Ronnie James Dio needs little introduction, a powerhouse vocalist and before he was cruelly taken from us in July 2010 after losing a battle with stomach cancer, he’d sung alongside and fronted some of the very best heavy rock bands around. With a CV which included stints in Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Heaven & Hell, before fronting his eponymously named band. Few can point to one better.
‘Live’ at Donington 1983 is of course a reissue and it features a stunning performance from a band who, at the time, were still riding high on the strength of their debut album, Holy Diver. As a band, they’d not been around too long and had already lost guitarist Jake E Lee, who’d left to join Ozzy’s band after the tragic loss of Randy Rhoads. The two other musos, Jimmy Bain (bass) and Vinny Appice (drums) were already seasoned veterans, as was Dio himself, but new guitarist Vivian Campbell was only 22 and was about to be thrown in at the deep end because this set constituted Dio’s first-ever performance in the UK.
What a performance they gave. Despite coming onstage early afternoon, the band was on fire throughout their whole set and certainly justified their place on a bill with some top-named acts. Opening with ‘Stand Up And Shout’, the pace never relented with this fast, throbbing driving opener, with Ronnie Dio screaming ‘You got the power, stand up and shout.’ This was followed by the slightly slower but no less forceful ‘Straight Through The Heart’.
They then slow the pace down for a version of Sabbath’s ‘Children Of The Sea’, which showed Dio could play with panache as well as fury. After a mercifully short drum solo, Dio teases the audience with a two-minute burst of Rainbow’s classic song, Stargazer, which wasn’t quite Rainbow’s symphonic version, though this short burst made me wonder why we didn’t get the whole thing. After a short guitar solo, it’s a lengthy powerful version of ‘Heaven & Hell’ before it’s back to Rainbow for a six-minute ‘Man On The Silver Mountain’, with a little flash of ‘Starstruck’ in the middle before a lively set concludes.
Dio and his comrades left their mark on an afternoon which included names like ZZ Top and Whitesnake, and they set a standard they maintained all throughout their careers. Holy Diver would prove to be Dio’s most successful album, and it’s just a pity they didn’t perform more of it at Donington. But, as this set suggests, what we did get was pretty damn good.
