THE VIDEO Dio, "Holy Diver," Holy Diver, 1983, Reprise
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SAMPLE LYRIC "Holy div-uh! / you've been down too long in the midnight seeea / oh what's be-commmm-ing of me"
THE VERDICT When I first heard that Ronnie James Dio had passed, this was the first song I put on. There are so many great ones I could have picked -- "Turn Up the Night," "Man on the Silver Mountain," "Rainbow in the Dark" just to name a few -- but "Holy Diver" was the one I wanted. Maybe it's all the confusing Biblical imagery (I think the holy diver is meant to be Jesus?), maybe it's the sort of dark march feeling the song has, probably also it's the amazing video. Because seriously, this video is outstanding.
Yes, the beginning is kind of just trees. But the second the guitar starts in, and you see that old burned out cathedral, you know this will be awesome. Dio has a big ol' sword, and he's fighting a creepy medieval dude who's wearing a tiger skin and swinging a giant axe. Dio just rolls up like it's NBD, hits him once, and moves on.
Then we get the demon in front of stock footage of a volcano erupting -- I'm sorry, I love this. It keeps cutting in the whole time, and sometimes Dio sings in front of it, which looks awesome. I am filled with regret at not buying the Dio "Holy Diver" back patch I remember seeing years back -- the demon is so badass. As is the stock footage of a volcano erupting. I feel like this is where South Park get their vision of what hell looks like. After all, they did feature this song extensively in their episode about home schooling!
Dio keeps walking through the cathedral, which is full of smoke, rats, and fire. He passes a vaguely S&M-looking blacksmith, who's working on making an even bigger sword. He throws it to Dio, who fully catches it, then heads into a new room where there's a crow on a perch a la the Undertaker. Umm love it.
He gets to a spooky room with a trio of figures wearing hooded red robes -- one of them looks up, and they have plastic cat eyes! What is it with heavy metal videos and trios of people in robes with weird eyes? Everyone from Def Leppard to the Scorpions has this.
I feel like I should write a book that's sort of like a dream dictionary, only instead of decoding dreams it will be like "what does it mean when you see this in a heavy metal video?" Like you could look up "bums," and find out what it means when a bum stumbles upon the band playing in an empty warehouse, or learn about heavy metal songs that are about homelessness. This is kind of a great idea.
Then he's back in the main part of the cathedral, which is probably the coolest set you could ever have in a metal video (which is probably why so many bands used stuff like this -- there's a similar structure in "Can I Play With Madness?"). Honestly, letting metal bands shoot their videos in this thing is probably the coolest thing that could have happened to this cathedral. One wonders how it got in this state, but if it can help people like Dio and Iron Maiden make cool videos, there's nothing wrong with it.
Oh Dio! This is such a loss. I know that Wu-Tang claim they are for the children, but Dio really is for the children, from "We're Stars" to, of course, "Rock N' Roll Children." Every interview you ever read with him, you're just like oh, he seems like the nicest man. He's always talking about wanting people who feel out of place to feel included.
Dio is also fascinating for having had the closest career arc to Spinal Tap (minus the opening for puppet shows part). He started out in rockabilly, then you get the kind of hippie Dio, then the dark 70s Dio, and then the triumphant 80s Dio. He never made a musical about Jack the Ripper, but that's because he was able to stay successful enough to keep doing what he loved (and since his drummers etc. didn't meet with a series of unfortunate accidents, have reunions with various bands over the years).
Gosh, now all my Dio memories are coming back to me. I was once at a bar where there was a guitarist playing, and it was all like Tracy Chapman-type stuff, and then all of the sudden, out of nowhere, he does this absolutely gorgeous acoustic rendition of "Rainbow in the Dark" which made me applaud wildly, yell for more Dio, and yes, actually tip him. Sadly, he did not play me more Dio, but he did respond by doing the first bit of "Holy Diver" which made me scream like crazy. It made my day.
Because really, you can recognize those chords anywhere. And Dio's voice is amazing in this song, because for most of it he doesn't really have to do too much, and so when his voice really comes in, and you can hear all that richness and power in it, oh! It's just astonishing.