About two weeks ago, our tireless team covering the South by Southwest Festival (and here we mean myself and my brother Rafael) had the privilege of attending the world premiere of the first fully authorized documentary about the life and career of heavy metal legend Ronnie James Dio at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas.
Sharing the audience seats with us were great admirers and important figures in the musician's life, such as his widow and manager, Wendy Dio, Black Sabbath and Heaven & Hell bandmate , Geezer Butler Skid Row vocalist and self-proclaimed fan, Sebastian Bach , and his friend and radio host Eddie Trunk . In addition, of course, were the documentary's directors, Don Argott and Demian Fenton , and other enthusiasts of Dio and heavy metal in general. Oh, and the film is called Dio – Dreamers Never Die.
First noteworthy observation: the Paramount Theatre, Austin's most prestigious and elegant movie theater, had far fewer seats occupied than I expected, or than a documentary about Dio deserved, to the point where it was possible to choose between several seating options minutes before the film began. Whether because documentary premieres are generally not as hyped as feature films, or because the average SXSW audience is more eager for new things than for dwelling on the past through traditional narrative formats, the fact is that the world premiere of the documentary had a modest audience, albeit one hundred percent passionate about the film's subject matter. Just for comparison, a few days earlier, the premiere of the film The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which Nicolas Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself, left dozens of people outside, including this writer, after the theater reached maximum capacity.
The film about Dio features a good selection of archival material from the beginning of Dio's career in the 1950s to his battle with cancer and his death from stomach cancer in 2010. Interspersed with this archival material are testimonials from people dear to the artist, such as the personalities I mentioned in the paragraph above, and particularly picturesque anecdotes, such as the one narrated by actor and musician Jack Black , with whom Dio collaborated on the film Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny . To complete the picture, there are some very competent dramatizations of scenes described in the testimonials but for which there were no recordings, and of course, a generous dose of Dio's musical production masterfully serving as the documentary's soundtrack.
More than just a bureaucratic documentary that recounts a person's life year by year, Dio – Dreamers Never Die is a tribute because Don Argott and Demian Fenton, besides being filmmakers, are also musicians and heavy metal fans who grew up and were shaped by the music of artists like Dio. And it's a tribute that strives to show someone for whom originality, authenticity, and perfectionism were non-negotiable qualities. This is perhaps one of the film's greatest merits: remembering an artist who didn't take easy paths. On the contrary, he was resilient and had to start over several times to avoid compromising his art in the slightest, leaving an extremely valuable legacy not only because of his powerful voice or musical technique but also because of the strength of his convictions.
I can say that having seen the documentary and being impacted by the life and career of that figure changed somewhat how I was prepared to absorb some of the shows we were going to see at SXSW. It's impossible to engage with the universe of artistic commitment and unwavering will of a guy like Dio and not turn your nose up at artists at the beginning of their careers who act on and off stage as if they already have a gigantic legacy to be admired by generations to come.
The day after the film's premiere, a panel called Dreamers Never Die – The Enduring Power of Metal, led by Eddie Trunk and featuring the same celebrated trio who were also at the Paramount Theatre the previous day, used the premiere of the film about Dio to talk, of course, about the film and the artist's career, but also about the enduring power of heavy metal as a musical style and way of life over more than 50 years of existence.
Of the three guests, Wendy Dio also came to the Festival to launch her long-awaited autobiography, which Dio had begun writing before his death, called Rainbow in the Dark , and which she herself helped to finalize with the help of journalist Mick Wall . Wendy spoke at the event, not only as Ronnie James Dio's widow but also as a woman and pioneer in the very male-dominated world of heavy metal, and specifically in her role as a businesswoman in this field. She was praised by her fellow panelists for her career and especially for her work with the Dio Cancer Fund , a charitable organization founded after the artist's death.
Wendy humorously recalled that being Dio's wife and manager gave her an advantage over the average manager when it came to getting the artist to do things he might not really want to do, like giving an interview. After all, you can't just say no to your wife like that. This observation was echoed with laughter by Geezer Butler, who is also managed by his wife, Gloria .
And speaking of that other legend, Geezer Butler recalled the curious story about the origin of the term heavy metal, initially used pejoratively by members of the media to describe the type of music Black Sabbath emerged making, as something that resembled the sound of a lot of metal being crushed together. “Ozzy, for example, hates the term heavy metal,” said Butler. He added: “We always saw ourselves as a hard rock band, because we were continuing from Cream and [ Jimi ] Hendrix and [ Led ] Zeppelin , so we were the next heavier step from them.” According to him, the first time he would hear the term in a positive way was about 10 years later, in an MTV documentary about the history of rock that already credited Black Sabbath with inventing heavy metal.
Asked by Eddie Trunk about the influence of his music on bands that came later with more extreme variations of Heavy Metal, and whether he follows any of these bands currently, Geezer Butler was categorical: “No. I prefer listening to an audiobook,” to which he was met with much laughter and applause, and, criticizing the lack of originality of these bands of the so-called more extreme styles of heavy metal, he went on to recount a recent episode when he was traveling by car and, for half an hour, had the feeling that he was listening to the same song on the radio, without being able to distinguish one song from another.
But not everything is rubbish for Mr. Butler. Of the bands that, in his opinion, play heavier, more original rock, his favorites are Mastodon and Rival Sons (who, incidentally, were the band responsible for the live Sabbath tribute at the 2019 Grammy Awards). And when asked about the void that bands like Black Sabbath and Metallica , for example, leave when they stop playing, Butler mentioned names like Slipknot and Ghost and how there will always be new groups to fill that space.
Regarding our third guest, what can we say? Despite having his own fanbase and achieving great success in the early 90s as the frontman of Skid Row, Sebastian Bach's presence at the event seemed to have much more to do with his fan devotion to Dio and metal in general than with his career. And that wasn't a bad thing at all, quite the opposite. Sebastian Bach was responsible for some of the best laughs of the panel, such as when he recounted the first time, as a child, driving under a bridge with his father, he saw the words Black Sabbath in graffiti and was absolutely terrified. Or when he turned the illegible logos of current metal bands, which to him look more like tree branches, into a joke. When Eddie Trunk introduced Sebastian Bach at the beginning of the panel, one of the titles he used was something like: "one of the biggest metal fans" he knew, and I think that, along with Eddie himself and the directors of the Dio documentary, Don Argott and Demian Fenton, this may very well be true.
I think what remained from the experience of the documentary premiere about Dio, plus the panel with these absolute heavy metal figures, was a feeling that metalheads, metalheads , headbangers , or whatever you want to call these peculiar people, are above all people who love this music and all the mystique that comes with it.
Is there a nerd/fanboy side to the crowd? Of course there is, in fact, our own intrepid team of two even took a selfie with Sebastian Bach at the event's finale (and before anyone says anything, Geezer Butler left a little earlier with Wendy Dio and didn't have time to catch up with them), but I see this fan love as a positive thing, a sense of community, of a group of people who love the same thing, simple as that.
On the other hand, it's possible that the living legends I've been writing about might have blind spots regarding the eternal question: "old = good, new = bad"? Most likely. But that doesn't matter. Not to me, at least. As I was saying, besides respecting these people who love and are dedicated to the world of Metal, I also choose to take away a lesson in authenticity and perseverance that Dio's story and some other anecdotes I heard throughout the event left me with.
