“Holy Diver” [Chugger Edition]

When asked what Holy Diver was about, Ronnie James Dio had an answer ready. A suspiciously obscure and specific one…

On paper, it’s a great story. 

Here’s my problem with it… 

It sounds like the story someone tells you when they’re hiding the real truth. 

By the time Dio started his solo project, he’d been pushed out of Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and Tony Iommi’s Black Sabbath. 

And still… he’d experienced the kind of stardom he’d only dreamed of in the earlier bands he was in, such as Elf.

But there was still something lacking.

He had always been the “stargazer”, never the “star”.

The name synonymous with Rainbow was Ritchie Blackmore. 

And when his star shone in Black Sabbath, Iommi and Geezer pushed him out:

To add insult to injury, Iommi and Geezer “deliberately credited me on the Live Evil sleeve simply as Robbie Dio [...] They did it just to be shitty” (Rainbow in the Dark, 191).

Dio had had enough. It was his time to…

Holy Diver was released in 1983.

Dio, in Italian, means “God”. It’s important to note how Dio speaks of his choice of name for his new solo venture:

Having already “sparked the second coming of Sabbath” (Rainbow in the Dark, 191), Dio begins to speak of himself in these religious, spiritual terms.

Not only that… The choice to simplify his name from “Ronnie James Dio” to “Dio” was intentional.

And career-affirming.

Holy Diver, the album, makes this impossible to ignore.

The opening track, “Stand Up and Shout”, opens with a fast, aggressive riff. Dio confirmed it was written between leaving Sabbath and forming his own band. The song is a statement. Dio has finally arrived:

The lyrics are written in the second person singular: “you”: it’s like listening to Dio talking to himself in the mirror. 

And, as we’ll see in a few moments, he employs this same technique throughout “Holy Diver”. 

The most telling lyrics in this opening track are:

The wheel suggests momentum, but when you’re pinned, you’re never really in motion, even when it feels like it. 

Again, the words “nailed to” evoke Christ-like imagery – Dio was nailed in place while he built momentum for other visionaries.

Then the penultimate song on the Holy Diver album, “Rainbow in the Dark” is a more “commercial” song Dio almost destroyed with a razor blade until his bandmates physically intervened. But again, the lyrics – and the song’s title – are revealing:

Doesn’t a “rainbow in the dark” seem like the perfect metaphor for Dio? 

Despite boasting one of the most powerful and impressive voices in heavy music, this metal “god” found himself consistently ousted from the creative decisions of the bands he fronted. 

Dio later confirmed the lyrics came directly from how he felt leaving Sabbath: alone, rejected, unseen. 

A rainbow with nobody to witness it.

Using the word “rainbow” also allowed Dio to take back control over his destiny. The band he’d formed with Ritchie Blackmore had been named after one of their favourite haunts – the “Rainbow Bar and Grill” in LA, “the coolest club on Sunset Boulevard” (Rainbow in the Dark, 123).

Not to mention…

Rainbow imagery has been inextricably linked to Dio throughout his career. 

His autobiography is called Rainbow in the Dark. 

“Holy Diver” is what happens when that rainbow is given the chance to finally radiate brightly.

Although Dio’s songs are steeped in allegory and fantastical imagery, there are very few moments in “Holy Diver” that back up Dio’s suggestion that the song is about a Christ-like figure on another planet.

Indeed, the song much more closely reflects the autobiographical details of his life.

For too long, the real Dio – the one capable of leading and making creative decisions – was masked, hidden inside someone else’s show.

He was “down too long in the midnight sea”... buried, hidden, uncredited.

He’s now ready to be “the star of the masquerade”. 

Is it any wonder the urge to “get away” in the song is so strong? Dio needs to “get away” from the forces that kept him down, even while appearing to be in the light:

Dio had been in the spotlight before. But he had felt powerless and without any real control over the musical direction of the bands he was singing with. 

The “velvet lies” could refer to two specific things: First, the deceitful nature of the music industry. 

Second, and possibly more interestingly, before founding Black Sabbath, Tony Iommi was in a band called “Velvett Fogg” which released its eponymous album in 1969. The lyric now seems like a direct slight at the “snow blind” guitarist who had recently edged Dio out of Black Sabbath.

The following lines are Dio’s rally cry:

Despite the “velvet lies”, Dio’s “truth” is pure, and still “hard as steel”. His vision holds firm and he’s ready to move forward into the next cycle of his career. 

And then the line that truly disrupts the “Christian martian theory”:

The figure isn’t a saviour or a martyr. 

It’s a survivor.

Like Dio, who had survived the Blackmore tyrannical rule and Iommi’s snow blind paranoia. 

And he’d come through all of it with his artistic identity intact.

That’s what it means to be “clean”.

A survivor who refused to compromise and made it out the other side, urging himself onwards with the mantra of “get away, gotta get away”.

That’s what leads me to believe that “Holy Diver” is Dio’s thinly-veiled declaration of creative liberation – his public announcement that he’s finally become the author of his own story. 

Dio was one of the great metal visionaries – a singer who understood the difference between “showing up” and “performing”. 

Wrapping his songs in allegory allows the lyrics to take on new meaning at different stages of his career.

So no. I don’t buy Dio’s well-rehearsed story that “Holy Diver” is about a Christ figure on an alien planet. 

For me it's the story of a man named Ronald James Padavona, who took the stage name “Dio”, and came up clean after spending years in the depths of other people’s darkness.

Normally I spend hours and hours researching before writing each issue of The Chug.

This issue was a little different. Instead I spent that time studying Dio’s catalog and re-reading the “Holy Diver” lyrics.

There are probably hundreds of ways to interpret this song, and my interpretation might be wildly different than yours.

There’s no doubt that Dio’s lyrics are heavily influenced by his interpersonal life. But, like many great artists, he became an expert at hiding the real story behind allegory and metaphor.

If you have your thoughts on what the song’s about, I’d love to hear them.

Hit reply.

I’ll share the most interesting interpretations in a future email.

🤘 Horns up 🤘

Shane 
Editor-in-Chief
The Chug Media

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