Dio’s 1983 debut album Holy Diver established the band as one of the top metal acts of the 1980s. Thanks to the world class vocals of Ronnie James Dio, as well as top notch musicianship from Vivian Campbell (guitar), Jimmy Bain (bass), and Vinny Appice (drums), it remains one of the truly classic albums of the genre.
Their success led the record label to take a greater interest in the band. Dio had largely been left to their own devices on Holy Diver, which had been produced by Ronnie James Dio himself, but now people were keen for them to repeat the success. The label felt that bringing in an established producer for the second album would help. And who did they strongly suggest to Ronnie James Dio? Ted Templeman (known for producing Van Halen, the Doobie Brothers, Van Morrison, and Montrose among others).
“I understand they thought they were paying me a huge compliment by suggesting Templeman,” Dio wrote in his autobiography Rainbow In the Dark, “but I was totally against the idea of Ted coming in. It was nothing personal. Ted was already super busy – over the next year or so he produced albums for Aerosmith, Eric Clapton, and David Lee Roth […] and I was convinced that no one was better situated than me to get the best sound for Dio. Holy Diver had turned out pretty good, after all.”
Indeed it had, having earned a Gold certification. This encouraged the label, who started to think that the second album could go Platinum if the songs could just be made a little more commercial and get some radio play.
This was not Ronnie’s idea at all. It was also a familiar argument, which was the exact reason he had left Rainbow five years earlier when Ritchie Blackmore, who was keen to get hits in America, asked Ronnie to write love songs that would be played on the radio. He did not go down that road then and was not going to do that now either. “For me,” Ronnie concluded, “the better option was simply to double down and make another uncompromising Dio album.”
The label did not give up right away. After Templeman, other names got thrown around. There was also talk about how the single from the album would be like. This was before any ideas had been put down.
Ronnie had contemplated one change, though. For the Holy Diver tour, the band’s live line-up had been bolstered with Claude Schnell on keyboards. He would play from the wings, not being a visible part of the band’s stage set-up. Ronnie felt that his classical training was an asset to the band, and asked him to join the band as a full-time member ahead of the second album sessions. Claude was liked by everybody and an easy-going guy who fit right in.
Schnell would end up having both a direct and an indirect influence on the new album. In a conversation with Sweden Rock Magazine’s Erik Thompson, he said: “When I joined Dio, I had to decide which synthesizer to get. The logical choice was an Oberheim. Van Halen had used one on Jump and it was very popular. Instead, I took a chance and ordered what the insiders whispered about as a sensation, even though no one had heard it. It was a DX7, which today is legendary but was completely unknown at the time. Ronnie was fascinated. At first, I experimented with more overtly rocking sounds, including an orchestral sound that Ronnie immediately reacted to and which became the chorus to The Last in Line.”
Vinny Appice spoke about the songwriting situation in the liner notes of the 2012 special edition of the album: “Some were jams, some were ideas from each of us. We all worked together putting the ideas together and making a song. I don’t think anyone had a complete song to bring to the table.”
For the new record, Ronnie decided to get away from L.A. where the first album had been recorded. Desiring a location with less distractions where they could buckle down and focus on the music, he set his eyes on Colorado’s Caribou Ranch recording studio. Before they went there, though, he wanted to make sure that they had a cornerstone song in the can – the song that would define the rest of the album.
“Throwing a band into a situation like that can go one of two ways,” Ronnie wrote in his autobiography. “It can often be the making of the band – or it can sometimes be the breaking. Artistically, we were all united. I had the lyrics for what I felt were two classic rock songs in The Last in Line and Egypt (The Chains Are On). Viv had come up with the arpeggio intro for the title track, and we’d added the monster riff in a final rehearsal in LA. It always felt better to have the centerpiece of the album in place before recording began. With The Last in Line, I knew we’d achieved that.”
Ronnie James Dio was never one to go out of his way to explain what his songs were about, preferring that his audiences use the song as personal springboards to let their own imagination take flight, or maybe make the song be about themselves. Still, sometimes he would share glimpses of his thought process.
In an undisclosed interview much later in Dio’s career, an interviewer asked Ronnie about The Last in Line. Ronnie explained that, in his view, humanity was indeed “the last in line.” He meant that we create our own heaven or hell with our choices, implying there is no higher arbiter. In those terms, the song describes a quest of self-discovery.
The first verse with the full band has an apt reference to Wizard of Oz (“We’re off to the witch / We may never, never, never come home”). Instead of being whisked over the rainbow by a hurricane, we are in the real world, on our own very real journeys through life to find who we are. This is referred to in the song as the magic of discovery (“But the magic that we’ll feel is worth a lifetime”) and the search for the truth (“We search for the truth / We could die upon the tooth / But the thrill of just the chase is worth the pain”).
Human beings, our essence, is at first nothing but potential. We’re born innocent (“We are born upon the cross”) and have a lot of potential actions in front of us, which may play out in a number of ways (“with the throw before the toss”). To partake of the world means releasing ourselves from that cross, taking action, and gradually losing innocence (“You can release yourself but the only way is down”).
None of us are completely good or bad, but the ultimate summation of whether we’re divine or evil we simply don’t know. It’s a judgement on a life we’ve interpreted by our intents but not seen objectively. We also see ourselves in an inner world that isn’t necessarily how the outer world sees us.
We’re a ship without a storm
The cold without the warm
Light inside the darkness that it needs, yeah
We’re a laugh without a tear
The hope without the fear
We are coming homeWe’re off to the witch
We may never, never, never come home
But the magic that we’ll feel is worth a lifetime
We’re all born upon the cross
With the throw before the toss
You can release yourself but the only way is down
We don’t come alone
We are fire, we are stone
We’re the hand that writes then quickly moves awayWe’ll know for the first time
If we’re evil or divine
We’re the last in line
In conversation with Sweden Rock Magazine, Claude Schnell added his own take: “Ronnie already said it in Heaven And Hell: ‘Nobody bleeds for the dancer.’ At the top of society are those who go to the ballet to flaunt how cultured they are, but none of them bleed for the dancer. The ballet dancer torments her feet and literally bleeds for her art, in order to give culture to those who look down on her. Ronnie looked at us rock musicians in the same way. We maintain a society that despises us. We are the least fortunate, the ones who are last in line.”
With the arpeggio intro, the monster riff, the keyboard elements of the chorus, and the lyrics all falling into place, the song sounded like it could be another Dio epic. All they had to do now was go somewhere and record it properly.
“Once we wrote the title track The Last In Line, we were confident we had our centerpiece for the record, so Ronnie booked Caribou Ranch” Vivian Campbell told James Curl for his book Ronnie James Dio: A Biography of a Heavy Metal Icon.
Located near Nederland, Colorado in the Rocky Mountains, the Caribou studio was a state-of-the-art facility that hosted over 150 big name artists in its heyday, including Michael Jackson, Elton John, Frank Zappa, Joe Walsh, and the Beach Boys, to name a few. The open spaces, fresh air and beautiful mountain scenery inspired Joe Walsh to write the hit song Rocky Mountain Way. Elton John went one further, naming his 1974 album Caribou after it.
The facility was like a small self-contained city nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The main building was a large barn that had been converted into a recording studio in the early 1970s. Sprawled out near the studio were over a half-dozen rustic cabins that housed the various artists and their entourages. Each of the cabins had an Native American name such as Chipetam Wigwam, and Running Bear. The largest cabin was Ouray, which was the one Ronnie stayed in.
Sandy Tomes, one of the directors at the ranch who dealt first-hand with the various bands, fondly remember Dio’s arrival. In an interview with James Curl, he said, “Dio was a question mark; when they came it was sort of out of our norm. The first project I ever did at the ranch was Amy Grant. So they were coming and we were all kinda like, ‘Well, I wonder what this is going to be like.’ Dio came in and right away they just endeared themselves to everyone. We loved them and they loved us. And we had a really good time.”
“When we got there, we only had six songs written,” Schnell told Sweden Rock Magazine. “We Rock was one of the ones we wrote up there. The air was thinner at that altitude and it took some time to adjust. Ronnie had to wait a few days to start singing.”
The place boasted all the amenities one would expect to accommodate such high-end clientele, such as recreational rooms with pool tables and dart boards as well as a mess hall and a 24-hour on-call chef. Large two-sided fireplaces warmed the lavishly decorated rooms, something Ronnie and his band mates were thankful for since recording took place during the frigid winter months. “There was a lot of snow, like four feet,” Campbell told James Curl. “We had to carve out pathways to walk from one building to another.”
The chef was put to good use at least one time when Ronnie requested Braciole, an Italian dish consisting of thin, pan-fried meat stuffed with cheese and served smothered in a zesty tomato sauce. Not familiar with the Italian cuisine, the chef was unable to prepare it. This didn’t, however, stop Ronnie’s resourceful keyboardist. Schnell put in a quick call to his former band mate Joey Cristofanilli, who put Claude in touch with his mom Mary who was known to be an outstanding cook. She gave the chef the recipe and instructed him on how to make the meal. A while later dinner was served and it was just as Ronnie liked it.
Secluded from the outside world, the band created unperturbed. Typical recording sessions started at around 11:00 am and ran until well after midnight, with some sessions going until the early morning hours.
“It was great,” Campbell said, “because we got to focus on making the record; there were no distractions and such.”
At this stage, the record company had long since accepted that it would be best for Ronnie James Dio to take on production duties once again, which Appice for one was more than happy about. “Ronnie was brilliant,” he said in the liner notes of the album’s 2012 edition. “He could hear where the song was going before it got there. He heard lots of melodies and individual parts within the song. He was great with the sounds of each instrument and the recordings of these.”
While the seclusion was conductive for the creation of the album, some found the quiet isolation difficult to handle. “When everyone got stir-crazy at the ranch,” said Sandy Tomes, “they would head down to Pioneer Inn for some drinks. I had a tequila shot contest with Jimmy Bain. I won, but I think he let me win.”
Bain in particular found the solitude unnerving. “I know Ronnie got pissed at Jimmy,” Campbell told James Curl, “because Jimmy was such a social person he couldn’t stand it that it was so isolated. So he took a car down to Boulder which was the closest city. It was a Friday night and he went down to see the Scorpions play. He came back with a bunch of strangers and Ronnie got mad. But that was typical Jimmy, you know. Jimmy was such a social animal, he needed that sort of energy of a party atmosphere around him. That’s what he thrived off of.”
Despite such incidents, the overall isolation and the freezing cold, the band enjoyed their stay in the studio. They were close, enjoyed creating, and produced amazing material.
“We were there to make a record and the studio was world-class,” Schnell told Sweden Rock Magazine. He would also learn that as gentle as Ronnie was normally, he was capable of real outbursts of anger. “It happened once when someone made a fatal mistake and deleted some irreplaceable recordings. Ronnie may have been a little guy, but when he got furious, he looked like a colossus.”
Now having a keyboardist as a full band member would give The Last in Line album a stronger orchestral flair than Holy Diver had. The label welcomed the development, assuming that more keyboards would make the end product more commercial. This was not necessarily so. In some ways The Last In Line feel less commercial than the band’s debut. In spite of this, if not because of it, the album sold even better – at least in the short term.
With the rise of MTV, the band needed to make a good music video if the album was going to be a serious contender in the marketplace. The video for Holy Diver had been shot on a very modest budget – and unfortunately looked it. This time, Wendy Dio (wife and manager) was looking to negotiate a more substantial amount, and Warner Bros. stepped up to the plate with $200,000.
“We shot one video for Mystery,” Ronnie said in his autobiography, “which the record company wanted as the lead single, and another for The Last in Line, which was were most of the cash went. We hired a movie director named Don Coscarelli, who’d made his name with a couple of films that were right up my alley, Phantasm and The Beastmaster. […] He really got what the band were about, and The Last in Line, in particular, looked fantastic!”
The video starts calmly enough, depicting a delivery boy jumping on a bike to deliver a package. He arrives at a building (that’s Claude Schnell, keyboardist, sitting in the car outside) and enters an elevator. Instead of going to the floor where he needs to go, the elevator falls down to an underworld domain where creatures who look like prototypes of the Borg from Star Trek: The Next Generation are enslaving people – youths and older – who seem to be herded through humdrum activities. The band appears, as does Murray (the band’s mascot) and his landscape from the album cover. In the end, Ronnie appears and saves the delivery boy from capture, allowing him to escape back into the elevator while Ronnie is dragged away by his captors.
The video is highly ambitious – probably more ambitious than even the elevated budget allowed for, but it’s a huge step up from the previous videos and still a fun watch today. The delivery boy was played by Meeno Peluce, who had been in The Amityville Horror.
The title track was released as a single on 11 June 1984, less than a month before the album which appeared on 2 July 1984. The song as well as the album gave the fans exactly what they wanted. They are very much follow-ups to the Holy Diver song and album stylistically, as well as living up to the established quality in songwriting and performances. Murray (the band’s demonic mascot) once again dominated the cover art. The imagery and lyrics planted the album firmly within the realm of heroic fantasy, something fans had come to embrace through every project Ronnie had been in previously.
The Last in Line was Dio’s single best-selling album, coming only a year after Holy Diver, which slung them to instant recognition. It charted at a respectable #24 in the US, going platinum in the process, and a very impressive #4 in the UK.
The Last in Line song did well as a single, too, reaching #10 in the US. It was not released in the UK, but saw some success in Spain and the Netherlands. The other two singles were Mystery (#20 in the US, #34 in the UK) and We Rock (did not chart).
The band still recall this early period in their history with fondness. In an interview with online publication My Global Mind, Vivian Campbell said “For me, The Last in Line and Holy Diver were both the same in terms of quality, as they were both strong records.”
Ronnie frequently indicated that he shared this view. In 1994, Mark Kadzielawa interviewed him on the tour bus after a show. This has been known as the “brutally honest” interview as Dio was very raw and open, speaking very candidly about his career, band members, collaborations, and album projects up to that point. As part of that they went through every album he had ever performed on. When they arrived at The Last in Line, he said:
“Another great album! Great album! Brilliant. You know, as good as this one [holds up Holy Diver]… it probably even is a better album, but maybe with just a little bit less fire perhaps. Because, we were getting, you know… it was starting to be ‘the beginning of the end’-times again, you know. That’s a shame, but personalities have a lot to do with it. But this was a great album. One of the most fun I’ve ever had making an album. We made this album up in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and it was just absolutely one of the most fun times I’ve ever had in my life. A great album!”
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