“A really bad person”: the vital lessons Ronnie James Dio learned from Ritchie Blackmore

Filling Ozzy Osbourne’s shoes wasn’t exactly the easiest of ventures. Yet, amid the fiery whirlwind of Osbourne’s legacy, his value to Black Sabbath lost its focus. While the band had always been a leading force in rock, with a somewhat erratic captain at its helm, they needed a fresh, dynamic presence at the eleventh hour. Ronnie James Dio would be the only man for the job.

Anyone would have felt daunted by the idea of replacing such an irrefutably legendary figure in metal, even if he simultaneously became a laughingstock among his peers. But Osbourne’s idiosyncracies are a part of his reputation, his fearlessness in doing something as objectively absurd as snorting a trail of ants seemingly matching up with his aggressive pursuit of musical greatness.

In response, Dio joined a long list of people astounded by Osbourne, though not enough to find him truly intimidating. “Replying to the things Ozzy has said to me is like duelling with an unarmed man,” Dio comically quipped during a radio interview in the 1980s. Dio wasn’t trying to be Osbourne’s carbon copy, and he celebrated their differences, mostly because he regarded Osbourne as lacking intelligence.

“I really feel like someone who has a sword up against someone who just has no clue what a weapon is,” he explained, taking a serious jab at the former frontman. “I find the man to be stupid, totally devoid of intelligence, an animal, and I could give you examples of all these things to back up what I’m saying. I would not say them unless I firmly believed these things. And I wouldn’t say them unless I felt that at some point someone need reply to moronic statements that Ozzy has made about people who, let’s face it, made him all the money in the world.”

Dio’s honesty earned him a lot of respect among rock and metal groups, mostly the ones who value musicians who say it as it is—with little regard for how their words or delivery might land in the recipient’s ears. While he was performing alongside Deep Purple, for instance, he recalls getting to know Ritchie Blackmore on a personal level, but the lessons he learned might not have been as positively profound as you might expect.

Ritchie Blackmore - Deep Purple - 1971

“I got to know Ritchie,” Dio recalled. “He’s a very private person, and I understood that, so I stayed away. If you jump on top of someone like Ritchie, he doesn’t want to know about you. One day, [he] came into the dressing room and said to me, ‘You’re a great singer,’ and I said, ‘Thank you very much,’ and then we became friends.” Later, Blackmore approached Dio about forming another band, which initially seemed like a great idea as the pair’s visions aligned.

Blackmore felt that Deep Purple had become too “funky” and wanted to join forces with Dio to place classical rock music at the fore of their creative artistry, but Dio only had one issue. “I felt he was a very cruel person,” he said. “Cruel to the fans, very cruel, and to people in general.” While his words seem heavy, he once reassured he feels nothing akin to bitterness towards Blackmore, but he recognised many characteristic shortcomings in his musical friend.

“He gave me my great opportunity,” he said. “Without him, it would have taken me a little bit longer to get where I am today. I’m not going to give him all the credit because I’m good at what I do, but he gave me my chance, and I learned so much from him. I learned good things, and I learned bad things. I learned what not to do. I learned that when you come out of the show, you don’t spit at your fans. You don’t run into the car and go away. They wait the whole time for you. You don’t be mean to your fans.”

He continued: “That’s what Ritchie did all the time, [he was a] really bad person, but he’s a great musician, and I learned what works and what doesn’t work.”

Being an integral part of Sabbath, possibly the most credible and reputable rock band of all time, meant taking on a great burden, but Dio worked hard to take all of the negativity of his peers and predecessors and reinstate what it meant to be a fan of something. Respecting the fact that musicians and audiences aren’t just a transaction to take for granted meant that Sabbath could thrive with a newfound sense of gratification.

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