Dio: Light Beyond the Black

by Martin Popoff

Genres: Music

207 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

At approximately 7900 (with over 7000 appearing in his books), Martin has unofficially written more record reviews than anybody in the history of music writing across all genres. Additionally, Martin has penned approximately 85 books on hard rock, heavy metal, classic rock and record collecting. He was Editor-In-Chief of the now retired Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, Canada’s foremost metal publication for 14 years, and has also contributed to Revolver, Guitar World, Goldmine, Record Collector, bravewords.com, lollipop.com and hardradio.com, with many record label band bios and liner notes to his credit as well. Additionally, Martin has been a regular contractor to Banger Films, having worked for two years as researcher on the award-winning documentary Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage, on the writing and research team for the 11-episode Metal Evolution and on the ten-episode Rock Icons, both for VH1 Classic. Additionally, Martin is the writer of the original metal genre chart used in Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey and throughout the Metal Evolution episodes. Martin currently resides in Toronto and can be reached through martinp@inforamp.net or www.martinpopoff.com.

Reviews

[Benjamin Kahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent read but not one of Popoff's stronger books. He relies way too heavily on Ronnie James Dio's quotes and his treatment of other band members seems to vary wildly. For instance, he has a lot of quotes from Vinnie Appice and Jimmy Bain early on, but when Vivian Campbell talks about why he quit the band (dissatisfaction over how much he and the other band members were getting paid), he only talks to Dio and Campbell. It would have been interesting to get the others take on the reason for Campbell's leaving and whether his assessment of their pay is accurate. Bain has a quote later in the book that suggests it might have had some merit. Towards the end of the book, you mostly hear just one voice, that of Dio. It gets monotonous as it turns into several chapters of "this song is about this," "that song is about that."

This kind of thing happens a lot - often, we don't even get the band members explanations for their departure, just Ronnie's version of what happened. I know Popoff says in his introduction that he doesn't want to engage in muckraking, but it would be nice to get a more rounded picture of the goings on. RJD is always portrayed as a the ultimate nice guy, but there is as much coming and going with the band as Rainbow ever had. It feels at times like we are being force fed only one perspective on band developments so as not to take the shine off of RJD's image.

This may not be accurate, but that's the sense I get. It's especially interesting having just read Rainbow: English Castle Magic where all lineup changes are seen as being a result of Ritchie Blackmore's personality and there is no effort to reform his reputation. There are elements of the story which suggest that Ronnie and Wendy Dio might not be that different in their business dealings than Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, but the book shies away from that. I don't want muckraking, but I would like a little more of the complete picture. And in that, Popoff falls short.