Review: Rainbow in the Dark: The Autobiography

Rainbow in the Dark: The Autobiography by Ronnie James Dio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was given an advance copy of this audiobook from the publisher through NetGalley.

I've always enjoyed music memoirs written by the artists themselves, especially after listening to Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis, so when I heard that this was coming out, I immediately added it to my ever-growing TBR pile.

I've been a fan of Ronnie James Dio ever since he was fronting Black Sabbath in the very early 80s, and one of the concert highlights of my late teens was seeing him with his own band, Dio. The man was an epic singer and had one of the most powerful voices in rock.

This was a nice trip down memory lane, though admittedly most of these memories belonged to RJD himself and were significantly before my time. It did take awhile to get going good, as RJD seemed to go into great detail on his early years. This was a foundation for the artist he'd become, but to me it really got interesting at the point that he and his bandmates solidified into the band known as Elf. From there his story really took off, to eras in his musical career that I could relate to, from joining with Ritchie Blackmore to form Rainbow, through his Sabbath days, and finally into forming the band he wanted all along, that which showcased his name: Dio.

I do feel like there was a lot of time that wasn't covered, from the early Dio days of the late eighties until his tragic death in 2010. I'm thinking he simply hadn't gotten around to writing about that era, but as the peak of his success came with the popularity of Dio, this was enough to make a good story. Still, it would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on the times he got back with Sabbath, first with the reunion album Dehumanizer, then to later regroup with them again to form the side-band Heaven and Hell. As I said, he probably had lots to say about all of that, just hadn't the time.

RIP, Ronnie.

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