Rock Hall Is ‘a Joke’ for Not Inducting Dio, Says Vinny Appice
by Corey IrwinVinny Appice, the drummer who enjoyed stints in Dio and Black Sabbath, has blasted the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for excluding Ronnie James Dio.
“I think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame suck,” he exclaimed while talking to Jeff Gaudiosi of MisplacedStraws.com. “It’s supposed to be rock 'n' roll, and there’s people in there that’s not rock 'n' roll one bit. And just the way they do business — it took ’em that long to put Black Sabbath in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? Black Sabbath started all this heavy stuff.”
Black Sabbath became eligible for Hall induction in 1995, the same year the institution opened its museum in Cleveland. Still, the group wasn’t inducted until 2006, and both Dio and Appice were among the former band members excluded from inclusion. The decision disappointed the drummer, but didn’t surprise him. “I wasn’t expecting them to induct Ronnie and I," he said. "They should’ve, but they didn’t. So I think they suck.”
Appice went on to opine that Dio’s body of work is more than deserving of induction, while further criticizing the Hall’s decision making.
“I went [to the Rock Hall] once," Appice said. "It was a friggin’ joke. And Ronnie should have been in there, even by himself. He should have been inducted. … He’s been in all these major bands and major albums, and he’s not in there. It’s sad. He should have been in there. I don’t even care that they didn’t induct Dio — the band Dio — but they should have did him and mentioned us. That would have been nice. [Dio‘s debut album] Holy Diver is 37 years old and it’s still selling. So [the Hall is] a joke, that whole thing.”
Ronnie James Dio died in 2010 following a battle with stomach cancer. Appice, Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi had joined the singer in a Sabbath offshoot band, Heaven & Hell, in the waning years of his life.
More recently, Appice has been a member of Last in Line, a Dio spin-off band featuring former Dio member and current Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell.
Ranking Every Dio Album
10. 'Angry Machines' (1996)
Like many metal gods who ruled the '80s, by the middle of the next decade, Dio had been reduced to chasing the grunge juggernaut. The result was 1996’s desperate-sounding ‘Angry Machines.’ With their grinding riffs and leaden tempos, token efforts like “Institutional Man,” “Black” and “Hunter of the Heart” were pretty much interchangeable with similar old-school attempts to fit in with the flannel folks (see Kiss’ ‘Carnival of Souls’). One exception: the gorgeous piano ballad “This Is Your Life,” which almost sounded like a requiem for Dio’s career, but instead signaled a creative and commercial rebound right around the corner.
9. 'Lock Up the Wolves' (1990)
Ronnie James Dio tried to reverse his band’s fading fortunes with the help of teenage guitarist Rowan Robertson and a completely reconfigured Dio lineup completed by keyboardist Jens Johansson (ex-Yngwie Malmsteen), bassist Teddy Cook and former AC/DC drummer Simon Wright. But ‘Lock Up the Wolves’ sounded almost nothing like the band fans had grown to love and, maybe not surprisingly, like a lot of groups fighting against each other for supremacy. This reflected Dio's growing uncertainty about his musical direction, leaving the album's only noteworthy track the tellingly nostalgic “My Eyes.”
8. 'Strange Highways' (1993)
It was deja vu all over again for Ronnie James Dio, and drummer Vinny Appice, as they again faced life after Black Sabbath following the controversial end of the ‘Dehumanizer’ reunion, and resurrected Dio for 1993’s ‘Strange Highways.’ This time, guitarist Tracy G. and erstwhile Dokken bassist Jeff Pilson completed the band’s lineup, but their efforts couldn’t overcome all the drama of the previous year – to say nothing of the era’s low tolerance for metal. So, highlights were confined to the defiant title track, the amazingly heavy “Bring Down the Rain” and a raging indictment of child abuse, “Give Her the Gun.”
7. 'Master of the Moon' (2004)
‘Master of the Moon’ was Dio’s 10th studio LP and their last after their frontman joined forces with Heaven & Hell, the reunited and renamed Mk. II lineup of Black Sabbath. Though none of Dio’s original group accomplices were on hand, frequent collaborators Craig Goldy, Jeff Pilson, Simon Wright and Scott Warren ensured songs like “End of the World,” “The Man Who Would be King,” and “Prisoner of Paradise” included epic riffs, big melodies, and castle metal lyrics.
6. 'Sacred Heart' (1985)
Proof that even the best recipes can tire the taste buds after a while, Dio’s third album in as many years sounded flat and uninspired. And it was inconsistent, because for every “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” (as powerful an album opener as Dio ever cut), “Rock ‘n’ Roll Children” and “Hungry for Heaven,” ‘Sacred Heart’ packed just as many fillers, like the dialed-in “Just Another Day.” Something had to give, and that something was guitarist Vivian Campbell, who eventually landed on his feet with Whitesnake and Def Leppard.
5. 'Killing the Dragon' (2002)
Even though Ronnie James Dio claimed it was technology that he was referring to with 2002’s ‘Killing the Dragon,’ one can’t help but extend that meaning to the fading age of alternative rock and all the cynics who had left one of metal's greatest voices for dead. Dio’s ninth LP shined like an emblem of the man’s renewed faith in heavy metal after a decade of creative wandering and commercial disappointments. On this 2002 outing, that devil-horns-raising spirit flew on unhindered, and put the focus on individual songs again, instead of overarching concepts, resulting in winners like the title cut, “Push” and “Along Comes a Spider.”
4. 'Dream Evil' (1987)
While many fans resented the sudden dismissal of Dio’s popular original guitarist Vivian Campbell, many more had to acknowledge that recruiting former Rough Cutt ace Craig Goldy seemed to light new fires under Dio’s volcano for 1987’s ‘Dream Evil.’ As comfortable a truce as one could hope for between appeasing Dio’s traditional metal following and their younger pop-metal adopters, ‘Dream Evil’ ran the gamut from the speed metal of “Night People” to the dinosaur plod of “Naked in the Rain” to the radio-tempting hooks of “I Could Have Been a Dreamer.” Only Dio's inimitable voice and Claude Schnell’s prominent synths tied everything together, but, for the most part, it worked.
3. 'Magica' (2000)
‘Magica’'s relatively modest sales hardly stake a strong claim for one of Dio's all-time best LPs, but this full-fledged concept album reaffirmed so many of his best-loved musical hallmarks, while simultaneously thumbing its nose at temporal musical fashions. it earned a place in the heart of every die-hard Dio fan, and the songs were pretty impressive too, capably moving the ‘Magica’ story forward while regaling listeners with punchy heavy rock (“Fever Dreams”), doom-laden devastation (“Lord of the Last Day”) and moving power balladry (“As Long as It’s Not About Love”). So beguiling was the LP’s fantasy world that fans still mourn the fact that Dio scrapped his plans to complete a trilogy of ‘Magica’ albums.
2. 'The Last in Line' (1984)
Dio made a mockery of the sophomore slump with 1984’s stellar ‘The Last in Line,’ which showed the band was now locked into the winning prototype they would emulate on all future albums, for better or worse. Even Murray, the band’s bullheaded mascot, was in his prime, along with the classic lineup of Dio, guitarist Vivian Campbell, bassist Jimmy Bain, drummer Vinny Appice and keyboardist Claude Schnell. Together, the band burns on “We Rock,” the title cut, “Mystery” and the closing “Egypt (The Chains Are On).”
1. 'Holy Diver' (1983)
Ronnie James Dio’s extensive early career spent singing alongside legendary guitarists in Rainbow (Ritchie Blackmore) and Black Sabbath (Tony Iommi), finally rewarded him with headliner status on Dio’s seminal debut, ‘Holy Diver.’ And clearly Dio made the best of it, compiling every lesson learned into an album bound to become a metal classic. ‘Holy Diver’'s title track and tunes like “Stand Up and Shout,” “Don’t Talk to Strangers” and “Rainbow in the Dark” would form the backbone of Dio’s concerts for years to come. The album boasts a distinctly raw and crunchy production that would be polished away as heavy metal took off in the ‘80s. There’s no topping ‘Holy Diver.’