The Encyclopedia of Dead Rock Stars (389 page)

A student and fan of traditional music, Dave Fisher came from the branch of folk that wished not to protest, but to educate and entertain. Fisher–formerly of doo-wop group The Academics– managed to achieve this on a grand scale with collegiate folk-unit The Highwaymen. This group was formed of five Wesleyan University freshmen: Bob Burnett, Steve Butts, Chan Daniels, Stephen Trott and Fisher, who, while studying ethnomusicology, also arranged The Highwaymen’s songs.

In 1959, RCA came knocking, wishing to record the group’s rendition of the trad/spiritual tune ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore’: the result was the two-million-selling ‘Michael’ (1961, US/UK number one). The record was so popular that it was still on the charts by the time follow-ups ‘Gypsy Rover’ and ‘Cottonfields’ (US Top Twenty) were climbing. But those who felt that The Highwaymen were mere vessels to carry the tunes of old were perhaps being a little unfair, particularly as Fisher’s ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ and ‘All My Trials’ have found their way into the folk pantheon since.

Despite much airplay and some highprofile television slots, the original Highwaymen had disbanded by 1964. Fisher–with some assistance from noted folk musician Gil Robbins (who’d joined in 1962)–now operated as musical director, with a series of musicians coming and going. The founder later embarked upon a solo career with Columbia and MGM, though without significant success. Then, in 1990, the singer found himself embroiled in a copyright battle with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson over the group name, although both bands continued to use it thereafter.

Of the original line-up, only Butts and Trott are still alive. Daniels died back in 1975, with Robbins (April 2011) and Burnett (December 2011) passing away the year after Dave Fisher, who succumbed to myelofibrosis in Rye, New York on 7 May 2010.

Wednesday 12

Joëlle van Noppen

(Middelburg, Netherlands, 20 January 1980)

WOW!

Joëlle van Noppen was one third of Dutch all-girl hopefuls WOW! who made a brief impact on the Dutch pop charts in the wake of success for international contemporaries such as The Spice Girls. The singer was a member of the Bolland & Bolland-produced group between 1997 and 2000, marking pop hits with tunes such as ‘Keer Op Keer’ and ‘Big Beat Boy’. For the last decade of her life, the former star had earned occasional bookings as a cabaret singer, although had recently been obliged to take on administrative work to help support her young daughter.

Joëlle van Noppen was travelling home from a trip to South Africa during which she became one of 103 victims on board Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771, which crashed upon landing at Tripoli in May 2010: the only survivor of the ill-fated Airbus A330 was a nine-year-old Dutch boy. While the bereaved were informed that the pilot had suffered a heart attack, an inquest suggested that management error was to blame for the accident. Further enquiries have been curtailed by continued civil unrest in Libya.

Golden Oldies #114

Ronnie James Dio

(Ronald James Padavona-Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 10 July 1942)

Dio

Black Sabbath

Rainbow

Ell

Heaven & Hell

(Various acts)

The image of Ronnie James Dio that comes to mind first probably depends upon one’s opinion of heavy metal
per se.
The axe-wielding lord of his kingdom; the loudest voice in Armageddon; the stalwart guardian of quaint prophesy? Whatever the take, by the time of his passing, Dio had written for us a legend as richly detailed as those the man himself loved. And there can be little debate regarding his deep and lasting impact upon rock’s most durable form.

But to arrive at rock’s kingdom requires a journey of frequent twists and turns, and Dio’s path to rock immortality–much like some of the opuses that punctuated his mid-career– was always likely to be long and eventful. And it began in unlikely fashion. An only child whose ‘best friends’ were the instruments his Italian-American parents encouraged him to learn, the young Padavona-as-was made an early impact, featuring on a clutch of rockabilly recordings as a boy trumpeter. An enthusiastic fifteen-year-old bassist, the apparent prodigy then strutted his stuff as a member of The Vegas Kings. All in all, it was pretty apparent that here stood a star in the making–just quite what
kind
of star was, as yet, undetermined.

Padavona soon forced his way to the front of the stage. He replaced Billy DeWolfe as lead singer while still at school in New York, the group morphing into Ronnie & The Red Caps (a homage to Gene Vincent’s backers). (The Red Caps’ eminently collectible first sides ‘Conquest/Lover’–featuring both singers–were recorded for Reb in 1958.) It was also within this set-up that the man (well, ‘youth’) first used that enduring stage name, a moniker he’d filched from mafia boss Johnny Dio. Group identities, however, were less consistent in Dio’s early years: his band now toured for some years as The Prophets until a split in 1967, by which time the earliest rumblings of hard rock were being felt.

Inspired by these dark developments, Dio (vocals/bass) and longtime guitarist cohort Nick Pantas reinvented themselves as The Electric Elves, the line-up completed by Dio’s cousin Dave Feinstein (guitar), Doug Thaler (keys) and Gary Driscoll (drums). The band toured tirelessly until a road accident in February 1970 caused injury to Thaler and the tragic death of Pantas. This hit Dio hard, but it was decided not to replace the former guitarist until the departure of Thaler in 1972 saw Elf (as they were now known) bring in Mickey Lee Soule to cover both instruments. A decidedly heavier band, Elf issued three albums and impressed members of Deep Purple. Dio and co therefore signed to their label, then touring with the group throughout the USA in 1973.

Departing Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had been particularly taken with Dio’s vocal contributions to a Roger Glover solo project, enticing Elf’s front man to join the first incarnation of Rainbow in 1975, and indeed co-opting most of his band (until the first recording, after which all were fired, bar Dio). Blackmore’s classical training and Dio’s ‘sword-and-sorcery’-flavoured imagery appeared a good marriage (these being times when hard and prog rock made comfortable bedfellows), and records sold well. The band themselves were seen as a blistering live attraction.

However, by 1979 Dio sensed that Blackmore wanted to take Rainbow on a more commercial path (which he then did, with marked results). The singer’s already highprofile rock pilgrimage drew him toward the darker, more familiar world of Black Sabbath, where he somehow replaced Ozzy Osbourne. Dio’s influence revitalised Sabbath’s fortunes, the band’s lyrical direction now mirroring the man’s early Rainbow output. The Dio-infused albums
Heaven and Hell
(1980) and
Mob Rules
(1981) were considered the group’s best for the past half-decade.

Ronnie James Dio offers thanks to the horn section

Once again, old habits resurfaced as further ‘musical differences’ issues led to Dio and drummer Vinny Appice break-ing away from Sabbath to form Dio the band in 1982. There was, however, no let up in commercial reception, Ronnie James Dio as an entity having almost as many fans as the groups for which he recorded. Dio’s first albums
Holy Diver
(1983) and
The Last in Line
(1984) were both confirmed platinum in the US, and began a consistent run of successful recordings into the millennium. Despite misgivings the leader may have had at the end of his Rainbow days, Dio the band became a very much more stadium-oriented proposition than previous Ronnie James projects. But it didn’t end there, oh no …

In satisfyingly appropriate fashion, Dio’s hard-rock ‘tour of duty’ saw the man wind up one last time with Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler and Appice to form touring ‘supergroup’ Heaven & Hell in 2006. The group played a gruelling ninety-eight-date tour in 2008, for which
Classic Rock
magazine awarded them ‘Comeback of the Year’. However, a second series of shows was shelved once it became clear that Dio was starting to feel the effects of his fifty-year odyssey.

The announcement of Dio’s diagnosis with stomach cancer was made in 2009 by the artist’s longtime partner and manager, Wendy Galaxiola–who remained cheerful enough about his prognosis to suggest that Ronnie would be back again on stage ‘once he kills this dragon’. Sadly it was not to be, and, despite a valiant struggle, metal’s favourite warrior son was finally slain by the beast: Dio passed away in the hospital on 16 May 2010. Hundreds, including many from the hard-rock fraternity, paid their respects at a memorial service at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills. (Almost comically, several members of a local baptist church protested outside that Dio was a ‘satan worshipper’.) Dio was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and also had a Cortland street named in his honour during the late eighties: an impressive statue of the man still declaims to the masses in Kavarna, Bulgaria.

Meanwhile, all across the greater kingdom of rock, Dio’s children continue to raise those ‘devil-horns’ in salute to the man that made it happen. After all, it was also Ronnie James who invented metal’s most universal hand gesture …

See also
Gary Driscoll (
June 1987); Cozy Powell (
April 1998).