Ronnie James Dio and the Keys to The City
On September 17th, 1985 3,100 fans thrilled to the sight of Ronnie James Dio slaying a mechanical dragon onstage at the Syracuse War Memorial. Now, the idea of a diminutive 40-plus-year-old man dressed like he just stepped off the set of Time Bandits dramatically plunging a sword into the throat of a fake dragon that wouldn’t pass muster at a Six Flags may seem silly to you. But we’re talking about a lost era here, before cable TV really got its stranglehold on American culture.
My family had finally gotten a VCR just the year before, and it was roughly the size of my grandmother’s steamer trunk. We still had a PONG game hooked up to a fire hazard of tangled wires that dangled like robot ganglia at the back of our walnut-paneled console TV. The concept of anything remotely resembling the Internet hadn’t even faintly dawned on rural America — though I’m pretty sure we had a VIC-20 plugged into that same deadly rat’s nest of wires (The pea green shag carpet, installed the previous decade by the previous owners, lay whimpering below, waiting for a single spark from that jumbled cluster to end its wretched, outdated existence).
So, information and entertainment flowed differently back then, especially in my neck of the woods. Less a superhighway and more like an overgrown, rutted tractor path. Without magazines like Hit Parader and Circus — which could be nabbed monthly at the grocery store for about a buck-fifty — my only connection to what was happening in the world of music and media would have been the five or so channels that we could tune in on TV (provided Dad had wrestled our 10-foot antenna into a cooperative position).
But let’s get back to this dragon business.
It might seem silly to you, the image of 14-year-old me, my sweaty, lanky arms pumping madly up and down, the muscles in my hands flexing and straining, pointers and pinkies skyward, rings and middles safely restrained by my determined thumbs. It might seem laughable, the long-haired man onstage, stalking his way up a chrome-plated ramp toward a 30-foot, fire-breathing, animatronic lizard, bellowing operatically into his microphone as he slams his sword home, triggering a shower of sparks and so much pryro that even the kids in the cheap seats feel their skin tighten on their slack-jawed faces. It might seem trite, cliche, overblown, low-budget, and just plain old ridiculous. And it was all of those things.
But it was also fucking AWESOME. And if, like me, you’ve seen Dio slay the dragon, you know what I’m talking about.
For a country kid too young to drive, getting to a spectacle like a Dio concert takes some doing. I was lucky; my mom brought home the tickets. She worked right across the street, and didn’t mind dealing with the chain-smoking old biddies that ran the War Memorial box office. And when showtime came, she drove me and a buddy to the arena, logged a few extra hours at the office, then drove us back to the sticks, my lucky friend and I reeking of teen hormones, sweat, cigarettes and pot, spastically recounting the night’s metal histrionics. I think she did this more than 30 times. A remarkable woman, my mom.
With the tickets in hand, the only question was who to go with.
I could rule out girls, and not just because most chicks found Dio abhorrent. They also found me abhorrent, and I can’t really blame them. I was pimply with long, straight brown hair and I had all the swagger of a corn stalk. I was, in fact, a literal Child of the Corn. My house was surrounded by the stuff, and where there weren’t corn there wuz cows. and where there weren’t cows, there wuz pine trees. And that right there is Central New York in a nutshell — though I should add that for a delightful six months of the year you can throw in mountains of snow so cold and deep that you sometimes feel positive God exists and he fucking HATES YOU.
What I’m getting at is this; I was kind of, um, isolated, and besides I hadn’t exactly blossomed yet. Sadly, for me, girls weren’t scheduled until the following school year. Considering the subject at hand, this is perfectly appropriate. I’m glad I saw Dio in 1985 with a bro. Standing awkwardly next to some chick trying to figure out what to do with myself would have been a major distraction.
I’m not sure who I went to see Dio with, but there are a few likely suspects. It might have been Mark, who introduced me to Led Zeppelin. He and I went to a lot of those shows together and his house was on the same lonely stretch of rural Rt. 20 as mine. It might have been Nathan, who was more of a metal guy than Mark and could be counted on to act as much like a drooling fanboy fanatic as me. It could have been Paul, who was just as big a RUSH nerd as me, plus he was the drummer in my first high school band. Sidebar: Scoring a drummer who was into RUSH was a huge stroke of luck. Like all teenage skinbashers, Paul worshiped and studied Neil Peart, who everyone knows is the best drummer that ever lived, but thanks to the Grunge and Irony movements of the 90's they won’t admit it anymore, because being a virtuoso is no longer cool. Sometimes I hate pop culture.
Whoever it was that hopped in our 1982 AMC Concord that night, I’d be proud for it to have been any of those dudes. I have a box of ticket stubs from those days, and every one has some kind of coming-of-age story sweated deep into the paper, caught in time beneath blurred concert dates, seat numbers, and the iconic band logos from a simpler world.
Pre-show nerves. It’s a feeling only diehard music fans and performers really understand, and it’s only resolved when the artists hit the stage and the crowd falls into rapture. It’s a sense that something really important is going down. It makes you want to pace around and chainsmoke and bellow emphatically about the cultural significance of heavy metal while scoping the arena for hot girls in tight concert T’s. Pre-show nerves will have you and your buddy perched on the edges of your uncomfortable folding chairs, straining to get a peek behind the scrim at the roadies, guitar techs, and miscellaneous crew; any backstage view that could lead to a deeper understanding of how feels to be part of such an obviously very important thing that’s about to go down.
I’m pretty sure LA scumbags Rough Cutt were the opening act for Dio’s Sacred Heart Tour. I don’t remember anything about their set, most likely I was too busy wandering the corridor and smoking cigarettes. Back then a couple of gangly 14 year old boys could just pump quarters into a vending machine like it was Pac-Man or something. Out would pop a pack of unfiltered Camels and a book of matches. No one even blinked. We puffed our way over to concession, where I paid $13 for a black T with the new Dio album cover printed on the front. Then we puffed our way back to our seats.
That nauseous, dry tobacco high is one of my most visceral teen memories. I will never understand how it was possible for me to smoke SO MANY cigarettes. I could never do that now. If I smoke even one, I get lung-rattling night terrors.
The house lights flashed and the crowd started going nuts. A subsonic synthesizer drone let’s us all know that The Really Big Thing was finally getting underway. Dio hit the stage with “King of Rock and Roll,” spidering around the set like a heavy metal warlock, which is, of course, exactly what he was.
Dio captivated me with his shrewish appearance and Gollem-like stance. He was like the creatures in The Gnome Book, who fascinated me for the same reasons. Bizarre, wise little creatures with magical powers that lived among the trees and wore pointy boots. How could a kid who spent all his time reading comics and drawing the guys in KISS resist?
I remember looking around the arena, marveling at all the fans who shared a love for Dio’s music. There were no online groups, fan pages, or blogs to connect me to my metal-loving peers. The social experience of the 80's heavy Metal Movement happened at parking-lot tailgate parties and arena rock shows. For me, as a rural-dwelling teen that had discovered heavy metal as an essential piece of my identity, the sight of 3,000 Bics lighting up in the name of rock was a very, very big deal.
About 40 minutes into the show the dragon made its appearance, its pleathery wings stretched wide behind Vinny Appice’s drum kit. It was poorly designed and kind of rickety, yet somehow glorious for all that. Mechanical jaws gnashed in time to the plodding groove, and fire blasted from its mouth as Ronnie put an end to the beast’s herky-jerky threats. Two gleaming 20-foot knights slid into view, flanking the stage, as if in tribute to Dio’s victory over the great fallen Tinker Toy.
It was at this point that the lights came up for a “special announcement.” The mayor of Syracuse (I’m not positive, but it may have been newcomer Thomas Young) walked out in a three-piece suit, shook Dio’s hand, and presented him with the keys to the city. This was a pretty radical move at a time when heavy metal and its influence on the youth of America was regularly villianized by mainstream media. But Dio was a local character — he grew up in nearby Cortland, a town known for not much more than being the childhood home of Ronnie James. And by the time he’d launched his solo career, he’d already been a success in two other HUGE bands, Rainbow and Black Sabbath. Ronnie was distinguished from the hairspray herd by his intelligence, his pure vocal skill, and his gentlemanly manner. So when he laid down his sword, took the mayor’s hand, and politely thanked him for the honor, there was nothing unnatural or weird about it. He made art out of dragonslaying and good citizenry.
What was important about this for those of us who’s futures were deep in doubt; the disenfranchised headbangers, stoners, metalheads, burnouts, etc…was that one of OURS was being recognized as a real cultural contributor. At least on a local level. And for all his talent and grace, Dio wasn’t a pretty boy or a poser. In other words, he wasn’t a no-brainer PR move. Dio was deep. He was accomplished, and his work was complex. He was weird looking. But he was way above average, and he was one of us; a long-shot from the sticks who made it big on his own terms.
The news of Dio’s death in May 2010 shook me. All the fans knew Ronnie was sick, but none of us believed he could be defeated. The man was 68 years old and still seemed an unstoppable force. He was full of life. He was wise. He was humble. He was still setting a good example. Hell, he was still packing arenas! Generations of rockers were out at his shows, mindblown by his powerful delivery and the inspirational success of his tours and recordings with Heaven and Hell. He was still relevant, and that makes the loss even harder to take. The world needed someone like Ronnie James Dio in it, and now he’s gone.
Over the years as I’ve shared my love of metal with old friends and new, my little story of The Dragonslayer and the Keys to the City has been a favorite of mine. Telling it seems to legitimize my faith in rock somehow; it illustrates the innocence and awe I’ve maintained, and makes clear my point of view: metal is important. It means something. Don’t discount it, and don’t discount me. There may be something surprising and valuable below the surface. Maybe not a dragonslayer or a warlock, but, for all my faults, a unique talent worth acknowledging.
A rainbow in the dark.
