Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by atnow
Rainbow in the Dark: The Autobiography by Mick Wall, Ronnie James Dio, Wendy Dio
4.0
This is the first autobiography I’ve read in quite a while. It’s not usually my thing. Typically, the only biographies and autobiographies I gravitate towards are musicians. The Devin Townsend autobiography is fantastic if a bit stream of consciousness at times. The Dream Theater biography is a great look into my favorite band. At some point in the future, I’ll get to the Dreamer of Dune biography about Frank Herbert, which will be my first non-musician biography since I read the R. L. Stein autobiography in 4th grade.
Anyways, my sample size is pretty small. I got into Ronnie James Dio when I was looking for some classic face shredding guitarists. I found Rainbow and was hooked. Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and Rising are two of my favorite albums of all time. After a bit of research, I discovered the storied Carter of Ronnie James Dio. As a happy coincidence, I realized that years ago, after riding my bike to F.Y.E. I impulse purchased the Black Sabbath: The Dio Years compilation album. So I was off to the races.
A Rainbow in the Dark is such a fun read. The problem with an autobiography is that it’s an inherently unreliable narrator, that cherry-picks stories, and has a vested interest in self-aggrandizement. So I read this entire book with a grain of salt. There is nothing I read in the early years of Dio’s life that rang up blatantly false. Hearing stories about my Dad and uncle’s youths, and friends’ parents’ youth of the 60s and 70s, everything Dio writes is as believable as those stories. True or not, self-aggrandizing or not, the content is believable.
Perhaps the best part of this autobiography is the conversational way it is written. A Rainbow in the Dark reads as if Dio was just talking directly to you. There are moments written that I could feel the beats, as if he had told the story before, got a laugh from some people, remembered it, and translated it to the page. My only real counterpoint to this autobiography, as I said before, is the Devin Townsend autobiography. That book was like being in the whirlpool of Devin’s mind, while this is like having a personal conversation with Dio.
About midway through the book, Wendy Dio has some interludes, which offer another side to some of the stories that are being told. The Wendy interludes ring a bit false to me, they are a bit too aggrandizing of Dio, and there is a sense of handwaving away difficult situations that really could have been explored in more depth. The interludes weren’t exactly detractors, because there was a real sense of warmth when it came to her feelings about Dio, I just wished they weren’t immediately juxtaposed against plastic comments about heated situations.
The Elf years are your typical rock and roll touring lifestyle stuff. Blowing through money, ladies, alcohol, and pot (never hard drugs, as is repeatedly stressed throughout the entire book). The stories are funny, and thankfully don’t overstay their welcome. The Elf stuff was interesting, but I had a bit of a disconnect, as I haven’t gone back and listened to it.
The meat of the book, for me, was the Rainbow years. Reading about Dio and Ritchie Blackmore was awesome. You could clearly see the cracks in the relationship from the beginning, which makes sense, as this is Dio’s recollection of events. Again, the tour stories are engaging and funny, and the added element of Ritchie Blackmore adds some chaos to the mix. It’s very clear that Dio saw himself as a bit junior varsity compared to Blackmore.
The Black Sabbath years show a progression of Dio's self-worth, putting himself into a position of partnership, as opposed to the boss/employee relationship that became the Rainbow dynamic. I have heard conflicting reports about Dio’s time in Black Sabbath, with members referring to Dio as very controlling. If the truth is in the middle of two stories, my best guess is that the members of Black Sabbath who couldn’t be bothered with the managing and business aspects of the band just didn’t like the direction Dio was taking them when Dio took those managing and business aspects over. The way I read it is that there was a void that Dio filled, and the other guys weren’t a fan of the way he filled it.
The final chapters cover Dio as a solo act, this time with him (and Wendy) firmly in control of the proceedings. There is an obvious symmetry from the Rainbow days, with Dio taking the place of Ritchie. Again, this autobiography is also a self-reflective exercise, and when Dio wrote this in the late 00s before he died, he recognized this symmetry. The bummer is that this ends in 1986, at the height of Dio’s fame and prominence. I wish it had gone a little further into the 90s and 00s when the music landscape changed, but he still had a loyal following.
All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was conversational, and not so mired in the details. Had it been any longer, any more detailed, it would have seemed almost revisionist. Dio was never the bad guy in any of the stories, just misunderstood, just like we all are in our own stories. There are moments of self-reflection where he admits he could have handled a situation better, which results in a sense of earnestness that balances out the crazy tour stories, and the occasional band in-fighting. If you are down to learn about Dio and don’t mind the slightly self-aggrandizing delivery, this is a solid read. 4/5.
Anyways, my sample size is pretty small. I got into Ronnie James Dio when I was looking for some classic face shredding guitarists. I found Rainbow and was hooked. Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and Rising are two of my favorite albums of all time. After a bit of research, I discovered the storied Carter of Ronnie James Dio. As a happy coincidence, I realized that years ago, after riding my bike to F.Y.E. I impulse purchased the Black Sabbath: The Dio Years compilation album. So I was off to the races.
A Rainbow in the Dark is such a fun read. The problem with an autobiography is that it’s an inherently unreliable narrator, that cherry-picks stories, and has a vested interest in self-aggrandizement. So I read this entire book with a grain of salt. There is nothing I read in the early years of Dio’s life that rang up blatantly false. Hearing stories about my Dad and uncle’s youths, and friends’ parents’ youth of the 60s and 70s, everything Dio writes is as believable as those stories. True or not, self-aggrandizing or not, the content is believable.
Perhaps the best part of this autobiography is the conversational way it is written. A Rainbow in the Dark reads as if Dio was just talking directly to you. There are moments written that I could feel the beats, as if he had told the story before, got a laugh from some people, remembered it, and translated it to the page. My only real counterpoint to this autobiography, as I said before, is the Devin Townsend autobiography. That book was like being in the whirlpool of Devin’s mind, while this is like having a personal conversation with Dio.
About midway through the book, Wendy Dio has some interludes, which offer another side to some of the stories that are being told. The Wendy interludes ring a bit false to me, they are a bit too aggrandizing of Dio, and there is a sense of handwaving away difficult situations that really could have been explored in more depth. The interludes weren’t exactly detractors, because there was a real sense of warmth when it came to her feelings about Dio, I just wished they weren’t immediately juxtaposed against plastic comments about heated situations.
The Elf years are your typical rock and roll touring lifestyle stuff. Blowing through money, ladies, alcohol, and pot (never hard drugs, as is repeatedly stressed throughout the entire book). The stories are funny, and thankfully don’t overstay their welcome. The Elf stuff was interesting, but I had a bit of a disconnect, as I haven’t gone back and listened to it.
The meat of the book, for me, was the Rainbow years. Reading about Dio and Ritchie Blackmore was awesome. You could clearly see the cracks in the relationship from the beginning, which makes sense, as this is Dio’s recollection of events. Again, the tour stories are engaging and funny, and the added element of Ritchie Blackmore adds some chaos to the mix. It’s very clear that Dio saw himself as a bit junior varsity compared to Blackmore.
The Black Sabbath years show a progression of Dio's self-worth, putting himself into a position of partnership, as opposed to the boss/employee relationship that became the Rainbow dynamic. I have heard conflicting reports about Dio’s time in Black Sabbath, with members referring to Dio as very controlling. If the truth is in the middle of two stories, my best guess is that the members of Black Sabbath who couldn’t be bothered with the managing and business aspects of the band just didn’t like the direction Dio was taking them when Dio took those managing and business aspects over. The way I read it is that there was a void that Dio filled, and the other guys weren’t a fan of the way he filled it.
The final chapters cover Dio as a solo act, this time with him (and Wendy) firmly in control of the proceedings. There is an obvious symmetry from the Rainbow days, with Dio taking the place of Ritchie. Again, this autobiography is also a self-reflective exercise, and when Dio wrote this in the late 00s before he died, he recognized this symmetry. The bummer is that this ends in 1986, at the height of Dio’s fame and prominence. I wish it had gone a little further into the 90s and 00s when the music landscape changed, but he still had a loyal following.
All in all, I enjoyed this book. It was conversational, and not so mired in the details. Had it been any longer, any more detailed, it would have seemed almost revisionist. Dio was never the bad guy in any of the stories, just misunderstood, just like we all are in our own stories. There are moments of self-reflection where he admits he could have handled a situation better, which results in a sense of earnestness that balances out the crazy tour stories, and the occasional band in-fighting. If you are down to learn about Dio and don’t mind the slightly self-aggrandizing delivery, this is a solid read. 4/5.