Music is very central to the human experience — but why? What is it about a melody, a song, an album, or some other composition that has so much staying power in our culture and lives? Sing to your dog and you'll get various responses. Most animals don't notice and won't care. So, what is it with us that makes music so indelible to our lives?
In the past year or so, I've taken a deep dive into the music of Ronnie James Dio. “Holy Diver,” the track, has always been in the back of my head, one of the songs that Spotify recommended to me early on in my account, finding all of the other metal bands I had indicated interest in. But in the past year, I've found something much deeper than his on-the-nose-yet-still-incredible allegory track that really seemed to encapsulate Dio for pop culture. Part of it is the music. But as I personally dove deeper into the hidden closet of my musical tastes and slowly emerged, I realized that I was a metalhead at heart. Not in a performance sense, but rather in terms of the music that constitutes the soundtrack of my day-to-day life.
We tend to find those connections through music — even if that idea is a melody. And then, we learn about the struggles of the artist, and begin to see the world as they do. And this tends to be the deeper piece. How these songs work with fact and fiction to craft a unique reality. And a unique reality is exactly what Ronnie James Dio worked his entire professional life to build. This is an exploration of the impact that that reality has branded into my existence.
Music, Mythology, Life, and Legend — WTF?
Metal from its inception was there to tell larger-than-life, epic stories. This means borrowing from everything from real experiences to the imagined, and then finding ways to piece it all together. There are no white knights in metal — one of the aspects that makes the style so compelling. No one is sanctified, all blessings come from how one fights evil or works with it, depending on the particular band's focus.
This means that all of the discology of metal bands is full of experiences that are grounded in reality, but transcend into myth and legend, sometimes borrowing from other traditions, and sometimes just outright making up their own. In this, Dio created a rich and sophisticated mythology in his music — but he also worked to create myths and legends in how his band approached everything. This is what we're here to dig into.
Part I: Rainbow in the Dark
“Rainbow in the Dark” is one of the most popular songs to come out of Dio’s catalog. Amusingly enough, Dio himself famously said that he wanted to cut the recording ribbon to shreds for this song, thinking it had too much of a pop feel. Nonetheless, this was short lived, and you can see in this recording from one of his later shows in life that the connection that he’s made with fans is really meaningful (“You are all my rainbows in the dark”).
It’s an interesting paradox in the name itself. A rainbow is, scientifically speaking, made up of light, and thus a rainbow cannot exist in darkness. But these paradoxes act almost like Zen koans that are often paradoxes intentionally meant to shape the mind, as is the case with this song.
For a thing to exist in an environment where we fundamentally cannot exist, much less survive and thrive, much courage, self control, and endurance is needed. Dio noted how Rainbow in the Dark spoke to his time in Black Sabbath, where he often struggled with creative restriction. It was an idea born of disappointment, locked into something that didn’t work for him.“Rainbow in the Dark” talks about tangible energy in the world; energy that true believers can see, that those who are desperate and feeling around in the dark can find. It’s a bleak world, and we’re alone — until we dig deep, find a way to keep hanging on for dear life to the faith that we will, indeed, find that magic in our own lives.
This is usually the most difficult part of any period we go through in darkness. One of Dio’s biggest strengths is in teaching us how to exist in the darkness, and even exist as a creature of the darkness — but without succumbing to it. And the deepest truth from the song, marking time at the end — it calling you beware.”but it's fear, and you'll hear” This is the message ultimately Dio leaves me with. Watch out for your fear. In those dark times when you have to feed your own flame, keep your own home fires burning, don’t succumb to fear. And know that you are a beautiful rainbow — whether you’re resting in light, or struggling in darkness.
Part II: Don’t Talk to Strangers
Also from the Album Holy Diver, “Don’t Talk to Strangers” is another one of the higher-played Dio songs. It isn’t very long and the lyrics are deceptively simple. Dio speaks to one of my favorite subjects — conventional wisdom. And he is, like me, often extremely unimpressed with how “conventional wisdom” is wielded. Conventional advice comes throughout the song — some of it things we’re told as children, while others aren’t even common sayings, such as “don’t write in starlight — the words will come out real.”
In the song, Dio really explores the validity of the things we tell children, and the unintended consequences of a society that grows up believing things that seem good but aren’t. So the line about writing in starlight always made me wonder why. The best I’ve been able to piece together ties to the magic that Dio references in “Rainbow in the Dark. ”But overall, these are the things that we have to fight and resist. What is writing in starlight? It’s writing in permanence, not only with a sense of stone-like eternity, but all of the undiscovered country that exists among the stars. It elicits wonder. It’s permanent, yet capable of evolving.
People are afraid to put themselves out there. “Careful with the ideas you present at work or at home, ”conventional wisdom will often say. “Don’t stand out, don’t get noticed, keep your head down, carry on with your day, ”as if we’re all afraid of some cosmic Whack-a-Mole mallet popping us square in the forehead. Writing in starlight is the opposite. It’s putting out that the ones you need to protect your soul from are not what the song is warning about. Instead, it’s saying that the voice of the song that tells you not to talk to strangers — that’s the voice from which you must defend yourself. Write in starlight. Write in starlight every goddamn chance you get.
Part III: All The Fools Sailed Away
This song is almost a revenge anthem from Dio. Almost. In truth, with a lot of Dio’s lyrics, you can see that he has strong levels of compassion and care for others, especially those who join his characters on their quest to defeat evil. But this song has a different sort of bad guy. The antagonist in this song he would reference from stage to be things like governments and religions. They make promises, they claim to have the keys to understanding our existence and eternal salvation, and then when you need them most are absent from your life. They take from you and never give back. This is a theme I’ve personally discovered throughout the world. The world takes. That’s what it does. It takes and takes and takes. It will take everything, if it can. And unfortunately, most of what this world takes from us we will never get back. And those who are in positions of authority without virtue or moral compass will absolutely abuse their positions.
The truth is that, because we’ll never get back what this world takes from us, the responsibility then falls to us — to you, to me, to our friends, families, loved ones, and strangers. We must give it back to one another. But those who are comfortable with taking from us, those authorities, those relationships, those institutions — at some point, you just have to stop receiving their bullshit. And this is the freedom that you can hear in every chorus of Dio’s performance of this song. At some point, he learned the secret. Stop listening. Make your bet based on what you know — the best you can. And then, let the haters, the naysayers, and the unbelievers (the fools) all just sail away.
You will not miss them. And eventually, they will fade from your life. There’s a lot to be said about having this strength. Believing in yourself, trusting your experience, and pushing through the darkness. So, we at Bad Liars invite you to do that with us. Take a position, let’s stick to it, encourage and push one another, and let the fools simply sail away.
