Episode #8 - The Little Wizard

Once upon a time, in a parallel universe a billion light years away from anything – and we mean anything – resembling reality, there lived a little man. A very, very little man.

Ronald James Padovano was his name and he had magical powers. He also had – disproportionately given he had the stature of an elf – a bloody big voice. Oh, and an imagination so ludicrous he made Tolkein’s thought processes look like those of a chartered accountant.

Anyway, the first spell cast by young Ronald was to magically change his name to Ronnie James Dio and you had to hand it to Ronnie (in fact, you had to hand most things to Ronnie because generally he couldn’t reach) it was a masterstroke.

Now, armed with the moniker of a rock God, the lung capacity of a whale, an I-Spy Encyclopedia of Magic and Witchcraft and a copy of his birth certificate to prove he was over 18, The Little Wizard emerged from the land of demons and fairies and ventured out into the big, wide world ready to make a noise.

And lo, it was a good noise, a noise that instantly grabbed the nuts of a pair of real-life fairies, our very own Mark and Richard, who, seduced by the power of the man’s vocals and his endless references to rainbows, witches, wizards and stargazers, were turned into Dio disciples overnight.

The upshot is that many, many years later, the great, and now sadly late, Ronnie James Dio has achieved the kind of gilded status many aspire to but few achieve, namely become the subject matter of an entire episode of Enter Sadmen.

Mark and Richard, giggling away imbecilically like schoolkids on their way to Cockfosters to order Spotted Dick, were literally wetting themselves at the thought of slapping Rainbow’s Rising, Black Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell and Dio’s Holy Diver on their respective turntables and once again worshipping slavishly at the feet of one of the all-time great metal singers.

Steve just rolled his eyes and went along with it anyway.

Rainbow – Rising (1976)

Our Dio special kicks off in ’76 with a gargantuan behemoth of an opus, Rainbow’s second long-player and voted Kerrang’s greatest all-time metal album in 1981. Quite how Rising had managed to nosedive – with the same organ we hasten to add – to numero 74 in Britain, never mind the world, by the turn of the century is the sort of mystery which only Bradford City fans may be qualified to solve, but such numerical nonsense was never going to dampen Rich and Mark’s love affair with the thing.

In an era of ridiculously over-long albums which seem to have a minimum of 20 tracks plus Christ knows how many more reissues, deluxe remixes and live, unplugged, vegan instrumentals, the jury agreed it was nice to be confronted with a piece of work featuring just six tracks.

And once the joke about pint-sized Ronaldo having fronted a band called Elf had started to wear thin, Mark and Richard loosened their fawning muscles on Side One before hitting truly extraordinary heights of hyperbole as the first strains of Stargazer were heard.

Bard Richard explained it was a fable about a wizard building a tower and learning to fly. Bored Steve said ‘move on’.

Black Sabbath – Heaven and Hell (1980)

The late ‘70s weren’t easy for Black Sabbath, who had become a by-word for drink, drugs and being upstaged by your support act. (Though in fairness the support act in question was a bunch of upstarts by the name Van Halen, so perhaps no disgrace there).

Anyway, post-Ozzy and post-haste, the Sabs needed a frontman. The mystery isn’t that they wanted Dio, more that the sozzled Tony Iommi could see the numbers on his phone clearly enough to be able to ring the wee man and ask.

Even more bizarrely, our man accepted. He doubtless thought he could fly in on the back of a winged serpent, killing a Manticor en route with one swish of his demon’s scimitar before ascending to the mountain top in the company of silver-tinted cherubim to blow his magical fairy dust upon Geezer and pals and transform Sabbath back into the Zeus-like demigods they once were.

Or perhaps not. Bottom line, he could sing a fuck sight better than Ozzy ever could and Sabbath were indeed back in the game, the message even spreading to a crofter’s cottage in the Scottish Highlands where Mark heard Neon Knights for the first time and hasn’t been the same since.

Dio – Holy Diver (1983)

Here’s a revelation, ladies and gentlemen. Richard couldn’t stand Dio. Genuinely couldn’t have him.

So many hours spent on the decks on metal nights at the Warwick University bar being pestered to play some Dio by the godawful Dungeons and Dragons brigade at the Uni’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Society (tune in folks, ‘cos we’re not making this up), Rich was a lost soul.

Solution? Suck it and see. Rich went away, immersed himself in Dio’s debut effort Holy Diver for a few weeks and before you know it, bang, love affair started and the rest is history.

To demonstrate his adoration, Richard actually totted up the number of times Dio sang the words witches, wizards, stars, hells and the rest throughout the course of this show, confirming that when we say Sadmen we ain’t joking.

Word play aside, would Holy Diver compare favourably musically to the Dio double act that had graced our headphones earlier?

Come join us in the world of The Little Wizard…