioghal Mo Dhream

[metal44]

Heaven & Hell. At that time I liked only Judas Priest, Led Zep and Pink Floyd. I bought a birthday gift to my brother: Steve Miller Band, the day before his birthday he said that was a terrible band. So I changed his gift and I got Heaven and Hell because of the name of the album and the cover.
As soon as I heard it i felt in love with Dio!!

[joan_antonini]

I found Dio on the radio we were coming home from a bar late at night and the disc jockey was playing Man on a Silver Mountain I can remember asking my friend who is this on the radio. This is a great song and what a great voice this guy has. After the song was over the disc jockey proceeded to say that the band was Rainbow. This is when I became hooked on Rainbow and Ronnie James Dio. In my opinion he is the best singer in rock was in the 70's and still is to this day!
_________________
If you wish hard enough you might be surprised what awaits you at the end of the rainbow!

[panayiotis1984]

[Parsifal]

I found Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow laying around unwanted in my Dad's vinyl pile. This was 1976, I was 9 going on 10. I thought because of the album cover it was a children's record.

From the first two songs, Man On the Silver Mountain and Self Portrait, I knew this was very much a "grown up"'s album. I never got over Rainbow, the band completely embedded itself in my life.
_________________
Catch the Rainbow

[berserkur]

I didn't find him...he found me.

I was at Wacken open air 2004 and was going to check him out( didn't know him much) and he blew me away

[Evil or Divine]

I found him thanks to my parents, all my family is fond of his music, so do I! But I really start to love his music 9 years ago (now I'm 20)

My dream is to see Dio with Rainbow on stage, but unfortunately, I was born too late! Grrrr

But I saw him on stage with H&H in 2007 (Graspop Metal Meeting - Belgium) and twice in 2009 (Hellfest & Casino de Paris - France)

The best gigs I ever attend to!!! and I realized my biggest dream by meeting him after the 2 shows in France!

(Sorry for my bad english, I'm French )
_________________
"Whenever you dream you're holding the key it opens the door to let you be free"

[Black_Kitty]

I saw the Rock'n'Roll Children video at a friend's place when I was about 14, I liked it and asked for more. So I received more... Then I realised I actually knew the singer, since my father is a Rainbow fan and we usually listened to Rainbow together before that. Yeah I know, pretty silly

[The Sinister Realm]

For me it was during his time in Black Sabbath. Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules era. I remember hearing those albums and falling in love with his voice. He was the ultimate metal singer! It was till a little later that I even realized he sang in Rainbow.
_________________
Sinister Realm-Traditional Metal
www.myspace.com/enterthesinisterrealm

[olivious the drummer]

1977.....my elder brother came home with an album called 'Rainbow on stage' and stuck it on the record player.........from the first note of the intro and on into 'Kill The King' I saw sold......lterally. Everything about those few minutes is etched in my mind.

Kill the king live is one of my favourite tracks ever - everything about it to me if perfection and from that moment I was hooked on getting as many albums with Ronnie James Dio as I could.....of course as a 7 year old I didnt have any cash but my brother was a keen music fan and kept on buying Rainbow stuff all the way through and then I got sabbath and Dio as they came along.

Ronnie has a voice that just 'gets' to me - his tone, his range, his delivery to me are just the most 'perfect' rock vocal that exists. I still love it even though it has changed and lost some of the original edge......but wow - he is the man!!!!

Ronnie - you are my musical hero and I thank you for all the wonderful years and memories you have given me.
_________________
Stand up and Shout!!!!!

[fiddlequeen07]

My introduction to Dio was rather serendipitous--I'll go so far as to say it had to have been fate! It happened in June 2007 (my parents never listened to Dio or his genre of music, so I missed out on many great years...) I had been dating this guy from one of my college classes, and one night he, his roommate, and I decided to hang out together at their apartment, to cook dinner and watch a movie. The roommate chose a movie for us--The Da Vinci Code--but as it happened, his probably less-than-legal Internet download of the movie didn't have working subtitles, so we couldn't really figure out what was going on.

So, the roommate had to make another choice. That second choice was (can you guess?) Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny. I had never heard of Tenacious D before that (apparently I grew up in a hole in the ground), and I was not a fan of Jack Black. But, I watched the movie, and I enjoyed it. Dio didn't make any real impression on me then--I didn't know who he was; I only gathered enough from the movie to figure he was a singer of some sort.

Anyway, two weeks later, I decided to go back and rent Pick of Destiny again. It was a 5-day rental, and I watched it 4 times in that span...that's when I got hooked on the movie. As you may know, Jack Black quotes a line of Holy Diver during one scene, so after I became a fan of the movie, I decided I needed to look in to this man Dio. So by December, for Christmas, I was asking for the Holy Diver album. I got both Holy Diver and The Very Beast of Dio--and I realized what I had been missing!

Little did I know then that I would have the unbelievable good fortune to see Ronnie James Dio live on stage with Heaven & Hell in August 2008 (Metal Masters Tour in Dallas, Texas) and then again in August 2009 (Albuquerque, New Mexico). I look forward to more shows in the future!

[meguto231]

i find dio in pick off destiny first and with black sabbath...

[ryuhi2]

I found Dio when I was 13. I was with my older brother in a record store (yes, records) and he said he was looking for the new Dio album, I asked who??? and he said "Dio? Ronnie James Dio? Black Sabbath? Rainbow?"

Well, The album turned out to be Last in Line, I listened to it with him and it was the greatest thing I ever heard. A few months later I was at the Rosemont Horizon (now Allstate Arena) near Chicago for my first ever concert, Dio and Dokken.....I've worshipped Ronnie ever since.....