As with any great hero’s story, there are moments in Ronnie Dio’s remarkable life where you can only wonder if he can overcome yet another travail and reach the elusive prize. Although as Dio biographer and Classic Rock contributor Mick Wall (who does a very good job here of helping pin together Dio’s disparate story) reminds us, getting three bites of the cherry in the music business never happens. Until it does.
From doo-wop crooner to certified rock star, the Ronnie Dio story is one that if you pitched it to a Hollywood studio – juvenile delinquent finds solace in music, changes the world – you’d get escorted off the lot. It’s all true, though, not least his losing a best friend and contemporary in the Electric Elves when a drunk driver hit their car head-on and almost took Dio’s life too. Although that was the spark that set the fire that would become the band Elf that would eventually
