In 2003, a news story broke that Ronnie James Dio had accidentally severed his thumb in a gardening accident. The nature of the newsbit was such that people weren’t sure whether it was true or not – it sounded like an absurd plotline from the Spinal Tap movie.
But it was actually true!
It happened sometime around mid-September 2003. Dio was trying to move a heavy garden gnome, but slipped and the gnome fell. He tried to catch it, which explains how it came to land on his thumb. It was a heavy figure, crushing Dio’s thumb to such an extent that it was severed from his hand.
Fortunately, Dio acted quickly. He immediately went to a hospital where a doctor was able to re-attach the severed thumb.
In 2004, Ronnie James Dio was interviewed about the accident by Rockdetector.com editor Garry Young. “It was a killer garden gnome,” Dio said. “I’m not joking, although I certainly wish I was. What happened was that I was in my yard trying to place this garden gnome on a slope. This is a seriously heavy piece of garden ornament, probably 60 lbs. [27,2 kilos] or so. Anyway, it fell over, I fell into the shrubbery and then began to slide down to the bottom of the hill. I was trying to stop myself with my feet but put my hand out at the wrong moment. You can understand this all happened in a split second. My hand landed on a rock, and the gnome landed on it, squashing my thumb between the rock and the gnome. Basically, it was crushed and took the end of my thumb off.”
but no doubt just as evil.
Interestingly, with Dio being the kind of man he was, his first concern was not about the practical changes that the loss of a thumb would entail. He thought of his fans and his career. “I just looked at my hand and the first thought that flashed into my mind was, ‘How on earth am I going to make my devil horn sign now? That’s my trademark!’ I wasn’t worried about the injury, I was more concerned with my career.”
His ability to stay calm and think/act quickly was no doubt essential to everything ending well.
“I just picked up the end of the thumb,” he said, “went back into the house, washed the nub of my thumb then got myself down to the hospital. It was quite surreal because I had one hand with this crushed thumb, basically just red meat and miniscule bits of bone, and I was holding the end of the thumb in my other hand. It was quite fascinating. It’s not too often you get to see inside your thumb.
“I got a shock when I arrived in the emergency room because a nurse took a look at it first and said, ‘No, I don’t think we can save this.’ I had to wait a while then for a doctor, all the time praying that he would come up with a different evaluation. Anyhow, he did thankfully. He said he could sew it back on. ‘Please do!’ I said, and that’s exactly what he did.”
Who knows if it was adrenaline or something else, but rather amazingly, there was no pain involved. His hand was totally numb. “I think all the nerves got crushed or something,” Dio confirmed. “It looked like it should be painful, but it wasn’t. After it was sewn back on they did a proper job of it and now it’s OK. It looks a little distorted and the nail has not grown fully back yet but I’m thankful I still have my thumb and I can still do my horn sign.”
Dio was a man with a big sense of humour, and it obviously entered his head that he had been struck by the ultimate rock’n’roll irony of a bizarre gardening accident. “Oh of course it did. I was imagining all the headlines in my head. It had every comedy element and more.”
While this story could give the impression that Dio was less than able when it came to practical matters, this is far from true. He was a skilled handyman who frequently dove into DIY projects, repairs, and many a practical thing around the house. This is something Jeff Pilson, bass player with Dokken, Foreigner, and – as we’ll get to – Dio, can attest to.
Pilson joined Dio for a spell in 1993, as Ronnie was putting his old band back together again after his second time in Black Sabbath came to an end. Drummer Vinny Appice followed Dio from Sabbath while Tracy G had been recruited as the new guitar player. Jimmy Bain was initially welcomed back on bass, but he showed up inconsistently and was ultimately not able to do it.
During one of those early days when Bain hadn’t showed up, Ronnie and Appice knocked on Pilson’s door. They were rehearsing just down the street, and wondered if Pilson knew of anyone who was available to play bass with them. They might have been fishing, and Pilson was happy to volunteer himself for the job. There was just one problem keeping him from joining them for a jam – his garden sprinklers had broken and he was in the middle of figuring out how to get the system fixed. Ronnie and Appice quickly said, “we’ll fix it.”
They proceeded to go around Pilson’s entire yard, looking things over, doing repairs and ended up repairing the entire sprinkler system. With the job well done, they turned to Pilson and said, “okay, can we go down the street and jam now?” And so they did.
What about the original garden gnome which severed Ronne James Dio’s thumb? It turns out that Dio did not hold too many grudges, and the gnome kept his job of making the garden more decorative.
“The gnome’s still there,” Dio said. “Only now he is on a very sensible level piece of ground. It wasn’t his fault, he’s an inanimate object but sometimes I look at that face and think… you know, he just has one of those faces! Put it this way, if I’m involved in another gardening accident you won’t have far to look.”
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