Holy Diver is the landmark song that titled the equally landmark debut album by the band Dio, fronted by famed Rainbow and Black Sabbath vocalist Ronnie James Dio. The line-up was completed by Vinny Appice (drums), Vivian Campbell (guitar), and Jimmy Bain (bass). The album has been hailed by critics and fans alike as a classic staple in the heavy metal genre.
The track that ended up defining the band, and pretty much the rest of Ronnie James Dio’s career, was written by RJD himself and was one of the first songs he wrote after leaving Black Sabbath in 1982.
The split with Black Sabbath had not been a good one, and his tenure in Rainbow had also ended sourly. Rainbow was Ritchie Blackmore’s band, who wanted to change to a more commercial direction. Dio was given two choices: follow along or leave. Dio left. Similarly, Sabbath was run by Tony Iommi, who at the end of the day got his say in that situation as well.
RJD knew one thing: his next band would be his. He was tired of other people calling the shots.
Some of Dio’s most memorable songs up to that point had been grandiose, huge-sounding and epic – such as Stargazer (Rainbow) and Heaven and Hell (Black Sabbath) – and Dio felt another song of that type was needed again to set a certain baseline for what the new band and the coming album was going to be like.
Vinny Appice, who left Sabbath to follow Dio to his new project, ended up demoing songs with RJD before the other members were in place. Holy Diver was one of those early songs, with RJD adding some bass and simple guitar. It was clear that this song was an obvious winner.
With songs like that in their back pocket, they set about looking for other band members to complete the puzzle. It happened pretty organically – Jimmy Bain had played bass in the best version of Rainbow, and he was the one who recommended Vivian Campbell. He was auditioned and the magic was undisputable.
When the full version of the band got to hear and attempt the demo of Holy Diver, the band leader could not have been more happy with how it came out. He later said that everybody “did wonderful things with it and made it come alive the way we know it today”.
There was no particular formula or concept planned for the album. It was all about what the musicians would come up with when they started working on the songs. While it clearly was RJD’s band, it was a collaborative one. They all wrote what they wanted to write, and if it felt good, it became a finished song. This means the songs on the album are individual stories rather than being part of a larger whole. There are of course red threads running through the album musically and thematically, by way of being made by the same guys during a specific time.
The meaning of the Holy Diver song has been long debated. If you look online, there are numerous theories outlined. Some of them see the song as describing Jesus Christ’s descent into Hades after being crucified. Others mention it potentially being about astral projection, about purity as opposed to false righteousness, about Satan’s own descent into Hell, or simply – if you want a more meat-and-potatoes theory – about Dio’s frustration with the stifling lack of creative control he had felt towards the end of his tenure in Black Sabbath (and the sense of betrayal about being fired from the band).
Holy Diver
You’ve been down too long in the midnight sea
Oh what’s becoming of me?
Ride the tiger
You can see his stripes but you know he’s clean
Oh don’t you see what I mean?
Gotta get away
Holy Diver
Ronnie liked writing lyrics that were open to different interpretations. He was happy to make people think, which in turn made it become their own songs. “I write for them,” he would say. “Use your imagination. Make it your own. When it’s out there, it’s no longer exclusively mine.”
For that reason Dio rarely explained any of his songs. When specifically asked what the song was about by Banger in 2004, he finally chose to open up a bit. “Holy Diver is a religious song, based on a religious attitude. […] The song Holy Diver is really about a Christ figure who is in another place – not Earth – and who has done exactly the same there as we apparently experienced on Earth. He died for the sins of man on that other far and distant planet so that mankind there could be cleansed, start again, and do things properly this time. The people on this planet are calling him the “Holy Diver” because he is about to go to another place to another planet, dive into another world, to do what he did first on our planet – save people from the sins or absolve them from their sins by having himself killed.
“The people are saying to him, ‘don’t go, no no no.’ The innuendos of tigers and stripes, hearts and being eaten and you’ll die, all come from that. The tiger symbolizes strength, while its stripes suggest impurity. The lines “Ride the tiger. You can see his stripes but you know he’s clean” means that you must take advantage of the strength you have and not judge the heart of others by what seem to be impurities. These stripes – in the package it comes in.”
Between the velvet lies
There’s a truth that’s hard as steel, yeah
The vision never dies
Life’s a never-ending wheel
“The song was meant to show just how selfish humanity is,” RJD continues. “That this one form of humanity on this one world said ‘no no no, don’t go down there and save anybody else. Stay here. We need you. You’re ours.’ That’s what that song was about.”
Only when the songs were done did they start work on the visuals and overall presentation of the album and project. This includes the controversial album cover. It was an easy decision to name the album after the Holy Diver song, and the artwork ended up depicting a devil figure drowning what looks like a priest. They knew this would stir things up, but Dio also knew it would give him plenty of opportunities to talk about it.
The artwork on the Holy Diver album was meant to have people ask the question “why do you have a monster drowning a priest?” Dio’s response would be, “how do you know it’s not a priest drowning a monster?”
The whole idea was to look beyond appearances, at what’s inside the package, before making up your mind about what things are like. Look at the heart and the spirit of the person before you condemn them for something that you don’t see. Dio got plenty of opportunity to get into that, so the controversial angle worked well from that perspective. He would also later point out “controversy sells as well, and sometimes you have to be a businessman”.
Some years after Ronnie’s death in 2010, his manager and former wife Wendy Dio revealed in an interview with Full Metal Jackie that Holy Diver had originally been written while Dio was still a member of Black Sabbath. “He had written Holy Diver and Don’t Talk to Strangers during the time he was in Black Sabbath, so they were supposed to be Sabbath songs. When he left Sabbath, we had a solo deal for him and he just put those songs [on the album] and got the band together, wrote more songs and it came out. Everyone was blown away about the reception that we got and how great the album was and how it’s stood the test of time.”
The Holy Diver album was released on 25 May 1983. The title track was released as the lead single from the album on 9 August, and although it only reached #40 on the Mainstream Rock chart at that time, that was still a pretty good performance for a heavy metal single.
Rather than being a short-term hit, the song would prove to have an incredible longevity. It has never been forgotten and is a staple on classic rock radio to this day. It is easily one of the most popular songs of its genre from the 1980s and beyond.
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