You know, I always seem to have a difficult time wrapping my head around the death of any one of the few celebrities I follow. I think I perceive them more as an undying icon than a human being… I dunno. In the case of a singer in particular, it’s difficult for me to listen to their music and not think of them as still, as forever alive, and sometimes I have to remind myself that, no, I will never meet him.
At the first and only concert I ever attended, last August, I saw Ronnie James Dio just months before he was diagnosed with the cancer that finally killed him yesterday. And though his death couldn’t really be called unexpected, it still seems really strange and almost incredible to me. I mean, I made metal horns at this guy. From 1/3 of the way up the amphitheater, sure, but still… my first metal-horns-at-a-concert experience with the guy that invented metal horns… and now he’s dead. And I’m not. Huh.
I learned that he died on Sunday. The night before, I was dragging people into singing “Holy Diver” while I backed them up. I’m not sure if that’s a strange coincidence, as I always want people to sing that, but it seemed fitting when I learned.
You know, during my first term in my recently-completed program, we tried every day to get our teacher to demonstrate her famous Michael Jackson moonwalk imitation… and the day we finally got her to do it was the day he died.
Such coincidences are never really all that significant, of course, but always interesting to look back on.
When friends of mine tried to get me into heavy metal, they gave me Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio songs. They told me he was the God of metal. I’ve never seen or heard anything to make me think that isn’t true. He was a great performer. I remember him once saying that he put on a huge spectacle at his shows because the fans deserved more than just what they could get from listening to an album.
To this day, one of his concerts was the only time I ever stood in the first row to see someone perform. It was AMAZING.
From all I’ve read today from various people who knew him, he was a class act. That’s something a lot of performers today could learn from.
At that concert last year, he started out by giving a general “here’s why I love Denver” greeting as I understand many artists do at concerts. It sounded so fake and contrived, it made me laugh. But then later when he was talking about how great his fans were and how much he owed them and everything he’d like to do for them, it seemed so genuine and legitimate I totally believed he was being sincere.
As a matter of fact, corny greeting aside (well, or perhaps even included XD), everything he said at that concert gave me the impression that he was a really nice guy — which kindof surprised me, since I’d rather expected a metal singer to get up and just yell obscenities at the audience or something XD