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Ronnie James Dio in 1988. | Credit: Getty Images/Paul Natkin
Sebastian Bach, the former lead singer for multi-million selling hard rock band Skid Row, says that one of his biggest heroes delivered his masterpiece just a year before he died.
Bach is talking about legendary vocalist Ronnie James Dio.
Bach is performing in Los Angeles on 18 May at the Rock for Ronnie concert — a charity event with all proceeds going to Dio’s Stand Up And Shout Cancer Fund.
Dio died of stomach cancer in 2010.
Speaking to MusicRadar, Bach says of his involvement with the Rock For Ronnie event: “This gig has a personal meaning to me. Unfortunately, my cousin, who was really like my brother, died about a week ago of the same exact thing that Ronnie died from.”
He adds: “I’ll be up there singing to my cousin Kevin and Ronnie James Dio. I hope they can hear me scream — wherever it is they’re at.”
In a long career, Ronnie James Dio featured on some of the most celebrated hard rock and heavy metal albums of all time — including Rainbow’s Rising, Black Sabbath’s Heaven And Hell and the debut album Holy Diver by the band he named Dio.
But Sebastian Bach believes that Dio’s greatest achievement came with Heaven & Hell, the band in which Dio was reunited with the other three members of the Black Sabbath line-up of 1981 — guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Vinny Appice.
Heaven & Hell made just one studio album, The Devil You Know, released in 2009.
Bach says: “I have always been an immense fan of Ronnie James Dio’s voice. I actually got to be friends with the man, which was amazing. We hung out a couple of times, did a couple of gigs with him—incredible person, incredible voice.
“Obviously, Ronnie and myself come from a time when there was no electronic assistance involved with getting onstage. We actually had to figure out how to make these sounds come out of our mouths, so it was a different thing.
“Ronnie was one of the best. One thing I always say is that there are very few artists who can say their best work was the very last thing they ever did in their lives.
“I will fight anybody on this point — I think the song Bible Black, off the Heaven & Hell record The Devil You Know, is the best song that Dio ever did.
“I’m serious,” Bach continues. “People have told me, ‘Thank you for turning me on to that song. I didn’t realise…’
“That song is right up there with Heaven And Hell [the Black Sabbath song] and Stand Up And Shout [from the Dio album Holy Diver].
“The very last single he did, to me, was the best single he ever did.”
Bach says he enjoys the Dio era of Black Sabbath as much as the band’s first phase with Ozzy Osbourne.
“I love all of it,” he says. “I don’t think one is better than the other — they’re just totally different.
“I was lucky enough to play with Geezer [Butler] at the Taylor Hawkins LA Forum concert, where Geezer was on bass. We did [Sabbath classics] Supernaut and Paranoid with Lars Ulrich on drums and Dave Grohl on guitar.
“That was a freaky moment for me. I couldn’t believe I was standing next to Geezer onstage.”
Bach is also excited by the prospect of Sabbath’s original line-up reforming for Osbourne’s farewell show in Birmingham on 5 July.
He says simply: “I’m happy that Ozzy gets to say goodbye in a way that he wants to — which is onstage.”
